Carriker Chronicles: Matt Rhule on Positives and Needed Improvement

Some of what Rhule touched on, plus Adam's thoughts

Rhule thought Dylan Raiola played excellent. It's Carter Nelson's time, that's an exact quote from him. They're going to figure out who's going to start and play a left tackle. Maybe do things a little bit differently when it comes to second and third running backs on the depth chart and how they play going forward.

Also, the pass defense was much better, and dare I say, and I quote, stickier, according to Matt Rule.

Also, areas of needed improvement for the Huskers. Let me shock you. Rush defense, pass defense, facing teams that play with tempo, and he wasn't to-the-gills thrilled with special teams, which I was surprised by. He did point out some good things the defense did as well beyond that. Right off the top, he was asked about the young defensive line, and he was honest. He said, I'm not real happy about giving up over 200 yards rushing. Almost 100 of that was to the quarterback on non-quarterback designed runs, for the most part.

Honestly, it's just Sorsby making plays, Cincinnati's quarterback. Now they need to be more disciplined in their pass rush. If you get out of your lanes, or you line up too wide, or you lose discipline, you create lanes, and a guy like that is going to make plays. It's something the coaches want to focus on more in the future, starting in practice this week.

When asked about Williams Nwarneri, okay, said he did a nice job, ran sideline to sideline, played hard. You don't always get an effort like that from every player, especially a young guy who's really playing for the first time, and he liked that. Now, Nwarneri made an impact and did some really good things in the game. You can see why he's a five star. He's just going to get better and better going forward. He said he had some good rushes. Just to step away on a couple of rushes from hitting the quarterback, great speed to power moves. Sometimes he lined up a little bit wide. Guys love to get wide because you can just fly off the ball. I always wanted to get wider. Every defensive end does, it's your dream. But sometimes, it'll create some lanes for the quarterback to take off and run through. Also, it's farther to get there. The wider you get, the farther you are away, even though it feels like you're making it easy. Great speed to power moves. So if you're flying off the ball, bam, and then you hit the tackle, you can almost run them over just a little bit sometimes. And I quote, happy to see Will fly around like that, end quote, said Matt Rule.