Nebraska Football
Weekly Press Conference
Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2006
Memorial Stadium
Pre-Iowa State

Linebacker Stewart Bradley
On ISU quarterback Bret Meyer
“He’s a good quarterback.  We’re excited to play him.” 

On the confidence of the Nebraska defense
“I think, if you can have a game where you pretty much play horribly and you still win, that’s good.  You’re always going to have a game where you don’t play your best and we’re happy we survived it.  Everything is improvable.  A lot of it (the performance against Kansas) was mental mistakes and things that are easily correctable, so we’re definitely still confident.”

On the focus for Nebraska’s improvement on defense
“We need to stay more focused in the game, especially if we get up early and not lapsing.  With a spread offense like that, to play defense, you have to be high-effort and you have to be flying to the ball all the time.  If you lapse, you put a lot of pressure on individual players to make spectacular plays since everything is in the open field.  So, if you’re not flying to the ball, they’re going to get yards on you.”

On Nebraska’s defensive struggles
“You guys saw it.  We all know what it was.  It wasn’t our best performance and we obviously didn’t play to our potential.  You can’t dwell on that.  As an athlete, you have to have a short memory.  There’s a lot of improvable areas.  We did a lot of good things.  We made a lot of big plays.  But, we had some lapses, and they’re definitely correctable.”

On covering a spread offense with base personnel
“I felt like the personnel matchups weren’t the problems we were having.  They were getting some quick-game stuff on us and running some naked (bootlegs) and throwing behind guys.  That doesn’t have to do with the speed of the player.  That has to do with the positioning and the patience of the guy in coverage, so I think we can cover (a three-wide receiver offense) just fine.”

On motivation for the Iowa State game
“We know how we can play, so we’re going to take care of business and focus on our assignments and play every down, one at a time.  If you get too concerned about the big picture, you lose focus on what you’re doing, each individual play.  That’s how you get big numbers put on you, just one play after another.  You miss an assignment, you’re consistently not playing well or you’re not in your gaps or missing communication." 

On communication issues vs. Kansas
"Communication was a problem on Saturday. It was loud. We didn’t communicate the best. We had a scheme where we had a lot of checks, based on what they were running.  We had a really good scheme going in.  When you give a stunt to a lineman that takes a linebacker out of a gap, but he doesn’t get the stunt, you’re going to get gashed.  Same with the pass game.  Communication wasn’t great when we were trying to pass the receivers off.  If the guy isn’t hearing you, no one is picking him.  To the fans, it looks like, “what is going on?”  But what it is is simple communication.  Communication is always easier on the road, since they get quieter for the home team, so that’s one plus, playing away for us.”

On the game plan against Kansas
“We had a game plan in to stop some of the plays that they hurt us with last year.  Those types of plays, Iowa State doesn’t run.  I think that, this week, you’ll see a more attacking style.”

On consistency in game plan throughout the Kansas game
“We mixed up and made some changes as they made some changes.  You always make adjustments during the game.  It just wasn’t our best effort, and it was across the board, from someone knowing what their job is and missing it to making a stupid decision to bad communication.  It was all across the board.  Definitely, it wasn’t like we were being beaten at the point of attack.  They almost never ran at the point of attack.  All their big runs were cutbacks, and that’s where you have to be disciplined in their gaps.  We had guys flying or pursuing.  That’s what teams can do against a fast defense: use their speed against them.  To a degree, that happened.  That also happens when you’re playing undisciplined football.”

On finding mistakes on film
“It’s easy to tell.  There are no secrets about why a mistake happens.  If you see the defensive line driven back three yards and the linebackers can’t keep up with the backs, there isn’t much you can do.  But if it’s communication and assignment errors, you know that, we, the Nebraska defense, beat the Nebraska defense.”

On having fewer quarterback sacks this season than last year at this point
“It hurts when you play a screen-and-draw team, like this week, or an option team.  I think, when we really unleash the defensive line and let them go, they’ve been pretty productive.  We have a talented group in that front four and they can generate sacks.  I’m not worried about it at all.” 

On the tone of practice
“We practiced well last week.  We’re going to step it up and make sure that everyone is mentally into the practice.  I’m sure the mental aspect of practice will be a big emphasis this week.”