Rutgers Head Coach Greg Schiano
GREG SCHIANO: Before I get into the game, I want to mention two members of the New Jersey football community who we lost recently, Xavier McClain from Linden, high school student, and Ali Muhammad from Rahway. Both young football players that were taken away too early. But to their families, I want you to know, our thoughts and prayers go out to you everybody from Rutgers, and everybody in our football program and everybody in our athletic department. Real sad to lose young men like that. I want to thank our fans. That was a great turnout, great atmosphere. That's something to be seen in the future. Just wish we could have performed better. But we're just not quite ready to do that yet in that environment, as when you're ready, you do it. We just weren't able to quite execute every job to the point where we put it together. So go back to work. Got a great challenge ahead of us next week, go out to Columbus. So a lot of work to do. But let me see if I can help you on any questions from tonight.
Q. Can you talk about Evan's play? And you suited up Gavin and Noah. How close were they to being able to go?
GREG SCHIANO: I thought Evan did some really good things. Obviously the turnovers, the stat in the last 18 games when Iowa has not turned it over, they have won. And the fact of the matter is, in the last eight or nine games, we don't turn it over, we've won. So that was going to be a critical part of this game. We turned it over three times and they didn't. I think Evan grew up this week. Took a lot more plays than he has ever taken in practice. Those guys, the other two you mentioned, Noah and Gavin, were coming back at different rates. So at one point, we only had one guy that was actually operating in practice, and I think he grew. Unfortunately we turned it over twice and that really -- I got done telling the team this, and I'll share with you, every football game, it writes its own story. When you turn it like that and they score, that's hard to overcome. I really thought that they fought, like all the way into the fourth quarter when we scored to make it a two-possession game, there wasn't a guy on that sideline that didn't believe we weren't going to win. So that's something that's a positive. But we just weren't up to the challenge tonight. We will be. This is temporary. We just need to be a little more consistent on offense. Defense, I thought played their guts out. We're close on offense. We'll get there.
Q. When you talk about not executing individual jobs, is that inexperience, youth? Is it just a lack of focus at times? What do you feel like has created that?
GREG SCHIANO: Some of its inexperience. Some of it, you know, people say lack of focus. Like it's easy to focus, right, when someone is across the line is trying to knock your head off, right. So let's not throw lack of focus around as a simple thing. There's a lot of things to get you off your focus. That's what you have to do when you play football in the Big Ten Conference. So I think it's consistent focus, play after play after play, because it only takes, you know, like I said, every game takes on its own story. It only takes a play or two. That's 14 points, and that kind of changed the complexion of the game. But they did. It's all about doing it. You can talk about it. You can speculate. But you've got to go do it, and we didn't get it done tonight.
Q. There have been times over the years where you guys have begged the crowd to come and show up and get here early, and for the crowd to be like that when you walked out of the tunnel first, how did it feel and how disappointing is it to not reward the fans?
GREG SCHIANO: It was really good to see it, for sure, right. That's what we aspire to build in this program, and we've had it that way where it's week-after-week-after-week is that way. Are we quite ready to perform the way we needed to tonight? I guess not, because we didn't do it. Now, there's a lot of reasons for that. Some of it's inexperience. Some of it's not executing. Some of it is coaching. There's a whole bunch of reasons. But I do, I do want the fans to know, like I said when I took the job, we don't need you when we're Top-10, right. Then everybody wants to be here. They are part of building this just like we are, and I believe that our fans are awesome, and they are going to stick by us and they are going to get better, and they are going to see a lot of good football. But it's a growth process for everybody. Fans included. We're growing up. The whole program is growing up.
Q. On the injury front, Desmond Igbinosun did not dress up. Where is he at, what is his injury, and how long do you expect him to be out?
GREG SCHIANO: I'm not going to get into his injury, but I don't know exactly how long he'll be out. He'll be back this season. I don't know when. We'll see how that plays out.
Q. And you mentioned Gavin and Noah both dressing and didn't play. Is it a matter of them possibly be being able to come back next week? Are they close enough that that's possible?
GREG SCHIANO: You know what they were available you could see in an emergency, emergency way. I don't think they could play effectively tonight to win the game. That's it. So when they can play effectively to win the game, they will be back in the mix. But that's what it will be; it will be back in the mix, right. The competition will continue.
Q. With the running game, it seemed like you were getting three yards occasionally. Was that missing the blocks, or was that simply they are a really good defense?
GREG SCHIANO: Well, they are an elite defense. They are one of the top, over the last five years, top defenses, period, in America. I actually thought we did some things in the run game and early in the game. I mean, again, those turnovers for scores, we were actually moving the ball. You know, sometimes you look at your call sheet and what the heck, there's nothing on here that's working. Tonight, I didn't feel that way. I felt there was a lot of things on the call sheet that were fine. Three-yard gain, four-yard gain, four-yard gain, first down there. Was enough going on good, but we turned the ball over. And when you do that, you know, it rewrites the story immediately. So I would have liked to have seen that but you know what, that's life. Didn't happen. Again it keeps coming back to what do you do. There's no such things as missed opportunities. Someone takes it. Iowa took it. So we've got to learn to take it better.
Q. What did you think of your pass protection?
GREG SCHIANO: At times it was really good. At times I thought Evan was standing back there for a while and then delivered the ball. At other times we got whooped in a one-on-one battle and it was like this, it was on us. He showed some mobility, I think, extending plays. He's never going to be the lightning quarterback, but he really showed some ability to avoid the rush and extend the plays. He had a completion on one that I can remember and then he threw it away a couple times. Mixed bag on the protection. Some really good, and then some not so. Guys, I appreciate it. Thanks for sticking around.
Iowa Head Coach Kirk Ferentz Postgame Quotes
Opening Statement:
"This is certainly the best way to start Big Ten play. I'm really happy for our coaches and players, I thought they did a great job. It's a hostile environment and coming in here we knew it would be. I thought our guys did a good job concentrating through that, they kept their composure. Bottom line is I think we really had good team play out there, so that's always a good thing. I think we saw improvement on all three phases, at least that's my vantage point. To talk about the defense, a lot of really good efforts out there, certainly some great playmaking by our guys. Clearly the guys are really playing at a high level right now and doing a good job. The two defensive touchdowns did feel a little bit like the Indiana game, that's the last time we did that, so a lot to be pleased about there. Offensively, I think we made progress. There were some things that were better out there today. It's kind of a weird game in some ways you lose a couple possessions, nobody's going to complain about that, but I thought we did some things better. Most importantly, I think the lines were all a little bit better. We're still not as cohesive as we need to be, there's still some things going on. Rutgers did some things to make it rough on us, as well with some of their movement. It was good for our guys to weather that on a road trip, and make some progress off the back screen. Special teams continued to do a nice job. I think we played as well as we've played tonight in that regard. It was good to see the kickoff coverage, Jay Higgins, he was doing pretty well out there. I can't say enough about Tory (Taylor), two good punters in the game. By my count one in the 10 and the other three were inside of the 10, so that's a huge plus to have him do that. So, I'm just happy to get the win."
On improvements in the rushing game:
"Every step of improvement is important for us right now; it's one of our team goals. It's pretty simple, during the week you want to win the game that's in front of you, and hopefully improve. I think it's always important for our program, especially in the month of September. We talk to our players about that all the time, September is a really critical month. It's week by week, step by step. We have a lot of really good veteran players right now, and all the guys who didn't play much need a reassessment of the game. I'm just really happy to see some growth."
On Cooper DeJean and coming from a school high school:
"Small town doesn't mean anything. Athletes are athletes, and good players are good players. We've had plenty of good players from small towns. The most surprising thing about Cooper is that he really wasn't offered a scholarship by anybody. You watch what he does, he just plays good football. He's flexible in terms of position, like fielding punts, he did a nice job there too. I'm not saying it's easy, but he makes it look easy, and that's what good players do. It's really good to see."
On Terry Roberts get hurt yesterday:
"Actually, it was pregame. We thought he had a chance to go, he's been banged up a little, but we thought he had a chance to go until pregame today."
On Cooper DeJean moving to different positions:
"That to me is probably the most impressive part. He's pretty fluid with his form athletically, but the mental part to your point. There's a lot that goes into playing any position, and he does a couple, and he does it well at a really young age as a player. It's a real credit to him. Some guys are just more flexible that way than others, and I would attribute that to the fact that he's a multi-sport athlete. I also want to mention Sebastian (Castro) jumping in there. When Terry couldn't go, Sebastian's the next guy up, and he certainly made a nice play. Certainly Kaevon (Merriweather) had a really big night too.
On Leshon Williams:
"I don't know what I can say about him. He's been really steady, and clearly, it's been a really tough couple weeks for him. You feel badly for anybody to go through that, especially someone at that age. It was great to get him back, he was back with us Monday, and his attitude really never changes. It was great to see him play like he did tonight, it's what you expect from him. Nonetheless, you can't overstate what he's been through."
On Keagan Johnson and his injury:
"It's soft tissue, and there's just no way to predict how it's going to go. He was making progress, and then had a setback a week ago. We'll take it day by day, and I'll keep you posted, but there's no way to predict these based on my experience."
