Matt Rhule may have hoped the shake-up on Nebraska’s coaching staff would start to clean things up. Instead, Luke Lindenmeyer handed the Huskers another awkward reminder that the problems have been sitting there for a while.
The tight end’s comments on Tuesday, during a joint media availability with center Justin Evans, centered on Nebraska’s penalty issues - and more specifically, the fact that those mistakes have been showing up in practice too.
“We’ve seen the penalties in practice, and maybe we were just like, 'Oh, it won’t happen in the game,' but we’re bringing in some serious accountability about that. We’re not gonna let stuff like that slide anymore.”
That line is going to stick. It’s one thing to say the team is addressing penalties now. It’s another to admit the penalties were happening in practice all along and apparently weren’t being treated as the urgent issue they became on Saturdays.
Nebraska is already in the middle of a four-game losing streak, and the penalty problem didn’t appear out of nowhere. Even during the wins, the offense was drawing flags, with wide receiver penalties - especially blindside blocks - becoming a recurring headache since Week 1.
That leaves a bigger question hanging over the program: why didn’t the coaching staff clamp down on it sooner?
The timing makes the situation even messier. Rhule had already moved on from offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen, and Lindenmeyer’s comments naturally invite the kind of speculation that the issue was either being overlooked or not treated with enough urgency until it became impossible to ignore.
If Holgorsen was the one not pushing hard enough on the penalties, that still doesn’t let Rhule off the hook. He’s the one at the top, and it’s hard to believe he wasn’t seeing the same mistakes in practice that were showing up in games.
The most charitable reading is that the problem only really escalated in the past few weeks. But even that doesn’t make the picture look much better.
Rhule has already dealt with the perception that Nebraska’s teams fade late in the season, and if part of that slide is tied to basic discipline issues not being corrected in practice, that’s a serious concern.
For now, Rhule has to hope the change at offensive coordinator helps fast. Because Lindenmeyer’s quote is the kind of thing that will come back every time Nebraska gets tagged with a costly penalty - and right now, that doesn’t feel like a rare possibility.
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Rutgers is dealing with its own personnel hit, with star wide receiver KJ Duff lost for the season, so both teams will be leaning on players who now have to do more than they were expected to do a week ago. For Nebraska, the bigger question is how quickly those replacements can settle in against an opponent that will be trying to test the spots where the Cornhuskers are thinnest. [Read more 🡒]