University of Minnesota Athletics
Player Quotes - Northwestern
10/9/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Safety Dom Barber
On how his responsibilities compared to last year’s responsibilities:
“I don’t think its much different. I use the same approach day in and day out and try to keep an open door policy [with the younger players].”
On mentoring young players who might be struggling:
“I don’t think they’re struggling too much. I just think they’re afraid to make a mistake. You just have to go out there and play football like you have been since 2nd or 3rd grade. You just have to go out there and play your game. Don’t worry so much about what happens; just go out there and have fun.
“I don’t want to say that they’re not willing to take a risk. I think they are sometimes nervous about playing and they just want to be in the right place at the right time, instead of just going out there and making something happen.”
On what is hurting the secondary the most:
“We’ve given up a lot of big plays. It just can’t happen. It’s unfortunate that we have given up those big plays, but I know our defense is good enough to stop some of those big plays. We’ve got Northwestern this week and they’re going to spread us out like almost every team has and we’ve just got to stop those explosive plays.”
Defensive end Willie VanDeSteeg
On the attitude of the defense:
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a sophomore, junior, senior, whatever, but you’ve got to play the best ball that you can these last six games. You’ve got to fix your mistakes and only your mistakes; you’re one of eleven on our defense. If I do my job and do my one eleventh, along with everyone else, if we can do that I think our defense could change around a lot.”
On Northwestern:
“They run a big spread offense; that’s what we’ve been watching on film. We just have to fix our mistakes because it’s not the whole defense, it’s one guy here and another guy there. We just have to fix those little things in order to play the best that we can.”
On whether practicing against the Gophers’ spread helps prepare for Northwestern:
“It helps quite a bit because you play against it every week, but everyone runs it just a little bit different. There is a quarterback in each offense that might give you a look that’s just a little bit different from another team. We just have to keep playing hard, figure out what we’re doing and do your one eleventh on our defense.”
Quarterback Adam Weber
On the offense:
“This offense will work if you get your guys to buy into it and you get the guys to work within the system. Not to say that we’re not doing that, but there is definitely room for improvement. That’s what we’re looking for we’re looking to be like Indiana, we’re looking to be like Northwestern. We have the potential to, but we need to stop hurting ourselves in the game.”
“I think if you talk to any coach in the country, that have all the respect for [offensive coordinator Mike Dunbar] in the world, because they know that he’s a great coach and that his offense that he brings to the table is something that can win games and we’re trying to get to that point.”
On Dunbar as a quarterbacks coach:
“He’s very talkative and he wants to coach you. A coach like that really wants you to improve and he’ll focus on all the little things for you. He sets a high standard, but he’s a good coach.”
On focusing on performing well in the first half:
“We made a point to try to come out and hit on all cylinders and I think that’s what we did. We had two nice drives there and then we kind of shot ourselves in the foot. No matter what happens, we’ve got to be able to pick each other up. I might have a bad throw or somebody might miss a block and you have to be able to pick each other up and we weren’t doing that in the Indiana game. We’d have one bad play and then we’d let it tumble and we wouldn’t be able to move the ball.
“If we want to play well against Northwestern, we might have a bad play here or there, but we have to be able to bounce back from that.”
