Scott Frost Quotes 10-26

Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Monday, Oct. 26, 2020
Pre Wisconsin

Press Conference Video

On the whole process of traveling to and from Ohio State, considering testing protocols, etc.
“Everything went as we expected. It wasn’t that difficult to go through any of those processes. The weirdest part of the whole thing was no fans in the stadium. That just felt funny. The rest of it felt like a road trip.”
 
On the situation at Wisconsin with the report of quarterback of Graham Mertz having a positive COVID-19 test
“I don’t think it will change anything for us. I hope for their sake that he is OK. I hope just for his health that he is OK. We have had false positives here too, so my guess is that’s what it is. Whether he plays or not, they’ve got a lot of really good players and they’re a really good team. I don’t think their offense will probably change even if he wasn’t playing. He obviously had a good debut and I hope he’s doing OK.”
 
On the young guys in the secondary who could be forced into first-half action because of ejections to Cam Taylor-Britt and Deontai Williams, and whether Nebraska has heard back from the Big Ten regarding the availability of Taylor-Britt or Williams
“I don’t want to talk about discussions with the officials in the league yet. We’re waiting to hear back from them again. I don’t believe there is a process to appeal that penalty so I think we’re kind of stuck with the outcome of it whether we agree with it or not. We need to get some young guys involved, not just in the secondary but in a lot of places. I think as soon as those guys are ready, we have some guys with some talent to make us a better football team. All those guys have to grow up, and some are going to have to do it this week.”
 
On using Luke McCaffrey in the run game
“Anything we ask Luke McCaffrey to do, he is going to be good at.”
 
On Nebraska’s quarterback system with Adrian Martinez and Luke McCaffrey, and the seamless flow of using both of them, and to what Coach Frost attributes the successful of it
“Having two good players that are good people too and that are friends. I think they are both rooting for each other, pulling for each other. There’s a lot of situations where having both of them on the field gives us some of our best players out there. Probably just because of the character of those two kids.”
 
On the importance of Martinez and McCaffrey having a good relationship
“It probably is important. It probably just makes it easier, more healthy. Both of them deserve to play, that’s what I said before. I think you could see that in that game. They both ran hard, they both threw the ball well. They both did things well, so they both deserve to play. If we can find ways to get them both out there, we will.”
 
On honoring Nebraska’s first black player George Flippin (1891-92) on the helmets
“With a lot of things going on in the country, anything we can do as a football team to be closer together, and anything we can do as a football team to be an example…I’ve said it a bunch of times but football locker rooms oftentimes are the best places I’ve ever been because people come from all different backgrounds, all different races, and all different places and come together, and it doesn’t really matter, you’re a part of a team. In a lot of ways, I think society should mirror locker rooms when you have good cultures built. To be honest, I didn’t know a lot about George Flippin before this year. If you haven’t read about him, it’s an unbelievable story. It’s fascinating. I would encourage our fans to go research that. You can’t honor everybody. You can’t do as much as you ever want to do. I think honoring him is a good start.”
 
On what allows Wisconsin to be good year after year
“Well, obviously you know, they do good job developing. I think they do a good job recruiting. They’re good coaches. They know who they are on both sides of the ball. That's probably the biggest factor. I think those kids probably get in the program and they know they need to be tough and physical and they learn the system on both sides, and they've got a good system on both sides. They wait their turn and when they get their shot, they're ready to go. That's where we're trying to get a little bit as a program. You're better when you don't have to rely a lot on young kids. You're relying on juniors and seniors that have been in the program and know the schemes and have been physically developed. They're quite a ways down that road and I give them a lot of credit for what they've built up there.”
 
On mistakes costing Nebraska points despite getting good yardage totals, and how much cleaning up mistakes can lead to points
“It needs to happen. It needs to happen. If you look at the two Wisconsin games and this past Saturday, our mistakes have kept us from having better performances and keeping the games close or giving ourselves a chance. Even Saturday, a couple penalties that I may or may not agree with, but a couple penalties that probably were penalties. They cost us drives, a fumbled snap, a couple fumbles. We moved the ball pretty well, but we need to capitalize on those things. The two Wisconsin games have been the same way. We moved the ball well, but they've done a good job getting stout when they needed to, and we made some mistakes that we couldn't. When you're playing a good team, you can't make those mistakes, and I think as painful a lesson as it was. It was a good lesson for our young kids Saturday. You can't just be pretty good. You’ve got to be really good and you’ve got to execute really well. If we clean up some of the mistakes, it’s going to give us a better chance.”
 
On quarterbacks protecting the ball
“I don't remember having an issue with that. Going back in my offense, somebody is probably going to look at the stats and find out something different. With McKenzie’s (Milton) freshman year, he was little wild with the ball and I know we turned it over some. You know, it's tough to go live with your quarterbacks and sometimes you’ve got to get hit to learn how to hold onto the ball. But if we're going to ask our quarterbacks to run like running backs, they need to protect the ball like running backs and both of them gave one away. One was a scoop and score seven and that really broke the game open, so those things have to get fixed. We can't give good teams breaks like that.” 
 
On the impact of the 2019 recruiting class at Ohio State and moving forward
“It's that class. It's this past class. I think we've done a good job bringing some talent in here. You know, the Big Ten, it's hard to play as a freshman in this league. Not that it can't be done, but it's just a big physical league and it helps you to be 21 or 22 year old instead of 18 or 19 years old. So it takes a little while to develop those guys, not just knowing the x’s and o’s but physically. We had a bunch of guys that played a lot for maybe the first time on Saturday. I expect we'll have some more this week out of that ‘19 class and out of the ‘20 class. When those guys are up and ready to go and ready to contribute, we're going to be a better football team.”
 
On how hard it was to stay patient with the young players last season 
We're going to play guys when they're ready to play, and it's been different reasons for a bunch of different guys. You know, Nick Henrich probably would have been ready to help us more last year, but he was injured and Bryce (Benhart) was learning and probably ready physically, but we just needed to make sure he knew his assignments. So it's a different reason for every guy, but the faster we can speed those along as coaches, the better chance we have of getting those guys on the field earlier and being a better team.”
 
On the defensive front seven against Ohio State
“I was pretty pleased with it Saturday. We're still missing a couple pieces. We’ve got to get healthy here, but I thought we held up in the run game pretty well. I thought we tackled better than we did last year. I thought we held our position to the point of attack better up front against a really good team. You know, I think everybody knows what kind of team Ohio State had last year and this year and I think we did a better job of that. You know most of their, not most of, but quite a few of their yards came on scrambles, which we’ve got to do better job of seeing that and rallying to it. They're really good at running outside-zone, mid-zone at Ohio State. I thought we held our gaps pretty well and played those plays really well. Wisconsin's run game is completely different. There's a lot of two backs, multiple tight ends. The fits are tougher, so we’ve got to make sure we're in the right gaps for those kind of plays and not bite too hard on the play-actions that they run off of them. So it's a different challenge. Hopefully we can get ourselves ready for it.”
 
On the schedule and how playing well affects the rest of the season 
“It's Game 2. It's important to me. I want to play well against these guys. They’re in our half. I think at some point, we're going to have to turn the page and try to beat one of these teams that is really good in our half. Wisconsin's been the best team in the West for a while. Credit to them, but as far as it relates to the entire season, it's Game 2. We did get a tough schedule. You know, getting the East champion and the West champion out of the gate. I think our team's ready to turn a page and take a giant step. We’ve got to get some momentum. We’ve got to get some wins, get some energy and have everybody start believing and knowing we can get it done. You know it's a little bit of a climb when they give us the schedule that we have, but our kids see it as a challenge and they're going to play hard and do everything they can to try to compete with Wisconsin.”
 
On what he’s going to miss most about the traditional atmosphere at Memorial Stadium on Saturday
“I'm going to miss seeing little kids at the Tunnel Walk. There's always little boys and little girls in the Tunnel Walk. They have a look on their faces that was probably a lot like the look I had on my face when I came to games in ‘83 to see the “Scoring Explosion.” That's always special to me. You know, I'm sure we're not going to count this as a break in the sellout streak because I know if we could have fans in there, we would sell it out. Virus or no virus. But we're going to miss them and I know the fans are going to miss being there.”
 
On the play of the offensive line against Ohio State
“For the most part, I thought we played really well. I thought we ran it pretty well against a good team. Little inconsistencies there, too. A couple pass protections where we just flat out whiffed, one where kids misread the signal and we left a tight end alone on one of their defensive ends in protection because kids saw the wrong play come from the sideline. But overall I was pleased and I think it's something we can build on. I thought (Brenden) Jaimes at left tackle played really well and it was probably the anchor as the veteran there. Guys across the board I thought did their job pretty well and it's definitely something we can build on and keeping there.” 
 
On Boe Wilson splitting time with Ethan Piper on the offensive line
“You know we didn't go as fast as we normally did, so there weren't quite as many reps, but when we start playing games with 80-90 snaps, you know I can see us having a rotation that there's several guys that we feel good about putting in there right now. (Trent) Hixson, Piper, obviously Matt Farniok, Boe Wilson and even guys behind them. Turner Corcoran came in and did a good job. Will Farniok. So we’ve got a lot of guys that we have trust to be in there. I thought Ethan did really well in his first real duty and we’ll keep guys fresh and ready to play.” 
 
On Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz’s performance against Illinois
“It's hard to do a lot better than that. I was watching enough that the one that wasn't complete probably could have been. It’s as impressive of a debut as I've heard about. They are always a dangerous team. We played Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl when they had Russell Wilson, and he made them an even more dangerous team when they had a real quarterback and an NFL-type quarterback. We’ve got to be ready for a good player.” 
 
On Ohio State Coach Ryan Day apologizing for not taking a knee on the final offensive play Saturday
“I don't want to talk about that. We're focused on Wisconsin. I’ll tell you what, if we want the score to be different, then we need to play better and that's the bottom line.”
 
On tight end Jack Stoll
“That's one of the positions where we feel like we have some depth. You know we're still evaluating Jack and we're going to get him back as fast as we can, but we do feel good about the guys that are at that position, him included.” 
 
On the blocking by the receivers and tight ends
“We have a saying, ‘no block, no rock,’ so we want all our guys to block for us and earn their right to be out there by what they do in the run game and that will give them chances to catch some passes. You know, we're better at receiver right now than we have been since I've been here. We came in and Stanley Morgan was a really good player for us and we've missed him ever since he's left. We’ve got to keep bringing these newcomers along at that position. I want to see us, just like everybody else, want to see us push the ball downfield more, take more shots. We’ve got to get guys downfield faster and more open and back people up a little bit. It will make it easier on a run game and gives a chance to have some explosive plays. But we have the guys that are capable of doing that, and we’ve got to make sure as coaches we get that done.” 

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