STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 16, 2023

Troy Taylor

Postgame Media Conference

Sacramento State - 30, Stanford - 23

COACH TAYLOR: Congratulations to Sacramento State and their staff and players. They made a lot of plays and made more than we did. And they won the game.

Q. Thoughts on your first experience at home at Stanford Stadium?

COACH TAYLOR: Definitely it's nice to be home. It's a great venue. Thought we came out, played really fast. And not able to sustain it like I would have liked to. But the environment was good.

Q. How did it feel to play against your former team today?

COACH TAYLOR: It's very familiar faces and good coaches, obviously, really good players. So once the game starts, honestly, you're just competing.

Q. What did you say to each other?

COACH TAYLOR: I just said congratulations, yeah, and good luck the rest of the season.

Q. What's the road ahead for this team?

COACH TAYLOR: Obviously we've got a ton of improvements to make, and we have a long year to do it. So it's just back to work and just continue to chip away and continue to build. Obviously disappointing when you lose any game, but we've got another one next week that we will respond back and be ready to play.

Q. Thoughts on how Sacramento State played today?

COACH TAYLOR: Yeah, really talented players. Really good coaching staff. They did a great job. They were ready to play and they did some nice things schematically and obviously the guys are really competitive. They did a great job.

Q. (Question off microphone)

COACH TAYLOR: My Stanford team? Oh, I mean, I'm a Stanford Cardinal now. So really just focusing on our team.

Obviously wished them luck moving forward. Just really focused on our guys and their mentality and being able to respond and come back next week ready to play.

Q. How did you feel about your two quarterbacks today?

COACH TAYLOR: We'll see. I felt comfortable with both of them coming out of camp playing. They can definitely play better.

We've got to do a better job of protecting them, for sure. The second half, the pressure really started to affect us in some crucial moments. It's not all the quarterback, for sure; it's everything, including us putting in position to be successful. So I've got confidence in both those guys.

Q. Simi as a freshman starting on the offensive line, what sort of impact has he made so far?

COACH TAYLOR: Simi is a really talented kid. Great kid. Works really hard. Obviously with the young team that we have, he has an opportunity to come in and play immediately and he's done that, and his future is very bright.

Q. You got good mileage out of your running backs today, thoughts on how they looked?

COACH TAYLOR: I think our running backs, listen, they play hard. They're pretty versatile in terms of being receivers and runners and protection. So we have to utilize them all, for sure.