Tommy Armstrong Jr. Press Conference Quotes

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Monday, Sept. 26, 2016
Pre-Illinois

Senior Quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr.

On what it means to receive his third Big Ten Offensive Player-of-the-Week award:
“It means a lot. It means our offense did a great job. I couldn’t have gotten that award without my teammates and great blocking by our receivers and our offensive line blocking their tails off. It is not only for me, it is for those guys that did a great job to get me the things I did to deserve that. They did a great job as a unit, as an offense. So that means a lot but at the same time we have just got to keep moving forward and keeping driving and feeding off of that.”

 

On how he has used last year’s Illinois game to prepare for this week
“I don’t really look back on it. We have just got to put ourselves in the right situation to win the game. Last year we kind of kept those guys fighting and kept giving them chances early on. We have just got to make sure we take care of the ball and put ourselves in the right situation to win the game. We have got to take care of the ball and make sure that we do the right things this upcoming Tuesday and prepare the right way. We have to make sure that we are on the right page with everyone. Like Coach (Mike) Riley said, with a bunch of guys being knicked up, we have got to make sure that everybody is prepared.”

On what he has done to improve his turnover margin from last season
“Just to know where my check down is, making sure I am using my feet every once in a while, throwing the ball away whenever I can, living to have another down, just to make sure I know where to go with the ball at all times, being quick with my feet and just being smart with decision-making, so I just want to improve on that throughout the season. I just need to keep living on the short passes whenever they give us those chances to get them. Those guys turn three, four-yard routes into 20, 30-yard gains, so I have just got to make sure that I put the ball in those guys’ hands whenever I can. There are a few throws here and there I need to improve on but at the same time I just got to make sure I am taking care of the ball.”

On his views of people kneeling during the national anthem in protest
“I am pretty neutral, but at the same time I talked to Mike [senior linebacker Michael Rose-Ivey] about it. I have known Mike since I got here my freshman year, he is that type of guy that if you look at his Twitter, he is really, really opinionated with things and he knows what he is talking about in certain situations. I think that after talking to him before that even happened, he feels that he is not only speaking for himself. There are a lot of people out in this world that don’t have the opportunity to speak on certain things and having that kind of a voice, I think Mike took it on himself to talk to the team and being able to let us know ahead of time before things happened and before all of the things blew up about it. He wanted to let a lot of the guys on the team know what his intentions were and I respect it. At the same time, there are a lot of guys out here doing it, but I think that whole aspect of it is just having a voice for other people because some people do not have voices like we do. Since the five years I have known him, Mike has grown up in tough situations. He has grown up in situations to where he does not have everything that everyone else has. So now being here and kind of having a lot for himself, he knows both sides of everything, so I think that was one of the reasons why Mike kind of put it on himself to have that voice because he knows how it is to not have a voice in certain situations. Like he told me, when he has a pedestal like he has, a voice, a platform to where he can influence people, it is not him talking on his behalf but it is on others’ behalf, so I respect that. At the end of the day, that is one of my good friends. No matter what he does, he is still going to be my friend, one of my good friends. Like I told him when we were sitting down, he sits next to me every day before we line up, before we go out there and go to war together. He is my locker buddy. We have conversations about life outside of football. I know his family, I have known his family for five years and I am a great supporter of Mike. I am a great supporter of DaiShon [redshirt freshman defensive end DaiShon Neal] and Mo [redshirt freshman linebacker Mohamed Barry] as well. Those guys, like they said, when you have a platform, when you have a voice, why not use it? At the same time, they are not speaking on their behalf because they wake up every day, they get up here and they have a life to where things are not really given to them, they earn everything get, but at the same time they have a voice for other people and I think they are speaking not on their behalf, but on the behalf of others. So at the end of the day, I respect those guys. They are my teammates, they are my brothers, at the end of the day I support them no matter what. There are a lot of people in this world that have different opinions, but at the same time you have got to be able to accept that and say, ‘hey, no matter what your opinions are, at the end of the day, that is your opinion.’ Different people have different religions, but you do not look at them a different way. They are all people, so like I told them, at the end of the day those guys are my brothers, they are my friends, some of them closer friends than others, but at the same time they are my brothers and I support them no matter what.”

On why he chose not to participate in the protest last Saturday
“I choose not to participate because I feel like I am not educated enough in that aspect to take that step. Like I said, I have known Mike for five years and he is that type of person. When things happen in this world, Mike is that type of person that sits down and talks to me about it and I am sitting here listening. That is the type of person he is. In life, there are certain guys that look at certain things in this world and they react to it because that is how they are, that is how they are taught growing up. I am not that type of person. Growing up, I was not educated enough in that area to say ‘hey, this is what I am going to stand for, this is why I am going to stand for it,’ but I feel like Mike in that situation, that is how he is. That is the person that he is. He has grown up, his parents taught him a way of being educated in that aspect of the world to be able to make that stand for certain things. I think Mike is one of my great friends and I had known before that game that he was going to do that. He talked to me and was like ‘hey man, how do you feel about this, how do you feel about that,’ so I said ‘I know you are that type of person to take a stand for certain things and I respect it. You’re one of my good friends and I am not going to look at you any different. You want to stand up for something, then you do it.’ People in this world stand up for certain things, people have different religions, people look at certain things or are taught growing up different than others, but you do not look at them differently. Mike is the same. Mike Rose I have known since the first day I walked in here. Certain guys do not know how to respond to Mike because he is that type of person who lets people know how he feels. That is one of my great friends. I am proud of him. There are a lot of people that may say negative things to him, but at the same time you have got to look at this world and there are people being opinionated, but he is a human just like anyone else. That is just a prime example of what he stands for and you have just got to be able to understand that Mike is just Mike Rose. He is the type of guy where if you just look at his Twitter, he talks about the bible, he talks about different things going on around the world and that is him. He is educated in that aspect of the world to be able to let you guys know exactly why he did what he did and what he did it for. He is standing up for something that he believes in and at the same time, like I told him, I respect it. If I could reach out to the fans, reach out to the people around the world and just let them know, just hear him out. Just respect it. There are a lot of people in this world that have different beliefs. If you look at it that way, you do not have people judging you by what you believe in. If you believe in God, if you don’t, if you believe in certain aspects of life, and if you don’t. We are all human and we all have different opinions. That is how I look at it, that is why I am neutral, because I know people believe in certain things, so why not just say ‘hey, at the end of the day I am going to look at you the same because I am a human being and you are a human being. I may not believe in the certain things that you believe in, but at the same time, that is why we are in this world. We are not going to be on the same page in every single thing we do in life, but at the same time we have got to look at each other the same.”

On how he thinks certain teammates with different opinions took Michael Rose-Ivey’s message
“I think it is the same way that I took it. Like I said, I respect him for going up to the team and talking to us about it. That is one of the first steps of being a brother, being a family. Before you do something you make sure you let your family know, that way we are supportive of it and we understand before we do not realize what you are doing before you do it, and then we are kind of in the same shoes as everybody else, like ‘okay, well we didn’t know anything about it.’ I think that is the first thing of everything. Definitely with the head coach and the coaching staff, before you do anything before anything happens, he always says ‘hey, let me know so I will be prepared,’ and I think Mike did a great job of taking those steps before everything happened so we were all on the same page. The main thing about that game was not about Mike, and Mike knew that, and Mike said, ‘hey, we want to focus on the game, we want to focus on winning. What I believe in does not have anything to do with this game. We have to worry about the game and that is what we did. We said ‘hey, Mike, at the end of the day you are Mike Rose, you are our brother. We still believe in you to make plays no matter what and we are not going to judge you, but at the same time we still have to be there to win that game,’ and that is what we did, so we were letting that go. Mike is doing what he is doing and that is still my brother no matter what.”