Nebraska Linebacker MJ Sherman Pre-Purdue Press Conference

On how the game flipped after the lead at half
“The tape says everything. Anybody who knows football can kind of tell for themselves. It’s more so in the sense that everything was about execution, everything was on our part. Everything was controllable on our end, if we can control the controllables, at the end of the day, eliminate the stupid stuff, everything would have been just fine. But once again, a learning opportunity.”

On the penalties approach moving forwards
“The same approach we always had. It’s a tendency right? We won three games in a row, there’s a tendency to kind of stray away from the process a little bit, everybody’s guilty of it. Everybody stops worrying about the little details that really got us there, and it shows. Now, there’s no wholesale changes we’ve got to do, there’s nothing like we’ve got to bring in motivational speakers or have team meetings talking about things we already know, we just go back to the things that work for us. We just have to fix the little things and go back to what we believe in.”

On balancing fundamental defense and creating turnovers
“Dominant contact. That’s what we preach all day, what happened to me, I’m not going to address it. It happened, I’ll learn from it. Just try to be aggressive, each way you can, each snap of the ball. First of all, you’ve got to hit the man, but that’s why we always try to preach running to the ball so the first dude hits him and the second guy comes in and strips the ball out. Johnny (Bullock) had a prime example of that Friday night, he was the second man in and he ripped the ball out. That’s what we always try to do.”

On the key to slowing Purdue’s rushing offense
“Do everything we can, do it in the sense of being aggressive, being violent, being disciplined. No wholesale changes need to be done with us, everything is about us. How hard we play, with the same effort and everything else that we did in the previous three weeks, yeah.”