Coach Bo Pelini

Monday, Oct. 5, 2009
Nebraska Weekly Press Conference
Pre-Missouri

On Blaine Gabbert
“Blaine’s a good player. Obviously he was a really highly recruited kid out of high school and he’s big, he can throw, pretty athletic. He’s a good football player.”

On the differences between Blaine Gabbert and former Tiger quarterback Chase Daniel
“They run basically the same offense. They can both run and throw. They’re both good players and very well-coached.”

On Missouri
“I don’t think they’ve really missed a beat. They still do a lot of good things. This is a very, very similar challenge that we had a year ago.”

On Nebraska having the nation’s No. 1 scoring defense
“I don’t pay attention to that. We have a long way to go as a defense yet. I don’t really get caught up in the statistics and all those things. I go off what I see in the film and the execution we have. I’m not satisfied with where we are as a defense. We have a long way to go yet.”

On the public’s fascination with handing out the“Blackshirts”
“You have to do things when you feel the right time is. I don’t really get caught up in all of that and our football team doesn’t either.”

On why he waits until later in the season to hand Blackshirts out
“I think I said this a long time ago when I first got here. It’s something you have to earn. You have to earn things over time. When that time comes, it’s a feel thing.”

On his definition of a Blackshirt
“It represents playing to a very, very high standard. Week in, week out. To me, it’s as a unit. It’s not an individual thing. To a certain extent it is, but it’s about your unit. It’s about that first group. It’s about earning the right by how you’re executing the type of football you’re playing. That’s how I see it.”

On if there’s a possibility if Blackshirts won't be handed out
“Possibly. I believe it’s a feel thing. I got that question the other night. One of the fans called in, I believe it was last week on my radio show. I really hadn’t thought that much about it until then. I’m not disrespecting the tradition of it or anything else.  I think it will become obvious to me when that time is.”

On the importance of the Missouri game to the North division
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? It’s the first game in the North. What do you have to do? You have to win your games in your division. It’s pretty obvious what the challenge is and going on the road to do it.”

On the challenges of Missouri’s defense
“The same ones that defenses do every week. They do some good things. They’re well-coached. They have some pretty good players. They have some guys that fly around. They’re very aggressive. We’ll have our work cut out for us. They’re a good group. They’re good personnel-wise. They play really hard and they’re well-coached.”

On if the Nebraska players will seek revenge on Missouri after last year
“I don’t think so. To me, it’s about execution. That’s what we stress to our guys. You can get caught up in reasons why and everything else. We want to play at our standards and play up to the goals and standards that we’ve set. That means playing your technique, your fundamentals, and executing the right way. The emotion part of it just happens and how a particular player or players, where they get that emotion and that fire from deep within them, that’s a little bit more of an individual basis. We have our ways we kind of direct they’re thought process during a particular week, but I’ve always felt that I’ve never had any sense of revenge. It’s about playing to your standards and having a pride about how you take the field and how you try to execute and the type of football you want to play at any given week, regardless of who your opponent is. You have to play a certain way and make that a culture of what your program is.”

On where Nebraska is at this year compared to last year
“I like to think we’re further ahead. I didn’t think we were a very good football team at that time last year in a lot of different ways. We were trying to find ourselves offensively and defensively. We just weren’t playing very well. We had a long way to go. I think we’re further along now and we’ll find out Thursday night how far we’ve come.”

On if Larry Asante is at 100 percent
“He’s getting there, yeah.”

On what Nebraska learned from last year’s loss to Missouri
“You learn a lot all of the time. Win, lose, draw, whatever, at practice, any time you go out there and play football, you learn a lot. I’m not going to get into all of the different things, but I thought that it was a learning experience in a lot of different ways. In the end, it benefited us in some ways, long term-wise. The reasons why I believe that, it doesn’t really matter. But it’s hard to benefit from getting your butt whooped like that. We were at a certain stage at that time. It was eye-opening. We didn’t do a lot of things. I thought that eventually it was a bit of a turning point. Everyone points at the Texas Tech game, that was also part of it, but how we responded after that Missouri game helped us find ourselves a little bit. Like I said, we’ll find out Thursday how far we’ve come.”

On how playing on the road at Virginia Tech will help Nebraska on the road against Missouri
“It helps that you’ve had an experience on the road, being in a hostile, loud environment. We play a different football team, different set of challenges. The mechanics of it, the experience of going on the road, helps you a bit. Obviously it’s a different football team you’re playing, different game plan, all those things. What we did at Virginia Tech or didn’t do at Virginia Tech isn’t going to help or isn’t going to change what we have to get done on Thursday night.”

On the noise affecting Nebraska’s offense at Virginia Tech
“You’re always concerned with that a little bit. We practice with crowd noise. Like I said, all those experiences we had at Virginia Tech, you hope they help you react better the next time. All your experiences help you, both good and bad.”

On playing on a Thursday at 8 p.m.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve been through that before. We’ve played a lot of late games in the SEC. A lot of them. It gave me a chance to get a longer run in that morning. I need it.”

On deciding to move the game to a Thursday night
“Like I said, it’s not that big of difference for us. As long as it’s not a short window. I wouldn’t like a short window going Saturday to Thursday. This enables you to have a little bit longer week and then a little bit longer week before Texas Tech. I’m sure that’s the way Coach (Gary) Pinkel looked at it, too. It’s not like you have a short week on one end or the other. This kind of spaces it out. It’s a little bit better for you as far as bye-week’s concerned.”

On the implications the Missouri game has in terms of recruiting
“Every game has implications recruiting-wise. Everything you do has implications recruiting-wise, so this is just the next one on the schedule.”

On Missouri’s offense and deciding when Nebraska should blitz
“Everybody’s style of offense has implications as far as how you pressure, when to pressure, how to pressure, all of those different things. They’re fairly a quick-rhythm on a lot of things that they do, but they throw the ball down the field, too.  We like to stay multiple on everything that we do.”

On how Nebraska stacks up against Missouri
“That’s why you play the game. We’ll find out between the white lines, right? Doesn’t matter what I think right now. We’ll find out Thursday night.”

On if he feels his team can win
“I’ve never gone into a game not thinking we can win. It’s not in my nature.”

On rattling Blaine Gabbert
“I’d like to get to him every play. I hope their offensive line just lies down. He’s a good football player. He’s going to make his plays. We’re good up front, and they have a good quality offensive line. It’s all part of it. It’s a part of disrupting his rhythm, giving him some different looks, all of those things.”

On Blaine Gabbert being mature and advanced as a quarterback
“He’s a well-coached football player and he was recruited highly because he’s a good player. We have a lot of respect for him and the offense. He’s the next guy that we have to play against and he’s a good player. It’s like anything else, if he plays good or he doesn’t play good, it doesn’t change anything. If he has a great game or he’s mediocre, or however people perceive him to be, this is only his fifth start, too. It’s not going to change, regardless of what happens, he’s still a good player. He’s just going to keep getting better the more experience that he gets. It’s just interesting. Week-to-week, I sit there and watch how people talk about different quarterbacks. I’ve sat there and had a chance to watch a little bit of football. For instance, Mark Sanchez, everybody was calling him the “guy” in NFL. I was driving into work this morning and people are now saying he’s not as good as they thought. You’re only as good as your last game, but it doesn’t change the fact that they all have talent and there’s a progress and progression you’re going to have no matter what position. The more experience you’re going to get the better you’re going to get. The same is going to be true with Blaine.”

On Missouri’s changes in its running game
“You see some different things, you see some similar things.”

On similarities between Missouri’s offense and Nebraska’s offense
“There’s some similarities, there are a lot of differences.”

On the emotions going into Missouri’s game
“I don’t really change week to week, obviously. I’m going to be the same emotional person this week than I was before. There’s always going to be a certain amount of burning desire in a player, different players. The key is how do you harness that energy and direct it in the right direction? That’s always the case. You can be over-emotional and it can work against you. If you have emotion, it can work for you. It’s all in directing and generating that energy the right way. Believe me, I’ve learned that more than anybody.”

On Zac Lee’s growth since the last road trip
“Like I said, Zac is going into his fifth start. Same thing. He’s better because of the experience he had at Virginia Tech. He’s learned from it. He’s a good football player and he’ll continue to be a good football player. He’ll keep learning. I think he’ll be better next week than he’ll be at Missouri. He’ll be better at Texas Tech and he’ll keep growing.”

On spending time with the safeties
“Those guys have been getting reps anyway. We’re hands-on with them all of the time. That’s just how we rep our guys. We equally rep our guys. We have a lot of confidence in P.J. Smith.”

On Roy Helu’s non-conference play
“I think he’s played well. What do you think? I think he’s played well. I think he could do some things, I mean he could keep getting better. I think he’s done a good job.”

On last year’s Missouri game
“It doesn’t really matter what happened last year. This is a different point in time, different scenario, different players. It’s not really an issue with me. We got out-executed last year. We just got beat. What happened last year isn’t going to have any correlation with what happens this year unless we let it.”

On taking the blame for last year’s loss
“That’s always my coaching philosophy. When it’s bad it’s the coaches, when it’s good it’s the players. That’s always been and is always how I’ll look at it.”

On if he out-coached himself last season with Missouri
“I hope I don’t do the same this year, I hope I do a little bit better. But yes, like I said, you learn from all of your experiences ? good, bad, different. We’ll see. It’s a different year.”

On the separations at safety for Nebraska
“P.J. (Smith) and Austin (Cassidy) have gotten most of the reps this week, but Courtney (Osborne) has gotten some reps, too. We have confidence in all three of those guys. They know what they’re doing.”