Wide Receiver Niles Paul

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Pre-Oklahoma State

On the impact of special teams against Texas
"Coach JP (John Papuchis) always says that special teams are a third of the game. It's a phase of the game that you either win or lose. Texas did a good job that game. Obviously, we watched them on film, and they did the roll out punt and punted it down, they never showed the look where they punted it across their body. Coach just told me shift with the punter, and he kept kicking it away from me and we didn't know what to do with that."

On if they considered putting a second or third guy back there
"Yeah, definitely. Rex (Burkhead) was on deck. We just never put him back there. He was definitely on deck ready to go."

On the second punt where he tried to get between the guy
"I realized that I can't let the ball, I have to get the offense in a better position. I was trying to hit the guy to prevent him from getting the ball, and I just didn't get there in time."

On where the team is at right now
"I think we are refocusing on the process, and we realize we have a big game coming up this weekend, and we're going to do everything we can to be fully prepared for this game."

On how difficult it is to get over Texas
"It's very difficult to get over a game like that, but I think Coach Pelini does a good job of keeping us focused and just telling us to forget about it."

On what he tells the players as a vocal leader on the team
"What I do is I man up to my mistakes in that game, just like everyone else manned up to their mistakes in that game. We all looked in the mirror and we came back and said we have a good team. We have a really good team. If we play our ball game, we'll win out the rest of the season."

On home versus away games
"We actually talked about this as a team, why we play better away than home. It baffles me. I don't think it's because we like to be hated going into an environment. It's weird because we do play better at away games. It's noticeable that we play a lot better. It's noticeable that we're more focused when we're away rather than at home."

On if they feel like the weight of the world is on them at home
"It feels like that when you're at home. There is a lot of pressure when you're at home. If you make a mistake, the crowd is definitely going to let you know."

On how he felt about Zac Lee handling the situation coming in
"Zac Lee is just waiting his time. We all were confident enough in Zac Lee that he was going to come in and do his job and do the best that he can and get us a win in that game."

On if he has to say anything to Taylor Martinez to help his confidence
"No, Taylor took it well and he's refocused. I don't think he lost focus, but he'll be ready to go come Saturday."

On how big a challenge Oklahoma State will be for the offense
"It's another challenge that we have to step up to. Like I said, I trust the fact that the coaches are going to put us in the position all this week to go out there and play the best game we can."

On how the wide receivers have responded in practice this week
"The same way we all responded. We know we made mistakes that game. We're only human. We're just going to keep doing what we're doing and just focus on doing our job and making sure we do it to the best of our ability."

On if the drops are extra motivation or business as usual
"I wouldn't say it's just business as usual. We're college football players. I don't see them as motivation. We just know as a corps we're better than that and we shouldn't drop those balls. As Coach (Ted) Gilmore always says, "do you want to be good receivers or great receivers?" If we want to be great receivers we need to catch those balls."