Sept. 12, 2009
Nebraska 38, Arkansas State 9
Memorial Stadium - Lincoln, Neb.
Quarterback Corey Leonard
On if there was anything specific the defense was doing to make it difficult
"It was tough in the first half because of the fact, like Coach (Steve) Roberts said, they were giving us too high of a safety look most of the first half. What that does is it gives us an advantage in the blocks to run the football. But again, if they give you that and you don't run the ball successfully, then you're going to be in trouble, because you're thrown into a situation that you don't want to be in. They were fast, they were physical, a typical Big 12 team. So with the looks they were giving us in the first half, we had to establish the run before we could really open up with our passing game. You kind of saw it late, we got to throw the ball around a little bit more. I felt we had pretty good advantages in our empty backfield every time we went five-wide. I felt that we had pretty good advantages and leverages in what we were going to do and what they were trying to stop us with. They're one of the bend don't break teams. They're not going to give you a big play, and you've got to take what they give you."
On what was most disappointing
"Really just not finishing. I was happy with the way we moved the ball throughout the game. I felt with the first two series, we got ahead of ourselves. We got a little bit too excited. We're ready to play football, and we're kind of going off momentum and not thinking. But after that I felt like we moved the ball, but again, when you play a team like this, you can't make mistakes, and even the smallest mistakes will kill you. Holding calls, turnovers, a sack, we've got to get better at consistently finishing drives and not making mistakes. You play that whole game over again without us making mistakes, and it's going to be different. But it wasn't so, and they did a great job, every time we made a mistake, they capitalized on it."
Running Back Reggie Arnold
On what he saw from Nebraska's run defense
"Their two inside guys, their defensive lineman, No. 93, is one of the best in the nation, and he played like it. Other than that, I think we did a pretty good job of taking advantage of what they gave us. Once we got past the defensive line, we were able to get down the field and execute our run game. Getting our two-back personnel and bring the ball right at them, something they said we weren't going to be able to do, we did a good job at it. It was mostly us not executing in the passing game like we should have been, and not executing at times in the running game to help the passing game open up. A lot of stuff Nebraska did affected us, but a lot of times we shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers, sacks. Those are things we knew coming into the game we couldn't have if we were going to have any success or have an opportunity to beat Nebraska."
Defensive End Alex Carrington
On if the start of the game was deflating for the defense
"It wasn't really deflating. Just like Corey (Leonard) said, we came out really excited, but we weren't really focusing in on our assignments and we gave up some big plays."
On if there was too much emphasis on stopping the run
"There wasn't too much emphasis. You can't emphasize that enough, because if you don't stop the run then they'll thrash us all night. What did hurt us is play action stuff, slowing down a little too much, blown assignments on the back end and not enough pressure on the front end."