Nebraska Football
vs. Buffalo
Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021
On thoughts on the game
“I first want to wish Coach Frost congratulations on a well-fought game and I thought his team and players played hard. Played with class and they fought us for four quarters. I am proud of the way our team competed. There are no moral victories. I told the guys this in the locker room, we are not fighting for moral victories. We play and prepare and plan to win. And we came up short. Very aware of the outcome of the game. What we have to do now is go back to the process. The systematic approach that we carry with us every single week to fix what we need to fix. Build on the positives from the game and prepare ourselves for a very good Coastal (Carolina) team coming to Buffalo.”
On comparison to week one
“You kind of start gauging first and absolutes. The absolute of we did not win the game and then we have peel back the layers of what the film says. And we had a lot of players play outstanding. We had a lot of individual great efforts. We are going to watch the film and recognize who those guys are and what they did. And then we will also find and be very critical of ourselves in terms of what mistakes were mad. What we have to do to improve our team. Our goal is to be 1-0 at the end of every single week. We were not 1-0 this week. What we have to do is refocus our focus correct our mistakes and move forward.”
On creating a solid team effort
“You let the film tell the story. We are very critical of our own selves. We are very critical. There is not a single detail in our program that we do not pay extreme attention to. Everything is important. Some things are more significant than others. But we talk about our culture daily. We talk about our love and trust and respect that we have for ourselves and for one another. We coach for our players. Our players we believe play for us as coaches and they play for one another and they play for the people that help put them here. I think as long as we continue to build on our culture and our trust and love and respect we have for one another we will continue to improve and get better throughout the season.”
On Buffalo’s defense
“Adrian Martinez is a great player. He makes plays on his legs and with his arm. They went to an empty set and we decided to pressure the empty set. It is football. We had an unblocked guy and had an opportunity to get him down and came up a little short right there. I think the call was a good call. A little bit short in execution but that is part of the game. You never will have every single play go your way so you have to respond. I love the way our players battled back getting to 14-3 going into the fourth quarter with us having possession of the ball. Very much were right in the middle of the game in the fourth quarter which is what we planned and prepared our team for all week. In the fourth quarter we did not make enough plays to really end up getting it done.”
On Buffalo’s offense
“There was some things that we saw in coverage wise that we wanted to try and take advantage of. You know you always have a plan and approach when you head into the game and then you let the ebbs and the flows of the game take course and you make adjustments and you make plans for the next situation at hand. You see some of those passes came a little more in the fourth when we got down 21-3 and went to a little more up tempo. We had a screen called in a third and long. They came with pressure and we got behind them. One guy kind of got the shoelace right there at the end. Those inches and crumbs in the game where you make one guy miss there and potentially that leads to a touchdown and then its 21-10 in a game. And then the narrative and story looks a little different. We have weapons on the outside that we want to utilize. We have guys that can make plays in one on one situations in contested passes. I do not have the stats in front of me but I think we were on the 50% mark on third down which is right at where our goal is we feel to play championship football. We had our opportunities. Nebraska made enough plays in the fourth quarter to win the game.”
On the third quarter
“I would not say a breakdown. We go into the fourth quarter 14-3 with the ball. I feel like our players battled really strongly. Are you going to play every single play and make every single play? No. That is part of the game of football and part of how you have to respond to each and every situation.”
On team discipline
“You look at penalties in really two categories. There is discipline penalties and then there is combative penalties. In a course of a game a holding or a pass interference or a call that does not your way. Sometimes those are just combative penalties that happen throughout the game. Some of the non-combative penalties are going to be things we watch on film and improve from. They are all correctable. I am very confident in our approach to game planning and us preparing our team to play consistently and play well from week to week. So we are going to watch the film and we are going to be really critical of ourselves. We are going to identify the mistakes and move forward and improve.”
NU Athletic Communications