Texas Postgame Quotes
vs. Nebraska
Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007
Head Coach Mack Brown
Opening Statement
Give Nebraska a tremendous amount of credit for all the criticism they have been under the last three weeks to come in here and play as well and as they hard as they did. I thought they did a great job coaching. They came in by releasing pressure on their players they blitzed every play. I don’t think I have ever seen anybody blitz that much. That is absolutely unbelievable. Running the ball, trying to keep the ball away from us offensively frustrated us a little bit in the first half and then we came back and we were able to get settled down and make a few adjustments and play really well in the second half.
I am really proud of the coaches that they didn’t get frustrated. We changed some things and Nebraska comes out and gets two big passes and goes right down the field and scores immediately and takes away the momentum we felt we would have coming out of the half, and they go up 17-3. We got the ball in third quarter when we are down with the wind and come back all of the sudden and have to work into the wind the fourth quarter and that is when Jamaal [Charles] did a great job of running behind his pads and going north and south and probably part of that is we stayed with the running game when it looked like we shouldn’t. I give Greg Davis and the offensive staff credit for keeping their patience down 17-3, and unlike Kansas State, we were able to pull back out primarily because of the running game.
I felt Colt [McCoy] had a courageous performance along with Jamaal. Colt made some plays with his feet. We protected the ball better than we did the last time we were here and overcame what could have been a trap game. Like I said, if you tell a good group of players and the coaches that they are bad for three straight weeks and they don’t come and show it I thought that is what they tried to do today and they played well. They played with so much effort. They played with so much heart it was disappointing that anybody had to lose. It ended up being a typical Texas versus Nebraskas game. Most of the games we have had have come down to the last minute and it is a great series between two really good teams.
On the offensive line
I think we will see that the offensive line did a good job blocking. We continued to pound them inside. It kind of broke loose when John Chiles came in and they left a hole up inside and gave us some confidence. The other thing was Jamaal really took care of the ball and had 33 carries and did a great job. Even the one that put the game away was third and to the right and they got penetration and he bounced away, protected the ball and came back around and was a yard short of the first down, which ended up being the one that made it where we would not have to punt again.
On the zone read
We were planning on using it coming into the game. We did not expect them to blitz every play. To their credit we did think they had enough trouble against the run that they would change something. We thought we would have to makes some adjustments during the game, we didn’t think it would be every play. That was just unbelievable. I have never seen anybody change that drastically from one week to the next. I thought Greg (Davis) called a really good series when we got the ball down for a field goal where we started running the ball more and we pitched the ball out from the option from the I(-formation) once and made about 15 yards with Jamaal (Charles) and kind of got going a little bit and took away some of their blitz. We were not able to break away from their man-to-man coverage in the first half, and they were just backing up man-to-man. Boy they were showing blitz and backing out and playing two deep and trying to confuse Colt (McCoy) and putting people in the gaps and we had a tough time. It is really hard to do what the staff and the kids did today, and that is overcome the adversity they had in this game and that is credit to Nebraska.
On why the zone read was effective
You have to have man-to-man assignments and when you are in blitz, it is really difficult for people to go full speed and still settle down. Somebody has to have the running back and somebody has to take the quarterback and in the zone read if that guy gets a little bit to up field like he did, Colt can step inside and make 15-20 yards. If you are in man coverage like they were, you are leaving the middle of the field open and you are blitzing from the outside so it is hard to break the line of scrimmage against the blitz because when you do, you have big plays. That is what happened today. We kept telling our guys at halftime it is there and we are a step from here and a step from there, and I know you are really frustrated with the three points, but hang in there. We will make some small runs if we keep hanging in there.
On Colt McCoy’s leadership
His leadership is something that has really changed the attitude of this team since Kansas State and the team feeds off of that. I thought Jamaal stepped up with that same attitude. Both of them stepped up with an attitude about toughness and the passing game was not there. We were not in sync today. We didn’t get as many plays as we would like to. We did get some big plays, but we were not as consistent with it as we normally are and thank goodness we were able for the first time in a long time rush for 350 yards.
On Jamaal Charles
I think Jamaal is wanting to show something every week. Everything just happened to go good this week. We go back and look at his first half last week he played a good first half and we felt like he got a little impatient and tried too hard in the second half against Balyor. We had 135 yards rushing in the first half last week and we didn’t finish it. This week, we did a lot better by hanging in there and running the ball because most of your running yards, and we have said this for 10 years, are in the fourth quarter and that happened today.
On Sergio Kindle
He made some great plays. He is such a force on kickoff coverage. He blew one up on their boundary, and our guys recovered. On the 4th-and-1, he was playing perfectly and the ball went right by his hands and they completed it, and that could have been a batted down ball or an interception. I think he is doing fine.
On getting 100 wins
I thought the players made it one that I would remember for a long time. The thing I told them in the dressing room was 100 was nice, seven was nicer today, but 100 over time was nice. When you talk about ?team’ all the time you have to say thank you to all the players for 10 years that aren’t here today that helped us get that because it has been nine-plus every year. A lot of people have put a lot of hard work into this. Coaches and staff who have been here for 10 years and administration and kids on this football team had a tremendous amount of pressure because (the media) didn’t need to be talking about 100 wins and how bad Nebraska was this week. I knew this game was going to come down like it did. It was a script again. It had it written all over it and it didn’t surprise me. I am happy, and I told them they sure made it one I would remember at this point.
On defensive tackles Frank Okam and Derek Lokey
Our guys really play well against Nebraska and they really played well today. I thought Frank [Okam] and Derek [Lokey] have played so well. It was kind of a scary game for Derek since he broke his leg in this game last year. I’m sure Nebraska remembers the fumble right at the end last year. It is really crazy how this game has come down to the end so many times and we have been really fortunate to come up on the good end. Frank is healthy. He is playing really well and showing good leadership out there and we are playing a lot of people, and I think that helped us late in the game.
On Jamaal Charles’ performance
It’s a game I needed Jamaal to have. Jamaal did great, give him credit. (He) took over the game, gained 1,000 yards. Let’s don’t act like he’s been struggling, we took him out at Rice or he’d have had a 100 yards, we didn’t run the ball on Oklahoma, nobody’s had 100 yards (against Oklahoma), at Iowa State we took him out early because we beat them to death. If we had treated Jamaal like Ricky (Williams) he would’ve had 100 yards every week except Oklahoma. That 1,000 would’ve been four weeks ago. Last week, I thought he tried too hard in the second half. I think what we can say is Jamaal’s had a great year, done a great job, and what a great back instead of talking about all the negatives that’s he’s done. What a great performance. I think Roger Wallace said it’s the most yards Nebraska’s ever given up to one back. Y’all would have to check that and see, I don’t know if that’s factual. If it is, it’s a great stat.
On Greg Davis
I was proud of him. I was yelling at him when we had three-and-out, three-and-out, three-and-out. I said we’re going to have to look at something here because we’re about to lose the wind and we’re going to be going into the wind. I think he was stubborn today and kept running it, which was really, really good. I thought his decision, along with Mac McWhorter, to continue to run the ball was the difference in the ball game offensively. I credit them completely, I’m not sure I would’ve (kept running the ball). I’m not surprised at all. You don’t win 100 games without Greg Davis getting some credit too.
On expanding Derek Lokey’s role in the offense
Luke Tiemann had been out for two weeks and we lost Antwan (Cobb), we just needed to expand the short-yardage and goal line out to the field. We feel like that’s something else we can continue to do. He’s such a smart young man. He can do goal line, he can do the field stuff and he can still play defensive end and defensive tackle. What a team leader he is, and what a great young guy.
On Nebraska’s touchdown passes
We had a couple of busts down the middle and they exploited them. Hopefully we’ll correct it. They were busts. They weren’t bad coverages, they were busts. We were disappointed on both, and we’ll get it fixed.
On Justin Moore and the punting game
The wind was huge factor today. It was plus-15 miles an hour. We were really concerned about it, we felt like field position was huge. Going into the game, they had an advantage with their punting game compared to ours. We were really concerned about that, and we were pleased that he did so well.