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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 12, 2015David ShawStanford, California UCF -7 What I love about our defensive persona right now was while the offense early on in the game were still trying to sputter, there was no division on our sidelines. No division on our sidelines. Complete, 100% by the defensive guys supporting the offensive guys. Once we got into a rhythm offensively, it was fun to watch. We did try to do some different things. Once again, the game plan-wise to get some guys in space. I think you see we've got some speed on this team from Isaiah Brandt-Sims who is going to make that play. He's made that play a bunch in practice. Michael Rector can get behind people, Devon Cajuste and Austin Hooper can play guys as well. You've got Barry Sanders and Bryce Love, you get those guys out there in space and they can make special things happen. So still took us a while to gain our rhythm. Our guys have a lot of confidence, because we know how to play. I won't take any, and I'll say it again, I won't take any questions about officiating. I will make one blanket statement that I was very frustrated today. That's all I'm going to say, and I won't talk about officiating besides that. Q. Even though you don't want to make a judgment on that call, how much did you think your defense got fired up over it? COACH SHAW: Which call are you talking about, because there were a few out there? Q. The targeting on Aziz? COACH SHAW: You know what? I think defensively we played really well all night, so I mean our guys were fired up. The biggest thing is our guys up front had to double up. I give a lot of credit to Nate and Owen for coming in and playing and they did a good job. Brennan Scarlett and Solomon Thomas played extremely well and extremely hard. They had to play double duty losing to Harrison last week and losing Aziz in the first half today. They sucked it up. They played extremely hard. They didn't tap out, and I give them a lot of credit for how well and how hard they played. Q. As a follow-up to that, do you anticipate doing that same type of approach next week against USC? COACH SHAW: Well, we'll get Aziz back, and hopefully we'll have a better rotation, keep our guys fresh. But at the same time, I think we're really smart with what we do with our guys during the course of the week. And if we have a to play a lot of minutes on the defensive line, we'll play a lot of minutes. But I love the guys that we have there. I love their attitude. And Coach Randy Hart just pushes them. That's all he says is go, go, go, go, go, and that's what those guys did tonight. Q. I know a lot of the fans are going to be talking about the performance of Bryce Love, the catches and the electricity he brought to the offense. How much is it just a coming-out party for him? COACH SHAW: It's been great. It's been great. It was a great job today. He's a mature young man. He's prepared for this time. For those of you who have been here for a while, know there is a way that we do this. We brought Kevin along relatively slow and spoon fed him a little bit. We did the same thing with Ty Montgomery. We did the same thing with Andrew as a true freshman, and that's what we're going to do with Bryce. The things he can understand and the things he can do, we'll put him out there and let him do it. He's not ready for the entire game plan, but at the same time we're going to pick spots for him both as a primary guy to get the ball but also as a decoy. Because I have guys like I said, him and Chris McCaffrey and Michael Rector and Isaiah Brandt-Sims, we've got guys that can really run. So there are a lot of different things we're going to do with all those guys. Q. Could you just talk about the flea-flicker and whether you definitely wanted to use it? Was it spur of the moment? What kind of situation were you looking for? COACH SHAW: It was in the game plan because this is a team that plays with their safeties tight to the line of scrimmage and they're very aggressive. You have to set up the flea-flicker by running the ball. We have to slam it up in there, slam it up in there, and with the safeties biting, the key is not the safeties, the key is the corners. When the corners bite and the safeties bite but the corners play deep, you can't call it. We had to wait for the corners to start getting aggressive. Once they started getting aggressive, then we made the call. Q. Locks like at the cornerback spot you had Quenton Meeks in there more often than Alexander. Is that something you anticipate happening more often? Are you more clear especially regarding like Meeks and Love what red-shirts you're going to consider burning moving forward? COACH SHAW: We played a lot of freshmen today, lot of first and second year players, and that's going to continue. You saw Ben Edwards at the end of the game get a lot of big hits. That's what Ben Edwards does. We think he's going to be special. You saw multiple guys, Meeks made some plays today, missed a couple things today, which is fine. That's going to happen. Terrence Alexander played a lot for us last year, but he's just a sophomore. We're going to keep rotating him in there. We have a chance to keep rotating guys in there and keep them fresh. We're trying to gain experience early in the year because you get into league play, starting next week with the USC team that's a no-huddle, fast-paced team, and a USC team, an Oregon team, Arizona team, a UCLA team, these are no-huddle teams and you have to rotate your guys to keep them fresh. That's what we're trying to do early in the year. We have some kids that have some talent and ability, and that's the reason why last year we've taken four DBs in the last couple years because we need them in our conference. These guys can play. They're still young. They have a lot to learn which is why hopefully they don't play a lot in a row. But we'll sprinkle them in a in a couple series, make sure they know what they're doing and put them back in there. Q. So when you go with a guy like Meeks like you did today, is that more of a drive by drive decision? COACH SHAW: Yeah, and there is a rotation. We moved Terrence Alexander, this is the week he was going to play corner and not play nickel. That gave Meeks a lot of reps back inside, and we may switch it back next week. Put Meeks back outside and maybe drop somebody else down there in nickel. We're trying to gain experience early in the year because we have some guys with talent, but they're young. So we're going to try to get those guys ready to play. Q. Can we read into your decision to put Crist in instead of Burns toward the end of the game? COACH SHAW: By my count they both played. One preemptive strike on a potential question or concern other people have, when the score is tied and you're looking at a 51-yard field goal with a guy who has never hit one 51 yards, you don't kick it, you punt it. Now when you're up, yeah, you take a shot. If it's at the end of the half like it was there where they don't have time to drive down, that's where you take a shot at the 51-yard field goal. I just want everybody to know there is not something I make up as we go. There is a philosophy here that I didn't come up with. It's been smart football coaching for many years. We're not just going to kick 51-yard or 52-yard field goals with a lot of time on the clock and on-side score. This is a field position game. This is a calculated approach that we have and that will not change. Q. It looked like a couple times UCF decided to put eight and nine in the box, did that really change your ideas to open up the offense a little bit? COACH SHAW: Well, it allowed us to get some deep shots. Now we have to up our percentage on hitting those. We had a shot at Michael Rector's close coverage. We've got to hit Isaiah, he's got to make that catch with Devon Cajuste down the middle. We got a pass interference call on that one, which is a big play because he had a chance to get down the middle on that one. We had to take another shot with Austin Hooper as well. We didn't get that one completed. But we've got the guys to take shots deep. But at the same time, like last week, we're not going to do it indiscriminately. We're going to take calculated shots. We hit more today. But last week we took them also. We got back on a couple and we dropped one. We actually dropped one in this one. So I think we've got a good approach. I think we know our team, getting to know our team even better. But I'm excited about the youth and explosive abilities of some of our young guys. Q. You guys were pretty balanced in terms of run-pass today, and through Kevin's drive he averaged almost 12 yards an attempt and the run game averaged less than 3. Does that success and lack of success going to form the way you guys game plan moving forward? COACH SHAW: No. No, we want to be balanced. We want to be physical up front. We want to run the ball, and I think with the number that attempts we had today, again, we were better than on third down. We sustained more drives than we did a year ago. We're going to have more plays and more opportunities. I think we're capable of averaging more per rush. I think all of our running backs will continue to play. I think you get the feel for what we're doing with Christian. It's kind of a lot of a lot. We're going move him around a lot. Run him between the tackles because he's good and he's broken out a couple times. We'll continue to use Remound, Barry Sanders and Bryce Love in a multitude of ways. I think it's a good group effort by those guys. We've got to get more yards per carry, and without seeing the film, I can't diagnose it right now. Q. You talked about previously when things are going good that you guys play fast. Was that your impression today or tonight versus last week? Did you guys look faster to you? COACH SHAW: After the first few drives, absolutely. We were by all accounts sluggish for whatever reason last week. We never got it going, and the first drive offensively was great at Northwestern, and then couldn't sustain anything after that. Today we still sputtered early on and missed a couple things, but our guys stayed positive and then got into a rhythm. Once you get into a rhythm, we're throwing it, we're running it, we feel good. We're mixing it up, and you saw a bunch of different things. You saw the wildcat. You saw us spread people out and go empty. You saw us go big people. I think we have the ability to do a lot of those different things. So I'm excited about where we are right now. I think we have so much room to improve. So much room to improve. If we can play cleaner, play cleaner we can be even better. That's what our charge is this week. Our charge is execution. I've been looking at a lot of -- went through a lot of my Bill Walsh quotes this week looking at things. So much is on the preparation to play, and that's what we're focusing on. We've got to continue to be really prepared to play so it continues to show up on Saturdays or Fridays or Thursdays. But you know what I mean. Q. In the spring you said you needed Christian to do a lot. So what do you need to see from him to continue to have him have a relatively good season? COACH SHAW: I think a lot of what you're seeing. He's returning punts, he's returning kicks. He's turning the receivers out, he's playing some single back, he's playing some two back. So we're going to stretch him thin. We're going to stretch him thin and he understands that. All the running backs understand that also. There are going to be times he's gassed and Remound's going to have to go in and run the ball. Remound did a good job today, Barry J. Sanders came in later in the game and saw what we want to see from Barry. We've got to see that consistently from Barry, and Barry's going to continue to get more carries and more opportunities. You see what Bryce Love can do. So I think we've got a really good combination of guys. We may not have a guy that carries the ball 30 times in a game. You know, 20 is probably going to be the most. But it's going to spread out, and if we can keep these guys fresh and get them out in space, they can do some special things. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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