Nebraska Offensive Lineman Teddy Prochazka Pre-Akron Quotes

On playing after injury recovery
“It was great. It’s been a long road to get back to where I am now. The recovery process is always still there. I feel more sore after games but I feel like being able to get through that game and attack it as much as I could was a great feeling and something I look forward to doing each week. I have a lot of belief in myself and this staff here. The protocol they put me on to get me back, the rehab and all of that, I’ve been through it my freshmen year. We have all these brand new facilities. I told my dad, ‘there’s no place in the country I’d want to be hurt more than here’ with this staff and these resources we have. It never really crossed my mind that I couldn’t get back.” 

On learning he was named the starter
“We never really had a conversation, it was more competition up until the game. Tyler (Knaak) has really pushed me. My game and his game have both developed so much over fall camp with our competition. It just continues to get better. Both of us talk about picking one thing to improve on each day in run and pass. I feel like we both had some of the things that were similar that we wanted to improve on whether it was pad level, elbows-in, punch timing. Watching film together, we really both matured a lot together. I feel like it’s been a great journey. Thursday of that week during one our last walk-throughs I was just kind of in there but we were still rotating in so I never really knew.” 

On learning from Coach Donovan Raiola
“It’s been really consistent, the technique that he believes in and we believe in. First he implements it, he’s coaching it more, coaching it more. Now, we’re at a point where it’s on the players and the old guys in the room – me, Henry (Lutovsky), Turner (Corcoran), Gunner (Gottula) and Justin (Evans). We have to really harp on guys that this is the technique that we use and we can’t use any other technique because coach doesn’t know how to coach that. What’s on film is what he’s coaching. You get guys like Rocco (Spindler) and Pritch (Elijah Pritchett) in here who aren’t used to this technique, you just have to keep bringing them along. You fall into bad habits sometimes and that’s fine, we’re just going to coach it up and get it right. It’s kind of on the players at this point now where if we see it, we have to say something about it.”