Nebraska Coach Mike Riley Quotes

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Monday, Nov. 9, 2015
Pre-Rutgers

On Nebraska's production
"Production was good, we had 24 first downs (which) is really good against that team. 499 yards, had 179 yards rushing, which I think was a key, key part of the ballgame. And we didn’t have many negative runs. There weren’t many behind the line of scrimmage runs. We didn’t have any fumbles, we didn’t have any sacks. We were 50 percent on third downs. Pretty good efficiency that way."

On Nebraska's offense
"(There were a) number of guys I think that played pretty well offensively, (Brandon) Reilly, (Jordan) Westerkamp, (Stanley) Morgan, and (Alonzo) Moore at receiver. I think Ryne Reeves had one of his best games as center. Zach Sterup did a nice job going in as guard. Alex Lewis had a good game. I thought Cethan Carter blocked real well on the edge. Of course Imani (Cross) had a good game."

On special teams
"Drew (Brown) has been on a good upward swing in field goal kicking. Of course our kickoff returns look like returns now a little bit. We are getting more production there. (Andy) Janovich had another good week of leading special teams. Brad Simpson again played well. Chris Weber was great to have back on special teams, made some plays. Antonio Reed, our freshman, a good special teams player, had a good day. Aaron Williams had a good day, and Adam Taylor played well on special teams the other day."

On Nebraska's defense
"It was a lot of tough sledding against a good offense and a good quarterback and one outstanding receiver. We had a good start in the game. I think our first two series were three and out and then we had a fourth-down stop. We made some good plays. We probably had our best tackling game and that was encouraging. We gave up touchdown passes, which was not so good but we did get an interception. And we finished the game at the end when we actually gave them too good of field position which was kind of scary. Dedrick Young, freshman, played a really solid game. Josh Banderas, very physical, good game, 10 tackles. Nate Gerry had a lot of tackles. Chris Jones played a good game. Kevin Maurice and the line, its been good to have him back."

On penalties
"I think another real good point in the game we had five penalties in the first half and none in the second half. Obviously all that was crunch time which was good to see."

On offensive problem areas
"We didn’t do a great job on first and second down passing. Of course we turned the ball over in the red zone that time that I thought, that was really bad timing for that turnover obviously with the way that game was going. Sometimes our decisions and execution aren’t great. Some of our run pass option plays were not very good looking. We threw two interceptions."

On special teams problem areas
"Our net punt wasn’t good. One time, I think the main result was that we didn’t protect Sam (Foltz) well on one of the two punts that he had, and so he had to hurry it and he didn’t look good and so our net wasn’t very good."

On defensive problem areas
"Our third down defense was not good. They were well over 50 percent on third down. We gave up four TD passes. We had too many kind of uncontested plays where they were open and then they caught it. And we didn’t get any sacks."

On Rutgers
"Defensively they are a four-man front team. A lot of umbrella looks whether its cover two or quarter, quarter half which we call cover four. And then a regular mixture of man-to-man and zone blitzes that you get from there. They have good linebackers, I think one of their linebackers leads the league in tackles. Active safeties and looks like good cover corners. Their punter is good. They have a great returner that Bruce Reed is particularly aware of. I am worried about Grant he’s got four TD’s this year."

On the Rutgers offense
"There are multiple personnel groups. We’ll see multiple tight ends. Multiple shifts in motion. They have three running backs averaging five and six yards a carry. One of their receivers [Leonte] Carroo looks like a really explosive, good football player. Lots of yards per catch, nine touchdown catches. They utilize their tight end well."

On Nebraska's injuries
"Daniel Davie is kind of status quo. He has got that big splint. He can go in an emergency but will not be a full-time player. If we need him for a series of plays he can probably do that, that is what he has been cleared for. Jordan Westerkamp appears like he is OK to start practicing today. Alonzo Moore is a question mark on that shoulder. Stanley Morgan is probable with that shoulder. Brandon Reilly is sore but will probably play. Tommy (Armstrong) went through the game fine and should practice and go through the week. Terrell Newby is getting better and probable for the game. Michael Rose-Ivy with his groin, Kevin Williams with his groin, it’s one of those deals where they are extremely sore now. How they progress during the week will tell the tale on whether they will play or not.

"We are heading into our 11th straight game and we have got to be really careful about being fresh for the game and getting some guys that are kind of on the edge back playing, and we have to be prepared. So balancing that is a big focus for the week coming up."

On Jordan Westerkamp
"A lot of years of coaching, he is one of those unique guys that wants back in and seems to be unaffected by whatever has happened and makes plays. I think that is as much a mental toughness as it is physical. He is totally engaged in the football. He is a really easy guy to coach and he has some unique talent to make some plays. I think he would be probably what we would call, for us, a prototype slot back. The things he can do, we play him some as a wide receiver, but that position holds a lot of interpretation, and he’s smart so that is a good thing for him in there."

On reviewing the last five minutes of the Michigan State game
"First of all, self-evaluation, the onside kick, kicking it deep, a lot of thought about that. We had a chance to get the ball back anyway, but obviously with that decision that put us in a pretty big hole. So that part of it you look at. And I think another crucial element and I don’t know if this answers the question directly, Dirk, but we played pretty cleanly, like I mentioned early but in talking today but in that second half, and any mistake like a false start, anything, could have thrown that last drive out the window. The plays were all planned out. We had good planning for that.  We had an idea what kind of coverage they would be in and where we wanted to go. We protected best, anything could go wrong with protection problems. We protected well and executed under pressure. Defensively, the other thing that is kind of haunting, it worked out, but the choice on how to kick the ball off there and the way they played it, that made me have a second thought on about how we approach that situation. Because really we could allow the kicker and the coaching staff taking a look a better interpretation of where to put the ball. Because we should have pounded that ball deep. The way they were bunched up in there, and you have to look at that and that backfired into a deal where they had too good of field position. The guy made a nice play on it, but man that makes you think on how to look on that thing on how to do that a little differently. Defensively, the guy made a great throw and a great catch in tight coverage to put them in one more play in good position so that was scary. But then the last play with a little bit of pressure and kind of a reload, I thought the defense came through so any of the those breakdowns in any of those areas could have been a difference maker and they are all learning situations both for the players and us."

On the team's growth and confidence
"Obviously there is a confirmation of a lot of things. Mainly the mental approach to getting ready for the game as a consistent factor. It’s not an accident that you’re ready to play, there is reasons for it. Understanding that every week, you know it’s not all the sudden that here’s a big game against a highly ranked team and now we are going to change. We need that continuity and that’s what we preach all the time and hopefully that kind of idea about preparation pays off cause then you always feel good going in. I would hope there is always confirmation in preparation of what it takes to win."

On kickers audible system
"I have never heard of that, usually you call for a certain kind of kick and what you want to do with it, but that’s kind of what I am eluding to. That opportunity to take a look and kind of hit them where they ain’t, sort of an idea. That was definitely as I looked at it on the field and on film particular, on the video, it became pretty clear."

On results and approach
"Hopefully it’s just confirmation for the whole philosophy of what we try to do week to week. You know I really don’t like to all of the sudden change because of the perception of the opponent. You’d like a consistency in what it takes to get ready to play, and this is who we are and this is an identity. And I think that allows you to be at your best all the time. Every game is a big game, every game takes the same amount attention and detail and you basically show respect to the opponent by getting ready and spending time with them so that is the kind of the thing that you want. You hope that a game like this is confirming for you team."

On tight end Cethan Carter
"I really liked watching the video yesterday and I particularly noticed him. I thought he was tenacious, stayed on his blocks and allowed us a lot of good room. We had some nice edge runs. We talked the night before the game about we had to block this front, this is a good front. This was not going to be easy, and we had to be able to do it run and pass, and we had to do it on the interior with our linemen, but we had to have edge blocking and our receivers had to block the perimeter. I thought overall we fought hard, and Cethan was a very good example of how that worked."

On Cethan Carter and challenges
"Good ideas but because of continuity hasn’t really, to me, we are under-using his ability and it’s basically because of continuity. I really think that you build that up through time. That was the first question with (Jordan) Westerkamp. He is always there. He is always there in practice. You get some feeling about how this is going to work, but as we go forward with that position the better use we make of our tight end the better everybody is. Because you can only basically, defenses are schemed up, if you just watch the safeties and you know here their intent is so if they have to spend a good deal of time on the exterior of your formation with wide receivers, then your tight end is really, really important and the better he is and the more productive that guy is then they have to really worry about what they are doing in the focus of their coverage. So its dominos. The more guys that contribute, particularly that position, it’s harder for the defense to really say OK, we are going to focus on this, and this is what we have to take away. That is the ultimate goal."

On Nebraska's “three-game season”
“Well I think that might be player-driven actually. I look at it as a one-game season week to week, and I think that everybody has a real good idea of what these three games will mean to this whole team, and I think that it’s pretty obvious that where we sit, we have to win out if we want to keep playing. I really don’t go there very often. I believe that after we talk about this Michigan State game today, we turn the page and we go right to Rutgers and that’s all we really have to think about.”

On the challenge of not having had a bye week yet
“No I haven’t really coached a season like this before, where the team plays 11 weeks without a bye week, and I don’t remember the last time anything like this has happened. Certainly if we could draw it up, we’d put it right there in the middle of the season. But what you have to do [when] it’s given to you, you say, ‘This is good and we’re going to make it work.’ There’s no doubt that we’ve had to put thought into how we practice, particularly when we’ve been hit hard by injuries. Then you really have to think about it. You sometimes go into practice with one more injury and we’ve got to change our defensive format. We’ve been to those extremes a little bit, and so you just have to be careful. You have to practice and prepare and then you have to have your team ready, physically to play. That’s the challenge of playing 11 straight weeks with what we’ve been through. The kids have done a great job. People have stepped up and we’re still getting some guys back, which is good.”

On the Missouri football team protest
“It’s interesting to me. I don’t know much about it. I’ve just heard a little bit from inside our office so I don’t know the issues. I can’t even speak to any of that. That’s obviously a personal, individual thing to them, their program, their university and that’s really all I know. In our world you have to be very thoughtful of everything that’s going on. This is not a stand-alone deal that’s going on. There’s all sorts of issues that come up.”

On Tommy Armstrong Jr. being named Big Ten Player of the Week
“I think that’s a good recognition for Tommy [Armstrong] and it’s actually a good representation of our team and about how he played and how competitive he was, and the plays he made at the end I think were just outstanding. The poise that he showed and how competitive he is to play, I think that is awesome. It’s great recognition for him and like I said, a good representation of our team in that effort, because that was definitely a whole team deal and the other thing was that it was an unbelievable night. Our fans were – I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like that. It was awesome and I’m real happy for them.”

On what he told Armstrong after his second interception
“Those things go back to…that particular play and why. First of all the protection was bad. He had a guy clean in his face. In that situation, it was a double-coverage deal and so the main point about quarterbacking, with all that, third and long, pressure, nobody blocking, the main point right there is don’t make a bad play worse. Just throw the ball away, we’ll punt the ball and away we go. There’s not going to be anything there. There’s supposed to be maximum protection. Three men out on the route, single side [with a] seven route, front side [with a] post [route], with a sit route in front of it. The place to go probably was the sit route in general. So the choice you make, but with the pressure, that’s going to be one that you just get out of and go on to the next play.”

On Armstrong’s resiliency being microcosmic of the entire team’s resiliency
“I think that’s probably right because quarterbacks make a ton of choices every game, and hopefully they’re all learning. The other thing I always make an emphasis on is, you have to learn as the game goes on. You have to see what their plan is, what they’re trying to do and then how we fit our stuff into it. You learn, you gather information as the game goes on. Tommy had a real good idea through the play where the balls were going to go in that two-minute drive. If they play in this coverage, then I know, so his decision making was spot on. So you have to keep learning that as the game goes on. Then you've got to take your lumps sometimes, like I said. Not every day is going to be clean. I mentioned we got zero sacks, but Tommy is a big part of the responsibility for that is because of his mobility, because he gets out of stuff and he makes something else happen. And when you do that, make it positive or make it neutral, don’t make it negative and on that play we did. We made it negative.”

On if Imani Cross will earn more snaps
“We won’t make a decision on that right away until we know exactly where [Terrell] Newby, but my guess is, even at this time, we would say, if everything was clean and both guys are healthy as we go in, that they will both play.”

On Jordan Stevenson
“Here’s a lesson about recruiting in general. For the recruit and the school, as the process develops, the ideal way to recruit somebody is through a long period of time where everybody knows each other pretty well. And so everybody knows what you’re getting and what you’re’ getting into. It’s not just for us, it’s for them, too. So in a short period of time, with a condensed recruiting time, with an unusual situation, either party might not know what they’re necessarily getting and getting into. It might not be a good fit for him, it might not be a good fit for us. So it’s all a process where it’s probably too fast. So everybody has to take a deep breath. Whatever happens to Jordan, we wish him the best. We wish it would have worked out. I know we put a ton of man hours in the situation to try to make it good and clean, but I think in his mind this is not the right fit. I think he’ll move on from here and so will we.”

On if Jordan Stevenson’s departure was mutual
“He left and my thinking on that is if that’s what a guy really wants to do, then that’s for the best.”

On using Nebraska’s recruiting history to help recruit out of New Jersey
“We want to capitalize on all those kinds of connections and we’ll sure use Nebraska’s history in recruiting there. As you know, we’re still formulating philosophical-type ideas about recruiting and I think one of the exciting things is this is nationally based. We’re going to reach out to areas that have been good to Nebraska historically. Then there are those areas where you’re going to go anyway, you’re going to Texas, you’re going to Florida, Louisiana has been good and parts of the northeast, like New Jersey and like the Washington D.C. area with, most recently, De’Mornay (Pierson-El) coming out of there. Those are all good connections. People know those people from history. They know De’Mornay and so we try to utilize those. And at the same time, I’m becoming more and more convinced that this 500-mile radius thing is real. We had a couple official visits drive here this last weekend and that’s positive, because families come and that’s a good thing, kids that we really want, when they’re able to get here relatively easy by driving. So I think the combination of what we want to do in this so-called local area and not just local Nebraska, but (the) local 500-mile radius idea is good. I wondered if in this radius, we could get half our class. Then pick those national spots, get a couple guys from California, Texas, and finish out the rest of that half of the class with kind of that national flavor. That appears to be a pretty good reflection of our current roster, so we’d like to continue with that.”

On the offensive line being more physical against Michigan State than it’s been all year
“We certainly hope that (we continue that the rest of the season). I think that our guys knew the challenge ahead and were well prepared and then had to play physically all the way across the front. It was a really, really good microcosm of the game in the trenches there, probably both sides of the ball. It was really good football by both sides. Like I said, we knew we had to have really good interior blocking against that front and to block effectively, we needed our tight ends to block the edge and our receivers do what they’re supposed to do on the perimeter. It all had to fit together. I thought we kept competing in all those areas and did a nice job. That’s a really well-coached, disciplined team in general and particularly defensively upfront, it was tough.”

On the highest number of “Hip Hip Hoorays” he’s ever done
“I don’t remember. Do you remember Dan (Van De Riet)? What was the highest number of Hip Hip Hoorays we’ve ever done? You think it was [Saturday]? Might have been.”