Tommy Armstrong Jr. Press Conference Quotes

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

Tommy Armstrong Jr.
Junior, Quarterback
On if he was aware that he’s the Big Ten Player of the Week
“Yeah, I was talking to Brandon (Reilly) about it as we were sitting in treatment, so yeah. He told me about it.”

On how he reflects on his play
“I did OK. I put our defense in tough situations at times. I made silly mistakes in the red zone that put us against the wall in certain situations, but overall, I think I did OK. You know, not my best but at the same time I’ve got room for improvement.”

On how he’s been able to bounce back from mistakes
“I don’t know. I think it’s just more in the trust my team has for me. My guys tell me, ‘We go off of you.’ My coaches always are telling me, ‘These guys are going to feed off of your energy. They’re going to feed off how you react to certain things and how you respond certain ways.’ Yeah I made mistakes at certain times, but just letting it go and showing those guys, ‘Yeah I made a mistake, but when I get out there next time I’ll make up for it.’ Just saying that to them as one of the leaders, one of the captains on the team, I think that drives them to get better and do their job a little bit better as well.”

On if he has faith in his receivers to go up and get the ball
“Yeah, I always have faith in that. Those guys, they work their tails off every week. I’ve been saying this since spring ball, these guys, the way we play, the way certain defenses play versus us, it kind of puts certain guys on islands and it’s expected for our guys to go up and make plays. We have a lot of talent all over the receiving corps, and they’re just looking for a chance. They make plays when they need to. Coach Dub (receivers coach Keith Williams) is doing a great job of making sure those guys are prepared. Just making sure they know that in certain situations it has to be the receiver that has to make a play. If (the defense) puts eight or nine guys in the box and you have one-on-ones you have to win your one-on-ones. Their whole motto is once they catch the ball, don’t get tackled by one guy. Make the first guy miss and work for every yard you get. They’ve been taking that in since spring ball, since having a new coaching staff and just being able to just take that in and just being able to improve each and every week, they’re doing a great job.”

On if the thinks Nebraska’s go-ahead touchdown was the right call by the officials
“You know, that’s not my job honestly. I’m only a player. I’m for my team. I’m for Brandon (Reilly) making that play. I’ve heard that the Big Ten officials ruled that it was the right call, so I’ll take it. At the end of the day, we scored. We had a great chance (and Brandon) made a play. It was a great play by him, winning his one-one-one. That’s one of the things that I just preached about was winning your one-on-ones (and) never giving up because, at the end of the day, Brandon could’ve realized he was out of bounds and just given up and said, ‘OK I’m not going to catch this ball, so I’m not going to go for it, because they may say I was out of bounds.’ But knowing that he had contact he kind of arm-moved him and got inside of him and caught the ball and scored to win the game. It was a great job by him.”

On the double pass interference call earlier in the game and if he’s been a part of something like that
“No, I haven’t. I actually ran up like 15-16 yards thinking it was defensive pass interference and then we get the whole play canceled out and had to rerun the down. It kind of confused me. I really didn’t think that it was able to be called that way, but (there’s) something new for everything. You've just got to accept it and just drive on. So we just said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to repeat the down.’”

On the offensive lines performance
“They played well. They made mistakes here and there, but they played well. Like I said they opened up holes for the run game, blocked their tails off in pass pro and those last two drives, those last two series, those guys said ‘Hey, anchor down. We’re ready to go. We’re going to win this game.’ Alex Lewis, (Ryne) Reeves and all those guys, being seniors they said, ‘Hey, let’s go! This is the time! This is what we practice for! This is what we prepare for! They’re not getting a push! If we run the ball, follow us. Follow your blockers and let’s just do what we do.’ That worked out the whole game. Honestly, the way it looked, we could’ve ran the ball the whole game because we had six and seven yard runs turn into 12 and 13 yard runs by Imani (Cross). Those guys, tight ends especially, blocking up to those linebackers and just getting to the second level fast and being able to create holes for the running backs and myself, it just helped us a lot with the passing game.”

On tight end Cethan Carter’s play as a blocker
“He played great. I think it all started with the offensive line's communication. Communication was the key that game. (Cethan) just told me, ‘Hey, when you send me in motion give me a little bit of time.’ And I told him, ‘All right, I got you.’ I gave him a little bit of time, they got the communication down pat – who they needed to block – and film doesn’t lie. He was blocking one of the top defensive ends in the country and he was doing a great job. He worked up to the second level, blocking linebackers, cutting guys down when they came running inside. He did a great job. All his hard work in the offseason paid off because he’s one of those great guys that worked his tail off with us and just needed that confidence boost, like this game, to just show that all his hard worked paid off.”

On if Jordan Westerkamp was woozy the next day
“No, not at all. He was good. He said, ‘Just my head. I hit it too hard. They just want to make sure I’m all right.’ And so I was like, ‘All right, just make sure you come back.’”

On if Westerkamp ever jokes around about putting the ball where he won’t get clobbered
“Nah, he doesn’t complain about that. Like I said before it’s just maybe a high ball, maybe a missed block. Some of those times we were kind of one block away or maybe if the ball was a little bit lower he could’ve just kept going, but he’s a tough competitor. He showed it out there.”

On if he’s surprised Westerkamp was able to continue
“I’m not surprised at all. I’ve lived with the guy for four years and I’ve practiced every day with him. He’s not that type of guy that just gives up and says, ‘Hey, I’m throwing in the towel because I got hit too hard or my shoulder's hurting, or my head's kind of dinged up from hitting the ground a little bit too hard. If I’m OK to play, if I’m still walking and I’m able to see, I’m going to keep playing.’ I think that’s his attitude.”

On the two catches Westerkamp had on the last drive
“We knew it was going to be there the whole time. Honestly, we could’ve just ran out there and we knew exactly what we were going to run and how we were going to run it, and who we were attacking before we even entered the game. It’s kind of funny that Coach Langsdorf always talked about it. He kind of mentioned it to us. He said, ‘Hey, don’t do what Rutgers did and spike it on fourth down because you’re probably going to find yourself in the situation to where you can win this game on offense and this is the play we’re going to win it off of.’ And it was. It was crazy because we got to the locker room and he was like, ‘I told you! I told you! This was the play that we were going to win off of and it happened twice in a row!’ He’s a great coach. He prepared us well. We studied as much as we could. We dissected their defense as much as we could in to that situation. It was kind of funny that we got in that same situation to what we thought we were going to get in to and it kind of won us the game.”

On if this began a three-game series to end the year and potentially get to a bowl game
“Yeah. It’s just that we’ve got to win out. That’s our objective is just to win out; win every single game. We've got to make sure that we prepare like we did last week. That was fun. It’s always fun winning games. It’s fun just knocking off a team that’s undefeated. We looked forward to doing that and we did it. It’s kind of a confidence boost for our team. We’ve just got to make sure that we carry it over. Coach Riley always tells us that now this time it’s just this game last week, it’s kind of just tools for the next following week. We’ve got to let it go and build off of it. Yeah, we won, but at the same time we’ve got another game to play.”

On how important it is to get bowl eligible
“It’s important. We want to play an extra game. We want to get to a bowl game. Not only for ourselves, but for these seniors. We want to be able to enjoy it and just being able to win out and just being able to spending a little bit more time with our seniors. Being able to just, sort of, have a little vacation with our team because some of these guys we’ll never get to play football with again.”

On the red zone interception
“Honestly, we knew… I knew they were kind of going with that zero look that first play where we got the loss. I wanted to give Jordan a chance to make that safety miss, but we ended up just getting a loss of yards. On that second play we probably ran that play five or six times in red zone situations. We capitalized on every single one of them, but I thought that the linebacker was firing in, kind of jab stepped in a little bit and then backpedaled, I tried to put it up a little bit but I didn’t put enough air on it to where I could zip it to my guy that was coming over the top of it on the baseline. (The defender) was at the right place at the right time. That one’s on me. We got to the sidelines and that’s when I knew we were going to win the game. Just by the offensive line sitting down and saying, ‘Hey, we’re all right, we’re all right. Tommy’s good. We’ve got you. It’s fine.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I got you guys. The next time we get out there we’re going to score. We’re marching down the field every time we get the ball. We’re killing ourselves. I’m putting us in bad situations. We’ll fix it.’ We got down there and we scored again. We got a stop and scored on our last possession of the game.”

On the postgame moment he’ll remember the most
“Honestly, just being able to enjoy it with my teammates. I think the funniest thing that I saw was our coaches up here (on the sixth floor of the press box) running down to get down there. It was just an incredible feeling just being able to spend that time with our coaches (and) spending that time with our players. Seniors being able to overcome a thing like this and just being able to stick together. That’s what it’s about. It’s all about family and being able to stay with each other through tough times. We found ourselves in tough situations all year, coming up short. Sometimes fighting our way back and then coming up short late in the game, like at Miami. This game, it was just different. We all had a different sense of urgency. Just being able to overcome all those situations defense-wise, offense-wise, special teams-wise, just being able to all come together as a team and just accept all the criticism that’s been going on with that game. Just being able to overcome all those problems and stick together and believe in each other. Our defense believed we were going to score and we believed that our defense was going to get us a stop and that happened and we won the game.”