Ever since the week Mickey Joseph took over as interim coach of Nebraska football, one of the underlying root causes of the structural damage to the Scott Frost Era began to get repaired: Alignment and messaging.

That was one of the key talking points we all discussed at the time, right? As soon as Joseph was in charge of the Huskers, we all witnessed a shift in how much more clear and consistent the messaging was from the top-down – from head coach to assistants (the ones not named Mark Whipple) to players – especially in press conference settings. What the coach said from week to week became more consistent, and the players often offered a strong mirror image of what Joseph was relaying to us.

Ever since Matt Rhule took over, those characteristics of the program became even more vivid and remarkably consistent. I mean, take the hush-hush approach from every single player and coach (not named Marcus Satterfield) who were either given a de facto memo or Clockwork Orange’d into making sure to only ever say the company line whenever posed a question about Dylan Raiola among the Huskers’ quarterback “battle” this spring. (Hard to call it a “battle” in the truest sense of the word when it was won so early on and in such a large landslide.)

It was an immediate divergence away from answering a Raiola-exclusive question with a Raiola-specific answer and into a robotic response such as “I think he and Danny (Kaelin) are both…” or “I think all three quarterbacks are…” or both.

Brilliantly annoying

Annoyingly brilliant.