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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 15, 2018

Alameen Murphy

Stanford, California

UC Davis - 10, Stanford - 30

Q. (No microphone.)
ALAMEEN MURPHY: I think it's one of those games where you're going to look back and be pretty proud of it. We played against a team that was averaging upwards of 30 points a game, and we held them to 10 points. You got some plays you're going to feel bad about, which you should, that's any game, never going to be perfect. As long as we can aim for perfection every game, that's pretty good.

Q. Some of the key categories from Coach Anderson was tackles, and (No microphone.) How do you feel you guys are doing three games in?
ALAMEEN MURPHY: I think a good thing about our defense as a whole is whenever we have something we need to key in on and do better at, we really do better at it each week. So the first week was missed tackles and we got that off the tape. There's always going to be some missed tackles, but as long as you limit them and really take 'em down, then we are going to be good. It's always something each week we have to take care of, what knows next week, maybe third downs maybe it's something else, but whatever it is, I have a lot of confidence in the defense that we will be able to get it done.

Q. Going up against the offense there were a lot of short passes. Speaking of missed tackles, this was (No microphone.) And how do you feel you did?
ALAMEEN MURPHY: The film won't lie, so we will watch the film and see how it was. It's going to be one of those. Walking off the field I thought we did pretty good. Always gonna be some of those plays you wish you had back, but we can't get those back. We just gotta be better next game, but I think we did good.

Q. Is it tough to stay patient, keeping the ball in front of you down after down and knowing when to pick your spot in terms of being aggressive?
ALAMEEN MURPHY: Not really because the short passes won't kill you. It's the deep once that will. If they catch a short pass, you pat yourself on the back and line up for the next play. If they're going to drive the ball on a bunch of short passes, we will be fine. We can't let the ball go over our heads, and I feel like we did really good today of not letting any balls go over our head. We had maybe one or two, but we did a pretty good job most of the day.

Q. Did you take any heat for getting tackled by the quarterback?
ALAMEEN MURPHY: A lot of heat, yeah. It's all right. Learn from it and keep going. It was really good to see this defense come out here and accept the challenge that we were going against an up-tempo offense who was really talented and we did our thing. It wasn't perfect but it was definitely a good performance for us.

Q. Second game back for Elijah, are you starting to see the old Elijah?
ALAMEEN MURPHY: No rush from Elijah. Not rush at all. Same thing he's always been. To me he's been the best corner in the Pac 12 for a long time now, and I hope people are starting to see that. He looks perfect. You tell me how he looks. He looked good out there today, and I'm sure he will look good for weeks to come, just gotta keep that guy healthy.

Q. Talk to me about moving on to the road now. Talk about the things you want to check off before you head up there.
ALAMEEN MURPHY: First thing we've got to pack is the defense. Whenever we go on the road, we gotta pack the defense. We had a bunch of road games last year that we either didn't play really good on, or we had a couple of teams that played us close. We know it's going to be a good game against a team as talented as Oregon is, and it's going to be on the road. We always rise up to those challenges. Always something to smile about, going to a rowdy place, a good team, playing on the road. I don't think nobody is going to be frowning about that opportunity at all on our defense.

Q. Where do you feel you guys are as a defense three weeks in?
ALAMEEN MURPHY: Three weeks, it's hard to tell but I think we're getting better each week. I think the most important thing is that each week we're crossing off something we didn't do good on the week before. The first week it was missed tackles, and I feel like we done we much better with that, and who knows what it will be this week that we didn't do good on, but I have confidence in the defense that we will get it fixed and scratch it off.

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