Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini Press Conference Quotes (Nov. 24)

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Monday, Nov. 24, 2014
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Pre-Iowa

Bo Pelini
Nebraska Head Coach
Opening statement
“Well we got together and talked about a lot of things. Went through and watched part of the film. We have a very short week. Got a lot to accomplish with obviously a day less. So we got some work done yesterday. A lot of our kids stayed around and started equating themselves with Iowa. The coaches worked late into the night getting ready for the game. We’ll get back to work today.”

On elaborating on the changes he said they had to make following the game Saturday
“Well it’s not like you can just overhaul what you’re doing. What I mean is that we didn’t approach it very well. We didn’t play very well. Our level of execution is nowhere near where it needs to be. I can sit here and get into the specific things and talk about it. I challenged our guys yesterday to get themselves ready to play during the week because that’s what it takes. Obviously we didn’t do that last week. There were some things that I watched on the film that I saw on the film that are hard to explain. We’ve got a different offense this week. A different challenge. Our goal is to play better across the board, offensively, defensively and on special teams.”

On if he has a set plan in place to stop spread offenses in the Big Ten
“No. I mean I’ve played against these types of offenses before and we’ve had success. But our level of execution isn’t where it needs to be. Some of the things that we’re doing. And that’s really on both sides of the football. As a coach, you evaluate, you look at what you’re doing and you sit there and say, ‘What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen?’ and then you work to get it fixed. I could sit here and go on for an hour-long dissertation. At the end of the day we didn’t play well enough. Still could have, should have won the game. But like I said after the game regardless, whether we would have been able to pull that out or make a couple plays here and there, when there are certain things that you do inconsistently, you’re going to struggle. You’re going to have some problems. And sometimes that exposes you. It’s nothing magical. Guys have to be in the right places. They have to communicate better. Play with the types of leverages on defense that you’re asking them to play with. Target things consistently the same way offensively. That didn’t happen. When you see the same play run three times and you do it right two out of the three times, the one time it hurts you is a bad recipe. Like I said, I’ve been around the game a long time. You’re not going to be as good as you can if those types of things are happening.”

On if he thinks the team has improved over the course of the season
“I thought we were up until a couple weeks ago. I think the last two weeks we didn’t play very well. I said this earlier in the year, some of the things were happening and weren’t hurting us. And that’s reality. In the last two weeks it’s hurt us. Two weeks ago we didn’t play well and this past week it cost us a game. At some point you just keep pushing along, keep working hard, keep working to improve and keep coaching them up. I don’t really want to go into some other remedies that could come about, but in some cases you would go to the next guy if you felt the guy was ready. That isn’t always the case.”

On concurring that he said he felt frustrated with having a 9-4, 10-4 program
“I never said that. I hope you know me better than that. I’ve never said anything like that. Give me a break. That’s somebody making a deduction. I get stuff all the time. National guys asking me this, asking me that. What are the challenges here?  You have to be really careful about what you say and how you say it. But a lot of times they are going to make their deductions about what they think. Bottom line is this program is about winning a national championship. Are there challenges here and there? Yeah. But there are different challenges no matter where you go. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know we can get it done here.”

On if he’s had any direct feedback
“Can we talk about Iowa please? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cut you off, but we have a short week and we have a long time after Friday to go into the what-ifs and other things. My focus right now is on Iowa. Trying to get up into Iowa City and give this football team this best chance to win.”

On if the defense is too focused on assignments that they’re missing everything else
“Our kids played hard the other day. Yeah, they did. It’s more than just missing assignments. At times lining up wrong, getting out of position, getting someone else out of position. Missing a tackle isn’t not playing hard. Our kids played hard. We didn’t play well enough. We didn’t execute well enough.”

On if the mistakes could be found before the moment of impact
“A little bit. I could sit there and go through every play and talk about it. Look at it. When things happen, there are different reasons usually on different plays. Different guys doing it. That’s just the nature of the game. If you line up outside in the D gap rather than lining up in the B gap, and they ran a counter away, that puts you back two or three steps away from where you’re supposed to be. Makes it harder to make the play. It’s more difficult. You put yourself in a position where now a tackle can chip down, come off the guard and get you. Where if you’re lined up two gaps over where you were supposed to be aligned, now you’re in position. Now you’re in a heckuva lot better position to get the read and the position to make the play. If a fullback goes to the flat and you’re supposed to be outside the fullback, it’s going to look awful. Like I said, a lot of times to be able to execute, you have to be able to line up correctly. You have to have you eyes in the right place and you have to go with your reads and keys.”

On if senior wide receiver Kenny Bell will be able to play Saturday
“Kenny I think was down seeing the doctor this morning. Where he is today I’m not sure. He felt pretty good yesterday. So it’s hard to say. When somebody has a head injury, it’s difficult to say.”

On the status of sophomore wide receiver Jordan Westerkamp
“Jordan is OK. He’s fine.”

On if the team will be in an emotional state playing on Saturday
“Yeah. But is it easy? No. It’s never easy when you lose two games in a row. I think that the short week might help us a little bit. Get back to work. I told them yesterday that there is no reason to feel sorry for ourselves or feel sorry for yourself as a player and a coach or anything else. For one, you don’t have time. Number two, we’re responsible. At the end of the day, we didn’t do what was required not only on Saturday, but obviously during the week to get the play to the level we could have. When you look at the game, we had so many opportunities still to win the football game. Me as a coach, I’d feel the same way today if we would have won that game. Even if we would have pulled it out at the end, made a play here or there, we didn’t play well.”

On if the blame of not playing well falls back on the coaches
“Yeah. I point the thumb. I don’t point the finger at the players. I’m responsible for this thing. That’s how I’m wired. If we don’t play well enough, that’s on me. That’s my nature and that’s how I look at it. I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to make excuses. I’m not going to do anything remotely like that. I’m here to serve these players in the best way I possibly can and I’m going to keep coaching them as hard as I can. I’m going to do everything I can to make this the best football team I can possibly make it. That’s all I know how to do. Did I get that done on Saturday? No, I didn’t because obviously we lost.”

On the changes he has made to the program to help it get over the hump
“I’ve made a significant amount of changes. I’m not going to get into every single one of them, but I change every year. Things change. You look for different ways to get better. To make you better. I understand that the room for error isn’t that great. I know that this year we probably had the most momentum we’ve ever had in recruiting. I think we need to keep upgrading there and keep doing the best we possibly can there. We have to keep coaching them up and keep working to get better. We’ve experienced things over these last couple weeks and we haven’t played well enough. We just have to keep working and looking for things to help your players get better and improve. Keep trying to increase your talent level. Keep looking to adapt and change as you see fit. Every single team you coach is a little bit different. Who the guys are, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what they can handle and what they can’t handle. You watch the film day after day and spend a lot of time, and you have to go with week, each game, each year depending on who you’re playing with and try to figure out what plan gives them the best chance to win. On a weekly basis and on a yearly basis.”

On if there are any specific overall program changes he has made since being in the Big Ten
“I mean that discussion is for a different time and different place when the season is over. Anyone who thinks that you just stay the same all the time and that there are no changes, that’s asinine. There are a lot of things we continue to do differently. Looking for new ways to do things, change practice schedules, change terminologies, different ways of doing things that if I’m being honest with you, would be over the heads of a lot of people. If you’re talking about X’s and O’s or Y’s, it’s how you go about certain things. It depends on what you’re talking about. Whether it’s X’s and O’s, whether it’s schedules, things off the field, there are so many different levels to it. Like I said, you could go into this for about an hour.”

On ways to get over the hump
“I’m looking to get over the hump. I can tell you that. I turn over every stone and I’m looking to try to get over the proverbial hump. But I know this, and I think it’s one of the great things about being here, people aren’t going to be happy until you win them all. You know what? Neither am I. That’s how I’m wired, too. To think that I’m not working my butt off to make that happen, that’s what I want to happen. I want to win them all. And I want to win a national championship here.”

On what they can do to try to move past the top three Big Ten recruiting teams
“Play better. Simple as that. Coach them up better and play better.”

On if he would fire assistant coaches if it meant he would keep his job
“I’m not going there. I’m not talking about that. Would I fire somebody to save my own job? No. Would I fire somebody who I thought deserved firing? Yes.”

On the overall performance of the offensive line this season
“They perform like I see a lot of other position groups. Inconsistent, mentally as much as anything, and not enough detail in our game. That’s what has plagued us all year.”

On if the first string players are unthreatened by the second string players
“I think that will help any group. I think that competition makes you better.”

On what he thinks of Iowa’s offense
“I think they are a balanced team. I think they are very physical on how they come off the football. I think they do a lot of good things there. I think they run their play-action game. The quarterback I think has really improved. I think he can throw the ball well and make all the throws. I think the running game opens up their passing game and vice-versa. They’re very balanced. And you have to be very balanced in how you defend them. You have to pick and choose how you’re going to go about it. I like our plan, but we have to execute it. I do like what we’re talking about doing against them. I think they have certain principles that they like to do both in the running game and the passing game. And like any time you play an offense, you have to try not to give them what they want.”

On his thoughts about how senior I-back Ameer Abdullah’s season is ending
“I think he is a warrior. I really do. He came back quickly off of an injury. He’s been less than 100 percent in the last couple weeks and hasn’t blinked an eye. I think it shows the character he has. To me, Ameer embodies everything you want a student-athlete to be. I believe that in every way. In his life, how he approaches every day, how he competes. He’s a pretty special guy.”

On what he told freshman wide receiver De’Mornay Pierson-El after that last fumble
“You know, he made a great catch. You learn from things. I’m not sure if he really would have had an opportunity. It was hard to tell whether he really had the opportunity to pull that one in. But early in the game where he stuck the ball out, you better be sure that you can get it in. When you’re a young guy, you can get away with some things at the high school level. But I think you’ll learn. I talked to him about this after the first one, you better catch and tuck it. Get the ball back into your body. If you don’t, the ball is going to end up on the ground a lot. That’s kind of what happened on the second one. It was a boom, boom play where he had the chance to pull it in. And you know what? You learn. You preach things in practice and you talk about tucking the football and things, but sometimes it takes a situation like that for someone to learn his lesson. And I know De’Mornay is a competitor. He’s going to be a great player here. I think he will learn from that.”

On if the program focuses on improving at the wide receiver position
“We have had a lot of injuries at the wide receiver position this year. We haven’t been very healthy there all year. And that’s hurt us. But De’Mornay has played plenty of times. I think he has played well. But the things that he has probably struggled with are the detail things. How to take a release. Where to take a release. Some of the little things that don’t show up on paper are the little things he’s learning and starting to understand better. He had a chance the other day where we had a route and he was supposed to rub the outside guy’s defender. He took a release that didn’t allow him to do that. It’s just things like that. He’s learning. He’s very attentive and he studies detail with what we’re asking him to do. And like I said I think he is just going to keep getting better as we go along.”

On the overall value special teams has had this year
“We put a lot of emphasis on it and I think it’s been good for us. There are still a lot of areas we can get better even in the special teams area. I think what we’re doing is pretty good, but we have to get better at times with the fine details. It’s hard in special teams when you get out of spring ball to get the necessary full speed look. I think the reason why we got better at it is because we did so much fundamental work, even going back to last spring and fall camp. And we’ve continued to do some fundamental work as the season has gone on. I think at certain periods and certain times of the week during bye weeks and such we really get back into the fundamentals and that stuff. Sometimes when you’re in scout weeks or game weeks, you get more scheme-oriented and you don’t want the fundamentals to suffer. Our fundamentals have slipped a little bit here toward the end in that area. I think overall it’s been pretty good.”

On what he thinks of the matchup between junior defensive end Randy Gregory and Iowa offensive tackle Brandon Scherff
“Well he’ll be matched up against a number of our ends. Scherff is a good player. Really good player. I think he will be a high draft pick on Sunday. We have a lot of respect for him, but I think our defensive ends are pretty good players, too. We played well up front the other day. Very well up front. Our front four played well. Especially our inside guys.”

On the plan they have for Iowa
“It’s still in the infant stages. I like where we are right now. We’ll have to see how it all plays out over the next couple days.”

On if the plan gives him confidence to the players will execute better
“There are some aspects of it going in that will play a little bit more at our strengths. I don’t want to get into the details of that because I don’t want to give Iowa anything.”

On how the defense it holding up against the number of physical offenses they have faced
“Pretty well. I know Kevin Williams played the other day, Jack Gangwish got a number of snaps. I don’t look at our guys and say that they’re worn out or beat up. I feel like they’re in pretty good shape for the end of the year. I think our team has been fresher than it’s been over the last couple years at this time. It hasn’t shown in the result, but I feel like after talking to our guys, I feel like they have their legs and that they feel a little bit fresher than the last couple years. I wasn’t sure how I was going to like the schedule that we went to, but I think it’s been good for us.”

On what areas Gregory has improved in
“I’ve seen him improve in a lot of areas. He’s gotten a lot better. Randy is a good football player. He can do a lot of different things. He was sick going into the game the other day and wasn’t feeling well a couple days leading into it. You wouldn’t know it by how hard he played. He got a little bit winded there a couple times. But he’s been pretty sick yesterday and wasn’t feeling well today. Randy plays hard, practices hard and prepares hard. He’s grown a lot, but he also has a lot of growing to do. The beautiful thing about him, as good of a player as he is, I think there’s still a lot out there for him.”

On what Gregory’s role is at the next level
“I think that he’s one of those unusual guys that can do a lot of different things. You wouldn’t ever see him move into a 3-4 and play a defensive end spot. He’d be a standup defensive end. He’d play in a 4-3 for sure. He’s one of those gifted guys who could line up and play outside linebacker. Not just a 3-4 outside linebacker. He has really multiple skillsets and is very instinctive for the game. You get some defensive linemen who maybe aren't quite as instinctive. He has a tremendous feel for the game. Still I think he’s going to get bigger and I think he’s going to get stronger as he moves forward. He’s a real talent.”

On the amount of scouting Gregory has gotten compared to other defensive players in the past
“It’s a little bit different because he’s a junior. The scouts are a little bit hesitant to come up and talk to you about him. I’ve spent nine years in the league and I know a lot of these guys. He’s very highly thought of. I do know that.”

On if Gregory will come back next year
“You know, we don’t really talk about that right now. That’s something where we’ll have to sit down when the season is over and talk about it. Look at where he is and where he feels he has to go. I serve an informational role in that. I’ll give my opinion and my advice as to where he is. Then it’s up to him and his family to make that decision and it’s up to me to support him no matter what he decides at that point. There’s always a lot of levels to it, making a decision like that.”

On what they look to do with the pass progression against Iowa
“Well we’ve actually done some mass protecting and things like that where we haven’t executed very well. We need to do it better. Our quarterback over the last couple weeks has gotten hit too much. And there have been a lot of guys that have kind of taken their turn on that deal.”