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Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Monday, Sept. 29, 2014
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Pre-Michigan State
On how many times he’s watched tape on Michigan State
“This year, not that much. A few times today. But as far as in the past I’m going to let that go, that was last year. Now it’s time to focus on them. Looking on at some of the stuff that happened last year. Some of the stuff that we were in this year that we were in last year that we could possibly put into preparation for this week, so a few times.”
On how hungry he is to come back for this game (Michigan State)
“We’re always hungry. We’re going to treat it like it’s a normal week. We just want to take care of the football. We take care of the football, offense rolls. Coach (Tim) Beck told us this past week when we played Illinois that every time we actually didn’t score was when we turned the ball over. That shows a lot about our offense. When we take care of the football we can do anything. So we’re just going to go into this week and just make sure that we take care of the football. What we’ve be learning this whole season is to make sure that we prepare the right way. As far as last year and the turnover margin, looking back at that, we just have to make sure we take care of the football and everything else will fall into place.”
On how much different he is as a quarterback now compared to last year
“I’m a lot different. It was new to me. It was my first year actually starting as a redshirt freshman. I saw new things. I saw certain guys. It was just different. I think things have slowed down. I’m getting more physical when it comes to running. I’m trying to make smarter decisions and stuff like that, just putting my offense in the right position. This year just going into this game, it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be a dog fight. We’re going into Michigan State, they’re playing at home. They’re defending Big Ten champions and we just have to make sure that we take care of the football, run our offense, and we take what they give us.”
On Michigan State pressing the receivers and winning those match-ups early on
“It’s big. Kenny (Bell), he makes plays. Jordan (Westerkamp) makes plays. Like I said before and at the beginning of the season, if you want to play that one-on-one then I’ll take them. But as long as it’s working when I run games and as long as it’s working when I pass games I’m sticking with what we got.”
On if he expects Michigan State to make him beat them with his arm
“No not really. Honestly I think they’re going to run what they’ve been running all season. It worked for them last year. They won the Big Ten by just playing their basic defense. They don’t change for anybody. But at the same time we just have to realize that we have to succeed and make sure that we run our stuff and make sure that we get yards. At the end of the day it’s all about our offense and what we do and how we achieve it.”
On if he thinks the offense is more prepared this year from practicing with Randy Gregory
“By far. I don’t know much about them, but I know a lot about Randy (Gregory). Randy is probably the best defensive end in the country by far. He’s had his ups and downs this year but he’s responded well. He’s overcome a lot. We’ve been against him all year last year and all year this year and it’s only preparing us for big games like this with defensive ends like Michigan State’s. We’ve been going against it all year so we know what to prepare for.”
On how much Kenny Bell changes the way opposing teams look at the Nebraska offense
“It changes it a lot. Like I said we just took what the defense gave us. We knew going into certain things that Illinois knew us here and there. We knew that sometimes Kenny (Bell) could run past guys that will take him down. We knew that our game plan was to run the ball until they stop us, and if they wanted to put people in the box then we were going to air it out. And that’s what we did. Kenny, he makes another threat for us just like all of our receivers and our tight ends. We just have to make sure that we prepare the right way. Make sure that we have a lot of options when it comes to running the ball and passing the ball and certain things like that going into Michigan State.”
On if a defense has tried to play them straight up with their base defense
“Illinois, that was pretty much their base defense. They would blitz here and there but after a while when things weren’t going well they started blitzing, loading the box a lot. But it didn’t really affect anything because we put ourselves in the right positions to move the chains. Honestly when we get into conference like this we’re expecting guys to play their basic defense. Going into Michigan State we know they’re going to play their basic defense. It’s worked for them and why not stay with the same things. We’re going to prepare the right way and prepare for like I said a dog fight.”
On seeing a lot of blitzes and adjusting
“We’re doing a good job. The offensive line is doing an incredible job. Like I said, I’m just trying to put them in the right position to block and see things easier. Get set a lot quicker and stuff like that. It’s easy if you get set quick with our tempo and then be able to see things happen faster for offensive line to adjust to certain things. I think McNeese State was a great thing for us. They blitzed us a lot. They played a lot of different things for our offensive line and just for our receivers and stuff as a whole as an offense. We saw a lot of things that we could have changed and could have worked on better and I think that it helped us throughout the season.”
On how the McNeese State game helped him and the offense as a whole
“It helped us a lot. Honestly when we played in the McNeese State game we just saw a ghost. They told us not to see ghosts, not to anticipate things and just run our offense. We could have put the game away a long time ago when it came to the first half. We were seeing things and we were thinking that they were doing one thing when they really weren’t. It helped us a lot by just our offensive line blocking what they see and me just trusting my offensive line to make blocks and stuff like that and just running the offense.”
On what the biggest lesson he took from the Michigan State game last year
“Just take care of the football. Honestly we did a great job at running our offense. It starts off immediately, we just have to take care of the football. Turnovers, I think they had zero turnovers, they ended up beating us by I think it was 41-28 something like that. We turned the ball over three or four times inside the 20 and we can’t let that happen. Our defense played lights out. But when you’re put into situations like that it’s nothing you can really do about it. It all starts off us. As being quarterbacks, as long as we take care of the football and put our offense in the right situation then you know we can do exactly what we did last year which is move the chains. Make sure that we’re doing the right thing.”
On how he will lead this offense
“Just staying calm honestly. Being myself, when things are getting rowdy, when we can’t communicate well, they’re expecting me to be that level-headed quarterback and be the leader on the team to where I can get my guys together and say, hey let’s get it together. Let’s communicate. Let’s drive down the field. It’s that time and that’s what it takes being the leader. Staying level-headed when things aren’t right in the atmosphere. Going into Fresno it was the same way. Going into Michigan State it’s going to be the same way. It’s just how we respond to the crowd and how we respond to certain situations because going into the away games there are going to be times where things aren’t going the right way. It’s just how you respond.”
On if he likes the atmosphere of an away game
“Yeah, honestly it drives us to do well. Our offense loves it. We have guys that love shutting people up, that’s the honest truth. We go to certain places and people say stuff and we let it go in one ear and out the other. But it’s an incredible feeling going into an away game and putting points up and beating the opponent and then the crowd having nothing to say about it. It all starts off as being just us but at the end of the game we want it to be us and our fans celebrating.”