Opening Statement
“I'm really proud of our team. We've got good players. There are no moral victories. We came up here thinking we could win. We could play better, but we didn't do that and you've got to give credit to Mike Riley and their staff. They were well prepared. We have a lot of little things we have to clean up as coaches and players. That's all of ours responsibility."
On the offense
"We start off and take the ball and we want to see if we can go score. So right away we go three-and-out, but that happens. Then they go down and score and the next time we get it, we make a nice play and then turn it over. So that kind of takes the steam out of your team to start the game three-and-out and then turn it over. The next time we get it, we march down the field and have a bad snap. It's a game of emotion, runs and feelings, and you want to take the crowd out of it, which we didn't do. At halftime I thought we were lucky to be where we were. They dominated the first half. We did some silly things with penalties and that didn't help us. It helped us that we kept them from scoring touchdowns. Bottom line is you'll never win games kicking field goals, you just won't and that's what gave us a chance. Our offense was more down than up. We've got to be able to run the football, and we couldn't do that today. In a run-pass offense, you've got to stay balanced."
On the offensive line's play
“At times he had time and at times he didn't. But overall I thought our offensive line did a good job, without seeing the film, I thought they did a good job and that gave us an opportunity to throw it down the field and our guys made some plays. We put ourselves too far behind. Like I said, I love the way our guys compete. We've got a good group in there. There's just a number of things we need to clean up. At the end because of some fourth downs, I took timeouts and other reasons because of silliness. Those are things that are coaching and that's on me and our staff."
On the defense
"We talk about five areas. Not giving up explosive plays on defense, creating turnovers, keeping them from scoring in the red zone, getting off the field and keeping them out of the end zone. We did a nice job of keeping them out of the end zone, even at the end our defense gave us a chance. I thought we gave up too many explosive plays especially on that 3rd-and-20. Tommy (Armstrong) made a real nice play. But we'll improve and we'll look at it. That's a good offensive football team. They've put 30 on everybody they have some really good players and good coaches."
On the fake punt
"We didn't get the exact look we wanted and we weren't lined up right anyway. That's coaching but we still had it. It may have not been as open as we'd hoped but is was there. It's the same thing if we looked back at why we did that onside kick there and if you don't get it. But if you are going to do those things there's a balance where we have to decide if the risk is worth it. I have no regrets though, we didn't execute it and we didn't get lined up right. I'm more concerned with the fact we didn't get lined up there. We had to make the perfect throw there, and we didn't do it."
On quarterback Nick Mullens' performance
"Nick's a good player. He had to play early in our tenure here together. He's accurate and he's tough, he's intelligent. He's everything you want from a quarterback. There were things we could have done earlier in the game to help him, and I'm sure there's things he'll say there's things he needed to do. Like the third down right before the fake punt where we didn't catch it, but the ball was thrown low. If we catch it and make the first down we're only down eight and who knows. We had it there, the crowd was pissed off at the refs, they were trying to figure out what to do with it right there. We had it, but we just didn't find a way at the end. What more can you ask for we were down eight on the road at Nebraska with eight or nine minutes. We wanted to put it back on them to make a play, but we just didn't and we've got to get better."