He Never Applied: How Dave Tollefson Coached His Way Onto Nebraska's Staff

Husker fans, here’s a story Matt Rhule told at the end of camp that had nothing to do with the depth chart, and it might tell you more about how he builds a staff than anything else he said.

It starts with a guy who came to Lincoln as somebody’s friend.

He just kept showing up

Nebraska had a guest in the building during bowl prep last December. Dave Tollefson came along with him.

Then he came back. And back.

“He just kept showing up, showing up, showing up,” Rhule said. “Unpaid, unpaid, unpaid. Didn’t apply for a job.”

Read that again. A two-time Super Bowl champion with the New York Giants was in the Nebraska facility working with defensive linemen for free, and never once asked anybody for a title.

Eventually Rhule said something about it.

“One day I was like, ‘Hey, you should just stick around.’ So we started paying him.”

“Those are my kind of guys”

That line is the whole thing:

“Lots of people ask me for a job. Some people just start doing the job — and you end up hiring them.”

Tollefson is now in his first season as a defensive analyst, working the interior line alongside defensive line coach Corey Brown. He came in for the Las Vegas Bowl and never left.

He’s got Omaha ties and three young sons, and he played his college ball at Northwest Missouri State — not exactly the standard résumé for a man with two Super Bowl rings.

Why it might actually matter on Saturdays

Here’s the part Husker fans should care about. Rhule was blunt about what went wrong up front last season:

“If we did one thing poorly last year, we kind of jumped around with the techniques, and the players didn’t improve on the defensive line.”

Different coaches, different teaching, no consistency — and it showed. So when he was asked what’s changed, he handed the credit straight to the people doing the teaching:

“All the technical improvements that we’ve made — that’s all Corey Brown, that’s all Roy Manning, that’s all Dave and Phil.”

Rhule says he’s now seeing improvement deep into the roster, not just with the starters. He mentioned watching the threes and fours — guys likely headed for scout team — and seeing their technique and discipline get noticeably better.

He also put the qualifier on it himself, which is the honest part: “We’ve got to see it in the games.”

The point

Nebraska’s defensive line was the problem last year. It got four new voices teaching it, and one of them talked his way in by not talking at all — he just turned up and did the work until somebody handed him a paycheck.

Husker fans, we find out on September 5 whether it took. But you can see what kind of room Rhule is trying to build.