Veteran coach Phil Snow was officially added to the Nebraska football coach staff as the associate head coach after serving as a consultant the last month of the season. Snow, 68, was Matt Rhule’s defensive coordinator at three different stops and two different levels before deciding to work as a senior defensive analyst for the Chicago Bears in 2023 and 2024.
Rhule served as Snow’s graduate assistant at UCLA in 2001. The two reunited when Rhule was hired as Temple’s head coach in 2013 and named Snow as his defensive coordinator. Snow followed Rhule to Baylor in 2017, then to the Carolina Panthers in 2020, serving as Rhule’s DC both places. When Rhule was fired as Carolina’s head coach in 2022, Snow opted to work as an analyst for the Bears rather than following Rhule to Lincoln. Snow was hired in mid-November as a consultant before being elevated to the full-time role.
Snow had a lengthy coaching resume before he met Rhule. After growing up in the Bay Area and playing at Cal State Hayward, Snow coached three years of high school in California from 1976-78 before being hired as an assistant at Laney, a community college in California. After two years there, Snow moved on to Boise State, where he was the defensive coordinator four of the five years with the Broncos. He returned to the Bay Area to work as an assistant at Cal from 1987-1991, before moving to Arizona State, first as the defensive backs coach for three years before taking over as defensive coordinator in 1995. He was the defensive coordinator the night the Sun Devils shutout Nebraska, 19-0, Sept. 21, 1996, snapping the Huskers’ 26-game winning streak and sending the two-time defending national champions to defeat. It is still the last time Nebraska was shutout in a football game.
Snow ran the Sun Devils defense until 2001, when he met with Rhule while serving as UCLA defensive coordinator for two years. After two years at Washington, Snow sampled the NFL, coaching three years with the Detroit Lions. After three years with Eastern Michigan, Rhule reunited with Snow and the tandem worked together for a decade.
In addition to plenty of coaching experience, Snow has a famous relative. He is the uncle to 2008 American League MVP, former Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia.