Coach Bo Pelini

Nebraska Weekly Press Conference
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009
Memorial Stadium - Lincoln, Neb.
Pre-Baylor

On if he saw anything on film that surprised him

“No. I thought we left a number of plays out on the field and left some things out there that were there and didn’t take advantage of, but no, nothing really surprised me. There are always some things you see more clearly on the film than you saw during the game, but it was what it was.”

 

On how he addresses the turnovers this week in practice

“Emphasis. We want to continue to emphasize. You have to put the ball away. You have to play cleaner. We have to get that aspect of it fixed, obviously.”

 

On what he has seen from the Baylor offense after the Bears lost starting quarterback Robert Griffin

“They don’t change much of what they are doing offensively. Obviously, he brought a different element to the game. They just emphasize different things. It has changed. That guy, he was a whole different dynamic in the game. This quarterback is probably a little more adept to throwing the ball, but obviously he doesn’t have the speed and athleticism that (Robert) Griffin had. But what they do, they don’t change their offense a whole heckuva lot, maybe a little less option, that type of thing.”

 

On Keith Williams' actions after Dontrayevous Robinson's fumble, and if Pelini would like to see more fire on the field

“It’s a guy trying to be a leader, but you have to do things in the right way and the right time. You don’t point the finger, you point the thumb. It’s been addressed. If you do something like that, you have to do it in the right way. No one felt worse about that fumble then Dontrayevous, whose playing hard. He didn’t want to fumble. You have to look in the mirror and anybody who does that, you have to make sure you look in the mirror to, and you better be playing perfect if you do that. I’m not saying you can say it’s OK. There’s a time and a place with all those types of things. That wasn’t the time and place.”

 

On what the leadership has been like on the team through these two tough losses

“Leadership, the effort has been there. The effort, the want-to. I always look at leadership, it’s not about barking. It’s not about talking, it’s about doing. It’s about making plays and overall consistency of what you’re doing. You have to take care of yourself first. As far as our leadership, as far as our effort, as far as our want-to, our attitude, that’s been good. The leadership of guys stepping up and making plays when plays have to be made, that’s the leadership we need. That hasn’t always been the case. It’s been a guy here or a guy there. It’s overall level of consistent execution that’s lacking, and that goes across the board with the football team.”

 

On if he thinks they have the guys who can make the plays

“Yeah, I do. They’ve done it. We just need to do it more consistently, obviously. We need to keep giving guys the opportunity to step and be that guy. You’re going to see some more guys, some different guys out there and give them the opportunity to be that guy.”

 

On what he saw from Dontrayevous Robinson, and if Robinson has emerged as the No. 2 running back

“I thought Dontrayevous did some good things. It was really his first time out there. He did some good things. He left some yards out there on the field to. He played like a young back. He played tough. He played hard. He missed some holes. He made some good runs. He did some good things, but he needs to clean up some, which is to be expected going into really his second game.”

 

On if there are any different guys he would like to announce that would get a shot to play on Saturday

“Nope.”

 

On if the defense plays well and loses, if he tells them they need to do more and play better

“That’s always my attitude. It’s a team game. You only play well enough defensively if you score more points than the other team at the end of the day.  I’ve always taken that attitude. You have to do whatever you have to do on any given day, given the circumstances, to win a football game. We gave up nine points and that wasn’t good enough on that day given the circumstances, given what happened. You can’t be satisfied. Even if you win the football game you can’t be satisfied with where you are. There are still a lot of things to clean. You know, we’re doing some good things defensively, but believe me, there is a lot that needs to be cleaned up. For instance on the touchdown, we have to get those things cleaned up. It shouldn’t have happened and it happened because we didn’t execute and didn’t do what we needed to do in that particular instance and it cost us in the end. Am I saying that you’re going to play perfect? Well, we needed to play little bit closer to perfect on that given day to win the football game, and we didn’t rise up to the challenge and we didn’t do it. It’s a team game. We have to have each other’s backs.”

 

On if he ever worries about the defense checking out mentally because the offense is struggling

“Well, that’s something, you have to be tougher minded than that. You can’t worry about what’s going on, on the other side of the football. Each game, I always say you have to respect the game. Each week you’re going to have different circumstances, different things are going to happen on both sides of the football and different challenges arise just by the shear circumstances of each game. No matter what happens, you have to do what you do and be prepared to do it at an extremely high level to make sure you give yourself the best opportunity to win. You can’t concern yourself with things that are out of your control or let it influence you one way or another. You have to play to a certain standard and live at that standard and not buy into worrying about what’s going on. You can’t let anything else that’s going on effect you and your mindset and what you’re tying to get accomplished when you walk out on the field.”

 

On if he thinks this is a championship-caliber defense

“We’ll find out as the season progresses. I think we’re doing some good things. I like a lot of the things we are doing. I still get frustrated at times. At times, things that hurt us last year hurt us this year, mental errors, just doing something undisciplined that’s outside of the system, outside of what we coach every single day. I believe it’s mental, and I believe it’s undisciplined football at times, meaning not putting your eyes in the right place, just not doing exactly what you’ve been coached to do. At times when that happens, that’s crept up and hurt us. The things that have hurt us defensively, that’s what’s happened. I have a very high standard on all sides of the football, but I see the things that have hurt us there, it hasn’t happened as much as it did a year ago, but it still happens at times, and it frustrates me.”

 

On where you begin to look when you are searching for that spark on offense

“It’s really across the board. I always believe offensively, you have to be hitting on all cylinders front to back. It’s not one guy here; it’s not two or three guys. When it’s crept up and got us, it might be a left guard here or a left tackle here, or a wide receiver dropping a ball here, a quarterback missing a read, a running back missing a big hole. Our consistency across the board has not been good enough to sustain drives, finish drives. Obviously, I thought we started rolling pretty good the other day at times, and then you lay the ball on the ground. It’s been one thing after another. You have to have more mental toughness. The effort has been there, the detail and level of execution has not been there. There’s only one way to address it and that’s to keep working every single day and bring the correct work ethic and the right attitude and focus to the practice field. You just have to work yourself through this. You just hope as a head coach, I tell them you can’t buy into everything that’s going on outside of here, you have to be confident, we’ve done it before, you can do it again. At times, we’ve been very good on offense moving the football and doing some very good things. Then we become our own worst enemy and that’s just consistency of execution.”

 

On if he allows himself to look outside the box offensively when the offense is struggling

“Absolutely, you need to do that. Like you say, you need a spark, you need to find some things, and as you move along you can sit there and continue to try and pound a square peg into a round hole, but at times you have to think outside of the box. You have to look at what your personnel is, what they have been able to execute and continue to look for the best way to utilize their talents as you move forward. That always has to be the case, even when you’re hitting on all cylinders. You still have to keep looking for ways to improve. Now it just becomes that much more - I don’t know - a bigger challenge to get that done.”

 

On how much effort needs to be put forth to make sure there is not a division amongst the players

“That’s not something I worry about. I think we have a lot of character. We have a lot of great kids in the locker room. They want to be good. Obviously, there’s no one in there that doesn’t want to win. That has not been a problem. There has not been an issue like that on our football team. If there was, I understand how to address that.”

 

On if it helps to have guys like Ndamukong Suh and Barry Turner who were hear in 2006 when it was the defense that was struggling

“Yeah, you look at really a year ago. In my mind, our offense carried our football team last year. We were a bad defense up 'til midseason or so. We kind of started to figure things out. Started to move along and gaining our identity. That really didn’t happen last year. You have to do what you have to do to win football games. You persevere through the tough times, you stick together, and you hope we become better and stronger because of it.”

 

On if this team is mentally tough enough right now

“Consistently we’re not mentally tough. There are a lot of things that go into being mentally tough. It means focus. I believe and I’m a strong believer in culture. I believe my vision that I have for this football team, that process is well under way. I can not proclaim that it has completely taken over yet. It is a process and it’s not something that happens over night. I understood that coming in. I know it’s a process. I’ve been through this before. I do not want by any means to make it look like I’m making an excuse. I believe we’re good enough and we have the tools to win right now. I believe that in my heart and I know that. I don’t believe it, I know it. Are we even close to where I see my vision of this program? I’ve never proclaimed that to be the case and we have a lot of work to do. It’s something that we are still (working toward), and we are always going to be, but we are in a situation that as a football team, as a staff, and as a program, you have to go and be prepared to roll up our sleeves every single day to go to work, because we’re not near where we need to be in a lot of different aspects.”

 

On if playing on the road this week will provide a better environment for the players to become more mentally tough

“I love playing at home, obviously. I always like to play at home, but that’s not the case this week. We need to go out on the road and play well.”

 

On if he feels like the team needs more fire

“Have you ever seen me on the sideline? Our guys are playing hard. You watch the film, the effort is there. Is there always instances? Yes, but that doesn’t get it done, technique and fundaments, obviously want-to, all those things. If somebody says that our team doesn’t have fire, I disagree. There are some guys, in some individual basis, I’d like to use a cattle prod on at times. That’s part of the deal. You can say that about any football team. There are a lot of different personalities, there are a lot of different ways guys exhibit that type of thing. At the end of the day, you can have some neat mild-mannered guys, which I’ve been around, those guys that are off the field don’t say a whole heck of a lot, but they play well. They play really well. It’s all in the guy.”

 

On if he is worried about the confidence level of his football team

“Somewhat, yeah. Especially with the negativity out there right now. That’s natural. But yeah, you have to address it. You gain confidence by having success. That starts in practice. That starts in their level of preparation. That’s where it all begins. You gain confidence by performing at a certain level over and over and over consistently. Once again, that starts in practice. That starts in preparation. That starts in your focus; all those things play into it. The more success you have, you gain confidence as the process happens.”

 

On the perception that walking out of the tunnel while locking arms sent the message that the team is lacking confidence

“I don’t care what it suggested, really. That’s irrelevant to me. That’s something they chose to do. You can read into that stuff all you want. I’m not a psychologist. I felt our football team was ready to play, we just didn’t get it done.”

 

On if an offensive spark can be as simple as one person

“One person can’t do it alone. A spark can be made by a guy rising up and making a play, but I can tell you this, a guy can’t make a play without help around him. Like I said, it’s a team game. But certain guys, a certain aura about somebody, or somebody stepping up and making a big play at a big time, that’s obviously a spark.”

 

On what type of improvements the wide receivers need to make

“Toughness, blocking on the perimeter, and obviously catching the football. We need to play cleaner. We need to make plays. We also need to block better on the perimeter more consistently. We need attitude out there.”

 

On if Zac Lee is still the starter at quarterback and if he would consider rotating Cody Green in

“I’m considering a lot of things. We’ll see how the week of practice plays out.”

 

On if there was a plan to try and get Cody Green into the IowaState game but they were not able to because they were coming from behind

“No, not really.”

 

On his postgame comment that Cody Green wasn’t ready to play and where he would like to see Cody at

“That was probably a wrong way of saying it. At the time, I went into that football game and felt that Zac Lee, given where we were, the whole situation, Zac gave us the best opportunity to win the football game. Like I said, there were a lot of 'what ifs', right? I thought that offensively, when you leave that many points out there and have turnovers inside the five-yard line, we're not having that discussion today, but it did and it obviously magnifies the situation that much more.”

 

On if there are any specific examples that stick out in his mind of the team not being as mentally tough as he wants them to be

“I guess I group mental toughness into a lot of different areas - busted assignments, losing your focus, putting your eyes in the wrong place.  There are many aspects of it. I’m trying to think of specific situation.”

 

On if when they went down 14-0 to Texas Tech is a good example not being mentally tough enough

“Well, I think they were a bit shocked for a second. I think our guys have been able to respond to adversity. I think mental toughness goes well beyond that. Mental toughness is being able to block out all the distractions and anything that’s happened. The hardest thing for a football player to do is to find that level of focus necessary to play great play after play after play no matter what’s happening to them. Being able to keep going to the next play, keep going to the next play, and to play 60 minutes of football. When you drift, your mind drifts, you lose concentration for a second, that’s when the difficult plays, that’s when the things that really get you beat creep up and get you. That’s probably what has hurt us the most. When you block a certain scheme a certain way over and over and over, and for some reason you run the ball and somebody just doesn’t, you forget about what you’ve been taught. To me, all those things are wrapped up into mental toughness and it hurts us.”

 

On if the offense is going to start playing to the players' strengths instead of playing to the offensive system

“I think that’s always the case. That’s the case defensively too. As guys move along, every year and the season moves on, you figure out a little more about your football team as the season moves forward, especially in the case when you have youth. You have to be able to move forward and be able to develop your offense and build around the strengths that they have exhibited up to a certain point. Really, that’s a weekly process that goes on in every aspect of the game.”

 

On if thinks Roy Helu Jr.'s shoulder was hurting him more than he led on

“I expect him to play like he is OK if he puts himself in the football game, period, end of story. If you’re hurt, you’re hurt. If you’re not and you walk out there on the field I expect you to give it up and to play the way we expect you to play.”

 

On if he thinks Roy Helu Jr. played tentatively

“Yes I did.”

 

On if him and Coach Shawn Watson are on the same page regarding who should be the starting quarterback

“Yes, we are on the same page.”

 

On if there are factors to throwing the ball behind a receiver that you don’t always see by the naked eye

“If you watch closely sometimes you can see. Most of the time you can see it, meaning sometimes a rush, a guy bumping the quarterbacks elbow. Sometimes by the naked eye you don’t see it, but usually on the highlights and things you can see it. Maybe a offensive tackle or guard getting pushed back into the quarterbacks face as he is throwing the football and he can’t step into the throw. All those things play a part in tit.

 

On if this is a must-win situation in order to reach their goals

“I look at the rest of them as must-win situations. That’s the way you have to address it. That’s the way you have to go after it. It doesn’t really change how we go about things. We kind of take things, week-to-week, day-to-day. It keeps us on task and that’s always worked well for me and for the football teams that I have been a part of.”

 

On if they are going to need some help to reach their goals if they don’t win this week

“Yeah, absolutely. You have to take care of your own. I’ve always believed that. You have to take care of yourself. You win and you don’t have to worry about what’s happening around you. That’s the attitude we take and all I’m concerned with right now is Baylor. We have to get this next one. Believe me, our guys understand the urgency of the situation.”