Matt Rhule has admitted twice now that he has been completely shocked by the amount of injuries the Nebraska football team has sustained this year. The Huskers coach never experienced this in the NFL with the Carolina Panthers, during either of his stops as head coach at Baylor and Temple, or at any of the other number of coaching jobs he has held throughout his long career.
“Never. I’ve never had anything close to this,” Rhule said on Monday, moments after revealing that the Huskers suffered two more season-ending injuries to offensive starters (LT Turner Corcoran and LG Ethan Piper), two more injuries that will keep an additional pair of starters out for multiple games (RG Nouri Nouili and WR Billy Kemp) and another nagging injury to a major defensive contributor (DB/WR Tommi Hill).
Corcoran (foot), Piper (dislocated knee) and Nouili (undisclosed injury) will all get surgery, Kemp will be recovering from an MCL sprain, and Hill is likely to be back on the field sooner than later because, as Rhule says, he “kind of has super-human healing powers.”
Rhule says that Ben Scott, who went down with an injury as well on Saturday, is totally fine, was practicing on Sunday night and will play against Purdue.
That was about the only good injury news to come on Monday. Nebraska is now up to nine players who have been lost for the season due to injury with six on the offense – two starting OL (Corcoran, Piper), two starting WR (Marcus Washington, Isaiah Garcia-Castaneda, plus however long starting slot WR Kemp will be gone) and the team’s original top-two RBs (Gabe Ervin Jr., Rahmir Johnson) – and three young, budding talents on defense (freshmen DB Dwight Bootle and LB/DE Maverick Noonan; redshirt freshman DL Brodie Tagaloa).
That’s in addition to a multi-game injury to starting safety DeShon Singleton, plus injuries earlier in the year to LB Luke Reimer, DL Cam Lenhardt, QB Jeff Sims, WR Jaidyn Doss and FB Barret Liebentritt.
“We’re a pretty beat-up team right now. We’ll have to have some guys step up. … In the last game, I thought a lot of guys stepped up when their number was called,” Rhule said. “We have lots of guys who started games here on the offensive line.”
It’s the offense where the main attrition continues, as the Huskers will now be without seven of the team’s original starters on that side of the ball. It's truly an epidemic of injuries that remains baffling, even unfathomable.
Rhule, in the wake of a rash of injuries unlike any he’s ever seen before, refutes any notion that there is any one thing leading to them – like the theories many have thrown around such as training methods and the grass vs. turf fields debate.
“They’re all contact injuries, you know? You get your foot stepped on: A guy gets blocked into Ethan, he hits him from the front. Sometimes, some of our guys wear knee braces to prevent getting hit from the side, but he gets hit from the front and dislocates his knee,” Rhule said. “He’s gonna have a major surgery. My heart is with Ethan, I can tell you that. There is no one, no one, no one who is more a Cornhusker than him. He’s got a long road ahead, but he’s a tough guy.
“Billy, a guy just kind of gets bumped into him, and he hits his knee. They’ve pretty much all been contact injuries, they’ve pretty much all been on the offensive side. As we always do, when we get to the offseason, we’ll study everything and see if there’s anything we can do better. But it’s obviously a rash of injuries on offense.”
Rhule said through it all, the team’s plan is “we press on" and then he shared the team's plans for how to replace those guys.
