1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Nebraska Beats Cincinnati 20-17: August 29th, 11:00am

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

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Friday victory. Boom. In a minute since we could put those words together. A Husker football post win, boom. Outta boy. Outta boy. That's all like, that's all that I'm walking out of those street. Outta boy.

Outa boy. Also remember before we get into all the particulars, there's a particular vibe that, needs to be set today yes yes sir be to the city that is the adrenaline pump that is the standard that is the vibe and mood march together feel good about yourself how are you dumb it's a dub it's a dub well done boys well done that's the first thing to say everything else you say after that with, bad a boy.

It is, we, we are both. Lack of sleep drunk. We are. That's how much we love y'all. Austin, what time did you go to sleep? So, funny enough, I got home about,

about two o'clock, sat on the couch, tried to prepare some things for today just while I was still awake. Yeah. Well, I'm on the couch, and turns out it's 545, all of a sudden.

So then I quick go upstairs just tell my wife, yeah, I did come home last night. Brah, like it was, it was, it was interesting because in trying to find a calming effect, usually after shows, it takes me, it takes me 45 minutes an hour to unwind, right, to let the, the, the adrenaline dump, uh, wear off, right? And I'm proud. of myself, I had a win last night because my thing would have been to go home and just find a snack, like half a sandwich or something. I didn't do that. I was just, look at you being a grownup. Look at you being a grown up. But we finally got through four to four, six, four, five, six, eight five, you want to be a part of the show. The Sardahamahman check, text line. If you want to be a part

of what we're doing, you can. You can follow on the live, all the live video streams, Facebook, YouTube, X, Allo Channel 961. Download the ticket app. I'm just going to keep saying it, because I need for y'all do this. Download the ticket app. Follow the ticket on all social streams. If you don't have us, take a moment. Austin and I can pause for you to find the ticket app and the ticket social media and follow. Pause.

Cool. Okay. Now that that's being done, we appreciate you greatly. Austin Norman, the first hour of this wonderful, wonderful Friday show is brought to us by whom. to build we got all sorts of wonderful people to thank most importantly hamilton telecommunications really big thanks to them everything that they do for us here at the ticket and this 11 o'clock hour it is uh the in full right that at the top of the list of of of expectation and and desired results at the top of the pyramid and i was talking about buddy very thompson they they had their first game

last thing how to go dub So in a unique twist. So my high school is a public school, but it's like one of the smallest big schools. But we share facility. It's our facility, first of all. But we share it with, so imagine Lincoln High. We are Lincoln High.

Pious decides they want to play on your field, right? Then over the course of time, now, they're, O'Connell Catholic is battling with DeMath, like the big, the big, big, big, big, big, big, big boys. So imagine Pious travels to Lincoln to face one another. My house school beat its private school locker mate.

They beat them 5524. This is the place, this is where Eric, Matt Catt tortured defenses for the four years. So we take some great pride. One, because a lot of my county records were broken by said Eric McCath. So I'm a little bitter. I'm a little bitter. Well, we were talking about yesterday.

I thought I was a pretty good punt returner. We all do until, until you see Eric Beckcalf return a punt or a kickoff. And you go, no, I wasn't doing that. I was good. I, that's Eric Metcalf. Hey, wait a minute. Listen, I was happy when Howard University came to see me play on the same field and the same stands. He had Texas, Alabama, Georgia.

I was like, nope, not the same. Not the same. I was a pretty good long jumper in high school. Pretty good. Metcalfe. Metcalfe was a foot and a half longer than I was, man. And let me tell you, you know, I was pretty quick. I thought I was pretty quick.

I wasn't Eric Mancalf quick. And so getting a win. But what Barry said was they walked into the middle of this thing with the intention of the dub. The dub is important. The dub comes first. The W comes first. And so all the schemes and all of the personnel decisions and all the things that go left or right, ultimately every decision should be based on,

based on the ultimate result, which is the win. And we have to say that. Like we have to say that. Dylan could have had 300 yards passing. Emmett could have had 150 rushing. The defense could have had three sacks. You could have had three interceptions. You could have a punt return and a kickoff return.

But if you lost the game, none of that other stuff matters. None of the other stuff matters. And this program has spent a ton of time recent years. fighting that. I think that's a good place to start this conversation because this is a fan-based DEP that has gotten so used to, number one, doom and gloom,

everything sucks and it's bad, or, oh, what are the positives we can take out of losses? Yeah, they lost the game, but look at this, but look over here.

Here's the hope to the future. Last night was the opposite vibe. I felt like Husker fans should have been happier, at least the ones that we heard from. We had madder than a hornet's nest multiple times last night. We had some engagement.

incredible, incredible calls. Go back and check out the post game if you missed it. But Husker fans are still, I think, so used to the, can you find the positives in a loss? That's what they're accustomed to that yesterday they had a chance to, we're not saying celebrate like Nebraska won the national championship, but there was very little reveling in the victory. You know, a week one victory, it sounds like a lot of people on our text line

and in our phone bank were more concerned about picking out the negatives from a win. People, Nebraska's 1 and 0. No, it wasn't pretty. Yeah, they got stuff to work on, but it's okay to be okay with a win for the win's sake. Well, here's, here's my vantage on it was also this. There's nothing else.

The win is the thing. The win is the thing. And you can't win them all day. They do all the prognostication. You can't win 10. You can't go 10 to 2 if you don't win the first one. Like you can't go on a feed and you don't win the first one. The mission was,

install, introduce install, highly repetition, find out successful points of coaching and play, figuring out what you can execute on high repetition. Did the teaching land? And then you put in the game plan for week one to beat Cincinnati. Literally at the top of the board,

big letters beat Cincinnati. beat Cincinnati. And ideally you have in play. You know what? 300 yards rushing passing is as a North Star. Kind of a standard. You know, that's a lighthouse down the road. Okay. We'd all like to run. We'd all like to sleep eight hours. Sometimes it's not ideal. Sometimes it doesn't happen that way. We'd like to eat three healthy meals a day. We'd like to be healthy about it. We'd like to get 30 minutes of exercise. We'd like to. Life happens. It does. But when you make it through the day, at the end, end of the day. Did you make it through the day? And as AD says, you got the wake up call.

You won. You won. Everything else you can fix, adjust. You know what? We'll tee it up and try it tomorrow. If we said a month ago, Nebraska wins 20 to 17, they're one and no. Nothing else matters. Now, you can get to, okay, then what do the numbers mean? But you have to say first, Nebraska, figured out a way to beat, yes, a non-con, but a Big 12 football team. You beat a Big 12 football team. They got the 105, too. They got the 105, too, right? I mean, they got fans too.

I mean, Travis Kelsey, you don't think he's about to be the GM of Cincinnati Bearcats football? We know that. We know that. You know, he's got resources. Look, that won't be the last time that team plays. isn't in our head stadium. Right.

Right. We understand that. But as we used to tell our people, when we went on the road, we always would make a sign. Dear host, thank you for the party. Thank you for receiving us.

Thank you for inviting all of your women. Thank you for all the food, all the drink. Thank you for all the celebratory things you're going to do. We appreciate it. We're going to take this dub and go home. Thank you. Casey, thank you, Cincinnati.

Thank you for hosting this fine event. Thanks for the barbecue. Thanks for the camaraderie and the unity. Thank you for allowing the Sea of Red to be in a place that is we actually want to be. And then, oh, by the way, thanks for the dub. And you can go through and bang your head against the wall if you want. I'm not one of those people because I know you can do everything. Matt Rule and this staff could have done everything perfectly

leading up to this thing and it could go laugh. We know that. That's the recent history. That you know what? Did you do everything you can do? You can't go out and you can't bewitched, crinkle your nose and bring back Ty Robinson Jr. You can't get another Nash hutmaker.

It doesn't work that way. You have to play. You got to dance. is with the girl that brought you. That's just, this is what it is. And yeah, you can spend your offseason talking about recruiting and development and all those things. But you put young defensive linemen out there and said, go at it, boys.

Go at it. Right? We don't know what the intention was. Were you trying to pressure him, pressure Cincinnati's quarterback? Or were you trying to contain him? What's the Berman line? You can't hope to. stop them you could only hope to contain them to win the game.

Can you do enough to win the game? And the numbers say you did enough to win the game. That's the result. And of course you want it more comfortably. You don't like three point wins because they make you sit on the edge of your seat. But guess what? No one said it was going to be easy. Nobody.

It's one of those things that just cracked me up about about Husker fans is last year. Oh, just get to six and six. Just get to a bowl game. Guess what Nebraska does? they get to six and six and they get to a bowl game. Well, I didn't want to look like that. Well, guess what? That's what mediocre football looks like last year.

That's what plain Jane smack dab average football looks like. One really great unit, one really bad unit. I guess you got to throw a special teams in the mix as well. Last year looked like a six and 16. But could we tell that after one game? But here's the thing. Do we know what was asked of that defensive line? A lot.

Do we know? A lot. Did they say, hey, we're going to ask you to stay in your lane. We're going to ask you to apply pressure. What were they told to do? More importantly, what were they coached to do? And then in what was taught, then it was we need to figure out how to hold Cincinnati to 17 points. Or what if they said, hey, our defensive target is to hold Cincinnati below 20 points to win the game.

because that's the thing. And people, if you haven't been in those rooms, you don't know that from a scheme standpoint, from a mentality standpoint, from a mission standpoint, you can say our mission is to hold this team. We need to keep them out of the end zone more than, we don't want three touchdowns, right? We don't want three touchdowns.

That we can scheme. You know what? We're going to keep you in front. We're going to keep you within the hash. marks, right? We're going to keep you to where we have more numbers defensively. We'll let our playmaking linebackers bring him to the ground. As long as he doesn't bang his head on the goalposts, it will call it a successful play. That may be the mission because, quite frankly, if I'm defensively scheming against

Cincinnati, that's what I would have done. Stay in your, I've told this story about defending DeMorne Pearson in high school, that he was their quarterback. Now, imagine DeMoney Piercenell exactly in the Cincinnati offense. That was his team's offense. They would drop back. They would spread the defensive lineback. They'd have a spy or two. And then our mission was this half the field, this linebacker, look, you need to be active

and spying DeMorne if he gets outside. Do not let him outside. Defense of end set the edge. If DeMorne is going to step up into the pocket, I need a linebacker there. If I hold him to five or six yards, It's a win. What I don't want is DeMorne's spreading us out. The receivers run down.

We're in man coverage. Everybody's got their backs of turn to them. You know what? DeMorne's to the house. Why? Because for three years, we had to defend this kid. We knew. We knew.

And from a defensive scheme, you said, here's what we want to do. Now, two of those years, the job the mission wasn't accomplished. Because, oh, we forgot. we have to set the same rules when he's playing safety and we throw a pass. Well, we didn't have the boundaries in place with our offensive linemen. So two touchdowns.

Hey, man, that's how it works. The mission, when you know that we don't have five, 330 pound defensive linemen, tells you we have to be active. We have to be a nuisance. We have to be in his way, right? they made it uncomfortable for him when he dropped back to pass. His passing game stats are terrible. 13 of 25, less than 70 yards and interception.

You did your job. You did your job. You held them to 17 points. You held him to 70 yards passing. And whatever nickel and dime stuff he got dropping back. But remember, most of those were on third down and they weren't fatal. They were three of ten on third. down and here's the best part.

They can get better. That's the thing that I don't understand. Did you expect to see Nebraska come out and look like a national championship contender in week one? Sure, you wanted it. But for all the people I heard say, well, we were sold a bill of goods. This isn't what I expected. This wasn't what was advertised. You weren't listening.

Who, yeah, who were you listening to? Who was saying that? All off-season long. Please tell us who was selling you that bill of goods because it wasn't us. Stop listening to them. Like, we were trying to tell you, Listen, we did not have the data to say. Now, we hadn't seen the group together. Now that we've seen the regret it,

we also have to understand that that group's style of play last night was just their style of play last night against that offense. There will be adjustments made. The run fits will be different, right? Maybe some different pressure will be put on defensive vats going forward. Do we think all Big Ten quarter? run the way Cincinnati's did?

I do not believe so. We know that that is simply not a statement of truth. So you're going to scheme differently and you'll find different successes. But the metrics for it is win the game and then how do we win the game? How can we win the game? What can we do? It's the job of every coach and every group to put the players in position to have the most amount of success. by defining what success is.

And success is winning the football game. Did Nebraska do that yesterday? They really did. They really did. Like I understand that the line was, no, you don't know what they were asked to do. You don't know what they were asked to do. And you also have to identify who they are.

We didn't know the personality of the personnel. I kept saying it. We don't know who these young people are. We've never seen them together. Listen, if they beat Akron, 2017, I'm going to throw confetti and celebrate because you did, if you beat Houston Christian, 20 to 17.

How many points did H.C.U pile up yesterday? Oh, it was 62 last time I stopped watching. They put up 62. Akron didn't score a point. So guess what? We're going to look at Wyoming State, figure out what they did against them, figure out what can we match?

Does it also matter? right? Does it also matter? And can we replicate the things that we did well against Cincinnati and then fix or adjust the things we didn't do well? We can't expect Malcolm Hartzog to put an offer on on Division I receivers. It's just not likely or possible. It's asking too much. What we hope is that he will learn his lesson, not stay in the mud, get out of the quicksand, and make a play at the most critical moment of the game. Hey, did he do that last night? Absolutely.

Like, it's a thing. It's a thing. When they figured out which Nebraska defenders were difficult to block in space, you know what they did? They adjusted and went away from it. You know what? We can't throw the out patterns. They're on these.

Quick slant patterns. Hey, you know what's difficult? Two linebackers through the window and one nose tackle who's just really just standing there keeping house. they did give Nebraska defensively credit for what they did. If we, there is not one Husker fan that if we said before the game, 13 or 25, 6, 69 yards and one interception. Who's not throwing confetti about that?

That is such a Big Ten West quarterback line. Man, like you did the thing. Yeah, well, I'm going to be, Akron 10, 10, nothing. Akron didn't score last night. So listen, they're coming to town. And look, that was a physical, that was an in-the-closet football game. They're going to come to town

beat up too. But here's the thing. It doesn't, you can get caught up in what happened. You can get caught up in what you didn't do. No, the personality and culture of a team. Forget about the program of the team. This team, we now know, one,

they're still physical. They're not overly big, right? Not super explosive yet, but plays were me. Hunter, we can define it as his play as explosive. We've seen, we have enough data on Jacorri Barney to say he's explosive when healthy.

We can now say, Emmett's got some pop to him. He's got some pop to him. And Dylan Riola's leadership was loud. It was loud and open. if you tell me defensively that you're led by a defensive backfield, sometimes people will say that makes you soft. But you can't say that about the Dallas.

Cowboys with Dion and Woodson and company. You can't say it about the Baltimore Ravens with Ed Reed and company. You just can't say it. They're Ronnie Lott. Tell that to the Legion of Boom. To the Niners and the Legion of Boom. It just means you have to play those Seahawks defenses weren't massive, but they played to their strength.

but they had to learn their strength. They had to learn them. And I'm just trying to tell them. It was interesting business, man. It was interesting business. And it's a win. It's a win. He says, I will address it.

He says, DPI, I love you. But why are you trying to tell Lifelong Cusker fans how to feel? When did I mention that? When did I say that? We are giving you our opinion. When did I say that? He says, I know football and that team does not look like, the improved unit that we heard about.

Okay, from who? From who? What are you talking about? Everything you hear from North Stadium, east stadium, everyone would call it now. Of course they're going to say that. You take it with a grain of salt. We told you we hope they would improve.

We're telling you players that we think have improved, but we knew nothing for fact until last night. I'm not one time in these 23 minutes have I told you how to feel. Not one time have I mentioned Lifelong Husker fans. You and I were talking. You and I were talking. And then we said, we asked from people.

One, we were here to 1.30 talking to Husker Lifelong Husker fans. We were here to 1.30. We were in the stadium and we were here. And we kept saying all week long in the lead up, you and I specifically, be careful about your expectation. Why?

Because you don't have any facts. And Jay, you just. just said, you called it facts. No, it's opinion. Those aren't facts. The facts is this team won a game last night. And they said, well, they got lucky. Well, you can, this, this program hadn't been lucky in a while. That's not. And lucky is from making a play. You made a play. That's not luck. You made a play. If you're relying on a missed field goal, lucky. You didn't do anything about it. Except maybe you held him out of, you know, close field. range. So maybe you weren't the miss field goal by keeping them to the 35 or beyond instead of

the 25. You held them to 70 yards passing. That's not luck. Despite the issue, she held them to 17 points. And here's the thing. I kind of know football too. Yeah, I kind of do. And I'm not telling anybody how to feel. I ask you to think. And that is a dangerous thing. I ask you to think, consume what you consume, but be careful in how you consume it and where you get it from. We didn't know who this team was. We had no idea who it was.

But you allow people to sell you a bill of goods that, okay, and then you're mad that you believe them. Okay, you're smarter today than you were. We're all smarter than we were. The data says that this group made place to win a big, football game. That's all we've said from last night to this morning, this group

found a way to win the game because other teams in this program recently hadn't done so. And we'll celebrate those things. Yes, we will. The thing that I've done, again, born raised in Lincoln,

Husker fan. Sometimes I feel like I'm the bucket of cold water guy. I'm not trying to be. I'm trying to be the realist. I'm trying to set the expectations right think they deserve to be. My hopes were not met last night statistically in terms of points. Either way, right? rushing out, sure. But my hopes got to take a 10 or 15% hit when I talk to you guys just for having seen this team for the last decade. This team for the last three years. What I wanted Nebraska to look like was not out there on the field. That is not all my hopes and dreams

accomplished for Nebraska. But you know what they did do. They got to win. They won a game. They won a one score game. Should it have been a one score game? Who's to say that's your opinion? But here's the thing. At the end of the day, it was a one score game. That they won. So, so again, without trying to tell you how to fan or how to think about the team, my strategy for Nebraska's been, let me look at this personnel. Let me look at the history. Let me look at the numbers. I'll have a target number that I hope for as a fan in my heart. Then I come on these radio waves. I'm knocking 10, 15, 20% off my hope because that's what's happened is that Nebraska hasn't lived up to my wildest hopes and dreams. So to be in line with reality, I got to knock a little bit off the top.

And that has gotten me much closer to reality than telling you what I hope happens for the last three years. We literally are talking, literally, here's the number. Here the number. You help for a program that did not have a team to beat a Power 5 opponent in the opener in a minute. One. Two, find some, all the things in the pregame, can they run the ball? Can we get to 100 plus yards?

Two, can Dylan lead this team and make good decisions with the football, not turn it over? Three, offensive line, can you hold it together? Can you protect Dylan? Keep him off the ground, keep him from getting beat up. Check. Receivers. You get new receivers. What are you getting from your new receivers?

Well, you've got a big playmaker. You've got a great down and distance guy, and we still have explosive Barney. What did you get from the tight end room? Lyndon Meyer lets you know, you know what? We're there. We still have questions about it, but we also, listen, you lose Bonner.

What's the adjustment? Check. Score 20 points. Is it ideal? No. Wasn't enough yesterday? Yes, it was. Defensively.

Now, you can say, how many points? If we had said, we asked each of you, how many points are you going to have to hold Cincinnati to win the game? If we all landed on 17 and then it happened, if the expectation is zero points, a shutout, that's an unreal expectation because shutouts are rare. Do you know the last time Nebraska shut out an opponent DP of any caliber?

Tell me, bro. I believe in the Nebraska game notes. It was the famous slash infamous Nebraska's back and we're here to stay 33-0-0-dropping of Arizona in the 2009 bowl game. Bro. It is simple. Like here's the thing. I'm here to celebrate the good things and ask questions about things that we're not sure of. But here's what I know. You know, there's a fact.

Not how you feel about it, but a fact. 2017 Nebraska wins. We'll be right back.