Post-game nuggets from Nebraska's loss at Ohio State

Here are some quick notes to pass along from Nebraska’s post-game press conference following Saturday night’s 62-3 loss at Ohio State…

***Mike Riley was very blunt about his thoughts on the loss after the game. “I’ll just start out by saying that was real bad, and we’re all responsible for it,” Riley said in his opening statement.

***Riley said he still wasn’t sure what Tommy Armstrong’s status was going forward after suffering his head injury during the second quarter.

Riley said the trainers were always very cautious when it comes to potential head/neck injuries, but after putting Armstrong through some tests they felt it was OK for him to return to the sideline in the second half.

“It’s too early to tell exactly what his situation is for next week playing football, but the good situation was that he came back out,” Riley said. “Probably we’ll find out what kind of plan we should make like that tomorrow. I don’t know that right now, but (Armstrong missing next week’s game vs. Minnesota) could be very likely.”

***Riley said the offensive struggles vs. Ohio State were nothing new, as the offense has struggled for the past month with its consistency. He said they thought they had an opportunity to attack OSU’s press man coverage with downfield passes, but admitted they probably went to those too often and got away from the running game too early.

Riley said NU had to solidify its offensive line situation going forward and also get “back to the foundation” of the offense, which is running the ball effectively.

***Riley didn’t want to use the injuries on the offensive line as an excuse for how poorly the Huskers played.

“I’m not going to go too far there,” Riley said. “I think that we expect a lot out of the guys that go in and play, and it feels like a copout statement if I was to say ‘yeah, that’s probably why that happened.’ We were beaten thoroughly in all the phases, and it really didn’t remind me of our team.”

***Riley was asked what was so different about Nebraska on Saturday night compared to how they had played through the first eight games.

“What it looked like to me was, which was very strange, I didn’t feel we played very loose,” Riley said. “I thought we were tight early. But the fact of the matter is we really couldn’t do a lot offensively and we couldn’t get them off the field defensively…

“This game came out of the blue for me.”

***Riley said it will be up to coaches and team leaders to get team to regroup next week.

“My thought is this team will respond. It’s pretty raw right now to say that, and I know it probably doesn’t look very good. But we’ve played through hard games, hard times, and played our best ball in the fourth quarters of games. I’m just going to continue to believe that’s going to be the case about how we’ll respond to get ready for the next ball game.”

***Armstrong accounted for 93 yards of total offense, including 19 rushing yards and 74 passing yards. He increased his career total to 10,254 yards, setting a new Nebraska career record in that category. He surpassed the previous record of 10,233 yards by Taylor Martinez. Armstrong set the record on a 32-yard second-quarter completion to Jordan Westerkamp.

***Armstrong moved to into a tie for ninth in Big Ten history in total offense, passing Martinez and tying Iowa’s Chuck Long (10,254 yards).

***Nebraska linebacker Josh Banderas had nine tackles, marking his fourth straight game with eight or more tackles.

***Senior safety Nathan Gerry had a season-high-tying nine tackles in tonight’s game to increase his career total to 258, good for eighth place on the Nebraska career tackles list and second among Husker defensive backs. Gerry passed Jim Wightman (254), Marc Munford (256) and Ed Stewart (257) in tonight’s game. ***Nebraska dropped to 1-4 all-time against Ohio State, including 0-4 in Columbus.

***The crowd of 108,750 was the fourth-largest ever to see a Nebraska football game.

***Westerkamp caught four passes for 51 yards. Westerkamp increased his career receptions total to 149, moving him within 17 receptions of second place on the NU career receptions list. Westerkamp increased his career yardage total to 2,289 moving him within 187 yards of second place on the NU career chart. Westerkamp caught a catch for the 33rd straight game.

***The 59-point loss was Nebraska’s largest under Riley. The previous largest margin of defeat was 10 points at Purdue last season.

***Senior running back Terrell Newby rushed for 54 yards, increasing his career total to 2,002. He is the 29th Husker with 2,000 career rushing yards.

***Junior kicker Drew Brown connected on a first-quarter field goal to give him 44 in his career, good for sole possession of third place in school history. Brown increased his career scoring total to 266 moving him past Johnny Rodgers (264) into eighth place on the NU scoring list.

***Nebraska lost consecutive road games in the same season for the first time since joining the Big Ten in 2011. The only previous time Nebraska has lost two straight Big Ten road games was the final road conference game of 2011 at Michigan and the first road Big Ten game of 2012 at Ohio State.