Troy HC Neal Brown Postgame Quotes
Nebraska vs. Troy Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018
Opening statement
“I’m proud of our guys. I thought we showed tremendous grit and determination. We didn’t play great football as we went through the game, but I thought our kids played at a high level special teams-wise. Our defense bent but they didn’t break. I thought we flew to the ball and tackled better than we had at any point this season. Offensively, we just found some ways to make some key plays. Those guys are good on defense, they’re going to be good on defense. It’s going to show as it goes through the year. I want to say this, I think this is a tremendous atmosphere for college football. These are great fans, really good people. I want to say this to the Nebraska fans, you’re going to be fine. Those guys over there, Scott Frost and those guys they have on defense and that staff in particular, they’re going to get it done here. They’re going to win and they’re going to win big. They’re doing it the right way, so I don’t want the narrative to necessarily be about that. We’ve got good football players and a good team, if you look at what we’ve done over the last three years. Our guys fully expected to come in here and compete and have the opportunity to win in the fourth quarter and that’s what we did. We’ve been nationally ranked, we’ve beaten LSU at LSU. I think Boise [State], I don’t know how their game is going now, but we didn’t play very well in week one and I think they’re very good. Are they that much better than us, I think it’s to be determined. I think it’s closer, but our guys have really improved over the last two weeks. So the narrative needs to be about us and what our program is doing. Nebraska is going to be fine. They’re in good hands and they’re going to have a quality program and I’ve got a lot of respect for Scott [Frost] and his staff. I thought defensively, Tron Folsom, his energy and tackles were tremendous. Will Sunderland made a huge interception to finish the game. On special teams, Tyler Sumpter may have been the most valuable player. He really punted the ball and flipped the field several times. He made all of his field goals and PAT attempts. A lot of names. Backup quarterback Sawyer Smith had the huge third-down conversion to end the game. We had a huge run that set up our other offensive touchdown. So I can list a bunch of names, but I’m proud of our guys.”
On what has improved the most
“Defensively, we just didn’t play up to our standards in week one. Brett Rypien, the quarterback at Boise State, had a lot to do with that. But we just didn’t play with the same level of energy and physicality that we’ve been accustomed to here. The way we play defense is the way we played today and we hadn’t necessarily shown that so far this year. Last week we convincingly beat Florida A&M and we’re better than them, so it’s hard to get a picture of how much improvement we’ve made. I told our staff earlier this morning when we met that this game is going to tell us where we’re at. Win, lose, whatever happens it is going to tell us where we’re at. We were fortunate to win the game. Now it’s about how we handle this win moving forward, I didn’t really answer your question. Defensively, we tackled in space much better and we forced turnovers. We had several takeaways last week and a couple key takeaways this week.”
On the impact of special teams
“They were huge. I talked about our punter, Tyler Sumpter, with the first punt of the game hit a bomb and really continued. His stats are close to about 50 yards a net punt, which is incredible. Brandon Hall handles our punt team, our special teams coordinator, and he’s done a really good job. We’ve changed our philosophy and what we do has been more coverage-oriented. Our guys have really bought into that. The field goal to go up in the game, if you look at statistics across college football, the team that scores first is winning at a huge mark right now. So to get on the board first, I thought that was big. We gave them a field goal too because we fumbled a punt down there. [Cedarius] Rookard made up for it by returning the punt for a touchdown.”
On if the punt return touchdown was from what was seen on film
“We ran our base return. It wasn’t anything special or anything we created. Their guy does a really good job of getting the ball down the field. I didn’t have a watch on it, I wasn’t sure what the hang time was. We’ve put an emphasis on our hold-up technique in the last two weeks. [Cedarius] Rookard did a really good job of getting vertical. Punt returns, when you go east and west there’s very little success. It’s when you go north and south when you have your big returns. A lot of credit to our guys for the grit in those returns, because you’ve got to hold blocks and do those types of things.”
On if Nebraska’s quarterback changed how they game planned
“Not really. If [Adrian] Martinez played, we were prepared for him. The backup, I thought he did some things. I didn’t think he did bad at the end of the game against Colorado, under some tough circumstances. On YouTube, I saw a little bit of him in the spring game and I was impressed. We would have played the same way against Martinez. Martinez is special and an elite runner and he’s got great arm talent. He’s going to be a tremendous quarterback in the Big Ten, but we prepared the same way for both guys.”
On the last touchdown making a difference
“It did. I told our staff on the headsets, ‘we’ve got to score one more touchdown to win the game.’ Just because they’ve got some elite athletes. [JD] Spielman, [Maurice] Washington, [Greg] Bell, those are some really high-end athletes. I knew they would break one at some point. I felt like for us to win the game, we had to get to 24 at least. We felt like to win the game, we were going to be in the 20s the whole time, so that last score was good. We were just trying to figure out ways to run the ball. They had such a decisive size advantage on us. We’re young on offense. It’s the first time our quarterbacks have played in this type of environment. They did some good things. They didn’t handle the noise very well at all. We had several procedure penalties and things like that, but we did find a way. We finally got in some unbalanced sets that we were able to take advantage of some things.”