Who is going to coach Nebraska’s special teams?

It’s fair to wonder who is going to coach the Nebraska football special teams next season. With spring ball starting soon, that’s still an open question.

Matt Rhule addressed the topic before Mike Ekeler left for USC. He suggested that Nebraska was going to promote from within, which included Josh Martin.

Martin was a one-time tight ends coach under Rhule. He worked as an analyst as well under Ed Foley and Ekeler. He also spent two seasons as the SMU special teams coach.

That made some sense. It seemed risky, but at least he had been a special teams coach before. Yet, on Monday, it was announced that Martin has accepted a head coaching job at a high school in Texas.

I’m sure the gig pays well. It just feels like maybe Martin wasn’t going to be the special teams coordinator after all, otherwise, I have a hard time seeing this move happen.

That leaves two coaches on the staff who were analysts last season: Brett Maher, the former Nebraska football kicker, who had a stellar NFL career. He’s been on the staff the past two seasons. Nick Humphrey, a former linebacker with Tennessee, came with Ekeler over from Tennessee. He was a special teams analyst last season.

Those are the two internal candidates. Neither has a particularly strong resume to be given the job of special teams coordinator. It makes you wonder if Rhule has an outside candidate up his sleeve.

For the sake of the program, I really hope that’s the case, because rolling with one of the others as coordinator of a 1/3 of the game would be a tremendous risk. And with next season’s schedule, Nebraska really should try to minimize risk.

This isn’t the time for experimenting. Unless those guys had a bigger impact behind the scenes. I’m not saying hiring Maher or Humphrey won’t work. It will just look bad for Rhule if it doesn’t.

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