PJ Fleck
Minnesota Head Coach
Postgame Quotes
Opening statement
"That was a gutsy win by a really good football team, ours. It was tough. It was gritty. It tested our character and I thought they passed the test. You have to give a lot of credit to Nebraska. I think Mickey (Joseph) has done an outstanding job. That is a really tough situation to take over and they play incredibly hard. As I have told you before they have athletes everywhere. Every position they are big. They are fast. They are strong. They are long. They are tough. That is Nebraska football and they are out there. We had to grit grind fight scratch claw and especially when a lot of things were not going our way. I am just really proud of the result of our team. The courage of our team and the heart of our team and I think it showed. We did not play our best football in the first half. We responded in the second half and I am just really proud of them right now. That is a huge win for us. They are all big but I am just really proud of how they went 1 and 0 today because that tells a lot about our team."
On the changes between the first and second half
In the first half, I thought Nebraska controlled the game. They controlled the line of scrimmages. I thought they controlled the run game. Here is the one thing that is really hard is that when you have to prepare for three quarterbacks. Joe Rossi made this statement up in the press box and this will make sense to you, 'We might as well just throw our game plan out the window right now.' Just because of what we prepared for and what was on film was not necessarily exactly what we saw based on who they had on the field. That is a credit to (Mark) Whipple and what he was able to do, but I think Joe Rossi is so good at making adjustments and we were able to after those first three possessions settle down. We tackled better. We rallied better. We swarmed to the ball better and we were confident again. We basically created a whole new game plan and really just went back to some basics. On the offensive side, we just could not get our traction. Nebraska did a really good job stopping the run early especially on the outside zone. They did a tremendous job of creating penetration and we could not get the outside going as much as we wanted to, but the inside zone was there and then we lacked explosive plays. We had two shots down the field to be able to hit explosive plays, and we dropped them which was unfortunate for us, but then we were able to rebound with that in the second half. The number one concern for us is Tanner (Morgan) being okay. I think Athan (Kaliakmanis) will tell you the same thing, but I was really proud of Athan stepping in there. I said this back at Penn State. The whiteout was not going to be too big for him. Neither was Lincoln, Nebraska. That does not rattle him with all due respect. He is not rattled by those things. He came in at halftime and made the adjustment, and I thought he played outstanding and he led our team to victory. He led us to 20 second-half points so I am just really proud of our team. It needed everybody offense defense and special teams. We made some huge field goals. Dragan Kesich don't ever take that for granted. The way he can kick that ball out of bounds and eliminate the kick returner who is very explosive here at Nebraska so but they kept fighting the entire time. We did not play hard in the first half played harder in the second half. They played hard the entire game but I loved the resolve for 60 minutes."
NU Athletic Communications
