Post-Game Quotes: Montana State at Northern Colorado

Recap | Notes

Head Coach Scott Downing
"We played a really good football team today. We obviously have some things we have to correct on offense. We're a little bit beat up on offense, but when we put a guy in the game he's got to produce in there, particularly at this level. Our hats' are off to Montana State. I thought they played very, very well. I was proud of the way our guys came out after halftime. We talked to them about ‘Don't let anybody say you didn't finish the game playing hard.' I thought we played hard the second half, but we do have some things we need to clean up and take care of."

"It's very clear, we have seven starters out on offense. I mean, that would be something where a young guy has to step up and make a play. You don't want to use that as an excuse, but that's the reality. I don't know if there's anyone in the country that can play with seven starters out, and go out and put 400 yards on somebody, but we have to do what we do. We have to continue to work with the young guys. There were times out there that we had three wide receivers that are all true freshmen playing and we got some backup offense linemen in there so we'll do what we can and we've got to get better."

How do you make sure the young guys are focused
"We're going to take a look at the film. We'll obviously see what we did right, see what we did wrong, see if it's something where we can simplify it so they can execute it a little easier. Again, they're players that have excellent athleticism, they're just young and they have to go out and instead of running a route at six yards they have to run the route at 12. We have to execute the right things on offense and I thought our coaches came up with a really good plan today, but obviously we didn't get it done and I take nothing away from Montana State. They had a couple of guys up there on the front that got after us; kicked our tail. We threw a lot of different blocking schemes at them and we still couldn't block them so today they were better than we were."

On defense
"I thought for as much as they were on the field they played pretty good. We didn't get a lot of turnovers or anything like that. They (Montana State) had 70 plays for 350 yards so I would have liked to see them get off the field a few times when they were able to get some drives off. There were several times where they (MSU) had a short field and we held them to a field goal. I thought we played solid on defense we just couldn't create any points and that's something that we're going to have to solve. We gotta get some points on the board we can't rely on the defense to shut everybody out.

On Dylan Orms (sophomore quarterback)
"I thought Dylan went in and did what he does best. He ran the ball and we ran some option with him. He kept it and made some people miss, but it's something we're going to have to take a look at and evaluate his performance as well. There's a couple of times where had he pitched the ball we may have had a big hit or we may have been in the endzone a little bit faster. But yet again, coming off the bench like he did I thought he had a pretty good command of the offense and certainly led us into the score which was good.

On bad snaps
"Alex Shapiro is a good center and he usually is spot on. He's had great snaps all year long and he had a couple of bad ones today. We're going to have to take a look at a lot of things because we have a lot of games left to make adjustments. Whether it's how we practice or plays we're calling and when, how we're doing things. We'll just take a look at it and see. For us, we've got seven games left in an 11 game season so there's a lot of time left and a lot of time to improve. A lot of time for young guys to grow up so that's the good thing we bring out of this game."

Senior quarterback Bryan Waggener
"They had good defense, we have to give them that respect. They came out and shut us down on offense. We struggled to make blocks and some other things when we really needed to so we didn't execute and they're a solid defense."

"We kind of never got it going today. We had some drops, we had some missed plays and some missed assignments and it really hurt us. We couldn't get on track today so we're going to have to come back, practice hard and get ready to go next week."

On MSU's front four
"It's always tough. You don't have the most time to throw, it's hard to get balls off and get guys open. They did a great job of batting balls down and things like that. They just made it tough for us today."

"We've got six offensive starters hurt right now, so that's one of those things we've just come out prepared for it every week and try to overcome that. We need other guys to step up and get going."

Junior running back Andre Harris
"Their front four was giving us a lot of pressure, making our lineman work and our linemen really didn't step up to the plate really."

Junior cornerback Korey Askew
"We can't worry about what the offense is doing. We have a goal we set out and we have to get our goals done first and then the team will come together. We can't worry about anyone but ourselves right now."