Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini

Nebraska vs. Texas Postgame Quotes
Saturday, Oct. 16, 2010
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)

On how he can explain what happened today
"I don't think that's it. Bottom line is some of the things that happened have been happening. We coach it, we preach it, you put the ball on the ground. Some of the things that have been hurting us hurt us today and worse. You have to get them fixed. Football comes down to execution, it comes down to fundamentals, it comes down to technique, it comes down to playing the right way. We didn't play the right way today. We didn't get it done. We got beat. I give credit to Texas, but we didn't take care of ourselves. We didn't play with good fundamentals, we didn't play up to our capabilities. That is what happens to you, you lose football games."

On the decision to bring in Zac Lee at quarterback
"We wanted to find a spark, we wanted to settle Taylor (Martinez) down. It wasn't Taylor, trust me, it wasn't just Taylor. We made that decision."

On the dropped balls
"It's pretty obvious. We had our opportunities to make plays, we didn't make plays. They did, they won the football game."

On why the offense wasn't working with Martinez
"We didn't execute. Our reads weren't good. We had a couple of touchdowns we should have had with Martinez, with dropped balls. We weren't pointing the finger at Taylor when we made the change, we just felt like we needed a spark. We needed something different. Like I said, we didn't coach it well enough today. We didn't play it well enough. I told our football team, we still have everything out in front of us that we want to do. Our first goal is to win the Big 12, it's still out there for us to go do but we're not going to do that unless we look in the mirror like men and take repsonsibility for what happened out on the field todya and get better because of it. We'll let the fans and everyone else feel sorry for themselves and feel sorry for what happened. You have to take an experience like this and let it make you stronger. If we do that, we'll respond the right way. If we don't, I know our football team has a lot of character. I know they'll respond well."

On if he envisioned them running the ball as well as they did today
"No, people run the ball well when you don't tackle well. It comes down to fundamentals. We didn't tackle well, it cost us the game on defense."

On Texas' punter and the field position throughout the game
"He did a couple good jobs."

On what they're going to do with the quarterback position
"Taylor is our starting quarterback right now. Nothing is really changed."

On how difficult it is to get a team to move on from an emotional loss
"It's pretty easy when you look in the mirror and take responsibility for it. There isn't a guy out there who played as good as he could play. There isn't a coach out there who did his job, me included. You move forward, you look at it in black and white and you move forward. I've said we're a work in progress and some of the things I've felt that we haven't come quick enough on hurt us today as a football team. Those are some areas we have to get fixed. We haven't gotten them fixed yet or played that way consistently. I'm a realist. Some of the things that hurt us, happen in practice. You either fix them, you become better or you don't. If you don't you have issues. Just like Texas, they could say the same thing, they have issues too, but they played better than us today."

On deciding on the on-side kick
"We figured we had to stop them anyway. We figure we'd be aggressive and try to get the ball back with enough time. If they got a first down it meant it was pretty much over anyway, whether we kicked it to them or not. We just figured it gave us another opportunity. Does that mean it would have been a little bit longer field? Yeah, we rolled the dice a little bit.I don't know if it was the right decision or not, but I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. I thought we'd be aggressive in trying to make a play, try to go win the football game."