Nebraska continues preparations for Colorado

“Well, I think they have really good coaches. You go back and look at their coordinators. You look at Sean Lewis from Kent State, he’s a friend. He’s an excellent coach. He comes out of Art Briles’s tree. You’re going to get the ball run from B gap to B gap. They’re going to attack you on the perimeter. They’re going to take ten deep ball shots a game. They have the guys. They can go down the field and their ball skills are elite. They have a quarterback that can make those throws. It’s really a perfect storm and perfect hire. That style of offense with that skill set of guys they have, plus the altitude and tempo in Boulder, it’s really well thought out. On defense, obviously, Coach Kelly comes from the (Nick) Saban tree. You watch Florida State film and you can’t look at everything from what they did last week. Obviously, they were facing a new offense with TCU and it’s like two different worlds of what we played last week compared to now. We’re studying everything. They have a lot of new players and we have new players so this is their first time too. A lot of work has been done this summer and a lot of work has been done right now.”

“We’ve been practicing with tempo all training camp. It’s a great way to practice when running defense and it’s a good way to prepare, as well as get in shape. The things we teach and the fundamentals we believe in show up in these games. What happens when it goes that fast is guys start to get sloppy. For our guys we’re going to have to make this about football. We can’t make it about altitude or tempo. This can’t be about a ranked opponent or being on the road. It has to be about football. That’s what we’ve done all training camp. There was a lot of questions about how the three-three-five stack up. I thought we handled the run game really well and like how you said it’s a whole unique challenge. Maybe more of the three-three-five so we’ll just have to play well. We’ll have to play football.”

“Yeah I don’t think there’s any moving on. At the end of the day we’re going to play each week. There’s a great Kobe (Bryant) quote, ‘we’re going to come back and do the journey all over again whether we win or lose.’ We go through the opponent. We go through the last game, so Friday we came in. We got back late. We came in Friday afternoon. We went through the game. This is what we did well. This is what we didn’t do well. Everythings very methodical and unemotional because there was a lot of good. It wasn’t like one of those ‘hey we’re down by two scores and we scored at the end to make it a one score game.’ We had the lead. Unfortunately we made some catastrophic errors down the stretch. We learn from those. We eliminate those mistakes. We had a chance to win that game so that was Friday. Saturday we gave the guys off, and I was in here Saturday morning in here working. We had a ton of guys in here taking care of their bodies. Recovering. It’s been a long camp. Then brought them in yesterday and we started on Colorado. It’s a little unique for us as coaches. I went home and watched the game on TV because I didn’t know what to expect. It’s not like you can watch it on tape. This is the first game so having a chance to watch the game was good, see the flow of the game and see them in action. Yesterday we came in here and worked with the guys last night. Today is their off day, and we’ll get back to work tomorrow morning.”

“No. Coach Sanders is a football guy. While you can watch all their practices and stuff on TV, at the end of the day when has he ever not been serious about football? He’s been a head coach now. They’ve got elite players and elite players up and down the front. Every time you have a great quarterback you have a chance to win. I wasn’t surprised at all.“

“He’s won in everything he’s done in football. He’s won as a player. He’s won as a coach. Everyone thinks, not me thinks, this is a big show. His poster was on people’s walls when he was a player because he is one of the most hard working players who played the game. Why would we think his team would not be the same? CJ White on our staff was a strength coach for him. He told us early on, ‘let me tell you how they’ll practice. Let me tell you what they’ll do.’ I have the utmost respect for Coach Sanders. When he was the head coach at Trinity Christian, I recruited (Qualan) Jones out of there. He’s a football guy. The commercials all of those things are the extra things you get to do when you’re elite at football. I’m not surprised at all. Everything he’s ever done in football he’s been successful at so he’s being successful here already.”

“Well he’s one of the most conditioned athletes I’ve ever seen, so god bless him. You know his lung speed is unbelievable. His ability to accelerate at 30 yards is something that’s hard to simulate in practice but I think the biggest thing about Travis is his ball skills. He just goes up and even the one where his foot landed out of bounds I mean his ball skills. That’s really going to be the theme of the week. Again with this offense they’re going to throw the ball down the field 10 times a game minimum. You have to play the ball. He can go up and get the ball. You saw him do it on offense. You saw him do it on defense. I mean he took the ball out of the young man’s hands on the flat route in the end zone. It’s not like he got the ball first. He took it out of his hands, but if you watch them practice all summer, on the stuff they put out, I mean he’s got those kinds of ball skills. He’s a competitor.”