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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 17, 2019

David Shaw

Stanford, California

UCLA - 34, Stanford - 16

COACH SHAW: Kind of expect three young guys playing up front and a young quarterback starting his first game, but that's not an excuse. We knew it was going to happen. Some things we did well. Some things we didn't.

Pass protection, there were times we thought we had enough time to get it off and didn't get it off. Sometimes we didn't have enough time to get it off. We missed some throws and we got some balls deflected. Couple guys got their hands on some balls and got opportunities to make highlight catches. We didn't make those catches.

So when you play against a good team and you have opportunities, no matter how difficult they are, you have to take advantage of them. We didn't today.

Their quarterback, DTR, I guess they call him X factor, quick, athletic, explosive. You give Chip Kelly a guy like that and we've seen that movie before. There are times we had him hemmed in and he got out. Some times where we had everybody covered and he's the guy that can take off and make plays with his legs. And those are drive extenders and those are big-time plays. Guy made those plays. And we have to be able to contain guys like that.

Heck of a play from a good running back also. Multiple good plays by him. We've got to get him on the ground. Had a chance to tackle him, didn't tackle him.

But all in all, for me, defensively, we played well enough to keep us in the game, played well enough to keep us in the game. We've got to make more plays on the offensive side. Had some opportunities just didn't make them.

I will say this, too, losing Jet Toner early in the game was really difficult. It's not often that you see a kicker get hit on a kickoff. So I need to see that film and see how that happened.

But Ryan Sanborn came in and was outstanding, kickoffs and punts, he handled both extremely well. Kudos to a young freshman for stepping up and making some big plays for us.

Q. Is there any moment in your coaching career that you kind of compare the decimation of the offensive line right now to to be able to draw some perspective and strength to get through this?
COACH SHAW: Decimation might be a little bit of a strong word, Stanford guy. But we haven't had this many injuries. There were a significant number last year and more this year.

The difference this year is these guys are -- we have so many guys out for the season. Last year it was kind of a different guys out at different times and coming back at different times.

We've got five guys out for the year. We're hoping on Devery, hoping that Devery doesn't make it six. Hopefully Devery can come back at some point before the end of the year.

But once again, we have to find out what our guys do best. And with the young group, sometimes that's hit and miss. I thought we played extremely well against Washington. Didn't play quite as well this week. Tried to build a plan with what those guys can do up front and what our quarterback can do.

Gotta go back to the drawing back to a certain degree. Have to watch this film and see what positives there are and make sure we're putting our guys in a position to be successful. And with the young group, that takes a little effort on our part, but that's our job. That's what we're supposed to do. We'll try and take care of these guys, get them ready to play next week.

Q. You've said before after games in which the offense struggles, that it's on yourself and coaches to put guys in the best position possible to succeed. On first reflection, do you feel like that occurred tonight? And do you feel like there was anything you wish you could do better in hindsight?
COACH SHAW: Yeah, a lot of things I wish we -- every play that didn't work, I wish we didn't call it. That's the only way I can answer that question. We're going to try to find the best way possible to put our guys in position.

When it doesn't work, we've got to go back and find a combination of game plan, depending on who we're playing, and what our guys can do. Like I said, with a young group, that's hit or miss sometimes. We haven't seen these guys play a lot. This is game one, really, for one of our freshman up front and game six -- five for another one and game seven for another one.

But it's not an excuse. We have to find out what those guys can do well and give them an opportunity. We should have run the ball better than we did tonight. We've got to find out why and make sure that we put those guys in position. Cameron Scarlett is running extremely hard, trying to make plays, trying to break tackles.

Now, ball security's on him. We can't turn the ball over. We've got to be better at ball security, and our guys are trying really hard to make plays. And we've got to try our best to put them in position to do that.

Q. Did you ever consider making a change at quarterback at any point during the game?
COACH SHAW: No.

Q. I guess why not?
COACH SHAW: The answer's no.

Q. And then second part, how confident are you that either K.J. or Davis will be ready for the next game?
COACH SHAW: We'll see. We'll see.

Q. As you talked about the defense doing well enough to keep you in the game, curious about some individuals. Thomas Booker in particular seemed to have a really strong game. What you saw on him on first review? And also Stuart Head getting the nod at safety and certainly (indiscernible) in run defense?
COACH SHAW: If we would have been able to score more points early, it would have been nice to be in a closer game, because I thought defensively, this is a tough team to slow down. But Thomas Booker is, he's grown up in front of our eyes. He's becoming that play-making defensive lineman that we know he can be.

He's only going to get better and better. He's quick. He's strong. And now he's building that confidence that he can get off blocks and make plays -- not just hold gaps, but really get off and make plays.

So that needs to be contagious, we need that from all those guys up front. I thought Casey Toohill played a good game. And we had some guys make some great efforts, but not enough.

Q. The punt block that you had, was that something that you saw that you thought you could exploit, or was that just a great individual play or what happened on that?
COACH SHAW: Every week Coach Alamar makes sure we find a couple of returns and one or two blocks that we think can work based on how they protect, what they do. And this group, they like to roll their group a little bit, and sometimes they block it straight. Sometimes they roll it one way or the other.

And our guys knew if they rolled it the way that we could try to block it, if they stayed straight there was another way we could try to block it. But what it took was anytime you get a blocked kick like that, it's the guy that blocked it, but it's usually the guys right next to him that did their job so he could get through.

It was a great job by those guys. We worked that multiple times this week and it was great to see it happen for us.

Q. The injuries on the offensive side of the ball are getting a lot of attention. But curious with what the defense is having to deal with. There was a pretty short rotation tonight, a lot of walk-ons and former walk-ons in the linebacker corps. Can you share your thoughts on what the defense had to overcome with that and what Coach Anderson was able to do with his own injury issues?
COACH SHAW: Yeah, it's football. You know, I've said this before, we haven't changed what we do drastically and we were probably the healthiest team in America for about 10 years -- fewest injuries and shortest returns, and the guys that were injured came back healthy and didn't get injured again. That was our mode for about a decade.

Sometimes the pendulum swings back the other way. We started this year about as deep as we've ever been. And ever I include those first four years with this program with Coach Harbaugh, we were as deep as we've ever been and now we're as injured as we've ever been.

We were two deep plus on the offensive line, we were three deep at inside linebacker, three deep across the defensive line, two deep in every position in the secondary. And there's no commonality. We've looked at all the commonality as far as workouts, as far as shoes, as far as surface, as far as positions and what we're asking them to do, as far as practice, et cetera, and there's no correlation. It's just football.

So guys get banged up. Hey, that's why we have 100-plus guys on the team. Everybody's practicing. Everybody's working. And when somebody goes down, somebody else has to come up. And honestly, up until this point, guys have come in and played extremely well. And we expect that. That's our standard.

We recognize that this is difficult. It's not easy. But when things are easy, then they're not special. So for us to get what we want, which is just to find another way to win next week, we've gotta see who is healthy, work them, get them to do what they're supposed to do, get them to feel good about what they're doing, and get them to play fast. And we've got great leadership on this football team. We need those guys to stem up and keep everybody pushing so we can play better next week.

Q. I know when you're dealing with this age group you kind of never know what you're going to get game to game, but are you surprised after the Washington game, which was probably your best game of the season, to now, which is what happened tonight? How surprising was that?
COACH SHAW: I've been coaching long enough to not be surprised. All you can do is prepare and push. So sometimes you step back a little bit when things are going well. When things aren't going well you lean on your leadership, you look at what you're doing. You try to change things up.

As was mentioned earlier they're doing a great job against the run, they're loading the box, so we switched it up, we've got to make some plays outside. And made a couple of really nice throws, guys had a chance, made one big catch, made a couple difficult ones, didn't make some of the special ones.

That's all we can do is continue to do what we believe is right and good for our guys and our guys gotta go out there and play.

So week-to-week, it's a different existence, right? We've got to close the door on this one, learn the lessons that we need to learn and open the door, open the book on the next week.

Q. What was the injury to Jet? Did he just get his bell running or was there an actual --
COACH SHAW: No, it was a lower body injury.

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