The great thing about Leon is he is not satisfied at all with where he is. He puts a lot of pressure on himself, which is good at that position, which is what we need. |
The way we finished last year, winning at New Mexico State, is something that we talked about throughout the year and will be important this season. We have to learn to win on the road to become a winning program and to be able to compete for league championships. We will have a lot of opportunities to do that this season. |
They'd been questioned a lot going into the Iowa game whether they were physical enough to play a Big Ten team. You hear that a lot [in the Pac-10]. We have some guys who can hit you. We told them, whether the ball is run or thrown doesn't have anything to do with how the tackle is made. Style of play doesn't matter. How you hit that guy, how you run to the ball, that's what matters. |
They're the team everybody points to in this league because of their three consecutive championships. They do things the right way. They win as a team. They know how to execute. They know how to win tight games. |
They've gone as he's gone. |
We did run the ball well and didn't put the ball on the ground. I was pleased with that. |
We didn't have any sacks, but a little bit of that was Leon, who did a good job of escaping a couple times. We need to create more turnovers on defense and get some negative yardage plays. |
We didn't have first-game jitters. We had last-three-minutes-of-the-first-half jitters. |
We didn't have pre-game jitters, we just couldn't convert and we lost our composure before the half. We gave up a long pass before the half, and that's what bothers me the most. |
We feel good about that position. And it is good we have competition there. |
We give up two big plays, and then we are behind. |
We have tried to educate the guys. But we are not going to stick our heads in the sand. We are going to keep educating them and hope to avoid these problems. |
We just flat out got beat. |
We just got beat 31-7; it's hard to find any positives. I'm not a guy that finds positives out of a 31-7 game. |
We lost our composure before the half, we lost field position in the third and we were crippled by penalties. We just flat-out got beat. |