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KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 2, 2016

Bill Snyder

Stanford, California

Stanford - 26, Kansas State - 13

Q. Is that kind of what you expected from an opening game? Kind of a mixed bag of good and bad on both sides of the ball?
BILL SNYDER: No, I wouldn't say I expected that, I expected some of the things that took place tonight not to happen on our behalf. You know, in all reality, I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect us to get penalized as much as we did, and I didn't expect us to, you know, probably reasonably ineffective offensively.

Again, I can't tell you that I knew what to expect with the young group of guys that we had with that group. And, you know, I didn't expect us to give up the big plays that we did, three good plays which really was the nature of the game as far as the scoring was concerned. But, yeah.

Q. What did you think were the biggest issues offensively tonight and what could you do better?
BILL SNYDER: Well, it's pretty much a mixed bag. I think number one the biggest thing was penalties. Continually putting in a difficult situation. I thought we had some opportunities on deep balls that, you know, we had a drop. We had a couple of slip downs. We had maybe some, well, yeah, I think we had some opportunities there that wasn't good. But I mean, there was just absolutely no consistency with us offensively. There were a couple times we -- I say a couple times, but a couple drives where we ran the ball reasonably well, but we struggled most of the night to run the ball. Obviously we were not extremely effective throwing the football for a variety of different reasons.

Q. Your defense seemed to be more effective in the second half. Did you make some adjustments or did Stanford do anything different?
BILL SNYDER: Well, you go back to the first half, and what I said a moment ago, we gave up big plays and we were not very good on third down. We weren't good on third down. We had a higher percentage in the second half, I think if I checked the stats on third down, but it was still not very good. And, I mean, that was our issue throughout was just we were not very good. I mean, and we have trouble defending the pass. They were 10 for 10 in the first half. The second half they weren't too far underneath that. They still threw the ball pretty well against us.

So I thought most people probably anticipated that they wouldn't throw the ball as well, but they'd run the daylights out of it with McCaffrey, and he's a tremendously talented player and wonderful young man. But, you know you take away two runs, which we -- one of them was free. We were blitzing them and we had -- it was a discipline thing. We got out of the gap and he's out of the gate. That's that late one when our offense had to go overboard down there in the ballgame. But the other one we just bounced off of him. He had a lot to do with that, but we missed tackles down there. But he had those two big plays. Outside of that I think our guys defended him quite well.

Q. Jesse seemed to struggle with the cramps in the first half. Did that hurt to try to develop some rhythm offensively?
BILL SNYDER: Well, it was the second half, and I mean, we'd already gone through a lack of rhythm, if you want to say that. So I don't know that that necessarily added to it. But we hadn't -- we still hadn't recovered from -- I don't know. We were inconsistent consistently throughout the course of the ballgame. Put it that way.

Q. Coach, Zuber in that touchdown run, what kind of game did you think he made for his debut?
BILL SNYDER: Well, he made a very fine catch and he made -- I couldn't count on one hand or less than one hand. I couldn't count on less than two hands the number of mistakes that he made. First time on the field. A talented young guy. Did a nice job catching the ball most of the time. But spent half the night in the wrong place.

Q. Coach, first game overall all the eyes on them, how did you think the offensive line fared?
BILL SNYDER: I thought in the first half they did a commendable job considering. Stanford's awfully good up front. They're a good defensive football team. I thought in the second half we were maybe not quite as effective. We had more issues in the second half. But then again, we got to that point in time where we had to throw the football, and Stanford knows if you're going to throw the football, they've got some pretty good guys coming after you. They kind of exposed us in that respect.

Q. Did Jesse seem more timid in this first live action than he has in practice?
BILL SNYDER: Oh, you know, I have to go back and look at the film. I'd hate to say that he was timid. I think he hit some struggles. Part of it was myself initiated and part of it was he hit some like just indicated in the second half. Everybody knew where he was going to throw it, and the defenders were back, and created some problems for him. But it was a mixed bag.

Q. It was probably good for him to get the first touchdown throw.
BILL SNYDER: Say that again?

Q. After throwing those interceptions, how good was it for him to get a touchdown throw?
BILL SNYDER: Well, touchdowns are what you play the game for. They're pretty good. We'll take them when we can get them.

Q. Overall the defense, how do you think they played?
BILL SNYDER: I think overall, again, you go back and we gave up big plays. It's a whole different ballgame. We gave up the touchdown pass. I mean, it's discipline. You've got a cornerback looking at me, and somebody's running flat by him. We have three, I'm saying three. I don't know if that's the case. I'll have to see it on film.

But three missed tackles on the long runs that McCaffrey hit early in the ballgame. That's 14 points, and then we give up the big play on, you know when we gave short field going for it on fourth down late in the ballgame. But you take those three away, and I think we played reasonably well.

What I said a while ago, we were not very good on third down. We didn't defend the pass as well as I would like to. But considering the fact that they run the ball, run the ball against most anybody. And like I said, McCaffrey's everything that people say about him. We defended him well except for those two carries.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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