NIU Football
Postgame Quotes
NIU vs. Akron
October 26, 2019

NIU Head Coach Thomas Hammock

On the game…
"I'm proud of the effort of your young men. These guys have been grinding the last few weeks to continue to get better and follow the message of the way we prepare and the way we practice. That's indicative of how we play, and we played a clean football game for the most part. There's some things we need to get better on that we'll evaluate tomorrow and improve on against Central Michigan." 

"Our players practiced well, and I know what these guys are doing week in and week out, and if you play clean football you give yourself a chance to be explosive in that dynamic." 

On the running game…
"My goal was to run it 50 times a day. We knew the weather was going to be a factor, and we wanted to give it a chance to lean on our offensive line and our running backs, and those guys came through. They played well." 

On Marcus Childers' performance…
"I like the ability to give him a run, pass option to where he can see the throws in face and if he doesn't like it, he has the option to mobile. He did a nice job managing the game. In those conditions there was no need to take a risky play just be smart and keep advancing." 

On the defense…
"Our defense and our young players are really improving. We see it in practice and our young guys – if given an opportunity – are going to make plays. I was impressed with the Nick's run after the catch – we certainly may need to use him on offense – Devin Haney the same thing, the run after the catch. He looked good with the ball in his hands. Our goal is to get the ball in their hands and make picks and create fumbles. We a couple of balls on the ground that we could've picked up, but with the defense that we have and the guys we have out there playing, you can see the real potential." 

NIU senior offensive lineman Christopher Perez Jr. 

On the running game…
"Coming into the game we were like 'guys it's going to rain so we're running the ball and obviously with Ross not playing today and having Marcus back we were like 'yeah we're for sure running the ball' and that's nothing against Marcus but I love it because it's not just Tre or Marcus or Nettles. Having Marcus and knowing he can play and do different reads it's very beneficial. So, we were talking about putting it in four-wheel drive from the beginning."


Akron Head Coach Tom Arth

On his team's performance…
"We did some good things, I thought our offensive line played really hard. There were some opportunities to run the football - which we did at moments - but all in all, we missed a lot of tackles."

On dealing with the weather conditions…
"[In the elements] NIU didn't have any issues moving the football or throwing it, so it's an issue with us and we need to handle it better."

On the challenges in facing NIU…
"They're [NIU] a physical team, they play really physically inside, they're really aggressive coming off the ball and they get on you quickly. We expected that and we prepared for that … we just didn't tackle as well as we've tackled the last couple weeks."

On his team's struggles in the passing game…
"Football is a game of execution. It's a game of coming out there and knowing your assignment, executing your assignment. And if you do that better than the team across from you, you're successful and we didn't do that."