Mike Riley Press Conferenc Quotes

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Monday, Sept. 28, 2015
Pre-Illinois

Nebraska Coach Mike Riley
Opening Statement
“OK well we will see if we can do that game justice in recapping it. It was one of those games that… it all kind of played out as we didn’t want it to. As the game goes on, and as you just continue to kick field goals instead of score, you know you get to that point where you feel like you’re in good shape in the game, but then they get one score and the score's pretty close now, all of a sudden, because you haven’t widened it enough. So that was, I think, fairly (an) obvious part of that first half. We actually opened the game with six scoring drives. The problem was that five of them were field goals, but six scoring drives and six stops defensively. That’s how the game started. Then the third quarter started offensively with us throwing an interception and them getting a touchdown. You know a tipped ball (that was) intercepted. And then we had a pretty decent drive coming out of a bad situation with a bad choice on the kickoff return, being backed up, we came out and got to another field goal and missed it. So we had an interception and then a missed field goal and then the next time we had the ball, on the first play, we fumbled. So that’s how the third quarter started. That led to all the theatrics for the rest of the game.

Production-wise, in a lot of ways, if you just look at that and (the) statistics can be liars too, but our production was good; 600-plus yards of offense. (We had) decent balance there, 242 rushing and 368 passing, I think. That’s a lot of production and not enough capitalizing on that production, I suppose. And then defensively, they had 53 yards rushing, but netted 11 so that part of our game is good. The other things that were good, we were sounder offensively on just the mental part, the correction part of the game being right. We had many less missed assignments than the week before. We were better there. Our coverage in kicks, we only had to punt once, but kickoff coverage was pretty good. We lost a little containment on one. That was good. We had, obviously Drew (Brown) was overall real good kicking. There’s still some issues there that we have to address with the protection. We had a nice, I thought, at least a decent two-minute drive at the end of the half to get that long field goal and make a good play. We only gave up one sack and our third-down efficiency, defensive-wise, was good again. We’re just giving up too much on first down and second down. That’s not very good.

You know, some of the negatives in the game are turnovers (which) led to points. We get beat on an onside kick and this was not a surprise, really, to us because we basically told our team, and especially at that point, but we told our team all week and every time they (Southern Miss) kicked off that this was nothing new to them. The guy (Southern Miss’ kicker) is really good at it and we actually took away the side they usually go to, but he came back the other way and we got beat on that. I didn’t like to do it, but felt it was necessary in the last (kickoff) to put the hands team in. There was way too… there was like seven minutes to go and our hands team was on the field. I just wanted to make sure that we had a chance, a better opportunity (to recover), if they did onside again.

We had a field goal that could’ve made the last part of the game very comfortable, but we had it blocked because of penetration off of the left side of our line. We’re still not very sound down the field, one-on-one passing on the outside. And then they really got us going with their back and their slot-back. Little pick games and isolation routes with an inside receiver. We had a hard time with that. And then I really (was) disappointed with the number of penalties. There’s nothing we can do except correct it, time it again in practice. Some of them are just bad choices. You know we get a… what we think is a nice interception. We get called for pass interference on it and then we get called for unsportsmanlike (conduct). I mean that’s all ridiculous. I don’t have any other explanation except that we just can’t do that. It’s got to change.

That’s kind of my summary of it. The most positive thing is we won the game and then, from there, there was some real positive things. I thought the number of people offensively that contributed, and especially with Andy Janovich doing what he did; running the ball, catching the ball. He is a really good football player. So we’re getting more parts working. If we can keep our production like that, just do a better job… some of that red zone stuff we talk about it being red zone, but a lot of it, about half of them, were not converting a third down in the red zone, right? So we make one more yard on those pass plays, we get the first down. We’re in the red zone with three more downs to work with. That’s where we kind of failed, too. Our third down deal on offense was bad. Defensively, like I said, it was pretty good. I think they were 3-out-of-14, we were 4-out-of-14, something like that. So we weren’t good and that’s what really played a big part in our red zone, is we just didn’t convert the third down to get more plays there.

OK that’s the summary of the game. We can talk about Illinois later as you ask questions.”

On getting fullback Andy Janovich the football
“Some of it is the game plan. (We) look at the front of the other team and what we have in our… we put all this stuff in, right? During spring practice and fall camp and then you pull it when you think it’s appropriate. Either as a change-up, curveball or as something that really fits their front. We liked the incorporation of getting the fullback some runs and we liked it against their front.”

On the evolution of the fullback position during his football tenure
“You know it’s kind of one of those positions, there’s not many teams that really incorporate a true fullback-type guy. We have actually morphed Andy into not only a fullback, but he plays, as you’ve seen, he’s played some h-back type stuff for us, too. So, you know, we certainly like it. I’m beginning to really like the blend of what we’re doing with personnel groups, having Andy in there and then substituting, basically, (tight ends) Sam Cotton or Cethan Carter in there for one of those guys in for Andy, so you have another tight end in the game or leave both of them in and leave Andy in and take a receiver out of the game. It gives us some versatility and especially if all those guys, in some way, can threaten the defense either running the ball or throwing it to him. Back in the day, our fullback, and Andy maybe could do this, our fullback was really, like when I was at SC (University of Southern California), our fullback was the guy that didn’t win the tailback job. So he became a lead blocker and also became a guy that would catch 50 balls a year, coming out of the backfield. We haven’t quite got into that kind of game with the fullback here, but that’s where it’s been historically, and I do like it a lot. I think with Andy you have to continue to look at things to do with him because he’s a good player. I think I mentioned to you last week that he had one of the best special team games that I’ve ever seen. I told a pro scout today to just watch the Miami film, on all the special teams, because he’s on every one of them except field goal and field goal rush and you will see a real football player.”

On if he thinks Andy is a potential NFL player
“Yeah, I do.”

On the status of wide receiver/returner De’Mornay Pierson-El
“It is positive with De’Mornay. Now I won’t say for sure that he’s going to play, but he’s going to slowly get into practice. One of the dangers here is overuse early, right? So we’re going to see where he is, and that’s what Mark Mayer, the trainer, suggested. See where he is as we go and see if we can, possibly, fit him in. Probably not for, like a, (don’t) count on him for a full game of 70 or 80 plays, but parts thereof hopefully. We’ll see. So you guys will know about that later in the week because we don’t know yet, but that looks possible.

(Josh) Banderas is possible. Vincent Valentine is possible. We don’t know any of those final answers. We’re going to go slower today. Tuesday and Wednesday will tell a tale more about where they are as we practice with more speed.”

On if the Southern Miss players flooding the passing lanes in the red zone helped (offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf) call the Tommy Armstrong Jr. sneak up the middle, late in the game, which resulted in a touchdown
“Well some of those plays are choices, pass or run depending on the defense. So that’s what those were.”

On the red zone struggles
“Well, you know, there’s isolated reasons, separate reasons for different things. One of them, you know, I think that we misinterpreted the coverage, actually twice misinterpreted the coverage by a receiver. So Tommy actually threw a real nice ball on one play, expecting the receiver… he misread the coverage. He thought it was a quarters coverage, it was really a roll down safety and he just bubbles and stays out, he probably catches a touchdown pass. You have to do that with some patterns, right? You have to know what it is and know where the throw should go accordingly. We’ve hit that same play for a touchdown against that coverage already this year. So we blew that a couple times. Then we had unsuccessful runs. We didn’t hit it. I thought that we missed… we ran, as you saw, early in the game we were having a lot of success with stretch plays and as the game went on, we ran those plays, the defense expanded pretty well, and we really missed, I thought, some great cutback opportunities. So, you know, it’s where you have to adapt as the game goes on because they’re going to change a little bit. So you’re going to see a different coverage all of a sudden, you've got to react to it, make a play. We didn’t do that in the red zone a couple of times. In the running game, I just think if we had a little better vision and, you know, we’ve got to continue to teach these guys about the options within a play because that makes a play repeatable. Not just a one time, good looking play in the game, but you can repeat it because what we like to think is no matter what they do it’s going to be OK because this is how we’re going to adapt to it. So I think it’s a process of teaching. I think that, like I said, we’re doing a lot of good things because those production numbers are good. It’s just being able to execute it and score points because that would’ve made that game like totally different… totally different. And, you know, they have a history of a lot of production with that offense, and then they found some stuff that they were doing that was hurting us. They did a nice job with it and we didn’t.”

On the number of defensive injuries around the country and if he’s seen anything like it
“I don’t think so. I’ve been hearing about all that stuff and I read about that article about TCU about a week ago. You know, we’re living it as you’ve mentioned it. We are absolutely living it. I mean it’s really at a bad spot for us - linebacker. We’re thin there to start with. We’ve known that since the day after we took the job and looked at the depth chart. We knew and we tried to fix it with recruiting, but you can’t do that with a whole bunch of freshmen anyway. But we do have two active true freshmen, and I think the guys have filled in great. Chris Weber made 12 tackles the other day, Marcus Newby probably played his best football before he got hurt, and then Luke Gifford goes back in and does a good job, but it has been an interesting year all around. I don’t have any, obviously, any explanation for it except it’s just real.”

On if he all the weight lifting and conditioning that goes on around the country has played a part in the rise of injuries as maybe the human body can’t take anymore
“I don’t know. You know, it’s very interesting the training that is going on. It’s funny you ask it because I had a big meeting with the trainer, the weight coaches and our operations guy last week, just asking questions. Just asking, ‘What is going on here?’ For us it has been a lot of soft tissue, right? You know, groins, hamstrings… we have to look at what we’re doing and how we… the games are hard enough. We’ve got to get these players and help them get through the week. So the combination of training, lifting… all that with practices and what I’ve cut it down to is, basically, Monday’s and Thursday’s are pretty slow-paced now. They would look like a walkthrough to you, but it’s a jog-through. It’s all about assignments and technique. And then we go fast on Tuesday and Wednesday because I said, you know, we were going fast Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then Saturday. Four out of seven days you’re going full speed. I said that may not be the ideal thing. So we’re trying to find something and that’s why I just had that meeting and I asked all the questions. So we’ll see if we can help our own team that way first, but it’s a real deal.”

On the value of the walk-on program in helping fill the void left by injuries
“Look at (linebackers) Luke Gifford and Chris Weber.  Those are both good football players and are doing a nice job. Andy Janovich (was originally a walk-on). There are great stories right here right in front of us. Dylan Utter, starting guard, was just given a scholarship this year. Those are all products of what has been done here for a long time, so it just hits you right between the eyes, the opportunity to have these guys that want to play here like this help the team in a lot of ways.”

On whether playing against higher-tempo offenses contribute to injuries
“That is a great question, and I don’t have any way to quantify that. It’s certainly been a topic and we probably still always need to keep examining it.  For us, in the rules that we’re playing with right now, we can’t control that part of it. What we can control is what we do with our players during the week just to get them to the game.”

On the status of sophomore linebacker Marcus Newby
“He is a 50/50 guy right now.  He’s just like Vince Valentine, and as a matter of fact, a name I didn’t bring up that is probably 50/50 today is (senior defensive end) Jack Gangwish.  So we’ve got, maybe, some good news on the horizon here.”

On whether Gangwish’s recovery is fast compared to normal recovery time
“It might be, but that’s not surprising.  He spends all of his time in the training room and he’s done a lot of rehab. That’s another one, though, that is only 50/50 and we’ll see what he can do.  We’re going to test him out. They’re going to do some physical testing on him with bags and stuff before he actually works against people. We’ll see. Those names are all possible.”

On whether schematic adjustments are needed to improve the pass defense
“Believe me, we are examining all different possible things, schematically. So we continue to look at that on where we can get the combination of getting enough pressure and then getting some curveballs in coverage. That is a difficult thing to mesh. You’ve got to win some one-on-ones.  (Redshirt freshman defensive end) Freedom (Akinmoladun) has come along. He is becoming a force as a pass rusher. He got two more sacks and quite a few hurries (in the Southern Miss game).  We’ve got a chance to make progress there. One thing that disappointed me, that we’ve really got to work with our players, is that when things are going south a little bit, don’t lose your minds on what you’re doing, just on the base calls. All of a sudden, people are trying to compensate for other things and not doing quite their job, and there’s no trust that develops with what’s going on. I won’t say this went all the way that way, but it looks like it’s falling apart. I watch the film and go ‘what are we doing here?’ We’ve got to coach to a point where the confidence, no matter what’s going on, we’ll play within the principles of what we’re doing and those things that when it’s hard, you can rely on some foundational things that we should know inside and out and call it and play. If they’re going to beat us, make them beat us where there’s a weakness in it. Every coverage has a strength and every coverage has a weakness. So the weakness should never be down there. It should never be that one. So whatever that weakness is, if they throw that ball, then tackle it and then you go on to the next play. That’s where curveballs come in. Foundationally, we’ve got to be able to play three things that are just second-nature to us, and when things go bad and it falls apart, then you’re really in trouble. We’ve just got to instill that confidence, let’s call this and play this, and it’s going to be OK. This is what has to be taken away, and if they throw this ball, it might be an eight-yard gain, but let’s just tackle it right there and go on to the next down. That’s how you play.”

On how to rebuild confidence in the defense
“Well, I think it comes down to the thing that helps players the most is a review of fundamentals.  It’s very obvious that whether we’re playing off or whether we’re playing on, that we’re having trouble with the fade ball. If you’re playing on, then the use of your hands, the use of your feet to get on the high shoulder to be in good position. If they throw a fade-stop behind you, then go tackle it. Just know what you have to take away, and go back to base fundamentals of what to do.  I think kids need concrete evidence of how to get better. It’s not always changing or adding a whole new scheme, it’s just doing what you do better, so you help kids do that. Sometimes we’re losing right at the line of scrimmage and getting in bad shape right away. Well, there’s things that we’ve got to help our kids with that prevent that. So we’ll go back to doing that. If you’re playing off, it’s just maintaining that good cushion and then that transition. For the first time, we rolled up a corner to the wide field. You’ve heard of cover-two and cover-three. Anytime somebody talks about “cover six,” it’s a rolled up corner to the field and man-to-man on the backside. So we actually are trying some different things there that will help those guys that sometimes are just isolated by themselves. Those are your curveballs that you throw in there. But you have to be able to rely on your fundamental coverages and your fundamental techniques, and, even though it sounds redundant to say it, we just have to keep helping them with technique.”

On how well he knows the tendencies of other teams in the Big Ten
“We’re going to go game-by-game with it. It’s both exciting for me and it’s a little scary, because for so many years and so many times in the Pac-12, having been at one place when staffs stayed the same, you kind of had a pretty good idea and foundation of where to start when it came to your preparation for those games. You kind of had a book on what your history was with that team. You could almost look at it like a year-to-year series with a team. We don’t have that. We have video from the past, which is helpful, and video from their recent games, which is what we’re going to rely on. We did offseason study of these teams. We’ll basically apply all that stuff and what we learned right now to each game, game-by-game and hopefully build up that book through the years. That’s what’s different for us.”

On the challenges presented by Illinois quarterback Wes Lunt, and whether the coaching scheme is the same as before the coaching change was made in late August
“I think it looks pretty much the same to me. The quarterback is throwing efficiently, he’s 60+ percent, (214) yards per game. They have a good receiving corps that is making plays. (Wide receivers Geronimo Allison, Marchie Murdock), they have a true freshman that’s playing (Desmond Cain) that looks good. They have a solid offensive line and they use their running back in multiple ways. Probably one of their best ways to run the ball is the draw, because a lot of times they’re in four-wide, they’re split, so if you’re out in coverage and you’ve expanded your defense then the draw is a good play for a versatile running back, and they use him in the passing game too. It’s going to be one of those games where you’re going to have to be very accountable with what they’re doing with the tailback and then being in good shape coverage-wise.  (Lunt) is an accurate, good-looking passer.”

On whether he has looked at getting other running backs more carries
“I think that we have a variety of styles in the running back deal, and I like that. I think that Terrell Newby is our most versatile back, and he has made guys miss. He has been effective in the passing game. The disappointment for me, so far, is that we have not really gotten our screen game going like we would like to do with our tailback or with any other parts really, our screen game has been average. I think (Newby) has the most versatility of our backs right now. And then Imani (Cross), I think he plays a nice curveball role for us. We’ve intended to get (Devine) Ozigbo involved a little bit more. You saw him in the (Southern Miss) game a little bit. (Mikale) Wilbon, I think as he grows in knowledge, and we keep working with him, he can be like Terrell Newby.  (Wilbon’s) a pretty versatile guy. He’s got learning to do like all younger guys do. Some of the parts of the game for the running backs that there’s no real statistic to it that people look at but is really important to us is how they do pass-protecting. There have been guys I’ve coached that can play as true freshmen because they have a very good sense of football and their vision, their football IQ is very good, and so pass protection, they can just see it. It’s like the game is slower for them.  Some guys don’t come along quite that fast. That becomes hard to play them because they’re so one-dimensional. It’s nice to give them the ball, but if then you don’t want to, you’d like to throw or play-action pass and they have a protection responsibility, they become a liability. I like the corps of backs, and I think they all can give us something, and I think Newby is probably the most versatile one. I think he’s done pretty well making people miss and getting yards after the hit. I think he’s done a nice job.”

On whether fullback Andy Janovich will see an increase in carries
“Boy (Janovich’s performance against Southern Miss) was fun, wasn’t it?  He was a load.  Believe me, it won’t always be the same. We were hitting them with the trap, but it won’t always be the same with every team that the trap’s going to be a real good play. We always look at every other avenue that we have and blocking schemes for the fullback and the tailback and the wide receiver on how we’re going to block the fly sweep, it all becomes a game plan thing, what’s best against the other team. I know our coaches will take a longer look at what might be possible for Andy getting the football.”

On the sustainability of success on third-and-long
“This has been a three-year deal for us, and we’ve got to fix it. We have been better on third-and-long than we have been on third-and-short. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s the reality of it, and I hate that. ‘Oh no, it’s third-and-one.’ (laughs)  (Junior quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr.) has made some good throws. I’m starting to like some of the chemistry he’s getting with somebody like (junior wide receiver Jordan) Westerkamp on that third-and-long range.  We just have to become more consistent throughout. We were on a pretty good pace third-down-wise, until this week. We want to get back up with that through all the downs, and of course continue with that longer-yardage deal, because that’s a pretty good percentage with what we’re getting. I’m having fun watching Tommy play football. He made some great plays on our bootleg/rollout stuff, some misdirection stuff, I though he made some great decisions, some really good throws that are not easy throws, those 20-yard comebacks on the sidelines. I thought he put them right on the money, he must have hit three or four of them in the game. Pretty good stuff, and he’s making a lot of good decisions so we’ve just got to keep growing it, I guess is the best way to say it.”