Who: Tony White
Title: Associate head coach/defensive coordinator
Previous stop: Syracuse defensive coordinator (2020-22)
Why he's important: Well, here we are. It's not as if Nebraska will shut down the football program if Matt Rhule does not succeed in Lincoln, but there may not be a Nebraska left to save for the next head coach if this hire does not work.
A program that won at least nine games every single season from 1969 to 2001 has suddenly found the 6-win mark insurmountable, bringing a string of six straight bowl-less seasons into the Rhule era.
With an 8-year deal, Nebraska has placed its emotional well-being in Rhule's hands, and Rhule has placed a great deal of the program in Tony White's hands.
White was born in Key West, Fla., spent most of his childhood in New York City, and went to high school in El Paso, Texas. He played under defensive coordinator Rocky Long at UCLA in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and that relationship would serve as the foundation of White's coaching career.
After a brief NFL and CFL career, White entered coaching in 2006, and by 2008 he was coaching linebackers under Long at New Mexico.
When Long resigned as New Mexico's head coach after that 2008 season he landed the defensive coordinator job at San Diego State, and White came along as cornerbacks coach. White would spend a decade at Long's side, learning the intricacies of the 3-3-5 defense, which White then got to implement at Arizona State and Syracuse.
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS: No. 15: Bryan Nardo, Oklahoma State; No. 14: Chad Bumphis, Mississippi State; No. 13: Buster Faulkner, Georgia Tech; No. 12 Chris Jackson, Texas; No. 11: Philip Montgomery, Auburn; No. 10: Josh Gattis: Maryland; No. 9: Lance Guidry, Miami; No. 8: Austin Armstrong, Florida; No. 7: Sean Lewis, Colorado; No. 6: Phil Longo, Wisconsin
In three seasons at Syracuse, White's defense rose from 75th in yards per play, to 24th, to 16th. Scoring from from 90th to 40th over White's three seasons. Relatedly, Syracuse's win total rose from one, to five, to seven.
“(The 3-3-5) allows you to be really versatile, show a lot of moves and put players in position to make plays,” White said in 2020.
Basing out of a 3-3-5 will allow White's defense to shape-shift from week to week. Depending on the opponent, Nebraska could function as a 3-4 team one Saturday, and a 4-2-5 team the next. Georgia transfer MJ Sherman will man the all-important Jack linebacker position.
White has also been quick to assert the defense is not his, but the staff's.
"You've got some guys who have played at the highest level, coached at the highest level, coached some of the most elite players on the planet. It's really neat to be in the room and listen to all of the ideas, and then come together to make this our defense. That's the thing I can't stress enough is that it is our defense," he said during training camp. "There's some great some that T-Knight (defensive line coach Terrance Knighton) has up front. (Linebackers coach Rob Dvoracek)'s been awesome in terms of figuring out issues and trying to figure them out ahead of time, and then Coop (secondary coach Evan Cooper) with his background in coverage, it's been fun to work with and mesh."
The staff inherited a defense that was not that bad in 2022. These weren't the 1995 Blackshirts, but Nebraska was suitably average on that side of the ball last season -- 59th in yards per play, 44th in pass efficiency but 101st in yards per carry.
Nebraska was 2-5 in 1-score games in 2022, and 0-8 in 2021, and 2-3 in 2020, and 2-5 in 2019, and... well, it's clear that winning has been hard in Lincoln for a while now.
“We’re talented,” linebacker Luke Reimer told The Athletic this month. “We’re competitive with these teams. We’re not winning because we’re not being a team. We’re not collaborating.”
Point being, Nebraska doesn't have to get a whole lot better defensively to be competitive again. The Rhule regime, at least in Year 1, won't be about instituting a total overhaul, but instead about finishing games and not self-destructing in key moments.
"We have plenty of film of what we're running," White said earlier this month, "so now we're going back through and seeing what can we do really fast and physical, what can we add, what can we take out, so that way guys can just go out there and play."