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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 10, 2018

David Shaw

Stanford, California

Stanford - 48, Oregon State - 17

COACH SHAW: First of all, very excited that we're able to keep the game at the proper time when we did. So thoughts and prayers to all those families that are affected by the fires. I know it's been a really rough week. So, but glad the winds were what they were so we were able to get the game underway. But don't want to undersell, I know how difficult this week has been.

Proud of the way our football team came out. We made some changes to our routine. Put some pressure on some guys to step up as leaders, made sure we started the games better the rest of the year. And our guys came out tonight with a fire and energy.

So excited about our seniors. A lot of our seniors made big plays tonight, contributed a lot tonight. Both up front and on the offensive and defensive lines -- Bryce Love, Cameron Scarlett, Jake Bailey. Guys came in and just made some great plays for us. Trenton Irwin made some nice catches.

But the night tonight, I thought the quarterback was awesome. I thought K.J. played extremely well. One bad pass protection down, tried to check the ball down, the ball got intercepted. But besides that I thought he was in control, made some great throws. He and Colby Parkinson the last three weeks have worked really hard to continue to work on their timing, because Kaden Smith, who I believe is the best tight end in America, Kaden has been playing so well making so many plays, he's getting a lot of attention.

He's a 245-pound tight end, not receiver. Colby Parkinson, one-on-one, and he's a weapon. And it's great to see those two connect. Excited about the long pass to Colby. That was Coach Carberry and Coach Morgan Turner putting together a run plan and inaudible kill package versus substitution. They brought a bunch of big guys up there to spread them out, make them defend our tight ends. And once again the single safety kind of cheated over to Kaden's side, which gave Colby the one-on-one to make a big play against an outside linebacker.

Can't go without saying tonight, talking about Bryce Love, once again, he's all that's right with college football. Doesn't ask for anything. Doesn't need anything. Just comes and works extremely hard. Able to come out of tonight's game for the first time in a while, healthy, we pulled him out; he didn't pull himself out, didn't get reinjured. Just got a little tight.

But for him on probably the best that he's felt in about a month, and all he does is work hard. All he does is celebrate other people's successes. All he does is whatever the team needs him to do. Couldn't be more proud of another human being.

I was excited about our honorary captain, Kevin Hogan. He gave our guys some great words of wisdom, some great advice on battling, on working together, not pushing each other. It's just great to see Kev, and I think he helped put the team in a great mood tonight.

Lastly, defensively, I thought we played well. Gave up a few plays here and there. But stifled them when we needed to. Got some stops when we needed to. We were able to increase our lead and get some other players in the game.

Q. You mentioned changing the routine to try and get the team off to a faster start. Without giving away any trade secrets, can you talk a little bit about what changes you made?
COACH SHAW: We practiced more together. Didn't split up as much. Part of it was because of our injuries. Tonight Devery Hamilton couldn't go tonight. Nate Herbig was out tonight. A couple of the guys that did go were still kind of banged up and hurting. Dalman couldn't go tonight. So we had a lot of guys that were out.

So we practiced more together. I think that helped. Guys continue to work on getting ready. And then pregame routine, we just changed up the times for things. We changed up how we warmed up. Did a little bit different to kind of keep the guys on edge a little bit. They kind of knew what to expect but not completely.

I usually talk to the team at the hotel. I didn't talk to them in the hotel. I only talked to them right before the game in the locker room. Usually there's a couple of guys that speak. We cut all the rest of that stuff out. After the coin toss, we brought all the team together and let K.J. give them the last few words. He does a great job of that because he speaks from his heart. The guys know he's just being honest with them and he loves them.

A lot of those things helped us to start the game in a fast way. And then you get a couple guys to make plays, and you build some momentum, and we fed off of that momentum.

Q. We've talked about there's the scoreboard evaluation and then the coach evaluation and execution. How would you assess both sides tonight?
COACH SHAW: I'll take the score seven days out of seven. I think the execution was about as high as we've had and for me it's not about the opponent. It's about guys are on their blocks and staying on their blocks, and running backs reading it properly and the quarterbacks seeing the game properly, giving the guys chances to make plays.

And (indiscernible) we left some yards out there. Michael Wilson ran one heck of a route to get open and K.J. overshot him a little bit. And we missed a couple of little ones. But those happen in the course of the game. You don't expect perfection. But we got a lot of opportunities to make plays and guys made really big plays tonight.

Q. Parkinson looked a lot like Coby Fleener in this game. How would you compare those two guys?
COACH SHAW: I try really hard not to. I wouldn't want to slight either one of them. They have some similarities, I think differences. I think Colby is fast. I think Coby is faster. Coby Fleener was big. Colby Parkinson is bigger. Colby is only a sophomore; he's 245 pounds right now. Coby didn't get up there until he was fourth year, fourth-year player.

So they have some similarities. But I'm really excited about where Colby is. And as much as anything, we have a special kinship. Wearing 84, but already in two years he's made more plays than I made in five. So really excited about where he is right now, and at some point we expect him to be the best tight end in America like Kaden is right now.

Q. Is there any way to anticipate at this point whether the guys will be back for the big game? I'm thinking specifically of Arcega-Whiteside, Toohill and Toner?
COACH SHAW: I would say Toohill has probably got the best chance. I'm sorry, JJ. JJ has the best chance. JJ was actually feeling really good starting yesterday. And he should start running around early next week, maybe even get some practice in on Tuesday.

Toohill, we've got to see. Broke a bone in his arm and it's taking a while to heal. And he can go out there but it's hard for him to really be effective.

Jet Toner, we're going to take him day-by-day. Take him day-by-day. His kicking action is very violent, and he's got an injury. So we've got to be smart with that and make sure he's okay. And we'll see where everybody else is on Monday.

Q. Did Henry Hattis rotate in for A.T. Hall because of injury or other reasons?
COACH SHAW: No, we planned to do that. Henry Hattis has really practiced well, practiced hard. We anticipate him battling for a starting job in the spring. And AT's been banged up, he's missing practice time. It's one of those things, we want a program, a little bit of a rotation to both reward Henry, but also at the same time to give some rest to AT.

And then thankfully we're able to take AT out and give Henry even more reps. So I'm excited about where Henry is and hopefully, before the end of the year, Foster Sarell will be back. He should be back on the field next week; I'm not sure he'll be able to truly practice, but he'll be doing football-specific drills next week. So hopefully before the end of the year we'll be able to get Foster some reps also.

Q. You've crunched eligibility now every year now since you've been the head coach here. Is that, I know it's an expectation at this point, but is it still something you take pride in, getting that 6th win --
COACH SHAW: Yes, it's a bar. But it's a low bar. And we still take a lot of pride becoming bowl eligible. But the thing is to win as many games as we can, and they'll tell us which bowl game to go to. All we're trying to do is build off this game, build some momentum so the guys in the locker room, not to just think about the win, but to think about what it took to get the win.

We played well in all three phases. We played hard, we played physical, we played smart, and we played together. So hopefully we can continue to build on that and take that into the big game next week.

Q. Safety play has been talked about off and on this season. How would you evaluate that, especially in the first half? There was some miscues. Don't know if they were just one-off events?
COACH SHAW: Yeah, one was the big touchdown. The big, long touchdown, and great play by them. It's what we call the old sluggo seam -- you pump it one side, they move the safety and you come back and hit the seam on the backside. A little miscommunication on who was supposed to be where.

Got that corrected. Our guys came up and made some big tackles, made some open-field tackles. Frank Buncom came down, made open-field tackles, had to make some tackles in space. We missed Ben Edwards all year, but I thought our guys played really well tonight.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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