Husker Defense Getting Ready for Purdue

The Nebraska football team practiced for just over two hours Tuesday morning outside on the Ed and Joyanne Gass practice fields.

Defensive coordinator Erik Chinander spoke after practice and gave his thoughts on what went wrong on the defensive side last Saturday in a 38-31 loss to Indiana.

“The problem was very clear – we didn’t get off the field on third down,” Chinander said. “We had a lot of chances. I want to say that 100 percent of the drives that they scored on, we had them in a third-and-medium or a third-and-long. We had a couple bad techniques, a couple of bad errors, but we didn’t get off the field on third down. That’s it. We did a good job (against the run). We did a good job on second (down). We couldn’t get off the field on third down.”

Chinander was asked to comment on the praise Head Coach Scott Frost gave to his staff at Monday’s press conference.

“I love football. I love Nebraska, and I love these kids. I’m going to coach them as hard as I freaking can for as long as I’m here, and I hope that’s for a really long time,” Chinander said. “This program is going to be really good. We have to find a way to make it better. There is no such thing as a quick fix. I know everybody wants it. I want it. The players want it. That’s not realistic. We have to build this program to where Coach Frost wants it. If that happens in the next four games, great. If that happens next year, that’s probably not good enough for everybody, but we’re going to keep pushing until we do it. There isn’t one person in this building that doesn’t love Nebraska.”

Chinander also talked about what he expects to see from Purdue on Saturday.

“In the run game, they do a lot of things to get a lot of different groupings in there,” he said “They are going to do many things to try to run the football. They have done a good job of finding many ways to run the football. They haven’t had a ton of success. Some of that stems from that they’re really good at creating formations to get you in a disadvantage passing.”

Nebraska will take the practice field once again tomorrow morning in preparation for the matchup against Purdue. Saturday’s game will begin at 11 a.m. central and will be televised on FOX. Fans can also listen to the game on KBBN 95.3 FM and the Husker Sports Network.

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