Texas A&M Postgame Quotes
vs. Nebraska
Saturday, Oct. 20, 2007
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Dennis Franchione
Texas A&M Head Coach
Opening Statement
"Well, very physical game. and both of our lines, offensively and defensively, I thought played very well and very physical. Third quarter, we had two 80-yard drives for touchdowns, into the wind in the third quarter. I was hoping the way things would go that we would be able to receive the third quarter and they would have to take the wind in the third quarter, and we'd have it in the fourth. Last week every point was scored with the wind. That was a little bit different this week obviously. Those two drives were huge, big fourth down stop down there inside the 10 by the defense. Great resolve on our guys' part, I was really proud of the effort. It took some real warriors out there today. There were a lot of guys playing banged up, and we kept rotating people in and out, and they kept responding. That was huge."
On the running of Jorvorskie Lane and Stephen McGee
"They did a great job with the zone read. Stephen (McGee) did a magnificent job of reading it and that really was the story. J (Jorvorskie Lane) running with the ball, and he made some great runs today, and I think the offensive coaches had a great plan for him. Stephen did a great job of reading it and he had a good feel for things, and what their adjustments were, and he knew where the cutbacks were and he did a great job of reading the blocks and finding the lanes to cut back and make plays."
On the defense's game plan to make McGee beat them instead of the running backs
"I think any time you play a team that runs the zone read like we do, and when you have a pitchback, you can take two out of three away. If we execute and do what we're supposed to do, hopefully they can't take all three away, and they shouldn't be able to. We did that today, we executed very well. On that play, we don't know who's going to carry the ball. It's going to be up to how we read the defense and what their response is. That was their choice, and Stephen did a magnificent job. I don't know how many carries he had, but probably more than he ever has in his career."
On Jorvorskie Lane's big runs
"Well he had some big runs today. We caught him in some things where he got the read. He does a great job of reading the blocks inside and making the cuts. Today I really saw a nice burst out of him when he saw it, he really hit it a few times."
On Texas A&M having no turnovers
"It’s always huge for us. You've read the stat in our thing about when we win the turnover battle, and I think we got two or three or four today. The one on the punt I thought was a big play early in the game for us that gave us some field position, and I believe we responded with a touchdown after that. Our offense, we have been pretty good at taking care of the football, and we did that again today. When you can get three or four and not give up any then you've got a good chance to win most games."
On the Texas A&M defense keeping Nebraska out of the end zone in the second half
"I thought the defense, you know they gave up some yards in the first half, but they hung in there, but the second half they didn't give them anything. I thought Coach (Gary) Darnell made some great calls down there in the red zone to keep them out at the end, and some of the guys made some really outstanding plays. We tipped that one ball and kept it from being a score. We responded really well on the sprint-out pass, and kept the quarterback contained and just executed pretty good. I think we had some good calls, and the guys executed them well and made some big plays."