Oregon Ducks Postgame Interviews: Nebraska

Oregon Ducks football postgame interviews for Saturday, September 17 game at the Nebraska Cornhuskers. If you missed anything from the players or coaches following the Ducks 35-32 loss, fear not, that’s why we are here.

QUARTERBACK DAKOTA PRUKOP

ON THE FIRST LOSS OF SEASON:

“We got to learn from it. That’s the kind of team we have, so we’ll see kind of guys we have, how resilient we are. Their secondary did a good job. They brought some pressure. We had some designed runs and we had some scrambles.”

ON THE FAILED TWO-POINT CONVERSION ATTEMPT AT GOAL LINE:

“I thought I got it. I felt like I could have reached out if I needed to, and so I dove and hit the pylon, didn’t feel like I was down. If they said I was down, then I was down, it doesn’t matter.”

ON THE LOSS:

“It’s a loss, no one likes that. Guys in the locker room are saying, ‘Hey, we’ve been in this situation before.’ The last time it happened, they (Oregon) had a really good season after. We’ll see how resilient we are and have a lot of faith in teammates. No heads hanging low, which is a good sign. But, I’m just proud how the team fought.”

YOUNG OFFENSIVE LINE:

“For some of those guys, its their first big game, they did a great job. We had a couple miscues but nothing terrible, nothing that just killed us. Nebraska is a good football team.”

Bruce Thorson-USA TODAY Sports

OFFENSIVE TEMPO

“Just making sure we had things picked up and for the most part, we did. When we come in here and have to use a silent count, that slows things down a little bit. The offensive lines has to be on the same page of just getting a call and going with it.”

INJURIES

“That’s tough, that’s tough. But, you know, next man up. We got a lot of depth all over the field, a lot of guys that aren’t ’starters’ who all made unbelievable plays today.”

QB COACH DAVIS YOST

ON THE LAST PLAY OF THE GAME:

“Protection wise, he felt some pressure, tried to get out of there and everything else kind of broke down after.”

ON THE EXTENDED USE OF RUNNING GAME:

“We thought there would be opportunity with how their backside end played, so scheme-wise we put ourselves in position to use that to our advantage, which I think made some good plays for us, but it wasn’t enough.”

ON DAKOTA PRUKOP

“Dakota was playing well, making decisions, responsible for the football. Drives to score touchdowns I thought he was our best option.”

THE WEEK AHEAD WITH DAKOTA:

“It’s really play-to-play. We’ll look at every play and see what we could have done better. Protection wise, I thought we did a pretty good job of putting our guys on the right guys. We got to make sure we can stay in the pocket and make some of the throws. Probably not using our feet enough on throws he made, he makes those. He’s making them in practice, he knew that right after the game. We’ll continue to work on footwork, sitting in the pocket, making the throw. Couple times on the backside route, he didn’t hit it like I expected.”

ON PRUKOP RUNNING THE BALL SO OFTEN SATURDAY:

“Yeah, part of our (plan) was how the backside end played, a lot of times we used Pharaoh and the tight ends coming back across. We could pull it and have him as a lead blocker. So, that gave us an opportunity to get into space. I think it was positive for the most part, make more plays.”

HEAD COACH MARK HELFRICH

ON USAGE OF RUNNING BACKS BEHIND ROYCE FREEMAN:

“Not a great deal, it didn’t really change anything. That’s one of those things, you talk about a fluky game. Did we rush for 300 yards and not turn the ball over? Did that happen and lose? That’s a tough one, yeah.”

Bruce Thorson-USA TODAY Sports

OFFENSIVE EVALUATION:

“There is an evaluation for everybody, starting with me. Everybody is evaluated every single game. That’s what makes it fun to second guess. Makes it fun to, we call that evaluate and we will in every realm. Special teams had a couple of huge impact plays. A million scenarios (like the first fair catch) like that we’ll address.”

SIDELINE DISCUSSION WITH PHARAOH BROWN FOLLOWING HOLDING PENALTY:

“I didn’t see it. That is a private moment I think.”

ON PENALTIES:

“He’s an emotional guy in a good way and we need to harness that as much as possible. Fine line on some of these, we obviously have to address all those penalties. It’s on me. We’ll take care of it."

ON TWO-POINT CONVERSION ATTEMPTS:

“With the skill set of Charles (Nelson) and still being able to hold, it’s a rare combination out of something teams have to prepare for. That’s something we’ll continue to do.”

IN CONCLUSION:

“We let it get away at the end."

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