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STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 30, 2019

Casey Toohill

Stanford, California

Notre Dame - 45, Stanford - 24

Q. (No microphone.)
Casey Toohill: Tough year. We obviously pretty evidently didn't play to our standard, and that's always tough. This is my last year. But I'll remember that, and I'll always have that sense of accountability for the success that we didn't have. But in terms of how I look at it, too, I have to take the big picture with it because this was my last game at Stanford and I've had just an incredible time here. I've loved every minute of it. I was so happy that I got to come back and try to lead this team. It's not always the easiest task to try to lead when things are hard, but I learned a great deal from that. I have so much love for this team, for these coaches, and I have so much faith that they're going to get it right the next time they step on the field. I do feel bad that I wasn't maybe enough of a catalyst that I needed to be, but I still am so grateful for the opportunity to play college football at Stanford.

Q. What were some of the differences out there -- when you look back at kind of the whole year and the difficulties of just having spring ball the way you would want to have a spring ball, having the training camp the way you would want to have a training camp, how much of all that have went into what ended up happening in 2019?
Casey Toohill: The problem with, like, that line of thinking is just, it's just kind of excuse-driven. If I was to sit here and say, oh, we didn't get enough reps. That's why we lost or we didn't do this, we didn't do that, I mean, our strength coach leaving, things like that. It's just, it's, it weakens the character. We really just, at the end of the day, it was on us and we didn't, we weren't up to the task. And that's, I mean, in life it's hard. We always look for these explanations for things. We want to explain complex phenomena with simple solutions or simple answers, but it's not simple. It's just, there were a lot of things in our own play that just weren't right and that's what needs to get corrected. I have full faith that they will correct that. And I wish I could have, I mean, I didn't play my best at plenty of times, and I look back on that and that makes me sad, but I'm still proud of how this team was able to fight, even though we were down like a lot and we had our back against the wall pretty much the whole year.

Q. What were some of the differences out there today against Notre Dame?
Casey Toohill: Differences in what sense?

Q. As far as the defense --
Casey Toohill: I felt we really came to play, especially the first half. I thought there was a lot of good, and they have, they're a good team. Notre Dame's a good team. So if you don't bring your A game, you're going to get beat. And that's what happened. We let up here and there too much a few big plays and that was it. But I like how we fought to the end and I think that's something to build off of.

Q. (No microphone.)
Casey Toohill: It's as deflating as you want to make it be. I wasn't personally deflated because I don't believe in that sort of mindset. It's just, football's back and forth, just like anything. So it's really just kind of how you approach each individual play after that. Yeah, it sucks. I think, obviously, we don't want to give up a touchdown, but I wasn't stressing about that. I thought we were still in a good place even with that.

Q. You've had a big hand in the leadership of this team. Curious as you move forward, are there any guys on the team that you see stepping into those kind of roles?
Casey Toohill: Sure, I mean, the thing that's good is I did have a big hand in the leadership, but also so did guys like, I mean, Malik Antoine, Drew Dalman, Colby Parkinson, guys that very well are coming back, many of them. So, like, I don't, I can rest easy knowing that there's plenty of great leaders just coming up the pipeline. I think one thing I just really tried to pride myself on as a leader was just trying to develop other guys. It's, like, I didn't want to be the only one talking, because as soon as I leave I don't want there to be some sort of void or anything like that. So I think a guy like Curtis Robinson, he's going to step up, he's going to be a great leader. I'm excited to see what he's going to do.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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