New Nebraska coaches preparing for return of traditional spring game

The Nebraska football squad will start spring practices on Saturday, and several coaches and players spoke with the media to kick off the 2026 season.

This year’s spring camp will end with the traditional spring game in late March, which didn’t happen last year due to fears that players would transfer after coaches could watch them compete on national TV.

Head coach Matt Rhule said since the transfer window has been limited to January this year, the annual scrimmage is back on.

“We missed it. We want to do it,” Rhule said. “We think it’s a great thing for the fans. It’s a great thing for people that want to come watch us play. Once they kind of changed the calendar, we went back to a more traditional setting.”

The staff decided to start practices sooner in the calendar to make room for more weight training in the summer and to have a faster turnaround after the 2025 season, Rhule said. He added the running backs looked fast in the Las Vegas Bowl, but will need more game experience to develop.

The coach, who’s entering his fourth year running the football program, said he wants to see better technique from his defensive line this spring.

The Big Red struggled defending the run throughout the 2025 season and its highly ranked pass defense crumbled down the stretch, leading to several blowout losses to end the year. That led to the firing of former defensive coordinator John Butler.

Several new assistant coaches line the Huskers’ roster. Those names are headlined by Rob Aurich, who will call the defense.

Thursday marked one of the first chances for Aurich to speak to the media. He says the Blackshirt tradition of strong and tough defenses at Nebraska is something he wants to build off of.

“I think that’s the most humbling part of this job is you feel a commitment, a gratitude, (an) ownership that this has to look a certain way,” Aurich said.

He arrived in Lincoln noticing the need to find big players to play defensive line and linebacker, to “compete with the big boys.”

The Big Red will be allowed to practice 15 times over the next month or so before the spring game kicks off on March 28.