Nebraska Football Week 9: Matt Rhule Faces the Heat Again

Nebraska spent Week 9 doing what bad November teams do: turning one rough stretch into a full-blown conversation about everything that’s broken. Three straight losses will do that. They shrink the margins, sharpen the knives, and drag the head coach into the center ring whether he wants the spotlight or not. In Lincoln, the mood has gone from restless to downright itchy. And that’s before the calendar flips into the kind of November that chews up coaches and spits out excuses.

USC, meanwhile, keeps living in the space between electric and maddening. The Trojans can still rattle the rafters when the offense clicks, but this league has a long memory and a mean streak. In a week that also had chaos elsewhere — see our College Football Winners and Losers roundup for the wider mess — Nebraska and USC stood out for different reasons. One is drowning in expectation. The other keeps reminding everybody that talent without polish is just a shiny problem.

Nebraska’s losing streak is no longer a blip

Three straight defeats don’t just sting. They change the temperature around a program. Nebraska has spent years trying to claw its way back to relevance, and every time the Huskers seem to catch a little air, the ground grabs them by the ankle. That’s where Matt Rhule lives now — not in panic, but in the kind of scrutiny that comes from promising a rebuild and then watching the wheels wobble in public.

The worst part for Nebraska is how familiar this feels. The Big Ten doesn’t hand out sympathy cards. It hands out bruises. And once a team starts stacking losses, all the “process” talk in the world sounds like wallpaper paste. Fans want progress they can point to. They want a line from September to November. Right now, they’ve got a skid and a lot of frowning.

The issue isn’t just wins and losses. It’s whether the program is showing any backbone when the season starts grinding. A good rebuilding team can lose and still look organized. A bad one loses and looks like it forgot the route to the stadium.

Matt Rhule’s November is about credibility, not slogans

Rhule has built a career on selling structure, toughness, and steady hands. Fair enough. Those traits matter. But college football is a hard-nosed business, and credibility is a live animal. Once the losses pile up, every word gets weighed against the scoreboard. That’s the deal. Always has been.

In college football, a three-game skid doesn’t just bruise your record. It tests whether anybody still believes the sales pitch.

Nebraska’s next stretch matters because it decides whether this season becomes a stumble or a warning label. If the Huskers keep sliding, the offseason chatter gets ugly fast. Not fair? Maybe. But nobody ever said the Big Ten cared about fairness. It cares about surviving the winter with your standing intact.

Rhule is also fighting history here. Nebraska has burned through optimism before. Fans have heard about culture changes, training tables, accountability, and all the other fine words coaches bring to town. What they remember more clearly is how often the ending feels the same. That memory sits in the building. You can’t coach it away with a glossy press conference.

USC still has the tools, but the Trojans keep leaving openings

USC remains one of those teams that makes a beat writer reach for aspirin. The upside is real. The brand is real. The playmakers are real. But the Trojans can go from slick to sloppy in the time it takes a defense to miss one assignment. That’s not good enough in a league where the better programs punish every loose screw.