Aug. 28, 2007

Head coach Joe Novak and juniors Larry English, Tim McCarthy and Dan Nicholson met with the media to discuss the "GEICO Soldier Field Showdown" season-opener against Iowa on Saturday afternoon. The transcript of Tuesday's press conference is below.

Head Coach Joe Novak

Opening Statement: "I think you have all heard this speech before. It's time to play and we are all very excited. We have had three very good weeks of preparation and we are a lot better football team than we were three weeks ago. How good that is? I do not know, but I do know that we have made some improvements. We are anxious to play and we are relatively healthy. We do have a few kids that are still on the bubble, but other than that, I believe we are ready to go."

On NIU's familiarity with Iowa following last season's game. "We obviously know a couple of things and people obviously do not change an entire system from one year to the next and I expect [Iowa] to do as well as they have for the last seven or eight years. We are very excited that their quarterback Christensen played against us, that is the only game that he started all year. We had a chance to get a feel for [Christensen] knowing that he came from right down the road from us in Lockport. We are familiar with him and what he can do. I do not see this match-up being a big deal, unless they are changing wholesale or we are changing wholesale. I know that we aren't and I don't think they are. I really think that it is all about feeling ourselves out. What can we do? What are we good at? Where are we in our division? Then again, we are never sure until we have played a game or two and that's why this Iowa game is going to be good for us. We will be able to evaluate our team very well too. They always say you make your biggest adjustments from game one to game two, because practice doesn't always tell you that as much as you would like."

On playing Big Ten teams early in the season: "There is two ways of looking at it. If you catch them early, they might not be at their peak yet or they can be as healthy as can be. It could be the same for us. It really is the luck of the draw. I really do not spend a whole lot of time looking and thinking about this because it does not matter to me."

On thoughts about Iowa QB Christensen: "For his first and only start, I felt that he really played well against us [last season]. For a young kid starting his first game, he played extremely well. He is a little kid he can move around a lot on you and he can certainly throw the football. He just does not have the two-year experience under his belt. I think he is certainly more than capable"

On the NIU running back situation: "As of right now, I would like to give all three of our running backs an opportunity. If Montell [Clanton] starts off well and if things are going well, we are still going to play the other ones, but we will be quick to go back to [Clanton]. It's going to be who is hot and who is doing well. We want to give all three of them a chance. It is a change for us to feel all those kids out. I have a pretty good feel for Montell and Justin [Anderson] and Chad [Spann] is fine as well. We will see.

On using two running backs at the same time: A lot of people tell me we should run a two-back offense. The moving tight end that we use could be a lot of guys. That tight end is a second back. He moves around and gives us a lot of flexibility so we actually do have a lot of two-back offense with a non-stationary tight end. And that tight end could be played by a running back, we don't know. I think we are doing more of that than people give us credit for."

On the Huskies being a "Mystery Team": "We have found out a lot of things, and I am still uncertain about some other things. We are always going to have things like that. We have a lot of kids that have played a lot of football and we have many of them coming back. We have got some talented youngsters that haven't had a chance to really do anything like Garrett Wolfe, Doug Free, and Sam Hurd. Until they actually do it on the game field on gameday, it is still a mystery. Last year we had all that hype with Garrett and Doug Free rightfully so, but we have a bunch of no-namers. That doesn't mean that they are bad players, doesn't mean that they won't be very productive, but right now we just have to wait and see. I have a better feel for this team, but until we go out there [on the field]. I will find out a lot then, I will find a lot out in the next couple of weeks. The kids know what's out there and what is being said that we are a no-name team and we haven't got a chance. Some kids probably do not care and some others may get charged up on that."

On The Huskies being `over-hyped' playing at Soldier Field: "I want them to be excited, have a good time and relax. This program and these kids have played in games like this before, most of our players played at Iowa last year. We have been there and done that. I want them to be excited and they will be. These kids put in so many hours for so many days and they only get paydays twelve times a year. If they are not excited when they play even Delta Tech, there is something wrong. You only play twelve times so if you can't get excited for that then you should be doing something else."

On NIU's offensive line progressing through the preseason and preparing for Iowa's defensive line: "[Iowa's] defensive front is outstanding. Those kids have been around and it's their third year starting for most of them. I know Bryan Mattison for them is an outstanding athlete. I heard about him playing over in the South Bend area and Kent High School. There are many guys over at Iowa just like him.

"Our offensive line has made some progress but we are talking about one senior out of fifteen kids so I do get a little concerned about our endurance, toughness and our mental game, but we have to wait until Saturday. I am concerned that Iowa is quite physical up front and we are not quite to that point yet. It's going to be interesting and it is going to be very important. We can talk about running great plays and passing the ball all over the field, but if you can't hold them up front then that's not going to happen."

On players availability for competition Saturday: "Tim McCarthy is still questionable, but we will see where he is at later this week. Jeff Fontana is questionable and we will know more here in a couple of days and we will go from there and play who's there. We hope to have these guys, but if we can't we will be prepared to go a different direction."

On growth of Nicholson, does he have to be a gambler?: "The thing I love about Dan is he feels he can make every throw there is. That's good and bad. He's getting better at making his choices the more he plays and he's understanding that. He's become very competitive and the kids look to him as their leader. He's a south side Irishman. These types of people are tough guys they are blue collar and they know how to play football. This will make him a good leader but we will have to see how he makes his decisions on Saturday. He can certainly make good throws but he certainly can't force them."

On just sticking with Iowa going to be enough for the team: "This is a program that very seldom gets blown out, except for the bowl game last year. If you go back to the Illinois game a couple years ago, the Wisconsin game, and even the Michigan game two years ago, nobody has just knocked us out of the box, nobody. I mean we have to play, we have to make plays, and the coaches have to make the right decisions, but we have to go in their believing we can win the ball game. If we were playing Southern Cal [USC] I would tell you the same thing, but you know you always have a chance and you never know what can happen. I always refer back to Alabama and Maryland. Who gave us a chance in those games? Who believed we could win those ones? Our kids didn't listen to the people that didn't believe. We are going to Soldier Field on Saturday to win that football game."

On the crowd to expect Saturday: "I expect to see more Iowa people there than us and that is fine, but it's still not as bad as going to Iowa City where it is ninety eight percent [Iowa fans]. When the game is played, it doesn't matter. If the kids are playing properly and they are focused, that is not going to make a difference. I think it will be very exciting for both teams to play and it will be very exciting for their kids as well. They have been practicing and working out all year and they are going to be anxious to play just like us."

On the defense for this year: "We might not be able to make a play when it is there or we might miss a play, but I love guys who are team coordinated and play hard. There is a lot of good chemistry with this defensive group and more athleticism than in years past, but we have to make plays and the opponents we are playing have to make them too. Our approach, our enthusiasm, our chemistry, I like all those things but we have to be willing to execute the tackle. You can technically do everything right but you have to make the tackle.

Junior defensive end Larry English

On facing Iowa: "All of us are going into this game with a chip on our shoulder. There will be no hesitation or any intimidation coming from us whatsoever. We're going into this game thinking we have a really good chance of winning it and that's what we're going to try and do."

On personal goals: "I don't have a goal in terms of numbers. My biggest goal is to win this game. Whatever I need to do individually to help this team is what I'm going to do. The main individual goal is always to improve game-by-game or even more so, snap-by-snap."

On opposing teams game-planning for him: "If [other teams] feel they need to double-team me, we have three other good defensive players on that line who can make some plays as well."

Junior quarterback Dan Nicholson

On facing Iowa: "On the offensive side of the ball, we know that we did not have a lot of success against [Iowa] last year. We're really to try and change that this year. We're excited and ready to go."

On playing at Soldier Field in Chicago: "You couldn't ask for anything more. Playing a Big Ten team to start off the season at Soldier Field in front of a sold-out crowd in Downtown Chicago, you can't ask for a better place to play. It's a great opportunity."

On game-planning for Iowa: "We've really studied last year's game hard. We know that a lot of the focus last year was on Garrett Wolfe, so it's really hard to say exactly what they're going to do defensively. What we do know is that they have a great defensive front four and that's the key to their defense. They have two great defensive ends and we really feel like we're going to have to a good job on those guys in order to be successful."

On the Huskie Running Back situation: "I'm very confident in the guys we have at running back. They're going to do some great things for us. People haven't seen a lot of them, because we had Garrett [last year] and he had the bulk of the carries. These are good players and we're real excited to see what they can do for us. They're all a little bit different, but they all add something to our offense."

Junior linebacker Tim McCarthy

On facing Iowa: "We've prepared real well for Iowa. We've faced Iowa last year. We're raring to go and looking for that `W'."

On playing at Soldier Field in Chicago: "This is a great team that we're playing in a great facility in downtown Chicago. We're looking forward to starting the season off right and I think we've prepared ourselves as a team. We're going to play hard and have fun."

On the Huskie Defense: "We've been real enthusiastic in practice, meshing as a team. Everyone is working hard. The main factor is that we're having fun. We know our main goals for this season and we're going to strive for those goals."