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Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007
Pre-USC
On facing USC after playing them before with Arizona State
“I do not look at it as a week of redemption at all. Like I have said before, it is such a distant far gone memory that it does not even come up in my head anymore. As far as this game this week, we as a team, with all respect to how big this game is for us and for the fans and everybody at Nebraska, we have do a good job of putting us first. We have to go out and improve in practice as an offense and as a team. I think that is the most important goal right now for us.”
On what is preventing him from finding a rhythm
“It is hard to say. I have felt comfortable. I felt more comfortable out there Saturday than I did in the first game. Game one, game two, game three will be even better. It is just a process of getting better each week and getting better throughout the game. I think in this one we will be a lot more prepared. Our preparation is huge this week. I think I spent about three or four hours up there yesterday. It is just improving. I felt very comfortable in the WakeForest game, but their defense is pretty tough. You would like to clean up the turnovers and little things like that, which I will. As an offense, we just need to go back to the drawing board and get better. That is all you can do week by week.”
On if there is added pressure of facing No. 1 team in the country
“Well if you put that pressure on yourself, but that is something I do not do. We, as an offense, have to improve this week. We know what we are up against. We know what we can do. We are not going to be putting ourselves in a good position if we do not take care of our business over here in Lincoln on the practice field. That is what we have to do. We have to go back to work today.”
On how much he looks back to his performance against USC two years ago
“Well in regards to their defense and what they do, they have not changed much because of how great they are. It is no less than great, they are great. They do a lot of the same things that I have seen on film and that I have faced. You just have to be mistake-free. You have to take what they give you. You have to be very smart. You always have to be aggressive. You have to take shots at them, because they are that good. We have a lot of respect for them going into this week of preparation.”
On how good the USC defense is year to year
“I think all of Coach Carroll’s team are very well prepared and very well coached. I can not separate one from the other because all their players are very talented. They have a great defense that is very disciplined. When you put defenders like them, who are that athletic and gifted and you couple that with smarts and discipline, you get a pretty stout opponent. I do not think they are any different than what I have seen before. They are very good, but the focus is not on USC for us this week. It is on us. How can we get better? How can we put our best product on field and our best effort on the field to give us the best chance to win? I think that is where the focus needs to be for us.”
On if this team is as good as he’s been on
“I think you can definitely say that. As far as the guys I have got around me, we have a great team. It is just a matter of us finding everything we can do out there.”
On the focus on them instead of USC
“This game has all the things surrounding it to make it a huge game as far as the hype. As a team, it is very important for us as players and coaches to take what we did wrong in that WakeForest game and really fix it. Where we stand right now on Tuesday, we have to go out and correct some things on the practice field. Things we can learn from from the WakeForest game and take that into our week of preparation is really important for us. We kind of established that, right from the get go, right after the game this weekend, that we have some things we have work on. It was a great win; huge for us to go in on the road, but every week is another game. It is another chance to get better. I know it sounds clich? but that is how a football season goes. Every week there are things you look at and breakdown and get better at. There are a lot of things for us to do.”
On his familiarity with USC players and personnel
“There is a lot that I am familiar with. I have played against those guys a lot. It is the same staff. There are a lot of things familiar as far as playing them in the Pac-10 too. Those things you kind of have to block out too. You just have to take what you see on film and break it down to see what you can do to attack them best. You try not to look in the past. As a quarterback especially, you try not to ever look in the past. You are always looking forward. This team poses a lot of challenges that we have to be ready for.”
On if he expects USC to blitz much
“I expect them to have a lot of answers. Coach Carroll is a very, very smart defensive coach as all of you know. He is going to have his bread and butter and probably going to have some new stuff. He comes with new stuff every week depending on how they gameplan. That is what we have to be ready for. We have to see how that develops over the game. You just go in with your best attack and just reaction to what you see.”
On who has had success against USC and if that can help Nebraska
“I think a good film to look at was OregonState. They had some success on them through the air. You look at teams that were able to run against them. It is not sticking out in my head right now, but there are definitely ways you can attack them. Again, it is being patient. They are very good at not getting beat deep. They have tremendous range in the back end. They have guys that can make plays. You just really have to pick your spots. One of the films I was watching was the OregonState game.”
On his nerves the first couple series against USC
“That comes with every game. You get so juiced up for games that you have to settle into the game. The important thing is just to be prepared mentally for what you are going to see. You are going to see the fastest team that you have played against. I think that goes for all the guys on the offense. We just have to be ready for the intensity and the speed of the game that is going to happen on Saturday. It is going to be really fast and intense. The crowd is going to be electric. There are just a lot of things. We have to make sure we settle into the game and not make mistakes.”
On where he was during last year’s game
“I think I was at home because they were out of town. I did not watch a lot of it. The game was hard fought from what I remember watching it on film. We did a lot of running the ball. We thought we could get up and down the field on them. You really have to go north and south on these guys, they are too fast to go east and west on. That was what I was trying to see on the film - how they reacted to our formations and schemes. Last year was a hard fought game and we really tried to run the ball at them. There were some good things to look at from that film.”
On if this game could be his defining mark
“I think it is important that you take each game as it comes and you not try to look at it in that aspect. Those are more things to look back on in the past in hindsight. If you look at that before the game even starts, it is not even fair to your team or how you are preparing for it. I do not look at it like that at all. I look at it as we are playing the USC Trojans. They are a very, very good defense and we need to play very, very good. That is going to happen by practicing very, very well. I know that sounds kind of simple but that really is what it is. You have got to be ready and it starts right now. We just have to go to the drawing board and think up the best possible way we can beat these guys.”
On simulating USC’s speed in practice
“By playing fast no matter what it is. If we go against our defense, those guys are pretty fast. The most important thing is to play fast and make mistake-free decisions. In the game, obviously it is going to be a lot faster. However, you can prepare yourself by thinking quick and by watching film and doing the things like that. As long as you know what you are doing and you are prepared, you can react. The game is going to be reacting and not thinking. That just comes with practice and watching film and reacting on the field throughout the week.”
On what he got out of his game against USC that helped him mature
“When you look back at that, we were winning 21-3 and I might have thought of myself as somewhat bulletproof since we were winning. But when you look back at USC, you can not do that. You can not take unnecessary chances against that defense because they are too fast and too good. I felt like we could win that game, so when they started creeping back by giving the ball off to their two running backs, you start to think to yourself, ?Okay I have to put this on my shoulders and we have to go get this done.’ In that regard, if you do that and you become too over-aggressive, then you could make mistakes against a really good defense like that. The important thing this week is to prepare and know what I am doing and take what they give me. You say that a lot, but at the same time that is what you have to do against these guys.”
On the team chemistry rising after Wake Forest
“Every game is different and that game was not pretty at times, but that is okay because that is football. We came out of there with a huge win. That was a really good team. I have a lot of respect for WakeForest. We grew as a team knowing that when things are not working here, we can make them work. Whether it is offense or defense or special teams, we all compliment each other in that regard in playing the game. We realize that we can win the close ones. We can win a really nasty game where as maybe before we do not win that one. We looked at it as we faced some adversity and things worked out for us. We can come back and look at that as a positive but we can also take all the negative things that happened to us in that game and get better on those things and really hone in on those things.”
On his preference of day or night games
“I love night games, but as a quarterback you can not care. Whatever time the game falls is when it is going to be. As a quarterback, no outside factor should have any bearing on how you play. You should just be able to focus between the white lines and play your game. I will say I like night games, though. I played a lot of night games at ArizonaState. It seemed like all the games we played where at night. It was just a lot fun with all the lights. It was just a different kind of glare, a different kind of atmosphere. It is a lot of fun. I am really excited to play at night again.”
On Purify having no catches against USC last year
“I was really surprised by that. That is pretty odd. Last year is last year. In the years before, when I played against them, that is a long time ago. It has nothing to do with this game coming up. There are things you can look at on film to try and best prepare yourself for the USC Trojans but you are doing yourself a disservice if you are looking to the past. We are really going to try and get after it this week and practice as hard as we can and prepare. We have a lot of things we need to improve on as an offense and this is a week to do it.”
On looking for Purify this year
“He is a big-body guy that makes play. You always want to put the ball in the hands of your playmakers and we have a few. I think this could be a big week for Maurice to step up and I would love to see that happen.”