As Matt Rhule continues working to overhaul his Nebraska defensive staff transitioning into a pivotal 2026 year for Rhule atop the Cornhuskers program, sources tell FootballScoop he’s looking to add an additional member of the San Diego State defensive staff that helped the Aztecs win nine regular-season games.<\/p>\n
After earlier this week nabbing fast-rising young Aztecs defensive coordinator Rob Aurich, Rhule and the Cornhuskers are working to bring Roy Manning along with Aurich to augment the Nebraska defensive staff.<\/p>\n
Manning has been San Diego State’s defensive edge rusher for the past year and prior to that served on Lincoln Riley’s USC Trojans staff as that program’s outside linebackers coach.<\/p>\n
San Diego State finished with the the No. 5 scoring defense in Football Bowls Subdivision play after it allowed just 12.58 points per game; the Aztecs also closed the regular season with the No. 7-ranked FBS team defense at 266.7 yards allowed per game.<\/p>\n
A former standout-player at the University of Michigan who had a multi-year NFL playing career before he transitioned into coaching, Manning also has been on staffs at Oklahoma, UCLA and Washington State among other notable stops.<\/p>\n
He’s proved versatile with his ability to coach and develop players on both the first and second levels of the defense. Manning coached at his alma mater in 2013-14, the final two years of the Brady Hoke era for the Wolverines.<\/p>\n
Nebraska stumbled to an 7-5 finish after it launched its season with a 5-1 opening half. The Cornhuskers now have lost 18 games in Rhule’s first three seasons and face Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl New Year’s Eve.<\/p>\n
The Huskers are going to need major help via the NCAA Transfer Portal to make a significant leap forward in 2026 after also stumbling badly earlier this month in the NCAA’s Early Signing Period.<\/p>\n
Per the 247Sports Composite, Nebraska closed with the Big Ten’s No. 17-ranked and college football’s 114th-ranked overall recruiting class. Nebraska saw multiple Football Championship Subdivision programs post more highly touted recruiting hauls than did the Huskers.<\/p>\n
Looking at the 2026 schedule, Nebraska opens its slate with three-consecutive home games against non-Power Conference opponents.<\/p>\n
The Cornhuskers host Ohio University on Sept. 5, followed by another Mid-American Conference program in Bowling Green the subsequent week and then cap their non-conference slate on Sept. 19 against FCS program North Dakota.<\/p>\n
While dates still are being finalized for the Huskers’ nine Big Ten Conference games, they have home games against the College Football Playoff’s top two seeds in this year’s field — Indiana and Ohio State — as well as a road trip to CFP-participant Oregon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Matt Rhule continues working to overhaul his Nebraska defensive staff transitioning into a pivotal 2026 year for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,24588,17677,50662,100,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-91769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-featured","tag-matt-rhule","tag-nebraska","tag-nebraska-coaching-staff","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}