Heinrich Haarberg talks Husker QB room, 2023 season and more

Heinrich Haarberg was back home in Kearney over the holiday break. Before Christmas came around, the Husker quarterback and Kearney Catholic product was interviewed on the Doug and Daddy Show on ESPN Tri-Cities.

You can listen to the wide-ranging 30-minute interview here.

With the departures of Jeff Sims and Chubba Purdy, Haarberg is currently one of three scholarship quarterbacks at Nebraska. He’s also the most experienced as the two other scholarship signal callers are true freshmen from the 2024 class in five-star Dylan Raiola and three-star Daniel Kaelin.

Haarberg discussed quite a bit during the interview. Here are the highlights.

Haarberg has been texting with both Raiola and Kaelin and met each of them during their prior visits to the program. Although many have already pegged Raiola as the favorite to win the QB1 job as a true freshman, Haarberg welcomes the competition.

For a program that hasn't played in a bowl game since 2016, Nebraska being able to attract the kind of talent like Raiola and Kaelin is impressive.

“That says something about what we’ve done and what we’ve shown this year under coach (Matt) Rhule," Haarberg said. "I’m glad both of them are coming in. And Daniel, that’s a hard spot to be put in. He was probably told he was going to be the only quarterback, and I know he works his butt off. So I think it’s a testament to him for sticking to his commitment. And Dylan seems like a great kid.”

Now all of the sudden Haarberg is the old guy in the room. But really, he’s not that old.

“Now there’s three scholarship quarterbacks, and two of them are freshmen and I’m the old head, which is funny because, shoot, I can’t even go on O Street, I’m not even 21 yet," Haarberg said with a laugh. "So I don’t know how I’m the old head.”

The quarterback position at Nebraska, like almost every other program around the country, has been a constant cycle of change since Adrian Martinez left. Such is life in modern college football roster construction.

“It’s crazy, the cycle we’ve been through of quarterbacks,” Haarberg said. “Last year, and in January, by that point I was the longest-tenured Nebraska quarterback, but I was also the youngest. Hopefully I can keep building the standard in the quarterback room, be a leader as much as I can to my room, to the offense.”

Haarberg said he was the No. 2 quarterback throughout spring ball, then once fall camp hit, Purdy was making a real push, but was slowed by injury.

Haarberg went into the season-opener at Minnesota as Sims’ backup, but the coaching staff still had plans to use Haarberg in other ways, and fans saw it when he lined up as an H-back and caught a pass to the flat for a first down in the first half.

“They told me, 'You’re too good of an athlete to have on the bench, that’s just not right,'” Haarberg said. “So there were a couple plays they put in for me to go to tight end or receiver. They even told me that, moving forward, if you’re not the starting quarterback, we’re going to keep developing you as a quarterback, you’ll never go to a tight end meeting or a receiver meeting, you’ll never be coached by anyone other than the quarterback coach, but you’re too good of an athlete to have in the bench. So we’re going to have packages for you at tight end, packages for you at receiver.”

During his early signing day press conference on Dec. 20, Rhule said it was his goal to have his offenses at Nebraska resemble a college version of what the San Francisco 49ers have been doing in the NFL. Haarberg would have a role in that kind of versatile pro-style offense, where some players align in different spots on the field and can be effective in different roles.

Could Haarberg have a role like Deebo Samuel? Or maybe something similar to former BYU quarterback and current New Orleans Saints' swiss army knife Taysom Hill?

“Moving forward, if I don’t get the starting quarterback spot, yeah, I’ll line up at tight end, run a couple routes. Maybe go to running back, you never know," Haarberg said.

Haarberg was asked what the difference felt like to have a full-time quarterbacks coach compared to having an offensive coordinator coach the position.

In 2021, Haarberg was coach by Mario Verduzco, Scott Frost's quarterback coach. The past two seasons, the OCs have coached the quarterbacks, including Mark Whipple in 2022 and Marcus Satterfield in 2023.

“It is a little bit different having the offensive coordinator as your quarterback coach,” Haarberg said. “There’s a good and bad to both sides. When the offensive coordinator is your position coach, you know the playbook pretty well. You know what he wants to you execute and how he wants you to do it. But at the same time, you spend a lot of time working on that side, whereas with coach Verduzco, he wrote a thesis paper on quarterback mechanics. You spend a lot of time on the field just working throwing motion.”

On Dec. 20, Rhule said he wasn’t ready to talk about if there’s going to be a change in coaching roles, or if he’ll bring in a full-time quarterbacks coach. Satterfield will be the OC in 2024, but will he also coach the quarterbacks? He did last season, but that wasn't the original plan.

Prior to the 2023 season, it was widely reported that Rhule was close to landing Jake Peetz to be the Huskers' quarterbacks coach, but it didn't work out. And Peetz, a Nebraska native and former Husker, stayed in the NFL as the passing game specialist for the LA Rams.

Glenn Thomas has also been a popular name in the rumor mill. Thomas was Rhule's QB coach and OC at both Temple and Baylor and is now an offensive assistant with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If Rhule does hire a quarterbacks coach from outside the program, he may have to wait to make it public until that coach's season is completed.

Adam DiMichele, an analyst for the Huskers and former Rhule quarterback at Temple, helped coach the Husker QBs in 2023. He could be an in-house option, too.

DiMichele was a star athlete at Sto-Rox High School in Pennsylvania. As a quarterback, he finished his career as the all-time leading passer in the history of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) and broke passing records held by NFL greats Joe Montana, Dan Marino and Joe Namath.

The reason Haarberg committed to Nebraska in the first place was because he wanted to be developed as a passer. He joked that he learned to throw from his father, who was a walk-on fullback for the Huskers.

Haarberg’s throwing motion was a topic of the discussion as well.

“Coach Rhule has already told me that they’re going to put resources into my throwing motion,” Haarberg said. “It may look broke sometimes, but it works.”

Haarberg called his low-elbow delivery a “bad habit” that he uses too often. But there are also times where it works to his benefit. The delivery is something Haarberg wants to continue using, but in the right moments.

“Fourth down against Illinois, I completed a shallow to Alex Bullock that kept us moving. If I don’t throw that sidearm, that doesn’t get completed,” Haarberg said. “You watch (Patrick) Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, guys like that — they know how to use it. That’s something I’m going to work on this offseason. Working on when to use it, because it’s not good all the time. You get balls batted down. I’m 6-foot-5, 6-6 — I probably shouldn’t have balls being batted down.

"But then you look at Justin Herbert, he gets balls batted down all the time and that makes me feel a little bit better — he’s 6-7. But that’s something I want to fix and something the coaches are like, ‘Hey, we’re going to work on this year.’”

Haarberg entered the program in 2021 and joined a quarterback room that included scholarship players Adrian Martinez and Logan Smothers. Haarberg said that group became very close off the field and created bonds that will last forever.

From that moment on, as long as he was around, Haarberg wanted the quarterback room to always have that feel to it. And when the room included Sims and Purdy in 2023, the vibe was the same, which Haarberg loved.

“I want it to be, ‘We have each other’s backs no matter what,’" Haarberg said. "Going in (entering college), I didn’t know how it was going to be. I didn’t know if it was going to be like a one-man, every-man-for-himself, or is it going to be a team?”

After spring ball ended last April, the quarterback room consisted of Sims, Purdy and Haarberg, with Casey Thompson transferring to Florida Atlantic.

“We became really tight,” Haarberg said of the quarterbacks. “We still competed every day, that’s not even a question at this level. You can be as close as you want, but you have to compete. So, I wouldn’t say there’s ever a lack of competition. But Chubba and I would go golfing every other day in the spring. …Love Jeff, love Chubba. Those are guys I’ll talk to the rest of my life.”

In regards to Sims, Haarberg, like everyone else, saw the Georgia Tech transfer was struggling. And when things weren’t going well, both Haarberg and Purdy tried to help in any way they could.

“It’s so hard when the bottom is falling out underneath you,” Haarberg said. “That’s why Chubba and I tried to lift him up as much as we could because we knew there was going to be a point where we needed Jeff, and there was, against Maryland.”

When Haarberg was told he’d be the starter for the Northern Illinois game, several thoughts went through his head.

One was how it would be his first start as a college quarterback. He also knew many young kids around the state, maybe some from small towns, would be looking up to him and thinking, if he can do it, so can I.

But Haarberg did what he was taught and didn’t change anything, treating game day like practice. He had his ankles taped the same way. He stretched the same way. But then the bus ride and the Unity Walk happened — and that’s where it hit him.

“There was a little bit of, you drive in on the bus, you see everyone, and it’s like, ‘You are the starting quarterback,’” Haarberg said.

Haarberg gave credit to Rhule for being able to get all the players focused on the game, so when they walk out of the tunnel in front of 90,000 fans, it’s about the job at hand and nothing else.

Haarberg was asked about the Illinois game. That tilt in Champaign was what kicked off a 3-0 run and an undefeated October.

“Coach Rhule had told us he was not OK with how we played Michigan," Haarberg said. "Not because we lost, but because of the effort we showed toward the end. We just kind of gave up. So, that whole Illinois week, it was a bloody practice every day.”

The consistently rough practices got the team physically and mentally prepared to go to battle on that Friday night in Champaign, and the Huskers delivered with a 20-7 win behind a stellar effort from the defense and a balanced attack from the offense — 158 rushing yards, 154 passing — despite ball security issues near the end.

The fumbles were a topic of the discussion, too. Haarberg said the coaching staff tried everything to help fix the problem, even going as far as doing drills Tom Osborne’s teams did to practice holding on to the ball.

“It was emphasized the entire year,” Haarberg said of ball security. “When you think about something too much, then all you’re doing while you’re in the pocket, or all you’re doing when you’re running is, ‘Don’t fumble the ball, don’t fumble the ball.’ Next thing you know, you get smacked and it’s coming out.”

There were many drills, Haarberg said, meant to improve specific areas of the team. The quarterback said ball security will obviously be a major area of emphasis this offseason, which it needs to be.