What Neal Brown Said Following Win Over Iowa State

Opening Statement

Appreciate you all being here. Huge win. I have a lot of respect for Iowa State and what they’ve been able to establish. A lot of respect for coach (Matt) Campbell, his entire staff and his players, especially with a 16-senior start. Those guys have been through it and have taken that program from one that was losing and have taken it all the way to the Big 12 Championship and the brink of making the playoffs. We’ve tried to emulate a lot of what they do here. To me, when you turn on the film, they’re really physical across both fronts and their attention to detail. They’re a disciplined program. A lot of respect for them.

I thought our crowd was huge, on third downs, fourth downs and at the end of the game. That’s special. I talked to our guys about that in the locker room just now, if you could bottle that feeling that you have when you sing country roads. I think it’s the best tradition in college football, followed up with the celebration with those guys in the locker room. If they could bottle and sell it, it’d be priceless. All the work that goes into it, makes it worth it. I’m proud of our staff and our players and how they responded. Not only were we 2-4 and we fought our way back here to 4-4, but within the last two games that we’ve won, we’ve responded. In the first half when they scored, we’d responded (with scores). If you can match score for score, that’s huge in the momentum within a football game.

Offensively, we played 76 plays, and we had the ball for 35 minutes. The thing that’s huge about that this year is that they (Iowa State) were between 50 and 60 plays. That’s where the opponents’ offenses were getting, and we went out and ran 76 plays and held the ball for 35 minutes (against Iowa State). I thought (redshirt senior quarterback) Jarret Doege was huge. You’re talking about a guy who’s gotten beaten up here, a little unjustly. I think quarterbacks get too much credit and too much blame. He battled. What a performance. I think we need to make sure we’re talking about that. (Redshirt junior wide receiver) Bryce Ford-Wheaton, what growth we’ve seen with him in three years. He has a drop that turns into an interception, and then he comes back and makes huge plays. So proud of him. Our offensive line is getting better. (Redshirt junior tight end) T.J. Banks isn’t going to show up a whole lot on the stat sheet, but he played by far his best game, with (redshirt junior tight end) Mike O’Laughlin being out. We’re going to continue to need that.

We finished on defense. If you think about it, we’ve been in that scenario that we just went through in the final drive. Against Oklahoma, we had a chance to get off the field on defense and we didn’t. We had a chance versus Texas Tech to get off the field and we didn’t. Well today, we had the chance to finish the game, and we finished the game on defense. So much credit needs to go to our older guys. (redshirt senior safety) Sean Mahone, (redshirt senior safety) Alonzo Addae bounced back and played big. (redshirt junior cornerback).

Jackie Matthews battled. (senior linebacker) Josh Chandler-Semedo was all over the field today. (Senior defensive lineman) Dante Sills was tired but was able to finish. (Redshirt junior defensive lineman) Taijh Alston, I could keep going. Our older guys stepped up on that last drive.

On Jarret Doege’s performance

I just thought he played well. I thought he played extremely well, and he knew he had to play well coming into the game. Sometimes that makes it even harder. They’re really good on rush defense. Their defensive line is really physical, and they use their hands. Oklahoma State runs the ball as good as anybody in the country, and they did okay (against Iowa State’s defense). So, we knew we were going to have to throw the ball to win. We mixed it up and played a lot of quick game early. They went to some cloud corner and took that away. We went to some deep balls. He played like that in fall camp. In games, he’s had three or four critical mistakes that we haven’t been able to overcome. Today, he really just had one mistake. We missed a couple throws, but when you throw it 50 times, you’re going to miss one high or low. He had a few of those, but he only had one critical mistake. Outside of that, his ability to respond is huge, too. He played extremely well. He’s still number one in the Big 12 in passing.

On the defense’s attack on Iowa State’s offense

In fairness, we spent a lot of time on them. We changed our offseason program after they dominated us last year in that game in December. From the time we came back in late January and started our offseason program all the way through fall camp, we had that 42-6 score (around the facility) and talked about how we have to get bigger, stronger and more physical. A year ago, it was domination on the front. This week, we didn’t talk about that game one time. We told our guys we are going to have a new season that starts during our bye week, and we’re not going to rewind on previous games. We’re not going to flash forward. We’re going to stay in the moment. We really concentrated on the offseason. We spent a lot of time on offense and defense, putting together a plan. We tweaked them a little bit this week. They (Iowa State) are really difficult.

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