Nebraska Football Postgame Quotes
vs. Oklahoma State
Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Quarterback Sam Keller
On the direction of the team from here (Audio)
"The only way to go is up. Any time you’re faced with a little adversity, or in our case, a lot of adversity, the only way you can go is up. The only way we can go from here is up. If we just stay together and make it happen, then that’s what we can do. Bad things have happened to good people before. It happens every day. The ball doesn’t bounce the way you want it. Things don’t go your way in life, but sometimes, they do. When they don’t, you can’t point fingers, get upset or let life become a downer just because things aren’t going your way. You have to go and make them go your way. It’s unfortunate that you have to wait a whole week to be able to do that on the field, but it starts tomorrow. We have to go up, stay together, and we can’t make excuses. We have to bond and become closer. This is not a good feeling. This is not what we want. This is not what anybody had envisioned. It’s extremely difficult to deal with, but you have to choose the way you’re going to go. The way I’m going to go and this team is going to go is up, because there’s no other way to go."
On the mood of the team (Audio)
"I get a feeling that guys are hurting and they want this corrected. They want everything to be okay. It’s not that easy, when you’re hurting inside so bad. I know some guys are just searching for what’s going wrong. Some guys are confused or angry, but a lot of guys, myself included, don’t really know how to deal with this kind of situation and the weight of this situation."
On Nebraska’s offensive system (Audio)
"This system works fine. That’s our system. We don’t know any other system. This is what we make work everyday on a daily basis in practice. In games, it’s worked. We have faith in the coaches and the coaches have faith in us. We just have to execute it better. It just comes down to dialing in. When it’s really bad, someone has to make a play."
Linebacker Bo Ruud
On the team’s emotion entering the game (Audio)
"We really believed we were going to play well today. We didn’t."
On Nebraska’s reaction to the first half (Audio)
"That first half was just horrible. It was the worst half I can ever remember playing, especially in a first half. That was just terrible. There’s no excuse for that. It was just poor."
On OSU QB Zac Robinson potentially coming over the line of scrimmage on his TD pass (Audio)
"It looked like he was over the line, but it was the type of thing to where nothing was going to go our way today. That’s just kind of how the day went. We weren’t going to get that (call). I didn’t really think about it after that."
On Nebraska’s slow start (Audio)
"I’m disappointed on the way we started the game. We came out at half and we were playing for pride at that point, just trying to make a comeback. If there’s a positive, it’s that we didn’t quit. We just have been starting games out really, really badly, and I think that’s the biggest problem. When you start out so bad, it’s hard to build on anything. As the day happened, things went from bad to worse in a big hurry. If there’s one thing I think will be big for us next week, it will be to get off to a good start because I think, when we do that, it changes the whole feel of our team. We always seem to play way better when we start well as opposed to when things start going bad early, it seems that we have some trouble bouncing back."
Center Brett Byford
If he ever thought he’d see a loss like
"Not really. We’ve just got to move on and go with it and keep working to get better. It’s obviously disappointing. There’s no doubt about that. Everybody realizes it. We’ve just got to come out and watch film tomorrow and get ready to play the next one."
On how to raise the team’s spirit
"Just play for pride and play for this program. That’s what guys were doing in the second half. The guys worked hard. Nobody gave up and nobody backed down. Guys just kept working."
What do you say to the fans?
"We’ll just keep working and do our best. We definitely aren’t quitting. Obviously a lot of people are disappointed outside of the team, but we’ve just got to pull it together like a family and work and get better and realize there are more games to go and we can’t dwell on this one."
Tight End J.B. Phillips
On what part of the offense is breaking down
"All it was offensively was the ball didn’t bounce our way a couple times and we didn’t make plays in crunch time. Other than that, I think we had a lot of positives on offense. We ran the ball well. We had several runs where we knocked off a whole lot of yardage, but then when it counted, when it was third-and-two or something like that, we didn’t capitalize."
On what the offense can take from the game
"We’ll watch the film tomorrow and I do think we’ll find some positive things. It’s just not having those mistakes or finding a hole, just little tiny things. It stinks that every week it’s the little things, but it is. Just making plays when you need to, we just didn’t come up."
On the offense’s struggles
"We know what we’re capable of. We’ll show flashes. That’s what probably eats at you more than anything. We’ll show those flashes and we know what we can do. We know that we can be a great offense. We’ve seen people make plays all year long, in fall camp and in spring ball. It hurts when you don’t perform to what you know that you can do."
Linebacker Lance Brandenburgh
On the loss
"We’re obviously really disappointed with the loss. We’ve just got to come together and improve. It’s all mental. The game is really 95-percent mental, and right now we’re just not playing smart football. It’s all about gap responsibility. You’ve got to be in your right gap and we’re all to blame for that. We know we’re a good football team. That’s the thing that’s so frustrating. We know we have the talent. It’s all mental. I’m not talking about mentally being down. I’m talking about mentally taking care of your responsibility for whatever look they come out in."
On how the team can remain positive
"We’ve just got to have each other’s backs. We’re not going to blame anybody for this loss. It’s on us. We’ve got to come together strong and practice hard this week."
On the feeling of losing at home
"I don’t like losing period, but losing at home is definitely worse. It feels like we let down our fans and we’ve just got to improve. It’s critical."