Opening Statement
“I appreciate you guys being here. Especially those of you who went to California. It’s great to see you guys get back. I mean that sincerely, I watch a lot of other press conferences and not everyone has the commitment from the people that cover them the way you guys do so it’s cool to go out there. As I said after the game, I just have to say it again, our fans were spectacular. It was absolutely amazing. To have that many people take their hard earned money and go out there or people who live there that support Husker Nation. It’s just such an amazing thrill and I’m unbelievably grateful. I’m going to say a couple things for a second so just forgive me, but I do want to make sure I highlight all of the things going on on campus right now. Obviously volleyball, number one, it’s just absolutely amazing. Our rifle team is number one right now and where they’ve come from in two years is amazing. Wrestling, it’s really cool that Bud (Crawford) went and walked them out and to see wrestling at number two and bowling at number two. There are really cool things happening and I hope I can get to men’s and women’s basketball here soon. They’re off to exciting starts and doing great things. One of the cool things with my job is when we have a huge win like we did against UCLA I get a text from Fred (Hoiberg) and Amy (Williams) and all those people. There are state high school playoffs. I know there are 28 teams still in it so good luck to those guys. I do want to highlight a couple things. It was a huge win. To go on the road – I think it’s our first time having three road wins since 2014 and we have one more chance which would be the first time since 2010. We’re going to continue to work this week so that we’re ready for that game next week. Obviously TJ (Lateef) being just the fifth true freshman and I thought he went out and he was masterful. He did a great job and I think the team really responded to him and had his back and he brought joy and energy and it was a lot of fun to see him doing what he was doing. Defensively, we still haven’t allowed 400 yards this season, only seven teams in the country have not allowed 400 yards this season, so while I know there are things we wish we could do just a little bit better there are a lot of things that we’re doing at a really really high level and we’re doing it with a lot of young players. I hope our players see, hey, continue to buy into the first floor of the development, continue to buy into Coach Butler and their position coaches and where we are defensively will only continue to take off. You see guys playing their best football. You see Keona Davis have a career day, you see Dylan Rogers get out there, you see Andrew Marshall making plays, DeShon (Singleton) as a senior batting the ball down and making havoc plays. I’m excited and really proud of our special teams. We’re top 25 in punt returns, punt return defense we’re third, kick off return we’re fourth, kick off return defense we 're 14th. Eck (Mike Ekeler) does a tremendous job, he and his staff. I think our players are really bought into it. Any time you can go out there and do the things we’re doing special teams wise and defensively you give yourself a chance. I personally believe Emmett Johnson should be in New York as a Heisman candidate. I think he should be a Doak Walker finalist if not winner and I think what he’s doing is fantastic. I hope people appreciate seeing him. He’s a First-Team all American. The last person who was First-Team all American wasn’t since 2011, Lavonte David. Just a couple highlights because hopefully our social media people will mash it up. He leads the nation in yards from scrimmage with 1431 yards from scrimmage in ten games, ranked second in the FBS in total rushing yards and fifth in yards per game, leads the nation by accounting for 37% of his team’s total yards, among power conference players he’s number one at 37.1, Jeremiyah Love another great player at Notre Dame is second at 29.6. Emmett is one of only three players with at least ten rushing touchdowns and three receiving touchdowns. He’s the only running back in power conference play with four 100 yard rushing games in conference play. Two pages, that's how good he is. He has the most rushing yards for a Husker since the Doak Walker Award finalist Ameer Abdullah in 2014, the most touchdowns for a Nebraska player since Ameer Abdullah had 22 touchdowns in 2014. Emmett (Johnson) became the first player in the Big Ten since at least 1995 to have more than 125 rushing yards, more than 100 receiving yards, a rushing touchdown, and two receiving yards in the same game. Wow. He’s the first player in Nebraska history to have 100 rushing yards and 100 receiving yards in a game. He’ll win a bunch of awards this week but we haven’t been able to announce them yet. I’m really really proud of Emmett (Johnson) and his character. I do have to say this, if you saw the end of the game and you saw the TV copy, I had a chance to see the TV copy. Everything that we’ve always wanted and it was a really good question that Sam (McKewon) asked me last year and it was what kind of guys are you looking for. At the end of that game they started interviewing me and I said TJ (Lateef) get over here, they don’t wanna interview me, they’ll interview you and he immediately started to talk about Dylan (Raiola) and he started to talk about playing for his brothers on the team and then Emmett (Johnson) gets in and Emmett (Johnson) talks about Dylan (Raiola), then he talks about TJ (Lateef), then he talks about the o line then he talks about all the other guys. In today’s day in age to have a team that talks about each other and not just themselves is really really hard to do so I’m very proud of the guys. That’s not me, that's the team and I hope our players this bye week take a moment to see how far they’ve come personally and where they’re headed and also look at the examples of the guys on the team who waited their turn. It’s very very hard and it’s very very not in vogue anymore to wait your turn and sometimes it’s just like well I’ll just go here and do this or just go there. Guys like Emmett (Johnson) had chances but they could’ve but they stayed. He deserves everything he’s getting along with everybody else. I’m really proud of all the things that are happening, it should be a great bye week for us to get healthy, develop some young players, really look at each guy and what we can do to help them, and then continue to recruit.”

On decisions to punt the ball and opponents’ field position
“ I think it is a mixture of a couple things to be honest with you, we are still attacking 3rd and 6, 3rd and 7. You look at the stats. 3rd and 11 plus, a lot of our sacks happen in those cases. We were also down at Minnesota so you have to play a little differently. We have great pressure  packages. John's (Butler) got all these things we like and I think the one thing is that people have lined up and run the ball against us. You go back to Michigan, it's the second last drive, the one that they go up by 10. It's 3rd and 13, on that drive, they ran a sprint out, they ran a screen, and they ran an outside zone. So I’m on the headset and I'm hearing John (Butler), well, I’m always like “blitz”, and I'm hearing him like “We should check the zone versus this”, and we have to relay that to the offense, and we are like ‘Hey guys, all these exotic pressure packages that earlier in the year we were trying to sort out and pick up’ because we have great wideouts when we get them the ball we said like ‘Hey lets screen that stuff and when they give it and some of that stuff lets run it against it and  then pick our spots.’ So I think we've adapted, but it's still a team thing. When you're down by 21 you can't do that, so against USC – USC has great pass rushers so the whole thought was let's run the ball early, let’s run them down and then throw later in the game when they are a bit beat up. In this game, they didn't have a ton of sacks, but that play, to make it very clear, that was a check. So if they came out and they were playing four-man rush zone coverage, we were going to let it rip and throw a downfield pass that was just because they came out and looked a bit different than he checked.”