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Nebraska vs. Florida Atlantic
Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Opening Statement
"Just had a chance to speak with the team after the game, certainly disappointed in the result and some of the things we did out there on the field. Give all the credit to Nebraska, they executed a great gameplan today, and were a team that were able to move the ball on us in the run game. There was times it looked like we were a powerful offense. There were times where we need to improve on. The two young men of note with injuries--- Quez (Jaquez Johnson, QB) and D”joun (Smith) --- early prognosis now is there will be a very good chance they will be back with us next week. We just need to keep getting better as a fundamental football team. That starts with me, us as coaches, and as we continue to take this journey together, we will embrace every challenge and certainly work to do a better job of stopping the run and running the football---the ultimate backbone of our football program. Clearly we were not there today and all the credit goes to Nebraska. We need to improve as coaches and players.”
On if there was consideration bringing back Jaquez Johnson back into the game
“There was consideration of him coming back but as we work our way through a long season we made the decision to go with Greg (Hankerson) and give him (Hankerson) a chance to show what he can do at this point. We feel very confident Quez will be back next week (Left shoulder injury).”
On FAU's offense shutting down after two successful drives to open the game
"I give Brian (Wright, Offensive Coordinator) a lot of credit to those first couple of drives. Certainly did a lot of good things to keep them off balance – and we got back to some of those things later on throughout the course of the game. It was a struggle for us to get off the field. At the end of the third quarter, we were roughly at 80 snaps on defense and those two units work together. As we got behind, the gameplan adjusts and we got more into a ‘two-minute mode’ where we were trying to score quickly and move the ball quickly. We got away from our initial identity where we were early In the game and then we got back into that later in the game. I know they had their reserves in but you could start seeing us comfortable in our element. Certainly statistically there is nothing that we are proud of from today, but we are going to take the positive and learn from the negative as we move into game two.”
On if Nebraska I-Back Ameer Abdullah surprised him with anything he did during the game
"He is a tremendous back. He is a back that is going to break tackles against any defense in the country. Whether it is someone in the Big Ten or someone in Conference USA, it doesn’t matter. He is one of the best backs in the country. At times he was certainly what I expected today, and that is what he has been here for several years now. He was a class player today.”
On the newcomers on FAU defense
"Well I think they are getting better. You certainly saw youth and some young players that made some young player mistakes. Where they got lost in the environment and got lost in the game and their fundamentals went away. There is going to be some film where I am not going to be able to recognize the player from what I have seen in practice and nor is the player going to recognize himself. If we can just get back to what we are working to become, we will be just fine.”
On if it was a tough transistion for Greg Hankerson coming into the game
"Give Greg a lot of credit, he went in there and had great poise and did everything he could to lead those guys. He was very calm and very collected. The thing that I was excited about honestly, is Greg never made decisions that turned the ball over, or put the defense in a position where they were on their side of the 50-yard line. That is a confidence builder for me with Greg, so it was good to see that. Obviously it was a challenging position that he was thrusted into but he did some things that we should be proud of."
On what he is proud of---not turning the ball over
"I am. I’m proud of that. We showed some discipline there (not turning the ball over). Also I am proud of our special teams. We are talking about we had to replace an all-conference punter and we did a great job today. Our coverage was clean, we pinned them inside the 20 to start the game, we had two kick-off returns that came out to midfield. So there is things from that standpoint where we can really build around our football team. We are excited about that, we played fairly penalty free, also no turnovers."