Mickey Joseph
Nebraska Interim Head Coach
Postgame Quotes vs. Minnesota (Nov. 5, 2022)
Opening Statement
“I want to take my hat off to PJ (Fleck), and the Minnesota football team. They stayed in the fight and they’re an experienced team. We knew we had to execute in all three quarters of the game. We had to win the second and third quarters and that didn’t get done today. We’re going to have to go back and look at the film, to see what we need to fix, but I think our guys played hard and till the end.”
On Chubba’s opening drive
“I thought he started early, but I didn’t think he saw it too much later in the game so that’s why we made the change with Logan (Smothers). We thought he gave us a better chance.”
On thinking about QB change
“We probably should’ve, but we figured we’d have to throw the ball downfield. When he wasn’t seeing it, we had to make a change but you’re right in this league you can’t do that. You can’t have six, three-and-outs in this league because they’ll eat the clock up.”
On Logan Smother’s performance
“He made some good throws today and he just has to be more consistent, but he stood up today.”
On Chubba (Purdy) passing performance
“He’s not seeing the coverage and he’s not seeing the progressions that he needs to get to. He needs to get the ball to the receivers when they’re open and he’s got to find them.”
On Casey (Thompson) not playing
“I thought he had more feeling in his hand today, but I didn’t feel comfortable.”
On Minnesota’s backup quarterback
“They threw it more than we thought they would, and we knew he would pull the ball. He’s probably a better athlete so they felt comfortable. He had experience. He had snaps in the second half against Illinois, so he was the backup who was the backup who had game reps.”
On difference between first and second half
“Well, I’m going to go back and look at it, but I thought they did a better job up front of hitting their gaps and I think we need to do a better job of moving them out of their gaps.”
On Minnesota’s defense
“It was a two-score game. They stayed with their game plan. When you play a team like that, you gotta really get it to three scores up on them before they can change their game plan. Two scores, they’re comfortable. They were gonna stick with their game plan as long as it was a two-score game, and it was in reach.”
On process of playing two quarterbacks
“I thought Whipple and I were on the same page, because when we thought (Purdy) was struggling we went to Logan. We communicate, but Whipple makes the call that he shouldn’t make, I'll let him know. We were on the same page today when it came to the quarterbacks.”
On effort from the Nebraska defense
“I thought they played lights out throughout the whole game. They gave us a chance to win."
On the wind affecting play
“I thought he was going for the pick. It was a taller kid, so you teach the shorter kids to play their hands. The ball hung up there and the guy out jumped him. He was going for the pick, and like you said, he thought it would be overthrown.”
On execution at the end of the game
“(Palmer) has got to squeeze it. It's a bang bang play. It was gonna be a catch and hit at the same time. He’s been in those situations before. We expect him to catch those balls. It is part of learning how to win and how to execute in this league. You saw in the first half with the defense, the defense and offense executed. When you execute in this league, you are going to have success. When you don’t execute in this league, then things like this are gonna happen. I gotta do a better job to get them to execute.”
On moving forward to Michigan
“We will talk to the boys about that. We are going to stick together and block out all of the noise. They are gonna come back tomorrow, look at the film and fix the things we need to fix. Then we are going to move onto Michigan.”
On running back usage during last drive
“AG (Grant) got a little winded. Then we wanted to try and get Rahmir (Johnson) in there and see if he could pop one. Get some speed in there on the draw plays. When AG got winded we thought we could go to Rahmir right there.”
NU Athletic Communications