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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 14, 2015

David Shaw

Stanford, California, ]

Oregon - 38, Stanford - 36

COACH SHAW: As we talked about during the week, we knew this was going to be a heck of a game. I told the team during the week, watching film, to say that Oregon was unranked was crazy. I'm sure they will be ranked this week. Very good football team. Very well coached. Very explosive football team.

Early in the first half, just gave them too many big plays. Too many big plays. Settled down for a little bit and then, offensively, didn't take advantage of our opportunities. In the red zone twice with opportunities to score touchdowns, we got field goals.

And we talked about it during the course of the week. This is a team you cannot take a bunch of field goals. We got a couple field goals and then we missed a field goal.

So that's what happens in tight games like this. You can't give up big plays, you can't turn the ball over, and can't miss opportunities. And that's what happened to us.

Now, typical guys, typical Stanford guys, we showed great heart, we showed great fight, got after it and came back. Every time we went down, we came back. And there's no quit in us. The guys fought all the way to the end. Needed to make one more play. Needed to make one more play and we didn't make it. So we didn't win the game.

But as I told our guys, and this press conference is not going to be any different, everybody is going to talk about how terrible this loss is, how awful this is. We got to win one game next week to win the PAC-12 championship game. Got to win one game next week to go to the PAC-12 championship game. It just happens to be our biggest rival, just happens to be for the Ax.

So this is what we're -- we're looking ahead. This a tough loss, against a really, really good football team. We fought like crazy, but we didn't fight very smart. And they took advantage of it.

So hats off to Coach Helfrich and his staff and the players. They made a lot of big plays and we got close to recovering, but we couldn't recover all the way.

Q. On the two fumbled snaps, was there anything that you noticed that went wrong in particular?
COACH SHAW: Hard to say. Hard to say. We played two centers during the course of the game, has not been an issue. The fumbled snaps were one with one center and one with the other. So it wasn't like one guy over the other. They just didn't -- we didn't connect on it.

Q. On the two point conversion try, what was the play call and what happened out there?
COACH SHAW: Well, they blitzed us, and Kevin was going to get hit one way or the other. It was a play that we call. He's got a lot of options and the bottom line when that happens versus the blitz, just try to find a guy and give him a chance to make a play. The ball was a little bit low. Hooper had a chance maybe to get it. The ball might have got pulled out, a good play on the defensive side, look for the ball to be a little bit higher.

But in a pressure situation we're not going to get perfect balls, so we got to try to make those plays and more credit to them than bad on us. It was a pressure, it was a blitz, there was a guy coming after Kevin, scot-free, which we knew if they blitzed us, it was going to happen. Just didn't make the play. Either the throw or the catch.

Q. Do you have any thoughts on why there were so many big plays by Oregon other than that's what they do for a living?
COACH SHAW: Not yet. I don't have any thoughts yet. I will after I watch the film. It's what they live on. It's what they live on. If you make them go three, four yards at a time, you give yourself a chance.

You let them go 50 and 60, you end up in a shoot-out like this. If we were able to get stops, I can't tell you right now if guys were out of the gaps, I can't tell you what happened, all I know is we gave up some big plays.

But you combine that early in the game, offensively, with being down in the red zone and having chances for touchdowns and getting field goals. That's how this game balanced out. We were moving the ball down the field and we didn't capitalize in the end zone. Defensively, we would get a stop, we would get a stop and then a big play. And you can't play these guys like that, they're too good.

Q. Your team still has its goal inside of winning the PAC-12. But how do you feel about basically having your chances of getting into the playoff erased here?
COACH SHAW: I don't have a comment on that. It was never in our hands as far as their being a committee and decision makers and we didn't focus on it.

So, like I said, we're living life in the windshield right now. That's in our rearview mirror. We got one game to go to the PAC-12 championship game and that's what we're going to focus on.

Q. Secondly, how do you think your team did against Vernon Adams? How did you say your coverage was on him specifically?
COACH SHAW: I don't think we did anything well enough, tonight. We bottled him up for the most part as a runner, but we dropped coverage twice as he was a scrambler, which we know that's how he makes yardage. He's a dynamic athlete, and he can make plays take a long time. And he was able to scramble back there and move back there and then find big plays down the field. And we just cannot give those up and we did.

Q. You mentioned having to settle for field goals. You had a fourth and two in the third quarter and you elected to kick it. Can you take us through the thought process there?
COACH SHAW: Fourth and two and we decided to kick a field goal. I mean, I don't know what else you want me to say. It's a decision we try to make. We go for a lot of fourth downs and I've given the guys that have been in the room kind of my situation there. When we have a lead, yeah, we'll go for those. If the game's, or especially early on and it's a close game, we're going to play field position or we're going to kick a field goal or punt it. We're within range and we decided to kick it.

Q. Do you have any comments on --
COACH SHAW: It's not complicated.

Q. Do you have any updates on Ronnie Harris at this point?
COACH SHAW: Ronnie's going to get checked again. We'll see, some kind of an ankle. I don't know how bad. But we'll check it out.

Q. Did you say Shuler was in the first fumbled snap?
COACH SHAW: I believe so.

Q. What about the second one?
COACH SHAW: That was Johnny Caspers.

Q. Kevin Anderson had a good game on the outside, Brennan Scarlett with three sacks. It was feast or famine. Was that you couldn't hold them in between, but there were plays to be made by the defense.
COACH SHAW: That's, that's exactly what happened. We made big plays and we gave up too many big plays. The effort was outstanding, the fight was outstanding. We're down two scores and the guys never stopped fighting. And I take my hat off to our guys for that.

We gave them way too much. We gave them way too much and really, in all three phases. But the fight, the battling, I'm really proud of my guys for that, because they spilled it out there. They gave everything they could. We just didn't make enough plays and gave them too many plays. The secondary, especially, seemed to have a rough day today. Was there anything Oregon was doing that kind of keyed into that?

COACH SHAW: They're good, they're a good team. They're good players. I don't know if you could say the secondary had a rough game more than anybody else. They made a couple of big runs. That's not on the DB's. We lost coverage a couples times on the quarterback moving around.

But it's a team game and it all works together. And we can point at specific plays here and there, but the totality is pretty straightforward. We played a really, really hard. We made a lot of plays in all three phases and then gave them too many plays in all three phases.

So it's as much of a team victory, everybody feeling great, and this is a team loss. We didn't do enough in any of the three phases to give ourselves a chance to win. We gave ourselves a chance to tie, but we didn't give ourselves a chance to win.

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