Matt Rhule on the quarterback position moving forward ‘we’ve got a good situation’

“I’m obviously very, very proud of the players. It’s been two hard weeks and I’m really, really proud of the way that they’ve stood together. I’m really, really proud of the way that team stood together and I think we’ve gotten better each week. It certainly wasn’t perfect tonight, but there were a lot of really good things and I thought they played like a team, which was really important to me. That first turnover, down in the red zone – defense going out there and getting the stop and holding them to a field goal. That’s really the culture we want to have. Having 96 yards rushing in the fourth quarter – that’s the culture we want to have, and putting games away and with the run game. There were a lot of things, obviously, in between. We had a couple guys go down with injuries. Rahmir (Johnson) went down and Cam (Lenhardt) went down. Gabe (Ervin Jr.) went down at the end, so hopefully they’ll all be okay. A lot of credit to Northern Illinois. I was watching that Florida State-BC (Boston College) game today. Seeing BC almost beat Florida State after seeing these guys beat BC – I knew it would be a battle and I thought our guys hung in there and did a good job.”

“I think he practiced well on Tuesday, and then practiced well on Wednesday. Jeff (Sims) really worked his tail off to come back and be ready to go and showed an unbelievable team, you know, being willing to practice on Friday. He was willing to go out there and be the third team quarterback, emergency quarterback. I just think after we got done with Wednesday, we knew that it would be Heinrich just because he was practicing pretty well.

And then we got in the game and Northern Illinois completely changed. They did some things just for Heinrich. They ran up the field. They really tried to take away the zone read game for us. They really tried to take away the counter game, some of the things that we’re pretty good at, they took away. He sat down and made some really good adjustments on the sidelines and found some formations that were good for us, and we were able to run the ball at the end.”

“I challenged the defense to think of this as a defensive team. When you play defense, people often say it was an ugly game, because everyone just wants to see offense. But they’re fun to watch. They’re fun to be around and they played to the very end. Unfortunately, credit to them (NIU). They did just what we did last week. They played to the end. Thomas Hammock wants to go win the MAC and he’s got his team ready, so I thought that was great by them. I think for us, it allows you to say ‘hey, even if we go three and out here, we can trust our defense.’

“We just wanted to protect the ball tonight. After that early turnover, I thought we did. Just let the runs accumulate, let the field position tilt. We had some aggressive passes. We hit the first play of the game or second play the game, whatever it was, we hit Marcus (Washington). I thought that loosened things up early. We hit (Thomas) Fidone down in the endzone on the pass. We let Heinrich spin it a little bit more than maybe we thought we would. Again, they were kind of doing some things to take away some runs. So the defense gives us a lot of confidence to play that way.”

“I know for a lot of the fans, and for a lot of people that care deeply about this program, this game was probably about having some hope that things are moving in the right direction. And I appreciate that. Let me just say that. I got on that bus today. We walked out to that bus and I’ve never experienced anything like that. We got booed on the first play of the game on offense, I’ve experienced that before in Philadelphia, but I’ve never experienced the crowd and all those things.

That was great. I thought it was awesome.  I thought that the crowd played a huge role today. Seeing all the kids at the tunnel walk and all those things – before the game, Giff (Issac Gifford) walked up to me and he said, ‘Coach, no matter what, this will never get old,’ and I said ‘I know.’ I thought that was great. But I think the biggest thing – as much as it would probably hope for a lot of people that this is working and we’re moving in the right direction – for me this was about belief. I believe that what we’re doing is working. I believe we’re doing it the right way. I believed that we could overcome the first two games and being close, but not close enough, in the first one. So I thought the players showed a lot of belief. They showed a lot of belief in each other.

“In today’s day and age that can be hard, but we have special players and I was glad they got the win the way they got it. I mean, that’s gonna be our play, at least for right now. On offense, I think the biggest thing that happened was they started to bring the place to life, right? We were just executing. Marcus (Washington) makes a play, the backs make some plays, (Alex) Bullock makes a play, (Thomas) Fidone makes a play. The play Fidone made on the sideline, that’s who Thomas is. We just gotta keep going and keep driving that.”

“I think we’ve figured out that both quarterbacks are good quarterbacks. The situation that Jeff went and played in the first two games was difficult, okay? And a lot of things that weren’t his fault were pegged on Jeff Sims. So, we’ve got a lot of confidence in Jeff. We’ve known all along that Heinrich (Haarberg) can play. We’ve got a good situation. I won’t talk any hypotheticals. I don’t know who’s going to be healthy and who’s not, but I know we can win with both guys. And you guys know how I feel about Chubba (Purdy). So I think we have a lot of players.”