I had to help the Colorado site get on top of the Karl Dorrell firing news this morning, so I'm just a little behind pace today!! But my full focus is on cranking out a ton of content for y'all over the coming hours. Column, Taj's First-and-10 (which is already in to me), Notes, Sidebars, etc.
Lincoln Riley's opening comments ...
"Really excited about the win, great to get to 5-0. It was kind of a game of momentum, obviously had some momentum early, we didn't do a very good job of finishing in the first half. Obviously, didn't stop them well then and had the huge touchdown pass called back, which we had a chance to really get some separation there and it didn't happen, so just a few too many errors. Proud of the way we played in the third quarter. Really, offensive drives were quality, we really stopped them defensively.
"We challenged the guys -- we didn't play just overall in the first half the way we needed to, just the attacking, relentless style that we want to play. And really on both sides. Offense had some really good quality drives, but it just wasn't quite us, wasn't quite the edge that we're used to playing with and that we expect to play with. I thought our guys responded well in the third quarter and made some key plays when it mattered to get away and win the game. Lot to improve on, no question about it. We're going to have to play a lot better -- we've got some really good opponents coming up obviously that we're going to certainly need to improve and that's obviously the goal. So we'll keep improving, but it's a tremendous win.
"Then obviously, we talked to the guys a lot about winning this one for Coach Nichol and his family. It was great to have them there, it was emotional -- just an emotional week really knowing it was coming up. Emotional pregame. Great to see Jimmy, his brother, and all his family and friends that flew into town for this, and we had a cool moment in the locker room there giving them the game ball and being able to hear from Jimmy. Dave would have loved tonight and glad we could get this win for him."
With two tough defenses coming up in Washington State and Utah, how do you evaluate Caleb's readiness to go against defenses like that?
"He's ready."
How did you think Gino Quinones played in his first start, and is Justin Dedich out for a long time?
"We'll keep evaluating Dedich. He's been a little banged up for us, so the hope was tonight be able to get through tonight and be able to buy him a little bit of time, which he needs. Tough to say on the interior. I mean, it was a big challenge. It wasn't ideally, if you going to rest a guy, play a guy, this was the best interior pair that we've played against -- not by a little bit, by a lot. That's probably the strength of the defense. So that was a big challenge in there. I didn't see any major errors by Gino during the game, I thought he did some good things. We'll have to go back and evaluate, but it's awesome to be able to have somebody step in there and still play pretty efficiently. Because it was a low number of possessions game, they obviously had a plan to slow it down, huddle a lot, use a lot of play clock -- which we're no stranger too -- so we had to have some pretty efficient drives, and we were able to do that."
What did you find most encouraging in Caleb's play and was there any sign early on to you that he was back to form?
"I thought he played well, I thought he saw the field well, made very few just mental mistakes, did a great job in some of the scramble situations. He got us out of trouble a couple of times. His being able to evade people in the pocket the last two weeks has been very impressive, and I thought he really threw the ball well tonight. The balls were on target, on the money, gave our guys a lot of chances to make plays, so he was a tremendous playmaker for us.
"He's a good player. I had zero concerns about it. It's like I told you, sometimes a good pitcher has a day. I watch good players and if they have an off performance the chances they're going to have two in a row are pretty low. So he prepared well and I had zero doubt that he was going to play well, and he did."
How would you evaluate the offensive line and pass-blocking?
"I thought we were OK. I thought we were OK. We missed a couple of blitzes, they had a couple of free runners on us, we got beat a couple of times with the backs, and then we got beat a couple times one-on-one. Just how it plays out. They're a good front and we knew that coming in, we were going to get challenged, but again the flip side of it is the number of possessions the offense had, you don't score that many points and play pretty efficiently if you're just playing bad up front. We certainly are not by any stretch playing bad. It was a good challenge. They won a few, we won a few, and then when they won he did a good job of getting us out."
Lincoln Riley's opening comments ...
"Really excited about the win, great to get to 5-0. It was kind of a game of momentum, obviously had some momentum early, we didn't do a very good job of finishing in the first half. Obviously, didn't stop them well then and had the huge touchdown pass called back, which we had a chance to really get some separation there and it didn't happen, so just a few too many errors. Proud of the way we played in the third quarter. Really, offensive drives were quality, we really stopped them defensively.
"We challenged the guys -- we didn't play just overall in the first half the way we needed to, just the attacking, relentless style that we want to play. And really on both sides. Offense had some really good quality drives, but it just wasn't quite us, wasn't quite the edge that we're used to playing with and that we expect to play with. I thought our guys responded well in the third quarter and made some key plays when it mattered to get away and win the game. Lot to improve on, no question about it. We're going to have to play a lot better -- we've got some really good opponents coming up obviously that we're going to certainly need to improve and that's obviously the goal. So we'll keep improving, but it's a tremendous win.
"Then obviously, we talked to the guys a lot about winning this one for Coach Nichol and his family. It was great to have them there, it was emotional -- just an emotional week really knowing it was coming up. Emotional pregame. Great to see Jimmy, his brother, and all his family and friends that flew into town for this, and we had a cool moment in the locker room there giving them the game ball and being able to hear from Jimmy. Dave would have loved tonight and glad we could get this win for him."
With two tough defenses coming up in Washington State and Utah, how do you evaluate Caleb's readiness to go against defenses like that?
"He's ready."
How did you think Gino Quinones played in his first start, and is Justin Dedich out for a long time?
"We'll keep evaluating Dedich. He's been a little banged up for us, so the hope was tonight be able to get through tonight and be able to buy him a little bit of time, which he needs. Tough to say on the interior. I mean, it was a big challenge. It wasn't ideally, if you going to rest a guy, play a guy, this was the best interior pair that we've played against -- not by a little bit, by a lot. That's probably the strength of the defense. So that was a big challenge in there. I didn't see any major errors by Gino during the game, I thought he did some good things. We'll have to go back and evaluate, but it's awesome to be able to have somebody step in there and still play pretty efficiently. Because it was a low number of possessions game, they obviously had a plan to slow it down, huddle a lot, use a lot of play clock -- which we're no stranger too -- so we had to have some pretty efficient drives, and we were able to do that."
What did you find most encouraging in Caleb's play and was there any sign early on to you that he was back to form?
"I thought he played well, I thought he saw the field well, made very few just mental mistakes, did a great job in some of the scramble situations. He got us out of trouble a couple of times. His being able to evade people in the pocket the last two weeks has been very impressive, and I thought he really threw the ball well tonight. The balls were on target, on the money, gave our guys a lot of chances to make plays, so he was a tremendous playmaker for us.
"He's a good player. I had zero concerns about it. It's like I told you, sometimes a good pitcher has a day. I watch good players and if they have an off performance the chances they're going to have two in a row are pretty low. So he prepared well and I had zero doubt that he was going to play well, and he did."
How would you evaluate the offensive line and pass-blocking?
"I thought we were OK. I thought we were OK. We missed a couple of blitzes, they had a couple of free runners on us, we got beat a couple of times with the backs, and then we got beat a couple times one-on-one. Just how it plays out. They're a good front and we knew that coming in, we were going to get challenged, but again the flip side of it is the number of possessions the offense had, you don't score that many points and play pretty efficiently if you're just playing bad up front. We certainly are not by any stretch playing bad. It was a good challenge. They won a few, we won a few, and then when they won he did a good job of getting us out."
