Nebraska Defensive Coordinator Tony White Pre-Colorado Press Conference

On how the defense prepares for Colorado’s explosiveness
“When you’re playing a heavier-run team, you tend to change your periods to more run, heavier inside. When you get into teams that want to throw the ball and get you out into space and stuff, you do a little bit more seven-on-seven and get the guys in more space-oriented situations. That way, the gameday is more like practice. You do little things like that. That’s the great thing with Coach (Rhule). He says ‘what do you guys need?’ and if it’s more seven-on-seven, we’ll do seven-on-seven. If it’s more team, if it’s more against the offense, whatever it is we need to do to put these guys in the situation that they’re going to be in in the game, he allows us to do. Doing little things like that and making sure that we harp on the little things that get us in position to make plays.”

On how to prepare DBs for Travis Hunter
“You just go back to fundamentals. Go back to what we do and the situations that Coach (John) Butler and all the defensive staff are putting the guys in right now, trying to mimic the same situations that our guys are going to be in in the game. You just rep it and you trust your training and like I said, through the week, you prepare in a way that you have confidence going into the game on Saturday.”

On how to balance bringing quarterback pressure and covering receivers
“It’s coming together and seeing what the best calls and what the best philosophy, not only, when we do pressure, what the coverage is going to look like, but when we drop everybody, what the rush is going to look like. It’s playing complimentary football on defense. That’s the challenge. He (Shedeur Sanders) is a talent. It seems like, if you go through and look at all the games, there’s a lot of ways people played him, and he was still able to perform and still able to execute. It’s a really big challenge, but he’s the type of player that makes you a better coordinator because you have to find ways, you have to be creative, you have to find ways to cover, you have to find ways to attack, you have to find ways to disguise. It’ll be a challenge.”

On the quality of the tackling against UTEP
“I thought when we got there, the guys got there with some bad intentions. I think we need to shore up our angles. There were some times that we got cut back on and that’s not what we do, that’s not what we preach. Again, you love the things that you did well, but every step of the way, it’s ‘what can we do that much better?’ That’s the first thing we showed the guys, and Coach (Rhule) pointed out, let’s do this better. Let’s take the ball away that we’re supposed to, let’s track our near hips and let’s really go after the football. That was the highlight of this week starting off, and making sure we get those things done.”