COURTESY OF NEBRASKA ATHLETIC COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT
Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Memorial Stadium (Lincoln, Neb.)
Monday, Oct. 28, 2019
Purdue
Darrion Daniels
Senior, Defensive Lineman
On how much he played Saturday
“Five snaps.”
On how disappointing it was to only play five snaps
“I believe we got complacent with the little things. I feel like that is what got us killed. Just not being dialed in absolutely every single little detail. Little things become big things in the end, which caused us not to pull out a win we should have had.”
On if he is OK for this week
“Yeah, I should be.”
On what he has seen from this team in the last 48 hours following the loss
“One thing I think the coaches have done a great job of is finding the issue. Now, it’s the next step of solving the problem. I think today in practice we took a nice step in fixing some of those issues.”
On what those issues are
“Like what I said, little details. We were complacent with the little things. We are now just really keying in on them and making sure those little things are not overlooked or ignored again.”
On what it means to him as a senior when he sees underclassmen speaking about culture
“It’s actually a huge reminder. He’s [Wan’Dale Robinson] is doing something I feel like all of the seniors should be doing. To see somebody younger trying to keep some of the older guys to a standard, I think that’s phenomenal. It motivates me to do more and say more.”
On what happened at the team hotel Saturday morning
“I like to say things when I feel like something needs to be said. For the most part, I keep to myself. I try to fix things around me. If I see something around me, I’ll be vocal. That given situation, I feel like that something out loud needed to be said. Just in the situation, before a game I just thought that we needed to be more focused in that position. Things were said, but I also feel like things were being ignored. I wasn’t the only one to say something. I was just the one to enforce it.”
On what signs he saw that the focus wasn’t where it needed to be
“I feel like that situation right there just shows that we got complacent with little things. It started out pretty strong at the beginning of the season for the most part. As time went on, one little thing that was ignored became a habit. It trickled down to other players, and it became contagious to where the majority of the team was doing it. The bad thing is the majority instead of the good thing. It just showed me as a collective group that we were not 100 percent dialed in. When 100 percent of the guys aren’t dialed in, that leaves a lot of room for error, and it showed up on the field.”
On what those little things were at the hotel
“Yeah, that’s Flow. Flow is to be getting our body woken up. It’s something that’s not as serious as a game, but it should be taken serious because it’s game day. Like I said, that’s one of those things that we took for granted and let go. Things like that. Things like Flow, when we start taking care of those things again, we’ll get better results.”
On what he saw at the hotel
“The thing is, everybody was doing everything correct. I feel like a lot of us were just going through the motions, not executing. We weren’t really taking it serious. We were just filling time instead of executing it. Like I said, people were doing, but I also heard little chatter. The day of the game, everybody should be dialed in. There is a time and place for everything. During that Flow period, we should have been dialed in, and a lot of guys agreed. They were overlooked.”
On where Flow is held
“It’s in a conference room.”
On what kind of things happen during Flow
“It’s just like a warmup for us. We do down and backs, high knees, butt kicks, lunges and things of that nature.”
On the pass rush
“It’s something that we do in practice. We have active quarterbacks. I feel as if we anticipated the run too soon. It’s obvious that we’ll work a good pass rush move and get quarterback level and expect him to go ahead on a run. So we were preparing for a scramble before we even finished rushing. I think that was the biggest issue we had.”
On the performance against the run
“Coach Chins [defensive coordinator Erik Chinander] mentioned it this morning. Monday and Tuesday practice were phenomenal, which made us minimize the run completely. Wednesday practice we let it get out of hand and it showed on third down. When they passed the ball heavy, we couldn’t complete it because we weren’t completely dialed in and focused on Wednesday’s practice.”
On the importance of getting to a bowl game
“It’s always crucial to get to a bowl game because nobody wants to play for no reason. I think it’s important for our team to get to a bowl game this year for the fact that we have a lot of young guys. The underclassmen to upperclassmen ratio is lopsided. There’s a lot of young guys, which is good for the future. I think as a senior class, what we need to do is end the season on a good note and start next year off to a good start. Going to a bowl game gives us more time with the younger guys to help lay a foundation to show them the way a team is supposed to operate. I believe we have the talent and I feel like we have a lot of guys who care about Nebraska football and care about doing the little things right. We just have to lay the ground work to let them know that it’s OK to not get bored with the little things.”
On defensive struggles
“The little things. It’s little things that coach points out to us at practice and little things that he points out to us during film. It’s one of those things that you do it once and you’re complacent and we think it’s taken care of. So we put duct tape over the situation instead of filling the hole. From this point on, we have to continue to be on each other about those little details of stepping with the right leg instead of the left. Or being in the A-gap and not getting bumped out if it. Making the right call and hand signals when we change calls, having better communication. Once we focus on that everything else will get fixed.”
On consistent mistakes
“Almost every first drive of the second half, we’ll come out and it’s always failure of little things where it blows up. I’ve turned on film and watched a majority of those drives and you can see that the calls were there and the play that’s there for the players to make is poor execution. It shows. Then coach gets on us and that’s when we start performing better, but it needs to be on a play-to-play basis rather than coach has to get on us to get it out of us.”
On Head Coach Scott Frost’s message after Saturday’s loss to Indiana
“One thing I think we do really well as a team is we don’t stray away from each other. I feel like we have a really good bond and we trust Coach Frost a lot. It’s frustrating, putting ourselves in these positions and not being able to take ourselves out of it. Coach Frost shares the same frustrations as us because he puts, if not more, into it than we do. Going into this week, we just have to try to continue to encourage the good things instead of focusing too much on the negative. We have to make sure that we’re always doing everything right. Being complacent, it’s a long season, we’ve been going at it since camp. We had a bye week, but it’s still football. It’s one of those things where we have a lot of young guys and we just have to continue to trust Coach Frost and all of the coaches on the staff and continue to not get bored with doing everything correct.”
