It\u2019s official. <\/p>\n
Nebraska formally announced Thursday the hiring of John Butler<\/a><\/strong> as its new secondary coach and defensive passing game coordinator. He replaces Evan Cooper<\/a><\/strong>, who resigned Friday for \u201cpersonal reasons,\u201d according to school officials. <\/p>\n The 51-year-old Butler, a Philadelphia native, possesses a wealth of college and NFL experience. His career includes a stint in 2013 as Penn State\u2019s defensive coordinator, with the Nittany Lions finishing 7-5 that season despite scholarship reductions and a bowl ban in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. <\/p>\n Butler\u2019s latest job was defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator for the Buffalo Bills (2022-23), with his secondary being a strength during most of that period.<\/p>\n There is a prior connection to Nebraska\u2019s staff. Butler coached current Husker general manager Sean Padden at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in 1995-96. He was the defensive coordinator and secondary coach during that period.<\/p>\n In addition to his time at Penn State, Butler has Big Ten experience as Minnesota\u2019s special teams and linebackers coach from 2007 to 2010. From there, his journey had a stop as South Carolina\u2019s special teams and linebackers coach (2011) before he moved on to Penn State as the secondary coach in 2012. He was promoted to coordinator in 2013.<\/p>\n Then, Butler turned his attention to the NFL. He was the Houston Texans\u2019 secondary coach (2014-17) before taking the same job with the Buffalo Bills (2018-21). He was promoted to defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator in 2022 and served in that role until this past season.<\/p>\n According to the Athletic, Butler decided to move on from the Bills after being passed over for the defensive coordinator job.<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s official: Butler will try to help improve a Nebraska defense that was 11th nationally last season in total yards allowed per game (303.5) and 13th in points allowed (18.2). <\/p>\n As for Cooper, he played for Temple when current Nebraska head coach\u00a0Matt Rhule\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>was an assistant coach there, and Cooper had been serving on Rhule\u2019s coaching staff for the 10th consecutive year.<\/p>\n Rhule has said he trusts Cooper at a high level for in part for his ability to evaluate talent. What\u2019s more, Cooper\u2019s first season coaching Husker defensive backs was a success by most any measure.<\/p>\n Nebraska\u2019s pass defense in 2023 limited opponents to 6.1 yards per attempt, a total that ranked ninth nationally. The Huskers also ranked 15th nationally in passing efficiency defense, their highest finish in that category since 2014. The secondary held two opponents under 100 yards passing and seven opponents to fewer than 200 yards through the air.<\/p>\n Never miss breaking news or another HuskerOnline article again. Click HERE to sign up for HuskerOnline\u2019s Daily and Breaking News Newsletters.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post It\u2019s official: John Butler joins Nebraska staff<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s official. Nebraska formally announced Thursday the hiring of John Butler as its new secondary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60275"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60313,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60275\/revisions\/60313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Butler has significant Big Ten experience <\/h2>\n
Cooper enjoyed success under Rhule <\/h2>\n