Josh Mitchell Press Conference Quotes

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Monday, Sept. 22, 2014
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Pre-Illinois

On his 57-yard fumble return for touchdown against Miami
“I was guarding my man and next thing I know he went down and cracked his head, so I came off. I was sitting around just waiting for the running back to hit the ground and the ball just squirted out. It was just sitting on the floor. I didn’t hear the whistle. Picked it up and just run it in.”

On if that play was one that you dream about
“You like to get those interceptions and run them back, but anytime the ball is right there in front of you and you get an opportunity to score it’s great. It was ideal. We really needed it at the moment. It helped the momentum. I’m just happy I happened to be around the football.”

On who was chasing him to the end zone
“Oh I knew who was on the field. So I knew when I picked that ball up I just took off. I knew who was on that field, and I knew how fast those guys were. As soon as it hit my hands I was like you better get to the end zone fast. I know that I was running full speed and when I watched the clip of it, he started closing some ground. That dude is fast, and I know I wasn’t running slow.”

On Miami quarterback Brad Kaaya, a former high school teammate
“The kid has talent and I think he prepared really well. He took his reads and he capitalized on them a lot. He impressed me. Like I said before going into the game, he was going to have talent. The fact that he has a freshman logo doesn’t mean anything. He’s a good football player and he showed it.”

On the crowd and the advantage of the large crowd
“That was the most intense game I’ve ever been a part of. It was fun. The atmosphere was great. You could tell that the crowd being so loud it kind of rattled them a little on offense. They had a couple delay of games and sometimes they couldn’t get the calls over and communicate to us because the crowd was so loud. I couldn’t even hear the guys next to me, so I know for them it was really tough.”

On catching Miami off guard
“We’ve been practicing mixing up some zone since fall camp. Just trying not to get too predictable in the games. I feel like it helped us a lot. There were a lot plays that we left out there. There were a lot of things we need to clean up with the defense. Some technique things. Tackling wise, because when you’re playing some zones you’re not as close to guys. We have to gang tackle more. I know I have to tackle a lot better. The zones help you, but at the end of the day if you’re not making the tackles the zones aren’t helping.”

On linebacker Trevor Roach forcing the fumble
“Roach, since he’s been here, he’s always worked hard. He’s one of those guys from our freshman year everyone knew he had talent. He had a couple injuries here and there that set him back a little bit. I think it was huge for him. Roach is a great guy. I’m really happy for him. A lot of the atteniton on the play has been set on me because I was the one in the end zone, but he’s the one that made the play. I just happened to be around the ball at the right time. I’m really happy for him. After the play I talked to him and I was like, “this is your play not mine. I just happened to be there at the right time, you made this play.'”

On the message he has for the team starting Big Ten play this week
“That it’s for keeps now. When you’re at a conference play you want to win games and they’re important games because for us we want to go undefeated. We want to win all of our games. We always want to do that, but when you get to conference play, everyone in the conference is zero to zero right now. So for us to get into conference play and to go out there, I just let my teammates know that this is for keeps. You want to get us that Big Ten Championship. You take every opponent and you play them like it’s a national championship.”

On being more familiar with the Big Ten now in the fourth year
“I think pretty familiar. We’ve played just about every team in the Big Ten so you have experience playing against other teams. You have experience playing against other players. I think that’s important just to know your personnel, especially if you’ve played them before. It helps you out a little more.”

On the early touchdown and getting overwhelmed
“That’s one thing that we really need to work on on the defensive side is just coming out with a little more composure when we start games. We’ve been giving up too many open drop touchdowns. Going into this game it was the first time we ran our defense first. JP (Defensive Coordinator John Papuchis) let us know before we went on the field, don’t make me regret it. We let him down. We didn’t go out there and we didn’t handle ourselves too well. It wasn’t really anything that they did, I think it was just our emotions were really high. We weren’t playing within our technique like we did, like we’re coached to do. It was more on us than really getting hit with some new things.”

On responding as a defense
“I think our response was good. I just think that we need to tackle better on defense. That was the majority of our problems is we missed way too many tackles. I know I missed a couple tackles. There were some plays where I don’t know what I was doing. When you get in games like that things like that can’t happen. Luckily those are things that you can fix easy. It’s not some scheme thing that we need to correct. Just getting to the ball and getting more hands to the ball.”

On facing a strong team this week
“Like you said, second-leading in passing in the Big Ten. I’m excited. I know personally I’m excited. It will be nice to go out there and just know that the ball gets thrown around a little bit just like going into Fresno State. The ball is going to be in the air, so for us just making sure our technique is good during the week and just making sure that we know rock concepts and we’re tuned into the game.”

On Randy Gregory and the team showing restraint and composure
“I think Randy has done a great job. When you watch the film, I think a lot of people are doing a lot of cheap dirty things to him after the plays. You know that’s not up to me, that’s just up to the referees. There are a lot of things going on on the field that are unnecessary and they’re not going on in between the whistles, and they’re not football plays. So for Randy to keep his composure as well as he has I think is impressive.”

On how he reacts when he sees that dirty play going on
“It fires you up and you obviously are going to have your teammate's back, but you can’t be out there doing stupid things and getting penalties because at the end of the day it’s going to hurt the football team. So you have to do what’s best for the team, and I think we could have handled the situation in the game a lot better than we did. But I feel like as a teammate you know, you have to have your teammate’s back.”

On losing his helmet
“Eventually, I didn’t know where it went.”

On if he knew what happened when he lost his helmet
“Not really. You know you blackout in moments like that. I remember Coop (Corey Cooper) pulled me out of the pile and that was it.”

On being attended to on the sideline
“My chinstrap just hit me in the eyes. My vision was a little messed up. When your helmet is buckled up and it gets ripped off your head it’s going to slide up. So it just hit me in the face.”