Senior Offensive Lineman Jermarcus Hardrick

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference Quotes
Monday, Sept. 19, 2011
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Pre-Wyoming

Senior Offensive Lineman Jermarcus "Yoshi" Hardrick
On what he knows about Spencer and Jake Long
"I think they come from a real close family. They're very close to each other. They started to show their true selves to the team. They like to have fun. They work very hard. I like Spencer a whole lot. He's very physical. A lot of people know a lot about Spencer. He's a walk-on that's starting. I think he's worked very hard to get to where he got. Jake is a very physical tight end. He's big. I think he's going to be good in the long run."

On if he saw Spencer coming up the depth chart
"I talked to him in the spring. I told him, 'you keep working and I think I'll see you up there with us playing on Saturdays.' I think he just took it and ran with it. When he got the opportunity to run with the ones he never looked back, and now he's started three straight games."

On the biggest difference with the line last week
"I think we rotated a lot of bodies in. We had a lot of fresh legs. I think we subbed every two series. We didn't get a chance to get tired. We ran a lot of no-huddle and we wore them down. When they got tired we just went fast and faster. I think that was (Strength)Coach (James) Dobson's preaches us: not getting tired is going to help us get through the season."

On if he likes the subs or would rather be on the field every play
"I think all of us would rather be in there the whole game. If helping the team means keeping a lot of fresh legs in there. All of us play different styles. We rotate four tackles and three guards. Just keeps a different attack coming in and fresh legs. It's going to help us down the road and keep a lot of people fresh."

On how his hand is doing
"Hand's great. I think I get the stitches out this week. I've played with it. I haven't missed a day of practice, and I'm going to practice this week."

On if that's the most painful thing he's gone through
"No. Not at all. Probably when I broke my hand the first time. This is just stitches."

On how hard it's been for Alfonzo Dennard to be out the first three games
"I know on the sideline when I talk to him and stuff, I can just see it in his eyes that he wants to be out there. He kept running past me in the game and playing a lot of jokes on me like he was getting ready to go in and things like that. I think he's just been waiting on to just get a chance to be back. Every day he talks to me and says, 'I can't wait to put a receiver out of bounds.' He's just ready to bring the physical back and return the Blackshirts, I guess."

On focusing on Wyoming
"I just think we have to do something different that hasn't been done here. Just competing every day. Taking a different outlook on things. We got to do something different if we want something different. We just have to look at it as getting better every day and every game and I think that's what we're going to do."

On if he could see center Mike Caputo focused before the Washington game
"I saw a different Caputo. I know every day in meetings Coach (Barney) Cotton made a lot of jokes. He made a lot of jokes about the Holiday Bowl that Caputo didn't play very well against a big nose guard. I think that was very personal. He didn't talk a lot in practice this week. He had a chip on his shoulder. I texted him right before the game and we text like three or four texts apiece. I just felt during the texts he was ready to play. I think like the third or fourth play of the game I saw 74 lying back by the linebackers. He just looked at me, and I figured it was going to be a good game."

On how it feels to have the offense shine
"I know there were a lot of jokes going around last year that we didn't hold up to good as a team. The defense was always talking about the slack they had to pick up for us. I just think we can throw jokes back now, but I don't know, we just got to keep winning as a team. I just think they're struggling right now, but it's going to get better. We're still young on D. Very young on D. Playing a lot of freshmen and sophomore corners. All we can do is get better."

On if he felt the offense tested the defense in the offseason more than previous years
"I felt in the spring, when the new offense came in, we were way more aggressive with the defense. We'd come off, we'd run side to side, we'd run north to south. We can go five wide and we can just do a lot and they couldn't tell what we were doing. I felt that the offense had to be better if we could finally move the ball on the defense because usually at practice the defense is just like a shut down and we don't get nothing."

On Seung Hoon Choi's level of confidence in the huddle and on his performance
"I think it was probably the funniest game I've ever played. I think I heard him talking like every play. Just saying something like, 'come on boy, what are you going to do now? Are you going to call me a fat Asian again?' Him and 74 they were going at it, they were talking the whole game. It was so funny. I didn't know what to do. Every time we heard somebody he was like 'uhh uhh uhh uhhh' just making a lot of noise. He texted right before the game. The O-line they call me Yogodi. It's just a joke. He texted me right before the game saying, 'Yogodi, I'm ready to go.' I texted him back, 'it's tomorrow'. I think he was just very amped just to play."

On if anybody told him to quiet down
"No. Actually, I joined him a couple times. We had a little fun out there. It's all about having fun. We'd come to the sideline and talk about what we said to somebody and what they said to us and what we were going to say when we went back out there and things like that."

On if Washington kept their reputation on being a team that likes to talk
"Oh yes. 74, 11, 28 a couple of numbers I know that, it doesn't matter what was going on in the play, they were just calling my number out a couple of times. I think it was 92 who was on Choi a couple times. They were just going back and forth. Choi, I didn't know he talked that much. Every play when we'd break the huddle he just kept saying stuff, "come on boy, come on, come one,' He'd talk very funny. I don't know. It was just different."