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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 17, 2016David ShawStanford, California Stanford - 27, USC - 10 DAVID SHAW: First of all, a nice team win. I thought we played well, not exceptional, but we played well in all three phases. Special teams-wise, we knew dory's a special football player, so kicking game-wise I thought we did a good job with the direction of our kicks. Got a chance to return one. Got a little nervous there for a second, but really good coverage on that. Besides that kicking game, I thought we were very good. Defensively, we played hard. We played a lot of guys again, we'll continue to do that so we can be fresh at the end of the game, but our guys played hard, they played well. We have to continue. I think we did pretty well on third down, but a couple of those late in the game, we had to get up the field on 3rd and down, 3rd and long, especially. Offensively I thought up front we really gelled. We were looking for that improvement on the offensive line this week. I thought we got that. Guys played hard. They played physical. We knew they had some really good players up front, and we had to play smart and play hard and strain in the run game. I thought passing game-wise, I thought Ryan Burns played well again. We missed two. You know, we missed two. We missed Christian McCaffrey on the touchdown pass. Another one we had Michael Rector behind Adoree', and he underthrew it a little bit. Besides that, he managed the game extremely well. Played pretty well outside of those two throws. Hopefully will continue to progress. Gosh, Michael Rector I thought played a good game. I thought our receivers played smart, played well, and you can't run for this many yards without the receivers blocking. So I thought those guys did a good job. Of course they all want to make bigger plays in the passing game and a couple of them were there, we didn't make them. But I commend those guys for coming in and blocking the way that they did. So Christian can have this kind of performance tonight. It was good to see Bryce get back out there again. You know, he's explosive, he's fast, and multiple runs now and he's one shoe-string tackle away from running away from everybody. So excited to continue that great one-two punch the rest of the year. Q. What was going through your head when you saw Christian McCaffrey uncovered down the left side, totally alone by 15 yards? DAVID SHAW: Touchdown. Touchdown. The thing is, that's one of those plays that we have three plays that kind of come off that that look pretty much the same, we ran it a week ago, and ran a couple plays that looked like that, and to sneak it to one of the backs and have Christian sneak out past the safety, and Michael Rector did a good job of tracking Adoree' into the middle of the field, which now Christian just has to beat the safety coming down to play the run, and they're not going to catch that guy at all. Q. What did you think of Ryan Burns' play in this game, and was there any particular reason why Keller Chryst didn't play? DAVID SHAW: No particular reason. We had a package of plays for Keller, and we didn't get to them. I feel bad about that, but that's just the way it happens sometimes. He'll continue to be in our thoughts as we move forward. Hopefully try to get him in each game. But the game dictates certain things. Q. What about Burns? DAVID SHAW: Burns, I thought, played well. I thought he played well. Outside of those two throws, the slightly underthrown ball, and seemed to be a little contact on the one with Rector. But if he threw that a little bit farther out there, Mike's behind him and then the touchdown and the double move with Christian out there as a receiver, it's just a beautiful route. Just overshot him a little bit by about 5 yards. So outside of those two throws, I thought he played really well. I thought he played smart. Late in the game we threw a jump ball out there to Francis, and you hope the receiver protects the ball with the quarterback. That was one of those that was 3rd down and long with the score out of reach, just launch one down there and see if our guy can make a play. Q. You've asked a lot of your quarterbacks before the snap. How would you say Ryan's doing in that regard so far? DAVID SHAW: I think very well. He's doing very well. I wouldn't say exceptional right now. You know, for guys playing the second game for an extensive playing time, I thought he played well. I thought he was very good. Couple times we probably didn't quite get to the right play. But our guys were good enough up front and they made it work. But I think he's improving and he's doing a good job. Q. Are you especially happy with him on third down? I think he was 6 for his first 9. You put a lot of onus on him to run the ball, and he came through a couple times on pretty critical on third downs. DAVID SHAW: Are you talking about Ryan? Q. Ryan on third down. DAVID SHAW: Yeah, that's one of our principle we've had here for years. It's a principle when we got Rich Gannon at the Oakland Raiders, Jon Gruden put in an unofficial rule that the quarterback's got to scramble or run for three to four first downs every single game. And I reminded Burns of that last week. He's an athlete. He's a big athlete. You've got to get us positive yards. If nobody's open, don't force the ball, tuck it away and run. He's a big, physical kid, and he's hard to tackle, obviously. He's 6'5", 230-something, 240-something pounds. He's a big guy and we'll continue to do that with him. Q. Coach, you seemed like you were channelling Muhammad Ali there with the rope-a-dope. When you kept wringing in the defense, it looks like you had ten in the box, and that's when the Michael Rector thing, the reverse happened, I believe? DAVID SHAW: Absolutely. You run certain plays to set up other plays, right? We ran power, counter, power, power, power counter, power, power, and then upstairs in the box we just watched and see if they're chasing from the back side. We thought they were chasing, and right before we called that play, oh, hey, Michael's coming up now. I said stay wide and run fast. You know, great, brilliant coaching by me (laughing). But, I mean, Mike's borderline world class speed now. We're talking upper 4.2, 4.3, 40-yard dash guy. He's explosive. When he gets to full speed, he's tough to catch. With all the speed we have on this team with Christian and Bryce Love, Michael Rector's the fastest guy on the team, and I think he showed that today. Q. Coach, for years Stanford couldn't see USC with binoculars. Now they've beaten the Trojans three times in less than one calendar year. What's that say about this program and what's it mean to you? DAVID SHAW: We don't use anyone but us to set our standards, right? USC's got a proud tradition and they've got a good football team. Now that football team is better than the one that everybody thought they saw against Alabama. Alabama played really well that game. This is a good Trojan football team. But we set our standard based on us. It doesn't matter that it's USC or UCLA, Notre Dame, whoever it is. Our standards are high. When we play well, we expect to win. Q. You were just describing your offensive power, power, power counter, and Christian got 30 carries. Does he run bigger than he looks or is he bigger than I give him credit for? DAVID SHAW: Oh, there's no question about it. He's 205 pounds now, something like that, six foot. But he runs like a guy that weighs 230. He's physical. But you don't see him get knocked down with just one guy. He gave a talk to the team this morning and reminded everybody, not just him, but for everybody, you don't let the first guy bring you down. You don't go down easy. He fights for yardage. He might get hit with a 2-yard gain, and you look up and it's a 5-yard gain because he fought for those three extra yards. He's a big back in a not-big-back body. It goes with his training, goes with his mentality. He's just a tough guy to tackle. That 30 carries is good, you know. Doesn't necessarily need 30 carries every single game, especially now that Bryce is back. We'll continue to get Bryce some carries, and the quarterback will take some carries. You know, we'll continue to get Cameron Scarlett in the mix. He was in the mix a couple times today, we'll get him some carries. We don't need Christian to get necessarily 40 or anything like that. But somewhere between 25 and 35 is plenty. Q. Bryce looked really comfortable running between the tackles today. Can you talk about his development as a complete back at this point? DAVID SHAW: So we knew based on Bryce's film that we saw him his junior year, we were really excited. But with a guy, once again, like Christian, he's not a big guy, you want to see him. You've got to see him with your own eyes. So we sent Coach Lance Taylor out there, running backs coach to go see him. He called me from the school watching him. He said, Coach, he's not tall, but he's not little. This is not a little back. Very similar to Christian, this is a running back. This is not a little scatback that you run toss sweeps with. This guy runs downhill between tackles. Just like Christian, you see him use his patience, he's got great vision, he's got great balance, and he knows when to hit it. When he hits it, he gets up to full speed. Like I said, there's two of those now. If he gets out of there, it's gone. Q. Coach, can you tell me a little bit about your defense. You showed up kind of a bend-but-don't-break spirit. Maybe gave up the occasional big play and 300 yards but for the most part kept them out of the end zone? DAVID SHAW: I don't like to say bend but don't break. We try not to give up the big play. I think we gave up a couple on third downs, in particular. But we want to be on the attack. We want to stop the run. I think they did a good job establishing the run early in the game. I think we bounced back. They came back in the third quarter. Established the run again, I think we bounced back again. Once we bounce back and do a better job against the run, we make a team one dimensional. Hopefully our pass rush and our coverage wins the game for us, and that's kind of what happened tonight. Q. Do you speak about that drive that you gave up to open up the second half. The nine-play drive. You responded with a ten-play drive and your defense pitches a shutout the rest of the game. What's that say about the character of this team being a strong second-half club this early? DAVID SHAW: We talk about being finishers. Of all the things that you want people to say about you, you want to say you're tough, you're smart, you're a good football team, you're fast, you're athletic. To me the biggest compliment is that you're a finisher. That you're going to play your best football in the fourth quarter. You're going to play your best football to close out the game. If you're behind, you play your best football to catch up and take the lead. If you have the lead, you play your best football to end the game. That's the way we train. That's the way we think. That's the way our program is built to be a really good fourth-quarter team, and we did that today. Q. Coach, how would you rate the performance of your offensive line in this game? How did they do on improving from what needed to be worked on from Kansas State? DAVID SHAW: Without watching the film right now I want to say we played much better. Without watching the film, I'd hate to give a pure letter grade. It feels somewhere in the D-range, but I'm a pretty hard grader, so we'll see once we watch the film. Bottom line I still think we can play better. I think they slipped off a couple tackles, and for us we want to play perfect up front. We talked about hitting our landmarks and straining to finish every single block. For the most part we did that tonight. We have the kind of backs if we give those guys a crease, those 4-yard runs turn into really big plays. Q. You guys ran the ball 47 times in this game, which is percentage is probably about 70%. And there were runs where McCaffrey wasn't touched for like ten, 15 yards. At what point during the game did you feel you had a clear advantage and complete control up front? DAVID SHAW: I think our MO is pretty much set in stone. If we get a two-score lead in the second half, we're going to run it. We're going to be physical. We talk about intellectual brutality, we're trying to end the game with the ball in our hands. I don't care about stats. I don't care what other people do. I don't care if other people are trying to run up the score. It's just football. We've got a two score lead. The way we play offense, the way we play defense, we're a tough team to beat. We tried to put pressure on the guys up front. Offensively and defensively on our team to end the game for us. Q. Did USC bring out the best in Christian McCaffrey? I know he had a school record 461 yards against them in the Pac-12 Championship game, and today he led you guys in every single category. I know it's kind of par for the course for him to do that, but does USC bring out the best in him and does it ever cease to amaze you what he can do? DAVID SHAW: Game day brings out the best in Christian McCaffrey. I wouldn't want to give anybody that much credit that he tries to play better against somebody else. He's got such a chip on his shoulder and such an internal drive, it doesn't matter who the other team is. When it's game day, he's excited and he can't wait to play. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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