Another call. Another text. Another message.

They all kept coming through to Phil Snow’s phone way back in 2001. Snow was the defensive coordinator at UCLA at the time, and some kid by the name of Matt Rhule who said he played at Penn State for Joe Paterno kept bugging him about a job.

“I don't even know him, right? I said, who the hell is this guy,” said Snow, Nebraska's associate head coach who spoke with media members Wednesday inside Hawks Championship Center.

UCLA was in need of a graduate assistant, and this Rhule guy told Snow to call Paterno. So Snow went to his head coach, Bob Toledo, hoping to solve this Rhule case.

“I said, ‘Bob, do you know coach Paterno?’ He said, ‘yeah, real well.’ I said, ‘Will you call him on this guy, because he's driving me nuts,’” Snow said though a laugh. “So he did, and Paterno said, ‘hire him.’ Nobody on our staff knew him, not one person. And he did a hell of a job in one year. Really left an impression on everybody there.”

Rhule and Snow have been tight ever since. Lifelong friends, in fact. Snow has been Rhule's DC at Temple, Baylor and Carolina in the NFL. And now after two seasons at Nebraska, Rhule wants his help.

“He asked me if I'd come and help, and I said sure,” Snow said. “I didn't really know what the job was, but I'm just going to help on defense and special teams, and the quality of play on the field. I'm looking forward to it.”

Snow has always liked Nebraska and has a great respect for Tom Osborne. When Snow was coaching at Arizona State, he enjoyed his three battles against the Huskers.

Snow spent nine years in Tempe, the last six of which were spent as DC. Snow was the Sun Devils’ DB coach in 1992 when Nebraska beat them 45-24 in Lincoln. When Snow was the DC, Nebraska racked up 77 points in a blowout Nebraska win in Lincoln. In 1996, Snow finally broke through against the Huskers, and his defense pitched a shutout along the way to a 19-0 win for Arizona State in Tempe.

What will Snow’s role exactly be at Nebraska? Helping develop the young coaches on staff and show them Rhule’s vision is one. He won’t be calling the defense on game days — that’s DC John Butler’s job — but Snow’s impact will be felt the most Sundays through Fridays. At practice, he’ll help coach a different position each day.

“Coach Butler will call the defense, but I will be involved in the game plan in there with them,” Snow said. “And it's a collaborative thing, right? We all work together. But it will be coach Butler's defense, and we're all working for him in that room.”

Rhule tried to bring Snow with him to be his first DC at Nebraska, but the way Snow saw it, at his age — he turned 69 years old in December — he didn’t think he had the energy to do the things needed to be successful, like grind on the recruiting trail.

And on top of that, Snow liked that Tony White was going to be next in line for the DC job. Snow is a big fan of White and knows him well because White had just completed his career as a linebacker at UCLA in 2000.

Snow knows better than anyone that, to win, you need to adjust and be flexible to account for changes — and there's plenty in college football these days with NIL, the transfer portal and an evolving College Football Playoff format. He’s seen Rhule adjust quite a bit already, especially with his own coaching staff.

“I left college football in 2019, so this is my first full-time gig with that in place,” Snow said. “But I mean, you just have to adjust to the times. And I think this staff and Matt have done a great job adjusting. His plan has changed a little bit from originally when he got here. So it's an adjusting deal, and you just got to keep adjusting with it.”

According to Snow, Nebraska’s staff had a couple meetings last week and Rhule spoke for “about six or seven hours straight.” There's a lot on his mind ahead of a crucial Year 3 in Lincoln.

Snow doesn’t need to be talked into the thought of Rhule being the right guy to turn Nebraska’s program around. When Rhule was hired to coach the Carolina Panthers, he brought along Snow to be his DC. The two coaches were out after 38 games and a record of 11-27.

Both Rhule and Snow agree, it was a hard job at a tough time, right when the pandemic was hitting. Snow said he and Rhule took the Carolina job and didn't even meet a single player for the first six months.

The coaches don't think they got a fair shake at it.

“Matt knows how to build a program," Snow said. "Now, we didn't get it done at Carolina, but they only gave us, like, really, two years, right? It was a bad deal.”

After being with Rhule at Temple, Baylor and now Nebraska, Snow understands how big year threes have become for Rhule. There’s always been a jump in wins. Temple went from six wins to 10 in 2014-15. At Baylor, it was seven wins to 11 in 2018-19.

“Matt is always trying to get better. His staff, he can drive his staff nuts with that too,” Snow said, “because he's always looking for an edge and challenging you every day on the field and what you're teaching and how you're doing it, how you're recruiting. That's just Matt. He's always looking for an edge, so he'll always continue to grow.”

Staying stagnant and never changing is not the way to go about things as a defense, Snow said. That goes for much of life, too, not just football.

“You got to stay ahead. Especially on defense, with the offenses that adjust to what you do, you must stay ahead,” Snow said. “Well, the only way to do that is challenge yourself, or otherwise you get comfortable and complacent and people take advantage of you. You have to do that on defense.”

And staying ahead, in Snow’s opinion, is continuing to adapt to Big Ten offenses. As he’s studied the league, he’s come to a conclusion — it’s growing more and more into something similar to what he saw in the NFL.

Whether it’s the run games, the two-back run games, the one-back passing attacks, it all looks familiar to Snow on tape. The personnel groupings too. More and more multiple tight end sets on the field with dynamic athletes with size who can both block and run routes, which in turn creates personnel issues for defenses countering.

Snow said White “did a fantastic job” with his 3-3 package. The coach said he used a 3-3 package at Baylor, but his version was different from White’s, which attacks more. Snow liked how all the movement at the second level caused confusion for offensive lines and quarterbacks.

Keeping parts of White’s defense is the plan in 2025, Snow said, especially on early downs. But it’s on third down where Butler will bring his own twist that you often see on Sundays when offenses are on money downs.

“We're going to employ all that stuff on first and second down,” Snow said of Nebraska defense from last year. “We're going to hope to advance the third-down package a little bit, more like the National Football League. If you watch third down with everybody on the line of scrimmage and mugging ‘backers. We’ll advance the third-down package. Coach Butler, he has NFL background, I do. But we're taking a lot of what Tony did, because it's highly successful in it and creates chaos for the offense.”

Prior to his arrival at Nebraska, Butler had spent the previous 10 seasons in the NFL as a defensive backs coach. That experience has equipped Butler with the knowledge of coverages he hopes will make a difference in 2025.

“I think John will bring some really good things to the table,” Snow said. “From an offensive standpoint, the protections, we’ll attack protections. The different types of coverages that we can play on third down that Tony didn't do, and that's nothing negative about Tony. He did a hell of a job with what he did, right? But I think there'll be a few different wrinkles on third down.”

When asked what stood out to Snow from Nebraska's 2024 tape, Snow brought up the play on third down and in the red zone.

Nebraska finished last season limiting opponents to 35.22% on third downs, fifth-best in the Big Ten. Nebraska's opponents scored on 75.68% of their trips to the red zone, third-best in the conference. They scored touchdowns on 56.76% of their red zone opportunities, which ranked 10th in the league.

"I think one area is third down — we have to win third down. The other area is red zone," Snow said. "I mean, when you really look at it, if you play well on third down, you play well in the red zone, it's hard to score from an offensive standpoint. So both areas, and I'm not saying they were bad, but those are the areas that we have to get better at."

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