Scott Frost
Nebraska Head Coach
On the change between the first and second half
“I'm not sure. We played a really poor second half. We didn't get very many possessions in the first half. I thought we did a good job offensively with what we had. We did a good enough job defensively. We gave them seven points on a turnover. I give Purdue a lot of credit. They stuck to their plan and won a game on the road in the Big Ten. You can't go minus four on turnovers and beat very many people in the Big Ten, and we played a poor second half.”
On if he thought about making a quarterback change
“Not really. In my mind, I didn't. We didn't talk about it.”
On the incomplete pass to Samori Toure near the end of the first half
“Again, it comes down to a couple plays and we have to make them. We kind of got a break to get the ball back with a little bit of time. I thought we had them in a good call and the play was there. If you hit that, it's probably a different game, even with giving them a pick six and seven points in the first half. That would’ve been a big play.”
On if coming off a bye week makes the loss more disappointing
“I don't know what could make this more disappointing, bye week or no bye week. We have a good enough team to win these games, and we're not winning them.”
On Purdue’s time of possession and game control
“We didn't play a good enough overall team game. We've been so good against the run and up front on defense and I thought we gave them too many yards on first down. We gave them too many easy throws, probably. That being said, the defense basically gave up 21 points today. The offense helped them out with seven and other turnovers. On some of the turnovers, the defense went out and got stops, big stops. Overall, we had to be a little bit better against the run and the time of possession would have been different. We have a couple drives where it was one play, interception or two plays. If the ball flies up in the air and they get it, that's going to change the time of possession.”
On if Adrian Martinez was 100 percent and how Purdue limited him
“He's close. He's still dealing with things but he's close. At the end of the day, we can't turn it over four times.”
On what caused the run game struggles in the second half
“I don't know. We're gonna look at the tape. We got two penalties when we couldn't. We came out on the first play, I think we got nine yards. We had a shot plan for the first time, and we got in second and one and didn't convert and that drive was over. We got another one going with a drive on the first play in the next series and then I don’t think we blocked very well. Five (Karlaftis) is a really good player. They have some good players. They're a good team, too. They have the fourth ranked defense in the conference or whatever it is. Some of the blocks and things we were doing in the first half, we didn’t get done in the second.”
On the fan base’s resiliency or lack of energy in Memorial Stadium in the second half
“I'm grateful to the fans. I'm grateful for an opportunity to coach at my alma mater. I'm impatient to have these games turn out a different way. I’m grateful to the fan base. I was just as frustrated as them in the second half.”
On if he notices when fans start clearing out
“Not really. I’m dialed in, trying to get the guys to play a little bit better.”
On why the team hasn’t been able to win recently
“We just have to play better. You know, we're a good team, we're not a great team, talent-wise. We have to play better. A team shouldn't need me to be motivate them all the time. That's my job. That's what I do, but a great team doesn't need a coach to motivate them all the time. We got them ready to play. I thought they came out ready to play in the first half. They weren’t not ready to play in the second half. We just stubbed our toe a few times and made too many mistakes and got beat by a Big Ten team.”
On why running back Jaquez Yant didn’t have many plays in the second half
“We didn’t get very many plays in the second half. Out of the backfield right now, Rahmir (Johnson) is just ahead of where Jaquez is.”
On what to say to the team and what the locker room was like
“Magic speeches aren't going to change this. To be honest with you, today I left the locker room and had the captains address them. We have great captains. We've got good character kids. I know guys like Austin Allen and JoJo (Domann) are going to want to finish and finish the right way. We need a little more of that. So the guys will keep working, but it’s disappointing.”
On trying to find new answers instead of reinforcing what’s already been said for the last three games
“There's no new answers. We'll look for them. We're always looking for more ways to get better. Again, we went fast there at the end and it looked great on that last drive. We tried to do that the two drives before and and turned it over. Sometimes when we do that, you take a sack and it kills the drive. We just have to be a little bit better. If we’re a little bit better in protection, we can trust that stuff a little more. When we're going fast, it really neutralizes pass rush because guys get tired and it helps out our O-line. We don't want to do that to our defense either. We just have to be a little bit better.”
On if he told Adrian Martinez to play conservatively after making mistakes
“No, I don't want any of my players playing conservatively. He's good enough to make the throws he missed today. The one play that disappointed me, and I let him hear about it, was when he scrambled out of the pocket on a third-and-six and was out of bounds one yard short of the chains. That's where you have to be a little bit of a nut-cutter and lower your shoulder or dive or jump or do whatever you can to keep the drive going. He's a great player. Some of those plays our whole team needs to make.”
On if there will be a quarterback conversation this week
“No, that's not a story. We're gonna play the guy that we think gives us the best chance to win. Right now, that’s Adrian.”
On if the team is playing with enough edge to win Big Ten games
“I don’t think edge is the problem. I think it's the gritty competitor that's going to go get it done when it matters. We had a chance to recover the onside kick. I have to see the replay but I thought we had it. There's the play and there's 20 of them in every game. There's the play and we fail to make that play more often than we need to in order to win games.”
NU Athletic Communications
