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Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Memorial Stadium
Pre-South Dakota State
Monday, Sept. 16, 2013
Senior Offensive Lineman Jeremiah Sirles
On having fun while playing
“A lot of people think that you have to have fun all the time when you’re playing football. You have fun at practice, but there are times when practice isn’t fun. It’s work, and work isn’t always fun. The fun part of practice is when you’re out there having fun and competing hard against each other. And then, when you get back in the locker room, you’re with 150 of your best friends. That’s the fun part. The fun part of the game is walking out in front of 92,000 people screaming loud and cheering in Memorial Stadium or walking out in front of 100,000 people in the Horseshoe at Ohio State. I mean, that’s fun. When it’s time to work, it’s time to work, and sometimes work isn’t fun. I’d say the majority of time we have a good time at practice because the leadership really pulls people along when we’re having a good time. Yeah, I think there are times when it’s not fun, but it’s hard not to have fun playing a game you love and a game that has done so much for you. If you’re at the Division I level playing college football, the game of football has done a lot for you in your life. It’s hard not to have fun playing a game that you love.”
On having Monday’s off from now on
“I literally just heard that when I walked in. We’ll probably talk more about it as a team, but it will be a change, I guess. We all have full trust in coach Bo (Pelini). If he thinks it’s the best thing to do for our team, then it probably is the best thing to do, and I think we’ll adapt well.”
On the team playing too tight
“I can’t speak for the defense, but I think offensively there have been times when I have felt that. I also think there have been other times when we’ve gone out there and played really well. We’ve played up to our potential, and we’ve played loose. I think that we play our best when we’re out there trying to let the system work for us and not trying to force plays, not trying to force anything, and just doing what we’re coached to do. We’re coached to go out there and just play and have fun playing. When we go out there and hit on all cylinders, our offense is hard to stop. When we’re out there sometimes it seems like we’re trying to do too much as an offensive unit, not from the coaching staff but as players. Sometimes we have 11 guys out there thinking, ‘Oh gosh, we have to make something happen.’ I think there was a little bit of that this weekend, but I don’t think we’re playing tight.”
On being taught too much
“I think there are times when we’re trying to analyze too much, but you have to play this game with your eyes. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of different looks in the first three weeks. Offensively, we’ve seen odd, we’ve seen over, and we’ve seen under. It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before, which is good. We just have to make sure that when we go out there we’re not overanalyzing. When we’re hear a play, we just have to lay it and play it. We just have to go out there and keep getting after someone for four quarters instead of chasing ghosts, as the offensive line calls it. It’s thinking, ‘Are they blitzing here? Are they coming here?’ We just have to make sure we’re not out there chasing ghosts, and we’re just playing our game.”
On playing not to lose
“I don’t think we ever played not to lose. We’re an attacking offense. I, personally, don’t even have a mindset of going out there and playing not to lose. I don’t know if any Division I athlete has that. I’m sure there’s doubt, but if you’re a Division I athlete, I don’t think you ever go into a game saying, ‘Hey, let’s go out and play this game not to lose.’ You go out to play a game to win. You go out to attack and get after someone.”
On the lack of explosive run plays
“It’s frustrating because we are used to that. We’ve had a couple good breakout plays (not runs), but UCLA did a pretty good job loading the box up on us and taking away our run game. That’s why we had to throw the ball. It’s the little things like a little block here, a missed assignment there, or a missed read here. Those little things catch up with you, and it showed. The third quarter was probably our worst offensive quarter since I’ve been here. We had one good drive near the end, and then we fumbled. It just comes down to the little things. If we don’t hurt ourselves, we’re going to be just fine. We have so much season left to play that we’re going to be fine as an offense. We’re going to be fine as a team. We’re going to go out and go back to work this week and go out and play a good South Dakota State team. They’re going to come in here fired up and ready to play. I hope our guys are going to able to shake this. We have to make corrections. We have to fix what was wrong with this last game, and we have to move on. If we dwell on this too much, it could really hurt us. I think that’s where the leadership has to step in and say, ‘Guy, fix it and move on.’”
On 2010’s game against South Dakota State
“Last time they came in here and they probably should have beaten us. They had a couple touchdowns called back. We have to prepare for this game. I think we’ve done a lot better job since then. That was my redshirt freshman year, so almost four years ago. I think we’ve done a lot better job as a team preparing every week like it’s the big game. It doesn’t matter who’s coming in here. It doesn’t matter if it’s South Dakota State, Ohio State, Alabama or Wyoming. It doesn’t matter. I think we do a really good job every week preparing. We just come out and work hard with the same type of work ethic every week.”
On playing South Dakota State this week
“I just started my study on them last night and this morning, and they’re a very good team. They’re a well-coached team. They’re very disciplined defensively. They’re going to line up and say, ‘Here’s how we’re going to line up, and I’m in this gap or that gap.’ We have a good challenge in front of us this week to come out and face these guys. I hope that, as a team, we can bounce back and come out and get after these guys a little bit.”
On what went wrong offensively against UCLA
“It was just a snowball effect. It felt like everything we were doing wasn’t clicking. It comes back to not hitting on all cylinders. If we’re missing one thing here or one thing there, it’s hard to be successful. It’s hard to be successful when 10 guys are doing their job and one guy might not be doing a great job. That’s probably a pretty bold statement, but it was so frustrating as an offensive lineman. I’m sure everyone on our offense can attest to that. We felt like we let our defense down. Our defense came and played lights out in the first half, and we didn’t go down and score right when we got the ball. That’s what we talked about at halftime. We wanted to go down there and put a touchdown in, and we didn’t do that. We, as an offense, thought that we let our defense down and put them in a bad situation.”
On using UCLA as motivation or putting it in the past
“You have to make corrections, but you can’t act like it never happened. That’s one thing that I don’t think we will do. We’re going to watch the film with our coaches, and we’re going to make corrections. We’ll go out and what needs to get fixed will get fixed. After we get it fixed, we have to minimize the repeat errors. We can’t get it fixed and then go out and do it again in practice. If you’re going to get it fixed, it has to be fixed. Once it’s fixed, you move on to the next thing. I think that’s the way that we have to look at it this week.”
On dealing with fan expectations
“I don’t really pay much attention to it. We have our own expectations, and that’s what we hold ourselves to. The fans out there want us to do great, and I love our fans. Our fans our awesome. But we don’t hold ourselves to their expectations. We hold ourselves to our own expectations, which are probably higher than theirs. I think that’s why it’s really frustrating sometimes when we don’t meet our expectations or the standards that we set. We don’t hold ourselves to fans’ standards. We hold ourselves to our own high standards.”
On the play calling
“I have the most trust in Coach (Tim) Beck of any of the coaches on our coaching staff. I know that he’s not going to put us in situations where we can’t win. He’s going to put us in situations where we can win. He’s going to call plays that he thinks give us the best chance to win the game, so we never question the play calls. We need to be able to do what gets called. He can call whatever play he wants, but if we go out there and we don’t execute it, it doesn’t matter. We have to make sure that when he does call a play we go out there and execute it.”
On how close Nebraska was to winning on Saturday
“I’m sure Coach Bo (Pelini) touched on it, but it was the little things and the details of the game that we let slip away from us in the third quarter of the game. We were up 21-10 at halftime with a chance to get the ball and go down and make it a three-possession game. Not being able to do that really hurt us. The big parts for me that really hurt are the slow starts for our offense when we come out after halftime. We have to be able to go down and put the ball in the end zone. If we put the ball in the end zone, we don’t give the ball to the other team on the 45- or 50-yard line. That’s the most frustrating thing for me. We were close. We had opportunities to make big plays. We had opportunities to have big things, but it’s the little things that have been haunting us.”
On when they realized they were in trouble against UCLA
“It was probably right after the second drive when we went 3-and-out after we went back on the field and gave them the ball right back. All of us on the sideline were saying, ‘Guys, we can’t do that.’ We have to make sure that we put our defense in good situations. Whenever you keep the defense out on the field and the offense goes 3-and-out every time, it’s hard for the defense. That’s why we felt like we let our defense down in the third quarter.”