Nebraska Coach Bill Callahan

Nebraska vs. Texas
Postgame Quotes
Saturday, Oct. 21, 2006
Memorial Stadium

Opening Statement
"It was a good football game today. You have to tip your hat off to Texas for making the plays at the end when they needed to make them. I’m very proud of our players. They fought hard. We had an opportunity to close the game and misfortune occurred. Victory was more or less swept away on that third-down play. I’m just proud of our kids for the way they played and competed. We made a lot of errors, but nonetheless, we were in it with the way we came back in the second half. They competed hard, and as a staff, we’re awfully proud of our guys."

On making adjustments after the first half
"In that second half, we settled down with the pass protection. The defense did pretty well adjusting at the half. We just didn’t make enough plays to win the game and overcome some errors in our game. It’s frustrating, but there are a lot of things we’ll take from the film that are positive that we can learn from. The overall effort from the guys, collectively as a team, was very good. We got into a hole there in the first half and came in the second half. We knew we could play well and played good football (in the second half)."

On correcting protection problems in the second half
"I just think we played better. The four-man rush was the four-man rush in the first half; that didn’t change. Our guys just settled in and started reading the moves a little better. We were adjusting to their moves and their counters in terms of the protection."

On Marlon Lucky’s pass play
"We worked with it (this week). You saw a few of the toss sweeps that were executed earlier in the game, and the pursuit really came downhill. That’s kind of a complimentary play to take advantage of an over-pursuing secondary that’s been stepping up to force a run. (The Texas) secondary is outstanding, and they really bit on it and came up hard on the initial toss. The secondary support was all in place, and Nate Swift slipped the corner outside when he filled the lane and came wide open. It was a good red zone fringe pass and play executed by Marlon and Nate Swift and the whole offense."

On bolstering the running attack against Texas
"I think Texas is a good football team. We would like to more balanced, but when we got behind, we just didn’t have that opportunity to run it the way we wanted to."

On the defense and special teams
"I think they did a great job -- an incredible job in the first half. You don’t want to have it come down to field goals, With the initial kickoff, our special teams play could have been better. I felt that going into the game, we knew there were going to be windy conditions. We just didn’t do a very good job with our placement and afforded a big play on the opening kickoff. Holding them to three points, I thought, was an outstanding job by the defense."

On the progress of the team
"Every game is different, so it’s really hard to say. We’re just going to look at our team and gauge our performance on a week-to-week basis. We’ll just go out and work as hard to improve. We have a great challenge coming up this week. We have to go back on the road for the third time in four weeks. It’s going to be tough. Oklahoma State is a pretty potent offense, and I know we’re going to have to be at our best when we go down south. It’s hard to gauge until it’s all done."

On using two timeouts in the final minute to challenge a Texas play
"We thought possibly that ball had come off one of the receivers’ foot and came up in the air, but evidently it hit the ground. It was worth the challenge, and it also served the purpose to freeze the kicker at the same time."

On the possibility of using Jordan Congdon for a long field-goal attempt on the last play
"It was a consideration. We just felt at that point that we were going to try to make a play. We thought it was a little bit out of his range, so that’s why we went with the play."