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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 15, 2018

Dan Hawkins

Stanford, California

UC Davis - 10, Stanford - 30

COACH HAWKINS: Well, Stanford is a good football team, did a nice job, took away things we normally like to do. Thought we hung in there, but when you play a team like this you gotta get a lot of things going your way and you've got to maximize every opportunity and when you don't do that you minimize your opportunities to win and it really comes down to those things.

But David Shaw does a nice job, these guys are a classy football team, and it's an honor to play them, but we've got to get better because our schedule is going to keep going after it, so we've got to keep getting better.

Q. Coach, talk about how you were doing in the first quarter, got a couple of turnovers early.
COACH HAWKINS: I think we always try to stay fairly steady about things, and people don't maybe always like that. It sounds rather mundane. But you know it's going to be a long fight, and you try to not get too high or too low. You know certain things kind of gotta go your way. We had a touchdown and it got called back, which is fine, that was the call, but you're going to have to maximize all those little things in games like this.

When you don't, it creeps away. So we knew we were in for a battle and, yeah, I wasn't -- we're not going to win in the first quarter by any means. It was nice to get a few things going.

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH HAWKINS: It really just comes down to pitch and catch. We always talk to guys about making layups. You gotta make layups and doesn't matter who you play. Probably dropped a few more balls than we were used to dropping and ended up having some issues there, and couple of realtime penalties as well stopped drives.

Then I opted to go forward, which we got, because you can't kick field goals against these guys and win.

Q. Do you think your offensive line played pretty well? I think the quarterback got sacked.
COACH HAWKINS: He didn't get hit as much as he got last week, that's for sure, but it was a point of emphasis. I thought Tim Keane, our line coach, and Tim Plough did a good job with the plan, and Jake did a good job getting the ball out of his hands. We knew we weren't going to be able to hang on to it very long, or we would have issues. So that was part of the game plan, getting it out.

But, yeah, they've got a nice front. They're very, very aggressive, do a nice job pressuring you, don't always have to blitz you to get guys to the quarterback but that was certainly a point of emphasis coming into the game, keeping Jake up right.

Q. You were doing well in the end of the first half and then you changed your plan to a little bit more of a running game and you were doing well with the short passing game. Why did you change?
COACH HAWKINS: In the RPO offense it's dictated by the front. It's not so much whether you're calling the play or not, it's dictated by numbers; it's all math and geometry. That's why it ended up being that way.

Q. You guys got creative with some plays, particularly in the first quarter. (No microphone.)
COACH HAWKINS: Well, again, against guys like this, you have to do things like that. You can't just go play real football. We're not going to lineup with 21 personnel and run lead ISO against these guys. We're just not. You have to do some things that cause eye confusion and keep them off balance and give yourself a chance that way. Otherwise it's going to be -- we're not going to get into a phone booth with these guys and win. We're not going to.

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH HAWKINS: I don't know. I thought they battled. I thought they battled the whole day, really did. Did a nice job getting stops in the red area against some short fields. But, you know, that's their -- again, that's their plan. They're going to put the mouth piece in and the head gear on and they're going to start going body blow, body blow, body blow, until you -- that's how they do it, and they're used to doing it, and they're good at it.

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH HAWKINS: Well, he's just so -- he's so versatile. He's really smart. He knows what the defense is trying to do to him and to us and you can move him around, like you said, he can play one, two or three very easily.

So that's a big benefit for us, because he's not locked into one spot, so you can kind of roll him around a little bit, but then we've got to have other guys make plays as well. I thought he caught the ball, we didn't get anything over the top or any big plays to him and we weren't able to get some of the other guys going. He's such a great kid, he really is. He's really smart and real coachable, he's awesome.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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