Opening Statement
“I appreciate you all being here. Thank you. Good win for us last week. I really appreciate Houston Christian. I thought their team competed hard for the whole game. It was good to get all of our guys who don’t start, get them in for a whole half. I think that will benefit us as we move forward into this week. First of all, just an honor to have the ‘95 team there. It was a really great experience with Colorado to have the ‘94 team, so I'm looking forward to having the ‘95 team this year. We’ll really do our best to play football that they can be proud of. I wanted to extend the congratulations to Terence Crawford. Historic, historic night and really cool to see Netflix see the whole world as he supports the Nebraska “N” with everything on his mouthpiece and seeing all of the guys that are with him wear Cornhusker Red. It’s those things that some people might not completely buy into it all, but it’s those things in the day-to-day that’s so important. It’s not five years ago anymore. It’s the world that we live in now and the generation of kids that we’re recruiting. They’re great players and his brand is cool. We are grateful that Terence would represent his home state the way he does. Just a historic night and a lot of respect for him. We turn to this week and we’ve won five of our last six, so our guys are starting to understand the process, they’re starting to understand going back to last year doing things at a high level. They weren’t giddy yesterday, they weren’t happy about some of the things. There are some things we have to really improve upon. I’ll make light of a couple. Obviously our kickoffs, we can’t keep kicking the ball out of bounds. We do kick the ball and we have some good coverage, but that has to improve. Our goal to goal offense inside the ten. We’re 69% reds on touchdowns, our goal is 70. 70 you think of CFP numbers, yet inside the five we’re six of our last nine. Three of them we haven’t scored. We should be through the roof right now, so we have to improve that. Defensively, we’re facing a team, I believe their rushing offense is ranked 15th. They have a quarterback who’s mobile and can run, so obviously that showed up in the first game and they’ll use temple, they will use sugar huddle. Those are things that showed up in the first game that haven’t showed up in the last two, but we’ll have to be prepared for that. A lot for us to work on. I love the way the guys have approached it. Now it begins. Big Ten season begins and we’re excited for it.”

On Michigan's offense from 2023 to now
“I wouldn't spend a lot of time comparing, they’re just different. They still have the same core philosophies, they are 15th in rush offense and 25th in rush defense. They are going to have elite play up front on both sides of the ball. The quarterback brought the dynamic element of he was their leading rusher in their last game, that hadn’t really happened the first two games, more of a pocket player in this last game, get out and utilize his legs and his skills set, so that obviously adds another element to it. They’re based on the same core philosophies of they’re going to control the line of scrimmage and they’ve done that so far this year.”

On prep for the Michigan game from the previous three games played
“I think since Cincinnati's gone on to prove they’re a pretty good football team, just watching them, that's all with (Brendan) Sorsby we did. I know they are playing an SEC opponent, but they've stolen the ball for almost 600 yards in the last two games. I think we can play pretty good pass defense, so we’ve had a chance to see some of those things. I think the biggest thing is we’ve had three weeks of just preparation for those games. The games are where you go to execute and compete. To me it's the work week leading up to it that makes your team better. I think our guys have worked hard the last three weeks to prepare, they’ve been mature about this is what we need to improve on each week. Right now there’s not a guy who doesn’t know what we need to improve upon. That will continue for the rest of the year, I don't know if the games themselves say much, at the end of the day you’re not playing Big Ten teams, so now the Big Ten starts, this is a whole other animal, but I think our guys have worked.” 

On how difficult not having a head coach would be
“I’m not sure. I’d hate to say it would be easy because what the heck am I doing. I’ve never been a part of that, obviously so I don’t know what that would be like. I’m not sure. Obviously they went through it two years ago a little bit, so they know how to do it. I would say that I have a great coaching staff and Susan (Elza) will run the staff meetings and Wish (Jarrett Wishon) would make sure everyone has the schedule. I think Dana (Holgorsen) and John (Butler) would do their jobs. I think we’re all professionals on our staff. How they’re handling it, I’m not sure.”

On veteran players (Malcom Hartzog Jr. and Javin Wright)
“They’ll play. The thing with Javin was at first ‘what is this,’ we have to be so abundantly cautious, but the doctors quickly said he just has a little strain. It just seemed better to hold him later in the week. Malcolm went out and moved around last night. I would expect to see Malcolm and Javin ready to go.”