What David Braun said after Northwestern lost to No. 4 Oregon

EVANSTON, Ill. — Northwestern lost to No. 4 Oregon 34-14 Saturday afternoon at Martin Stadium.

David Braun recapped the second loss of the season for the Wildcats (1-2), who are off next week and travel to UCLA on Sept. 27.

Below is a transcript of Braun’s postgame press conference.

DAVID BRAUN

“I want to open up and I know all of us are here to talk about the game. There’s plenty to talk about but got to be honest with you, it’s been on my heart the last couple of weeks, raising three kids, those that know me know that I try and stay off social media and stay as present as I possibly can with our football team and my family. But being a dad over the last five years I think we can all admit there’s some things going on in our world that sometimes make you question humanity a little bit. I want to be really clear, this isn’t a political statement. Anybody that knows me knows that I have no political affiliations or alliances. To me show me someone that’s truly there to serve the people, then they have my vote but political rhetoric doesn’t resonate with me. The thing I wanted to share that I think is something that’s jsut on my heart, it probably comes from my personal journey, is if there’s people out there that are hurt, they’re broken, they’re searching, I know my life made a radical transformation when I decided to commit my life to Jesus Christ. In a rold that’ kind of crazy right now I’m going to keep focusing on this football team. I’m going keep focusing on my family. I’m prayerful that in a world that feels more and more divided every day that we have opportunities, specifically around the game of football, things that I can control to come together.

“That being said, disappointed with the result today. It’s one of those things that it would be really - I first want to acknowledge Oregon. We got our butts kicked by a really good football team. We got our butts kicked. And Oregon is yes, a really good football team. Ultimately we set out this week with a mission to find a way to beat Oregon. We failed in that mission. I want our guys to keep their heads up. I want them to stay the course and be confident that there’s bright things ahead for this football team. But also we need to acknowledge and certainly not be satisfied with hey, we played really hard. Yeah, we played hard. But we didn’t execute at a high level. We need to do a better job as a coaching staff, starting with me, of identifying truly who this football team is putting our team in situations to get a game like this to the fourth quarter to be within striking distance. You can point out a few plays in the first half that could have kept it close. To me that’s a loser’s mentality. Oh if we changed these five plays, well we can’t change those five plays. Ultimately, we went in the game saying we need to win the rushing battle, we said we needed to win the turnover margin and we needed to create an edge on special teams. If you look a the stat line we won the rushing battle but ultimately we didn’t win it until that explosive play by Dashun Reeder. We had opportunities to win the rushing battle, got to limit that explosive play, the first play for our defense in the third quarter. We didn’t win the turnover battle. You can’t beat teams like Oregon when you don’t win the turnover battle. You’re not going to give yourself a shot. On special teams we did give ourselves an edge in my opinion. Joe Himon’s return, I thought our coverage units did a good job. But there is an opportunity for us to go back and evaluate and say who are as a football team and as a coaching staff how do we put this team in position to do it the Wildcat way. We’ve won a lot of games over the course of time here at Northwestern of getting it into the fourth quarter and finding ways to win in the fourth quarter. We didn’t give ourselves a chance to do that today. Opportunity for all of us to learn and grow. We got our butts kicked by a really good football. I still believe we have a good football team in that locker room that has a lot of bright things ahead. Opportunity for us to get to a bye week, hopefully get some guys healthy, and have a great weekend and a half of prep for UCLA.”

On the 40-yard pass and the offense’s ability to generate explosive plays:

“Ball was a little bit under-thrown. That’s the thing is, every ball’s not going to be perfect. In those situations, Preston has to trust that his wide receiver is going to out-compete a DB for the ball and that’s what Drew Wagner did. To be honest with you, I think we got to be aware of chasing explosive plays. If you look at our sequencing, we’re driving - I think it was that first drive and we try and chunk off an explosive with a trick play. Well, the one we’re running the ball a first down that could have led to second and five ultimately led to a second and 10 and now we’re kind of out of sequence. That third and one first drive of the second half, we get it to third and one, I understand the play ball from Zach from a standpoint of hey this is an opportunity (with) tight coverage to take a shot and score a touchdown. I understand all those things, but the way that we were running the ball, and reevaluating maybe it’s better just to run the ball and go pickup a first down. We take a play-action shot, it turns into a sack, it turns it into fourth and 10, field spacing, where we are on the field and the field zone and the points we’re down, we end up going for it on fourth and 10. Is that the best way to start off and put our defense in maybe not the best spot? Do we need to find explosive plays? We do. I believe Griffin had one today, Drew had one today. But those explosives that started to show up, Dashun, it’s just executing our I don’t say routine, but our routine offense. It’s something that we have to evaluate because the way we’re operating on offense right now, if we stay ahead of the chains and our sequencing is right, we’re moving the ball. Whether you look back at Tulane or you look at late first quarter, second quarter against Western Illinois, or you look at Oregon today where we’ve put ourselves in bad spots and sputtered out is we get off that sequencing and we’ve got second and 10 or second and 11. It’s something that we’re going to have to evaluate.”

On going for fourth down four times:

“Part of the plan beyond the three bullet points I mentioned earlier, we understood No. 1 if we want to score points on offense I as a head coach have to get over some of my brain that’s wired like a defensive coach. I think I’ve grown in that area. Some of it is just general thought process as a program. Specifically for Oregon, we knew we’d have to find a way to steal a couple of possessions. How can you do that? It’s fourth down conversions. I believe on the first series we had a fourth down pickup. That fourth down’s important. We knew Oregon had the ability and would past the 50, go for it on fourth down. if we get a fourth down stop, that’s as good as a turnover. We knew that we were going to have to create some possession by being aggressive and then executing on defense. To answer your question directly, if was definitely part of the thought process of how do we position ourselves to beat a team that’s the caliber of Oregon.”

On running game’s effectiveness:

“I don’t want to sit here and pat ourselves on the back. But at the same time, that’s a really good defense and a really good defensive line. Not taking any shots at Oregon, but I thought we did a good job of consistently putting our backs in positions to carry the football. Dashun late in the game against whether they had their starters in or not, aside from that carry, shoutout to Dashun, stayed ready, got his opportunity and executed. Great job young man. Even leading up to that, there was never a point where I didn’t feel like we weren’t able to establish the line of scrimmage. If there was one disappointing juncture in today’s game it was the third and one that led to fourth and one that led to a stop on fourth and one and our defense had to start that series inside the 10.”

On Preston Stone:

“We can’t turn the ball over and the ball can’t be on the ground. di dhe make some nice throws, even on the fourth and 10 that Ricky’s got a chance to make that play? I think you can evaluate some plays and say you know what kid, good job. And you can look at some plays like man, this can’t happen. That’s three weeks in a row that the ball has been on the ground. It can’t happen. We can’t turn the ball over against a team the caliber of Oregon. It’s not part of the equation for us to winning football games. I think there’s things to acknowledge in terms of like hey, nice job kid, well done. And there’s some stuff that has to get fixed.”

On their offensive play-calling process:

“I’m the decision-maker on all of that. I’m giving that information to Zach early on in that sequencing, of hey, you got four downs in this range. If we get this to X, fourth and X amount, you know you got to go. That puts him in a position to sequence out his play-calling throughout those four plays. Ultimately part of the plan was certainly not to go for it on fourth and one on the minus-10, but it was like you know what if we’re going to give ourselves one last chance in this football game, it’s fourth and one, let’s put in on the O-line, let’s go. That’s my decision. Where I’ve grown is my communication with Zach in game has been much more proactive, which comes down to a lot of hard work we put in this offseason sitting down with analytics and stalking as a staff for how we can position ourselves for that.”

-- James Crepea covers the Oregon Ducks and Big Ten.

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