Nebraska Offensive Coordinator Dana Holgorsen Pre-Wisconsin Press Conference

On why he took the job now
“I have a great deal of respect for Coach (Matt Rhule). We visited in December and I didn’t think it was fair to him, me or the program at that point. I was tired, I had been through a lot. Just didn’t have to do it at that point and I didn’t feel like I was ready to give it my all. I was very grateful to Sonny Dykes and TCU for being a consultant there, which kept me around the game. I was there for three weeks in camp, then went on vacation for two weeks and came back. I was there for two games and I didn’t like being part of the games, because I wasn’t part of the games. I was up in the head coach’s suite for a game and I was on the sidelines for a game. I was just like ‘I don’t like this part of it.’ If I don’t have any control over it, I don’t want to do it. I would just help prep them in the beginning of the week and then I would go do something else. It was fun to do other things, but I was slated to go back to Fort Worth on Sunday night and Coach Rhule called and said ‘let’s come try to figure this out. I need your help.’ I was grateful to him for saying that he needed my help. I think a great deal of him. I think a great deal of this program. I was excited to jump on it. Rules allow it. In years past, rules wouldn’t have allowed it. I just wanted to insert myself and try to help Coach Rhule and help this football team and try to help this great program.”

On his thoughts on the offense
“I had no idea what to expect on Saturday. I dove right in and a week later, he made the announcement. I had no idea what was going to happen in the beginning. I didn’t come here with the intention of being the offensive coordinator and the play caller. We didn’t know what it was going to look like, he’s just like ‘hurry up and get here.’ I got here and started digging into it. My job is to wake up and try to make it better every single day. I’ve literally worked 16 hour days every day for 13, 14 days now. I’m still learning the offense. I’m still learning different nuances. I’m still learning the players. I don’t know all the players yet. I’m still trying to get to know those guys. At the end of the day, it’s about putting your head down and trying to prepare. For the first eight or nine days, I focused on us and tried to learn an offense. I watched all the video to try to figure out what we do well and what we don’t do well. I watched three or four practices to try to assess what we do well and what we don’t do well. Then I turned attention to USC and I had to figure that out, defensively. Then Sunday, I had to turn our attention to Wisconsin. There’s only so many hours in the day. We just got done with a two and a half hour practice out there and I’m about to go get in a room and study the video for the next couple hours, then turn the attention back to Wisconsin and start watching third down and medium and third down and long and red zone and score zone and goal line. I’ll leave here late at night and wake up and do it all over again. There’s a lot of information, a lot of assessing. At the end of the day, it’s about getting these guys in position to be successful. Whatever we can do to practice to make people better, to give them the information, to try to get these guys in position to be able to be successful this Saturday. I’m not thinking about anything else other than that. I’m not thinking about where we need to be able to go offensively, I’m not thinking about Iowa next week. I don’t know what December is going to look like, I don’t know what January is going to look like. I don’t care. 100% of my focus is trying to get our offense better to where we can win against Wisconsin on Saturday.”

On his impression of Dylan Raiola
“I thought everything was really good. I started talking into the mic on Tuesday morning of game week. That’s the first time I talked into that thing. It makes play calling a lot easier. The iPads on the sideline make play calling easier. I talked to a couple of my colleagues across the country. They asked if I was going to call it and I said yes, and they’re like ‘the technology is going to help you.’ I can just look at the paper and I can read from it and talk into it. I used to signal everything myself, now we’ve got a bunch of signalers. I don’t even pay attention to the signaliers because I’m talking to him the whole time. He’s a very, very, very bright young man. How is this kid a freshman? How can he process all this information as a freshman? He knows the plays, he knows the offense, he knows how to communicate it to the players. I thought the process was really good. We had two snap infractions, which is 100% on the center. He will admit that. Other than that, there was nothing pre-snap. We weren’t getting delay of games, we weren’t scrambling to get people lined up. I thought it was very efficient. I thought our substitutions on the sidelines were really good. That was encouraging, and I think it’ll all get better. The play on the field needs to get better. The operation, I thought, was fine. We’re not sitting here trying to worry about the operation. We’re trying to worry about the play on the field, to get that better. That’s what we were working on today, what it looks like out there on the field.”