Notable quotes from Nebraska's shocking home loss to Northern Illinois 21-17.
Head coach Mike Riley on his level of concern about the team:
“We have to prove more about who we are, for sure. We’ve been, I would say, inconsistent at best. I mean, that’s not even probably accurate, but that’s been us, and I don’t like that. I think that we’ve got to have a better identifying quality than just being like we’ve been, inconsistent as a football team, and that’s all phases there. I can kind of cross the board with that, from the beginning to today, that we’ve been inconsistent.”
Quarterback Tanner Lee on the team feeling pressed after the first interception:
“I think we knew we could move the ball, and we just wanted to hurry up and do it and start scoring. I do think we were pressing a little bit, and we were making mistakes and doing uncharacteristic things that we pride ourselves in not doing. It was disappointing, and we just couldn’t get out of that hole.”
Linebacker Luke Gifford’s message to the fans:
“We are going to keep busting our tails. There is a sense of urgency and the standard here has not changed. Losing is not okay and I know we got a group of guys that are going to work their tails off. It just makes you sick going into that locker room afterwards and it sucks. No one likes losing. So we are going to just keep working. We still have a lot of things ahead of us. We are going to take it game by game, play by play and we are still going to work our tail off.”
Northern Illinois senior Shawun Lurry on his interception for a touchdown:
“We had a great game plan for this week, watching a lot of film on them. We had five days to watch film on them. They run a lot of bubbles, so something just told me to jump it and I just jumped it. Results happen.”
Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst on seeing progress despite being 3-6 in the last nine games:
“It’s hard on the outside looking in to objectively say that, but I do see that on a lot of levels. It hasn’t looked like that. I’m not concerned about the end of last season and those sorts of things. My obligation is to these young men that are in our program and our coaches and our staff. We’ll be judged week to week on our performance and today’s performance was not good and unacceptable.”
