"Everyone is due a hiccup and we deserved to get in front and the guys rolled their sleeves up but they will not afford us any head start this weekend."
Schmidt, the mastermind behind Ireland's shrewd game plan in Chicago, did not believe his coaching rival was trying to play with the heads of the Irish team by claiming they are favourites.
"It is not mind games, I know him very well," said the 51-year-old former schoolteacher.
"He has summed up a recent result. He does not believe we will pay too much heed to that because we know how good they are and part of that is their coaching staff who I know very well.
"We want to use Chicago as a reference point to get better. There was no arrogance from them, that is one ex-player shooting from the hip. They were tough to beat and will be even tougher this time.
"They have won two World Cups in a row and have put huge margins in teams, fifty points in South Africa.
"You will not get a tougher test and when you win 18 matches in a row, they wanted to finish the calendar year unbeaten and they want to start again. But we have learned lessons and we want to focus on ourselves.
"It is process driven, you try to be accurate no matter what time the game is at and you do not get too far ahead of yourself.
"We want to achieve a few things and if we achieve those, we will get the performance but against the All Blacks we know that may not be good enough to win.
"The set-piece is massive for us this weekend...you saw Australia lose a lineout in the Championship and suddenly New Zealand score at the other end."
After naming his starting side, Schmidt admitted he wanted to unleash recalled flanker Sean O'Brien from the start.
"We thought it was better Sean started rather than come off the bench," he said.
First five-eighth Jonathan Sexton said the side wants to retain the attacking mindset that served it so well in Chicago and insisted Ireland are now capable of stringing significant back-to-back performances together.
"Conditions will determine, if you sit back they will punish us but we will try to attack when we can with or without the ball," Sexton said.
"It is a monkey off our back but even though we got the win the review was pretty harsh and we know we need to be better because they will be better.
"We have shown we can put performances back to back, there is still an element we need to back it up but we did it last November against South Africa and Australia, as well as in the Six Nations championships.
"We need to show up and be emotionally and physically ready to go and hopefully the performance will come from that.
"We have greater depth because we have had injuries last spring and in the summer. We saw that against Canada and we will need it in the World Cup.
"When they came back at us, we stuck to our plan and then took our chances, that was it. When we sat back, we got into trouble but when we were on the front foot, we got into their territory, we took our chances."
