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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 26, 2019

K.J. Costello

Stanford, California

Stanford - 41, Arizona - 31

K.J. COSTELLO: How I feel this season. It's about playing football, playing good football. We've done a lot of that at Stanford the last four years I've been here. My job is to try and be a catalyst to get us to do so. I think we did that today. There was guys all over the field making plays. I still think there's a lot more out there. Seriously, I mean, we broke out and did some things we thought we could do the last eight months, so that's good. There's still a lot more out there. In general, regardless of the situation where we stand, we have to get better.

Q. How did it feel to finally get back out there on the field and take that first snap?
K.J. COSTELLO: Yeah, it seems like it's been an eternity, man. Three, four weeks standing on the sideline, guys going down left and right. Being one of those guys as well, it doesn't feel good. It feels awful, especially when you play this game because you want to do anything for your boys, and you feel you can only be a voice on the sideline. That's not what I signed up to do.

So being able to go out there and play and smile at my brothers, you know, offense, defense, special teams, that's why I came here to do that exactly.

Q. When you're able to distribute the ball like you did, 11 different receivers, what can that do for the offensive execution?
K.J. COSTELLO: We saw a little spring ball with all the seven-on-seven we ran, you know. I felt that when we, our offense, was playing the best football in the last two years, it was taking what the defense gives us. It sounds super cliche, and it's very, very complex, to be honest, in terms of what coverages the defense is going to run and what answers they're giving me.

But when you have four guys, including a tight end and a running back who are all dangerous with the ball in their hands or can make a guy miss, that makes my job a whole lot easier. We've known that for quite some time now.

Being able to run the ball is big time, but also being able to dink and dunk and go over the top, kind of have a full complexion of an offense is what we want to do. We saw a little bit of that in the first half, and there's definitely more in the second, and the job is to win. So that's what we did.

Q. Coach was talking about your juice. Do you feel that you energize the team out there?
K.J. COSTELLO: I can tell you one thing, I feel a whole lot different playing than not playing. For me, it's everything. I'm out there, haven't played in four weeks. I'll challenge myself to play that way in terms of -- not performance, in terms of energy for the rest of my career. I think I did that early on when I got here. I've done that most of the way. I think there's a couple times when you feel -- you don't want to be pressing. But I think that's the expectation. That's the standard. I try and bring that every week.

Q. Is there a point where I've got it, it's going to be a good day?
K.J. COSTELLO: I haven't hit an inside go to Simi all year. It felt amazing. The fade to Simi and the boundary down there in the end zone, up the seam to Simi. I hit it in practice, didn't feel the best in practice, but like things I was planning on doing all week, whether I was playing or not, was preparing to do so, and to see that come to fruition is exactly why you prepare and play.

So I think that it's a good feeling. I think that Simi -- I think the game slowed down for him today. We've all known what he can do. He's done it in practice. I think officially the game slowed down for Simi, and now that's the bar, and we've got to keep going, keep climbing.

Q. The ball to Brycen Tremayne, I thought that was headed through the uprights when you let it go. Take us through that play as you remember it.
K.J. COSTELLO: Not to give away my tells, but playing off the safety there, I threw that ball five times to Caden, my boy, and then I threw it many times in high school. I haven't thrown it to this bunch of guys yet. Brycen is perfectly built for that. Running on a linebacker back of the end zone, he makes plays like that all the time. I told him he's the guy. I want to see a lot more of that out of him going for the remainder of the season.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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