Opening Statement
“A, a lot of credit to Indiana. They played a really, really clean football game. B, it was not our best football in any area. Disappointing, it was an opportunity to get back today and get to work and try to improve that. We have a great, great test ahead of us, but we’re excited to move forward.”

On main takeaways
“We struggled at the corner position. They isolated some one-on-one throws and those are 50/50 balls. You should win 50% of the time and they won most of them. We were maybe a little bit more off and they took free access. The game came down to the run game. We were not able to stop the run. In some cases, some inexplicable, we’re blitzing into the run – and there’s an unblocked defender. Just didn’t tackle, didn’t play well. Go back to that game. It’s 14-7 with four minutes left in the first half. We call that the middle eight, the last four and the first four. We’ve been historically very good in that area and we weren’t. We weren’t good. As a head coach, you always have to start with, what do I regret, what do I not regret? Coming out in the second half, it was 28-7, we drive the ball down and its 4th and 8, 4th and 9. We probably should have kicked a field goal there. The analytics say no. The analytics say go for it. There’s a big part of me that always wants to show the guys that you’re always playing to win. A lot of times in that game, it felt like we were playing not to lose. I think defensively, the minute you lose the edge of playing to win and you’re trying not to lose, a really good defense becomes really average really quickly. I put them in harm’s way in the second half by going for it on fourth down, trying to get back in the game. At the same time, I don’t know that I regret it, if that makes sense. I kept saying to Giff (Isaac Gifford) on the sidelines, that I just can’t wave the white flag. I can’t not try to get back in this game. To answer your question, I think that’s what made the score so bad. From the very beginning, we weren’t tackling at the level we were capable of. The first third and one, we have an unblocked defender there who doesn’t make the play. It just was bad all around.”

On perimeter blocking
“Our perimeter blocking has been a deficiency for us all year and continues to be. Even on the second drive of the game, we started with the ball on the one yard line. We get a couple first downs and punt the ball. The next drive, we drive the ball all the way down to the 15-yard line and we fumble. They blitz off the edge, we have a bubble screen there and it should get thrown out there and it doesn’t get thrown out there. Okay, whatever. On the first drive of the second half, we kick it out there and Jacory (Barney Jr.) gets tackled because we don’t block the safety. There’s an execution component to all this. I hate when coaches say ‘well, we just didn’t execute.’ That’s a cop out. What I don’t like is missed assignments. What I don’t like is not knowing what to do. In a lot of areas, things happened fast in that game. They pressured us, we kicked the ball out and either we run into the defender or we didn't make the block. That whole component of our game was lacking, and it’s something that they did – on the goal line, they did it at a high level. They did it a couple times. They took advantage of their RPOs. It’s an area that we have to be better at.” 

On the challenge to his assistant coaches to get better
“Keith (Mann) told me I do a good job in season just staying very locked in and not reading stuff and listening to stuff. But, Keith kind of said, ‘Hey your statement of, I didn’t see this coming gained traction.’ To which I would say, I’m just going to get to your point. If I saw this coming, then you guys should all be very nervous. I thought we were going to play well, and I thought we had a great bye week. I’m telling you, we legitimately worked on these things over and over. Now, sometimes, I mean no one’s going to want to hear this, sometimes maybe we’ll show up this week. Maybe we’ll show up the next week. These are not things we haven’t done all year, all spring. We got to that moment and just didn’t do the things I know we’re capable of doing. I hate when coaches walk in after a game and say ‘hey, that’s on me’ but I really felt that way because I know what we’re capable of doing and we didn’t do it. We just weren’t ready for that moment. We weren’t ready for that game. Even in the pregame, it felt awesome. So, to your point, I think there’s a challenge sent to the coaches. There’s also a challenge sent to the players. These are grown men. You’re supposed to block that guy, block him. Block him. There’s a couple plays where Emmett (Johnson) spins out of one, and if a guy would’ve blocked the safety on the other side, he would’ve gone for a touchdown. I just show the guys, as a team, how much we all affect each other. A missed block on a bubble screen leads to a 4th and 8 pick, which leads to the ball going all the way down to the 20, which leads to a touchdown. Everyone has to do their job and do it at a high level. To me, this happened to us. We allowed it to happen. It stunk, it hurt. We’ll find out a lot about ourselves moving forward. We’ll find out about the coaches, we’ll find out about the players, we’ll find out about me. The last thing we’re going to do is sit around and be victims. There’s areas that we struggled in that game. At the same time, we haven’t struggled with tackling the way we did in that game. We haven’t struggled getting off blocks. We haven’t done that. We did it in that game. Today, we took a deep step back and we’ll attack the week.”

On turnovers and Dylan Raiola’s interceptions
“I think a smarter coach would’ve settled the game down when you’re down 35-7. In my mind, the long game is that Dylan is going to have to learn to play in those moments with intense pressure, trying to get your team back in the game. We probably could have minimized that. You go through the interceptions. The first one is 4th and 8. I think if Thomas (Fidone) came up here, he would say that he had the defender outside and was supposed to hook in. It’s an option route and he caught that on the first first down. If he would’ve turned in the coverage right, Dylan would’ve thrown him the ball and would’ve had a first down. The thing about Dylan is he’s not going to walk into the postgame press conference and say ‘those ones aren’t on me.’ He’s going to walk in and say ‘I have to play better.’ And he does, we all have to play better. It’s a crucial 4th and 8, maybe the game is a little different if we kick that field goal, and he (Dylan) doesn’t have that one there. The one with the scramble, he’s scrambling to his left, Jacory (Barney Jr.) sees him scrambling, so he throws it to Jacory. Jacory takes off, just kind of a tough play. The third one is a bad ball. We don’t want any of those, and those aren’t excuses, but everything isn’t always as it seems. I thought Dylan did a lot of really, really good things in the game. Unfortunately, the game plan we had going in, when it hit 28-7, kind of starts to alter a little bit. We were going to have to throw the ball a little more than we wanted to. Indiana is an elite pass rush team. Our hope was to be able to mix the run and the pass, it got away from us. I don’t think people are doing anything differently. Each week, we’re facing better teams. We have to continue to improve and play better. That all goes together. We’re talking about the perimeter blocking, you have to be able to kick a bubble out and have a guy go for 30. We need to run a pop for 80. We can’t get tackled by the ankles. My main thing in life as a coach is not to panic, not to overreact, we can’t change everything. Just keep getting better at it until they’re the best that they are. I wanted Dylan to stay in that game in that situation. I wanted him to have to battle through all of that. He went through three interceptions, he suffered through that, hopefully we get better as we move forward. I think he’s playing well, I really do. It might not seem that way to everybody, but when I watch the tape, I like most of everything that he’s doing. We’ll keep building off it, because teams keep getting better and better.” 

On making sure the players don’t overreact and keep competing
“I think you’re doing that every week. I think if you have the right team and the right group of men in the room, if anything, 56-7 should snap you back to reality. We had some success defensively the last game. I’m more worried about success leading to complacency than I am about coming back from something hard. We go back and watch the tape now, if you watch the coaches tape, 2-3 times, we should’ve sacked guys. Guys that were all over the news interviews or all over Twitter talking about how many sacks they had, they didn’t show up in that game. I’m worried about complacency. I trust our players. I think our players just have to settle down and go back to the drawing board. You have a bunch of veteran players. We’ve had a couple opportunities to get to these big moments and we’ve gotten there, but it’s fallen a little bit flat. Last year, Michigan. Then we rebound from that and get ourselves to 5-3 and we just can’t quite get over the hump. Here we are. To me, Colorado was a breakthrough. A big moment, and we went and played it. Illinois has proven to be a pretty good team. They just beat Michigan on the road. That was a good game, back and forth, but we got to overtime and it looked like that game. Here we are on the road against Indiana, a team I thought we were prepared for, and it fell flat. Part of my job is getting us to not fall flat. I’m not saying we were flat, the effort fell flat. I don’t worry about our guys not competing. I really, honestly don’t. That’s the least of my worries.”

On how he goes about working around a struggling run game
“You stay very focused on what it is. When people line up and play us straight up, we run the ball pretty well. I believe that. When people pressure us and blitz us, we struggle. How do you relieve that? You relieve that with RPOs and kicking the ball above the screen. When we do that, even when we have numbers, we’re not getting what we want. It’s a challenge. Do you put in a bunch of new runs? No. You go back and say ‘what can we do better?’ The shame in that game is, you run down there and run the power. If you see that block by (Barret) Liebentritt on that power, he absolutely rocks their linebacker, the ball gets inside, we get the first down. It’s 7-0, maybe we make it 7-7 and feel better about the run game, but we fumble the ball, then it’s 28-7 and you’re like ‘we’re kind of out of the run here.’ We’re going to have to drop back and throw it. I don’t know that we’re necessarily going to be really successful for a whole game just dropping back and throwing it 50 times. We did a decent job in that game of dropping back and finding people open. That is what makes this difficult. You have to run the ball to get some consistency, you’re not running it. I think it’s going back and saying ‘what exactly are they doing?’ They’re pressuring us, they’re blitzing us. Our effectiveness throwing RPOs and run alerts and blitz relief has not been great. We’re trying to build off that in some way.”

On if the team has a confidence issue
“No, but I do think if I’m going to be completely honest, my battle since I’ve been here has been the, ‘Here we go again,’ which predates us. It’s like, ‘Here we go again.’ Whether it’s just the constant narratives of tough losses, or we were having some success early, the vocal narrative is always very much like, ‘Here’s what they’re not good at, right?’ So our kids are reading what they’re not good at, and that’s life. I’m not complaining about that. That’s just, it’s just, you want to come play at Nebraska. They deal with it. So when things go wrong, we naturally in that game to me kind of sunk back into, ‘Here we go again.’ And I’m not saying that I saw that. I didn’t feel that during the game. I was competing to the end, but that’s as I talk to people, that’s kind of what they said. I think it always comes down to just football. If you’re supposed to be in the B gap, then be in the B gap. Don’t go to the A gap. Touchdown hits because you’re in the wrong gap. So whether that’s confidence or whatever, but the first time we’ve been down right. We’ve been up at every football game for pretty much most of the game, and then all of the sudden, now we’re down for one. So this is a great opportunity for our guys. It’s like a gut check to say, ‘Hey if every time we’re down, we’re going to talk about our confidence then like, man, we better start handing out participation trophies.’ This is a game for men to go out and battle and fight, and you find out a lot about yourself when you get knocked down. We were knocked down the second half. We were knocked down at that game. You come back. You don’t point fingers. I didn’t think the guys threw their helmets or acted foolish. As bad as that loss felt, it’s the same as losing seven to six. You’re five and two. Find the things you’re good at, build off them, work on the things you’re not good at, come back the next week and go compete. So all those other things like confidence and all of that, I think those are, I was very direct with them, we’re not going to make a bunch of excuses. We just didn’t play well enough. We’ll play better. We’ll coach better.”      

On the offensive tempo and being a defensive-oriented team
“I think anytime you're playing well, you know, and executing like, I mean, Michigan won the national championship last year in the huddle. You know, a ton of teams are in no huddle. The whole I think, I really, honestly believe it kind of comes down to, like, blocking, making plays, winning your one on ones, making guys miss. So my natural inclination would be to always play with some tempo. I think it's just harder on the defense. At the same time, we're living in a world of signal stealing, still and all those things. So sometimes it's easier to get in the huddle. We weren't playing great defensively, sometimes it’s easier to slow it down a little bit. My natural inclination would probably always be to play with some tempo, just to keep people on their heels. But I think every game's a little bit different, right? I think every game you're trying to identify what you do well, what they don't do well. Again, when the game got to 28-7 and 35-7, we kind of aborted what we had hoped to do and tried to adjust a little bit.”

On tackling and what’s challenging about it
“I thought (Kyle) Monangai from Rutgers was an excellent back and we didn't tackle him great on the first series. And then after that, I thought we kind of settled in, right? You know? We tackled a lot during that week to get prepared for him. I thought a lot of our issues in this game were us. We're called a gap and a half team. Like, if I'm playing outside of a guy, and I'm playing this gap, and also come inside…I thought you saw a lot of guys on defense ripping and swimming up the field like everything was a pass and it was a run. We didn't adjust to them running the football on us. And so a lot of balls got to the safeties. You're asking the safety to tackle a big time back with 53 and a third, that's a lot. That's hard to do. So I thought a lot of our issues maybe started up front in the fits. Tackling, especially as you go on throughout the course of the year, pad level, fundamentals and tackling are the first things to go. So you find a way to prepare and practice those things moving forward. The disappointing thing about last week was it was coming off a bye where we took a lot of time to work on the fundamentals. When I go back to the question earlier about premier blocking, I do believe we're repping those. To me, anytime something doesn't show up, we're not going to just throw it on the kids. Hey, you got to go to execute. We have to rep it until it's good enough. Tackling wasn't an issue against Rutgers. It was in this game. It'll certainly be a challenge versus a running game like Ohio State's. I know we want to talk about last week, but we have a heck of a challenge in front of us this week. And if you go out there against Ohio State and you don't challenge them, and you just want to bail and play off coverage and hope that you don't get beat, you're going to get run off the field with these guys. You have to go out there and compete. If a team beats you because they're better, they beat you because they're better. But you have to go challenge people. We weren't that way on Saturday, to many degrees. We have to be better.”

On if receivers are getting open
“I think we had a lot of guys open a lot of the day. I do think that when we're getting pressed and pressed man, we're not doing a good enough job. We're not doing a good enough job of getting releases and getting off press. So I think it's twofold. I talked to you guys about last year, if you give us zone coverage, we have guys running wide open. I do think we're pretty good at running by people and throwing the ball. We didn't do it a ton, when we threw that one to the back shoulder of Jahmal (Banks) on the touchdown drive. I think you go back and look at the tape – if I made a cut up of the press reps where we didn't beat the guy off the line, and some of them were really bad, just really, really, really bad. There are guys open at other times too. So I think it's very specific to me to beating press and getting off press. We have a lot of guys that want to play pro football, and they come here to get a degree, win, and go on and play pro football. And Pro football is a game of press coverage and tight coverage, even for the quarterbacks. The throw he (Dylan Raiola) threw to Fidone, really two throws – that, and then the over out, that's open in the NFL. I think our guys are going to have to recognize that people are going to come out and press us and play man, and we have to win, and then we have to go out and press people and play man. We have to win. Everybody wants play callers to design a play where the blitzer comes free or the guy's wide open, right? Satt’s (Marcus Satterfield) job and Tony's (White) job, to me, is to get a guy one on one, and then it's our guys’ job to go win the one on one. I think coming out of that game, I hope our guys understand that a little bit better. Indiana was a good defense and they challenged us.

On injuries
“Nash (Hutmacher), even he went back in and played. I assume he'd be fine. Dylan (Raiola) is fine. Rahmir (Johnson) left the game early, and DeShon (Singleton) left the game early. Not sure of their status for next week. As we go through the week, they’re in the head injury protocol.”

On anything he did differently going into this week
“I don’t know if this is any different than the Michigan game. We sat there for the last two hours and watched the game, the first half as a team, coaches, staff and players, which I like to do. I learned from Coach (Tom) Coughlin, he took it from the Blue Angels or the Navy SEALs. They debrief after every mission, and guys take ownership. I just want them to see how it all fits together. Again, a bubble screen thrown to the left, where you forget to block the safety, that leads to 2nd and 10, that then at least a 4th and 8, which then leads to the ball in the 20. I just want them to see how interrelated they all are, because when we're out there, sometimes we're like ‘what's happening?’, but, just make the block. Just do your job. Just do your assignment. It's easy to talk about that a lot when you're 5-1, and, you know, you’ve only trailed for six minutes in the whole season. But when you're getting your tail kicked, like we got our tail kicked, it's easy to go back and show them. I know it was bad, but let's look at this, if we did this, if we did that, if we did this, if we did that, and hope that it grounds them and brings them back, and also pulls them away from some of the narratives of ‘we stink’ or ‘this stinks.’ It's all interrelated. It's all interrelated. So, you know, catch the kickoff, and don't catch it at the two. Let the ball go out of bounds, hit the ball. Imagine we let the ball get at the 35 then we get two first downs, like we did. Now, the whole game's different. So I want them to see that. And I want them to also see Indiana. Indiana came out and challenged us. I don't know how well we challenged them, and so I'm taking that personally. Now you're facing the best team, the best team in the country, the best roster in the country, number four, unbelievable team. If we spend the whole game playing Ohio State, looking at the score, we're hoping to win, we'll get our face beat in. If we go out there and challenge them, because we all think we're good football players and we want to play in the NFL, and their players are going to play in the NFL. So if you're an NFL player and I'm an NFL player, then I should compete with you. If I back down from you, then I'm not really an NFL player. I want our guys to go out there and compete and see what happens, and then I want to come home and play UCLA and do the same thing, and do it for five games. We've been on the journey of the season. This was a real, real, real down point. See how we respond.”

On if revenue sharing has reshaped the advantage teams like Ohio State will have in the future
“I want to first give credit to Ryan Day. Those guys are Ohio State, because Ohio State wins, and players want to go to a winner. While there is an NIL component to everybody, Ryan's won, Urban won, Jim Tressel won, Ohio State has won a ton. Kids want to go be a part of one of the best programs in the country, one of the best receiving corps over the last however many years. Great all first round quarterbacks. I just don't know if we know how revenue sharing is going to work yet. There's still no manual that’s been handed out like, here's how it's going to work. But in theory, if everyone has the same dollar figures, then you should bring about more parity. On the flip side of that, you know, no one knows the impact of NIL, but to me, Ohio State's roster is not about NIL, it's about guys saying, hey, I want to go play at a place that competes for championships. For us to get to that point, we've got to win enough to justify players taking a chance on us until we're at the top of the mountain, and then everyone wants to come. You can’t have many 56-7 games. You’ve got to go compete at a high level. But we'll get there.”

On Micah Mazzccua at left tackle
“It's probably really challenging. I thought it was a lot of guts by him to want to go out there and play. We worked it the week before so he was really doing it on the Rutgers game then the bye week, and then this week. I thought he did a nice job when he was out there. When Micah (Mazzccua) is focused, like he is right now, he's really talented, and he can help us. It was good to get him out there and get him in the mix.”

On how he sets the example to block out the ‘here we go again’ mentality
“Just deal in fact. Deal in reality. Just watch the tape, right? Like, to me, as I said to the guys that started the meeting today, ‘When something like Saturday occurs and you're at your lowest, you first start like, what can I do better? And then you turn to the tape. You don't read about it, or listen to the guys in the locker room talking about, well, I think it was this. I think it was that, like, you just go back. What did I not do well enough? Like I said to you guys, I probably should have kicked the field goal, made that 28-10. Hit that ball back across, right? But watch the film. Like, even before I showed the team the film this morning, I watched it. The game's over, I watch it on the plane on the way back. I watched it yesterday twice, and I watched it again this morning one more time because all the answers are on the tape. And just like, ‘Hey guys, look at this. Look at this. Look at this.’ I think when you do that, you start with reality and you start with yourself. It doesn't ever feel like it's me versus them. I'm not sitting up there saying ‘you guys didn't do this, and you guys didn't do that.’ We didn't play our best game in any way. That was a team that was going to try to embarrass you if you let them. We took the loss, we come back and we regroup.”

On confidence about kicking field goals
“We would have made that field goal. It was really more based on, again, the analytics saying, ‘You go for it, right?’ We hadn't really stopped. I mean, I said that in the meeting, and most of the guys on defense disagreed. They were like, ‘Screw that, coach, play to win.’ So, like, I'm just saying for me, if you're gonna lose, I don't want to lose, but if you're gonna lose, how do you want to lose? And that's a challenge in those situations. You don't want to be in those situations, so you're not having to make these decisions. But it's like, ‘Should we just run the ball and get out of dodge and should we let Dylan (Raiola) have those reps of playing through that situation. Should we let the guy at Jacory (Barney Jr.) have to go compete?’ We chose to do that. We put a lot of our twos in in the fourth quarter. Those guys are gonna play a lot of football. We let them play. But no, I think our field goal kicking is, honestly, it's improving in practice. We just haven't had many opportunities to do it. I think Johnny (Hohl) is getting better and better and better. That was purely to me, and the analytics had to go for it out to fourth and 11. Once you cross the 50 on that drive, it was just like you only have so many more drives left, let's go make one. But that being said, maybe hindsight, just the impact that that loss has on the players, the visual of it, but that's why I keep going back to them. I just remember, it was 14-7 with four minutes left, so let's just play a little bit better at the end of the half, and come out of the half, maybe we go down there and score. We move the ball great. Something could have been different.”

On the eye-opening elements of Ohio State’s offense
“Their run game. It's Chip Kelly, right? He's gonna find a way to run the ball. I mean, they can run the ball any which way. They have an elite offensive line and defensive line. I mean, they have elite guys up front, but, you know, they're not no spread tempo anymore, like they're, they've got the quarterback run game. They've got two great tailbacks. Their tailbacks are special, but they create all different kinds of angles. And you know, they're gonna run with a lot of different run schemes. They'll play with two tight ends. And then they've got outstanding receivers who, if you play one on one, they'll go to them. So they've got great, great players. They start with the run game to create one on ones, to throw the ball, and then they have a QB run game, which you know, is a great equalizer. Really outstanding football team.”

On Heinrich Haarberg
“I thought Heinrich (Haarberg) did well the things that he got a chance to do, He also went in, played on the punt team, played out at receiver a play or two. He’s a good football player. We’re just trying to get him out on the field and trying to increase that as we move forward. It’s hard in that when he goes out there people kind of say, ‘Hey he’s probably going to be running the football,’ but he can throw it so maybe we will increase or decrease each week.