Opening Statement
“I’ll start by congratulating the women’s volleyball team. I thought that was awesome on Saturday. I was home, I didn’t go to the game. My daughters shamed me. We watched it together as a family and loved it. True grit and competitiveness was pretty awesome to see. Hopefully, we can match their intensity this Saturday. As we move forward, just a couple injury updates. We’re a pretty beat up team right now. Ethan Piper is done for the year. He’ll have knee surgery. Turner Corcoran is done for the year. He’ll have foot surgery. Noure (Nouredin Nouili) is in surgery right now. Noure will be out for probably one-two weeks. We’ll have to have some guys step up. With that, Billy Kemp will be out multiple weeks with an MCL sprain. I’m trying to think if there’s anybody else. That’s really it. Tommi Hill will be day by day. Tommi Hill has kind of superhuman healing powers. I’m sure Tommi will be back. He’ll probably be at practice tomorrow, but he’ll be day by day. With that being said, I thought in the last game, I thought a lot of guys stepped up when their number was called. I thought Justin Evans-Jenkins came in both at guard and then at center. Henry Lutovsky is a guy that’s been a starter for us at guard. Teddy Prochazka is a guy that’s been waiting his turn. We have lots of guys who started games here on the offensive line. Jaidyn Doss and some of the other young receivers, they obviously stepped up. Tristan Alvano stepped up. I expect them to step up and I expect our veteran players to play their best football and that’s what happened on Saturday. I know Nash (Hutmacher) – when you watch the tape, Nash played great. Ty Robinson was absolutely dominant. We’ll need those guys to play well, we’ll need younger guys to step up and there’s a standard here and everyone has to meet the standard. I know you guys are all trying to tweet that news out, so I’ll give you a second. Waiting to hear what you have to say.”

On if there’s a theme among injuries or if they're all freak things happening at once
“They’re all contact injuries. You get your foot stepped on. I don’t know if you’ve seen the play, but a guy gets blocked into Ethan (Piper), hits him from the front. Sometimes, some of our guys wear knee braces to prevent getting hit from the side, but he gets hit from the front and dislocates his knee. He’s going to have a major surgery. My heart is with Ethan, I can tell you that. There’s no one more a Cornhusker than him. He’s got a long road ahead, but he’s a tough guy. Billy (Kemp IV), the guy just kind of bumps into him and hits his knee. They’ve pretty much all been contact injuries, they’ve pretty much all been on the offensive side. As we always do, we get to the offseason and study everything and see if there’s something we can do better. It’s obviously a rash of injuries on offense.”

On Teddy Prochazka 
“I think Teddy is a starter for us. Teddy can absolutely play at a super high level. He’s had the benefit of all these weeks of practice, of getting his feet underneath him. Got some reps in the Michigan game, he wasn’t quite at full speed yet in the Michigan game. He’s at full speed now, that knee is healthy. He’s ready to go. I love those guys, those are great guys – Turner (Corcoran), Pipe (Ethan Piper), that left side of that line. Teddy’s OOU, he’ll be ready to go. I think, again, just getting that rep as a jumbo tight end has helped him and he’s gotten a lot of reps in practice. Teddy will play really well for us.”

On if he’s ever had a year where one side of the ball has injuries like this one
“Never. I’ve never had anything close to this. But you know what? We practice on. There’s no sadness in me. There’s sadness for my guys, I love those guys. I couldn’t have even thought of having another receiver go down. But, from a football perspective, when we walk out onto the field this coming Saturday, all but two guys will be underclassmen on the offense. Those guys are learning by fire. When given a chance, Malachi Coleman went and made a play. When given a chance, Emmett Johnson went and made a play. When given a chance, Justin (Evans-Jenkins) went out and played well. When given a chance, Jaylen Lloyd has made plays. So, we have enough players to win with. We’ve got guys who can help us. We’ll just have to continue to step up.”

On ongoing redshirt conversations
“The players’ careers always come first. It’s maybe different here than other places, but I think most guys will appreciate that in the long run. And we have, like I said, I hope you guys see that I say what I really mean. We have some guys, good guys, who are redshirting, like James Williams. I wasn’t lying. We’ve got some good players just sitting there waiting their turns. Kwinten Ives got in last game. I was hoping for a bigger role, he got like a play or two. Kwinten is ready to go. My plan is, if we can, to redshirt guys. This might affect Jaidyn Doss, depending on how fast Billy (Kemp IV) comes back, because Jaidyn has now played in two games. But I think Jaidyn is going to play, play. If you’re going to go out there and play 50-60 snaps, then to me it’s worth playing in five or six games, seven games. I’m not going to use a guy up for 10 plays and use a whole year up on him. I’m going to do my best. Each guy is unique, each guy is different. On the offensive line, we have some really good young o-linemen that we’ve been redshirting in Sam Sledge and Gunnar Gottula. Gunnar was with us in the spring, Gunnar can play. Those guys are, ‘hey, they’re coming up on four games,’ so they’ll be ready in the jumbo tight end and the field goal team. Jacob Hood is back and has been playing. Tyler Knaak, we brought in. Those guys have really come along. Again, we got out here and Coach Osborne and Coach Solich and those guys talked about the two-platoon practices and stuff like that, which we’ve done some of in the past. It’s just doing a little bit more of it. I think it’s going to pay off right now for us.”

On the benefit of getting younger guys repetitions
“I did this at Baylor and Temple for different reasons. Older guys weren’t bought in so I played all the younger guys. Three years later they were champions. Our older players fight and believe in what we are doing. But as they have gotten banged up other guys have stepped up. I think the biggest thing is we have a standard and it was not the standard on offense on Saturday. Putting the ball on the ground that many times. I don’t care about the score as I’ve told you guys. I don’t care. I do care about the execution. That was one of the best wins I’ve been a part of, but that was certainly not the best performance I’ve been a part of if that makes sense. When you go back and look at it right, the first six drives four of the first six plays or three of the first six plays the ball was on the ground. Turnover, ball is on the ground. All of the sudden we settle down and the next two drives we score and we score. We are going to have to grow up a little bit on offense this week in terms of taking care of the ball and making the plays that are available to us because the players on defense are getting that done. The young players on offense can get that done. I have full confidence. This is the challenge this week. ‘Hey let’s take care of the football. This Purdue team that we are facing is going to put pressure on us. They are going to come after you.’ Coach (Ryan) Walters is a defensive mastermind. They’ve had a bye week. When you come off of a bye week all of the sudden we go out against Northwestern and they are in tackle over and they are doing all of these different things on offense. They are doing different things on defense. We are facing another team coming off a bye week. When you have a young team they have to be able to adjust quickly. We have a lot in front of us so we can’t put the ball on the ground. We have to protect the football and battle it out to the very last play of the game.”

On Heinrich Haarberg’s touchdown pass 
“The first play was either an explosive play or a touchdown right? I just think sometimes as you go through the ascent of a young quarterback you go out there early on and you just start to play. I was taught this by June Jones so this isn’t Matt Rhule’s theory. You just go out there and you just kind of play on instinct. Then you have some success so you start trying to do this versus this coverage and you start seeing all these things and you start to play slow. And then you get through that and you start to play fast again. He was just too slow. That guy was open but (Nate) Boerkircher on the corner was wide open. We were going to start the game with a touchdown but we rushed. We saw too much. I think that showed up a lot during the game. We left a lot of things out there. Way too much out there to win a Big Ten game. I think as the game settled on we hit one. Again Malachi’s (Coleman) first progression was play the play and hit it. There were some plays that were there that I think we absolutely have to hit. I think we are at the point for me as a coach where it’s like we are going to be more aggressive. We are going to have to push the ball down the field a little bit. Obviously this week is a new week. We’ve got to see who’s healthy and who is ready to go. That was the thought process last week. I just think Heinrich can make those plays. He just has to slow down but that is what happened. They play off instinct then they start coming in and watching tape and seeing the coverages where as early on it was one, two, three. Then all of the sudden they hit a point where they relax. Henrich needs to do that.”

On Nick Henrich’s availability
“He has just been a little bit banged up. Nick is a downhill, physical, violent run defender that can play the pass as well. He is just a little banged up so I think we just went a little bit more with Javin (Wright) and those guys so just more a coaches decision, hoping that Nick would come through that game because we held him on Wednesday night’s practice, get through that game, be available as needed and be a little bit more healthy this week as we move forward so Nick’s coming off a knee and banged his shoulder up in the Illinois game. He’s just a veteran player who’s played a lot of football and he’s a little banged up so he is the heart and soul of the team but that was more probably the game and his health than anything else.”

On Ben Scott
“Ben practiced last night and we expect him to play.”

On the offensive line’s mentality
“They play for each other. I texted Turner (Corcoran) and I texted (Ethan) Piper on Saturday night and both guys with devastating, season-ending, potentially surgical for Turner, surgical for Piper injuries. Both guys were talking about the impact they were going to have on the young players and how they wanted to get back out there. A lot of guys get injured and they go to treatment and you don’t really see them in meetings as much. I try to make them go to meetings but sometimes it’s ‘Hey I can get to the rehab guy here’ so sometimes it’s things we do medically. I walked by the o-line room yesterday and I see the crutches outside the meeting room from Turner and I can’t say enough about that so Turner is going to be right there with the guys and Piper is going to be right there with the guys. When they’ve been under scrutiny, I’ve always said I think they should be thankful for those guys that are out there battling. We’ll be thankful for them now. I am thankful for the backups that are now starters and the way they prepared because while it has not been perfect, they have won four of their last five. Going back to last year’s Illinois game, what was it, 170 or 160 yards rushing in this game, it’s not perfect but these guys fight. They fight for the University of Nebraska so I can’t say enough about when Justin (Evans-Jenkins) went in and what he did. I thought Justin played well and Tyler (Knaak) is ready and Henry (Lutovsky) is ready. We have a lot of guards that can go in and play.”

On Nouredin Nouili’s injury
“I don’t want to say that right now just because I haven’t talked to him. I’m sorry but he should be back in two weeks we hope.”

On Sam Sledge
“That’s been the plan, right, as needed. He would still be in that, ‘Hey I’m a backup. I’m in the backup role.’ He wouldn’t be rotating in or anything like that yet. Gunnar (Gottula) would be in that same role. You start thinking about the PAT field goal team. You start thinking about extra tight ends. We were in that game and we had two things we wanted to do. We wanted to get into big, 14-personnel, no receivers and do some special things and we wanted to feature Billy (Kemp IV) and all of a sudden Billy is out and the 14 personnel stuff is out. Having Gunnar and having Sam available could be really good for us and giving Jaidyn (Doss) a full week of knowing, ‘Hey I’m the slot’ will help us a ton.”

On if there’s anything from the defensive front that’s impressed him
“I think when they play aggressively, when they’re getting off and attacking, that’s happened in pretty much every game except one or two. We have guys who can rush off the edge. When it’s a four-man rush, sometimes the quarterback has stepped up. Going to that five-man rush in the last game allowed us to have five one-on-ones. Coop (Evan Cooper) suggested that and Tony (White) went with it. That’s what makes Tony so good. He listens to everybody. That allowed us to have five one-on-ones. I just think we play really aggressively. The guys play fast. I don’t ever notice when someone else is in, if that makes sense. I don’t sit there and say ‘well, why is Ty out?’ Ru (Ru’Quan Buckley) goes in, he runs a mine movement. He’s a nose tackle who runs a movement outside. He gets a counter at him and he spills it. You couldn’t get that done if you had to beg, but Ru does it. Riley VanPoppel, as a freshman, is out there getting 10-12 plays every game. We just have a lot of guys we can rotate in there and play. When you have MJ (Sherman) and Prince (Princewill Umanmielen) as your jacks, when you have four or five inside backers you trust, guys can play fast. They can compete against each other to get more reps. They hit the movements and they execute the movements. (Cameron) Lenhardt is finally healthy, which is a big thing for us. Chief (Borders) is giving us good reps. A guy that’s really made a jump in the last two weeks, to me, is Blaise Gunnerson. He’s played a lot of football, but he’s always kind of been nicked up in the past, now he’s healthy and he’s just getting extended weeks. He’s finding his confidence. We have a lot of guys, Steve (Sipple), that can play. I think we can cut them loose. This week presents a whole unique challenge in that Hudson Card, he was a Division I wide receiver if he wanted to be. I watched him in high school, he’s so athletic. Some of the things – we’ve been letting some guys out of the pocket, run them down. We’re not running Hudson down. We have to do some different things this week versus this offense. Graham Harrell, he’s a great offensive coordinator. He will find a way to run the football. What we found out last week was, Northwestern, which was last in Big Ten rushing, off the bye week, was going to find a way to run the football against us, and they did. They had 135 yards. Completely unrelated, but I didn’t say this after the game – if I say, ‘hey, we would have lost the game earlier in the year,’ maybe someone asked me what I mean. I’ve been on a lot of teams where those runs break and Omar Brown doesn’t run the guy down. Malcolm (Hartzog) gets beat. A lot of times I’ve seen that guy turn and look at the safety, and walks in for a touchdown. And that’s losing teams. So, when I say ‘I don’t care about the score, I only care about how the film looks,’ I want to win the game. But when I see that, the fact that Malcolm got beat and didn’t feel sorry for himself and ran it down and got the guy tackled at the eight-yard line and we held them to a field goal, that’s the winning football. The defense will have to do it more this week with the amount of injuries on offense. The special teams will have to do it more this week. We have to continue to say we’re playing as the Huskers. That’s a lot of things I said, but I just think they play aggressively and play together and we throw a lot of waves at people.”

On how pervasive sign-stealing is
“Yeah, sign stealing happens every game. There’s nothing wrong with teams looking over trying to steal our signs. There’s nothing wrong with us looking at their signs. It’s why you should have mics in the helmets. All these coaches that vote against it every year, they don’t want to teach their quarterback. In the NFL, the quarterback goes out there with three play calls. If I see the free safety’s foot like that, I might go one high and check to this play. But you get to college and you’re watching the game on a Tuesday night, and they’ve got the signal and they're just calling a play. That’s what makes college football, to me, that’s why they score more points. But it’s also why the kids are less prepared. That’s why there 100% should be – you get rid of all the stupid signs on the sideline so we can get pictures of rockstars and all that, and we could just play football the way it should be. You go to a high school game, there’s technology on the sideline. You go to an NFL game, there’s technology on the sideline. Go to college, there’s nothing. It should be that. But that’s sign-stealing. I will not carry that over into going and filming someone else’s practices or something like that, or filming someone else’s games. That’s completely something different. And I’m not saying that happened, but I think what’s wrong partly in our society right now is we say someone does something against the rules. And sports need rules, right? Sports need rules to keep competitive balance, and when something does something against the rules, we say ‘well, should that really even be a rule?’ It is the rule. We don’t get five downs. In-game, stealing of signs, we play against somebody, and I know that person has friends on the next staff, I know if they have our signs, they have them the next week, that’s all part of the game. You have to do what you do. We should absolutely have technology, but if there’s a rule, the rule should be followed. I’m not speaking about what’s happening right now because I don’t know what happened, but if that is happening somewhere, it’s completely, completely wrong.”

On if Rhule had suspicions of Michigan having extra knowledge
“No one from the Big Ten or NCAA has asked me anything yet so I’m not going to probably comment on anything like that. I don’t know anything.”

On Ty Robinson
“Other guys sometimes get sacks because he runs up the field and makes the quarterback run for his life. The last sack of the game he beats the guy one-on-one. He was absolutely dominant in my mind. By far Ty’s best game. The type of game that moves you up a couple rounds in the draft. I thought he looked excellent. Again I always go back to the tape and not the stat line. At the end of the game when I’m walking out of the media room and I see Nash (Hutmacher) there and I’m like ‘Hey they picked you huh?’ and he’s like ‘Yeah I had two and a half sacks.’ I can’t even tell that sometimes during the game with what’s happening. But when I watch the tape, I just think Ty (Robinson) hit his stride and that doesn’t mean Nash didn’t, they are both hitting their stride. Then Cam (Lenhardt) comes in and Jimari (Butler) is playing well. I think Ty is someone that the other team has to take account of when he plays.”

On the plan for the running back position
“It’s one of those deals where Emmett (Johnson) can kind of do everything for us and Emmett had some good plays for us. Anthony (Grant) held on to the ball, Anthony had a great run on a run. Josh Fleeks is a guy we want to continue to get in the game so I think all three of those guys are going to continue to play and I’d like to have more plays. I’d like to have more tailback runs so hopefully we can continue to get those guys more involved but it’ll be all three of those guys pending a good week of practice and pending ball security.”

On how the offense will change
“We’re going to have to find the players we have and find what they do well and put them out there. Each week this is a man-to-man defense, this is a bear defense, highly active, pressure’s a lot different than Illinois, same sort of structure but different than Illinois so it brings unique challenges but to me it’s about who are the players that we have and what can they do? I think that’s on both sides of the ball and on special teams. We’re always trying to highlight our players and at the same time understanding that each defense brings things we have to be prepared for and they have a lot that we have to be prepared for. Getting into specifics of it, I can’t say that right now, it’s Monday but as we get closer in the week, I think we’ll have a good plan.”

On communicating with NFL coaches about players
“No one really wants my, as a college coach, my football evaluation of them as a football player because they see that themselves. They don’t need me to tell them how fast they are. I think at the end of the day, they really want to know, ‘Hey what’s his character like? What’s his football character like?’ Meaning practice habits, taking care of his body, is he going to be a pro, how’s he going to take care of his body, how’s he going to learn, will he play special teams? The good thing for me because I had so many guys at Temple and Baylor that kind of went on and I had a lot of guys that were like late draft picks and free agents that have made it a long time because they were professional. When a guy comes in and is like, ‘Hey tell me about Quinton Newsome,’ I can be like, ‘Yeah he reminds me a lot of Nate Hairston’ and make them put those projections together. Really what they want from me is they want to know from me is that football character, that note-taking, that learning. That’s the biggest thing at that level. Is a guy is a first or second round pick, that’s one thing but when you have three down, and as I tell our guys, I’m going to be honest. I’m going to be completely transparent because if I lie about one, I’m lying about them all and then they’ll never listen to me again but we have great guys and I think when people come watch us practice and see the way we do things it helps because what you really want when you try to take out a late round guy or a free agent is someone who is going to practice and so we had one scout come in and say, ‘Man you are the second-hardest practicing team I’ve seen in college football.’ I had him tell the team that because I think sometimes they are like ‘Why are we practicing so hard?’ When a guy comes up and it’s going to be two names and he looks at someone from the University of Nebraska, late or as a free agent, he knows, ‘Hey these guys know how to practice.’ Those things they ask. If there’s a guy I know, obviously they will ask me more things about guys but the base thing is that like what’s the football character, learning? If it’s a first round pick, maybe it’s more, ‘Coach when he has some money is he going to continue to love the game? Or is he in the game just to make some money?’ Those are some of the things people are asking me.”

On if it bothered him that the scout said they were the second-hardest practicing team
“No I know who the first is and we’ll catch them. We’ll catch them. It’s University of Georgia. That doesn’t mean Alabama isn’t ahead of us, that’s going to go viral and I’m going to have all of these fanbases yelling at me. I’m just saying what another person said of the teams he’s seen. But I know how Georgia practices. It’s been great to have MJ (Sherman) here to tell the guys, ‘Hey you know on Thursdays when we come out with guys in baseball caps and we walk through? They are in shoulder pads and helmets. So this whole, ‘Coach we’re a little beat up.’ Yeah there’s a cost to doing things you haven’t ever done before and it’s practice. I am not saying we are the second-hardest practicing team, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying a scout said that and I had him say it to the team. But it’s just the ethos out there. You want people to know what a Nebraska guy is. You come into a team meeting and if you don’t have a pen in your hand, and you come into a meeting and you don’t have a pen in your hand, you’re out. You’re not in the meeting. When we have a guest speaker come in to talk about life skills or something and they see all of our guys with pens and pads and they’re like ‘what is this?’ Well that’s because I had a guy come in one time and he was like ‘Matt I go to other teams and they take notes and you guys don’t take notes.’ And I was like man I am failing these guys because these guys are going to be taking notes some day at Google, they are going to be taking notes some day at the Washington Commanders, they better be taking notes here so everything we do is designed to help them be pros in life or football.”

On how ready they are to play cold weather football
“We put the whole thing together saying ‘hey there are going to be days where it is cold and windy.’ When we went to Illinois it was freezing. I had the Gatorade thing but I can promise you there was chicken broth in that thing. The wind is a factor every single game. You talk about sign-stealing. We are on the visitor’s side. We show our signals every single play and the other team’s coaches are up in the box. It’s not the best sideline to be on on the visitor’s side with the sun in our face. The sun in the first quarter on 2:30 games is a real factor for the punt returner. There are all of these things that I kind of had to learn about our home stadium. What does the wind look like? All of these different things. But we put everything together with the hope of it allowing us to win cold weather games. It would allow us to win windy games. That’s why in the start of spring when you go out in spring football when it’s 27 degrees and windy we never practiced indoors. We always practiced outside because we don’t have any dome games this year save the Big Ten Championship game so we might as well practice outside. So we have prepared for all of those things. The big thing again is as I said there is a standard. We have to execute and perform at that level when it comes. The guys in Purdue are used to cold weather too, I’m assuming. I think Indiana is cold too. We all are going to have to play through it. It’s just going to come down to who executes and plays well.”

On night games in November
“I’ve learned when it comes to those things to not worry about things I can’t control. When Trev (Alberts) told me ‘Hey Illinois got moved to Friday night. I know it’s a short week.’ If I could have picked I probably wouldn’t have done that right? Give me the full week, but ok, we’ll play it. Well, when we won the game I’m sitting home Saturday and I get to watch my daughter play volleyball. The guys got to rest another day. I was like ‘this is pretty good.’ So you know, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about those things. And again, when I was in the NFL, we were never really in it down the stretch. But if you are in it down the stretch you are probably going to be playing on some Sunday nights. If you are a good team in the NFL, you are going to play on Monday nights, Sunday nights, Thursday nights. You get used to playing at night. I think as things move on, having a night game here at Memorial Stadium in the cold with the way our fans show up and the light shows and the things that we have going on, I’ll take that. I’d play every game in the snow if I could because we are here. We live here. This is what we are. I’d play every game in the wind. Because we should be able to throw the ball in those elements and we should be able to play defense in those elements. Kick in those elements. There is a benefit from having a punter from Montana and a kicker from Omaha. There is a benefit to having guys. Did anybody see what happened in the pregame? He hit the upright on the extra point in pregame. So he (Tristan Alvano) stands there afterwards and he’s out there like ‘I’ve got to get another one.’ He was being a freshman. I walked over to him and I said ‘Did you need two tries when you kicked the game winner in the state championship? Get your butt off the field.’ He goes and nails a 47-yarder. There is a benefit from having guys from this part of the country that know. The quarterbacks from Kearney, the punters from Montana. Let’s let it wind.”

On if he’s thought about switching sidelines
“I got here and my one goal was don’t change anything that Tom Osborne did. When they said ‘hey, we’re going out in a new tunnel walk,’ I said ‘whoa’ and Trev (Alberts) was like ‘no, it’s okay, I got it.’ I know there’s a lot of things with the stadium. Those things will all come and go as we go. I don’t know what’ll all be mine, what’ll be up to be, what’ll not. The great thing about when Trev is the A.D., all the visionary stuff, I don’t have to get super involved in. I’m in the day to day, ‘hey, what do we have this week?’ and if it helps us win, it’ll help us. When I say that about all that, I just think we always know ‘hey, people can steal our signs because they can see what we;re doing.’ Last week, Northwestern, our press box guys, they’re looking down over them and can’t see them and they have a sheet over them. I don’t know what they’re in, but they know what we’re in. We’re running a run play into will-free safety, and our quarterback has to make an audible, but someone who has our signals can just look. That’s how football is. All I’ll say is, why don’t we just put a thing in the helmet moving forward and give me an iPad on the sideline? And let me go. I see that at high school games. We should probably have it in college, the technology. That’ll happen hopefully in the next couple years now.”