STANFORD UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 30, 2024

Josh Hoover

Postgame Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Josh.

Q. Fourth quarter, trailing, one drive, is that one of the moments you dreamed about when you started playing football?

JOSH HOOVER: Yeah, it's the ones I love. My entire life, I felt like I'm a guy that lived for those situations. I think we learned a lot from those situations we had last year. We worked on it all season. Tonight you saw what happened. Went down and scored when we needed to. Just a credit to our guys, the toughness, the mental toughness, it takes to go and execute in crunch time.

Obviously there were some things we need to clean up. We weren't great in certain scenarios. When it was time to make plays, guys up and made plays. It's a situation you can only dream about. Proud of the guys for going out and executing.

Q. (Question about Jack.)

JOSH HOOVER: Yeah, he was unbelievable. For his first game out there, he was awesome. Great feel. There was one down the sideline that I overthrew by just a foot. I think he would have scored.

He did a great job tonight. Proud of him the way he adjusted. He's such a selfless guy. He'll play any position on the field. That's what makes this team special. That's what makes my love for this team so great. It's just the guys like that that are willing to play whatever position just to help our team. He's doing that.

Q. You had the crazy interception, fumble off of that. How do you keep your composure, keep everybody locked in in those moments?

JOSH HOOVER: Yeah, you just keep playing. You can't control what's already happened. As a quarterback, everyone's looking at you to see how is he going to react. We had a couple drops, miscommunications with running backs, put the ball on the ground, things like that.

You just have to keep playing. You have to persevere. You can't let that affect you. You have to flush it. It's hard, but I think our guys did a good job of flushing the mistakes and continuing to fight and press and work.

I gathered everybody up and just told everyone to relax. You can't do anything about it. Just relax, play our game. They can't stop us. We're stopping ourselves.

That was my speech to everybody.

Q. Does it feel good to finally take a breather after (indiscernible)?

JOSH HOOVER: I'm sorry?

Q. Does it feel good to take a breather after the previous game?

JOSH HOOVER: No, it feels good to win a game. I mean, it's a good feeling to win. Obviously you'd rather learn a lot after a win than after a loss. We're sure thankful for the win. God has been good to us. We're going to continue to praise Him.

Q. Can you highlight the first touchdown to Savion in the corner and also your deep ball in the first half that didn't lead to a touchdown.

JOSH HOOVER: It makes it easy when you got studs out there. All I got to do is put it in the air, they're going to get it. Both of those plays, I threw it up to Savion. He made a play on the ball.

When you have studs around you, they make you look good. I'm sure thankful for them. I get probably too much credit for some of that stuff. Those guys are making plays on the ball. Super thankful for the way they can go downfield and track it and make plays, so... It's all them.

Q. Young in your college career, being on the west coast playing after midnight Dallas time, the limited number of plays, what feels unusual about being at Stanford tonight?

JOSH HOOVER: It's kind of a strange atmosphere. Like, in the south, we're used to football is everything. It was just a little bit different atmosphere, a little more laid back, relaxed. The weather was awesome. I'd take this weather any day. I haven't felt this in August in a long time, so...

It was just a little bit of a different vibe. But the guys did a great job of not letting that affect the way that they got ready to play and the way they came out hot.

We started really fast on offense. It was just kind of a different feel. But proud of our guys for not letting the external factors affect the way they showed up and played and just continued to press on, no matter what their surroundings were.

Q. Can you talk about the communication system.

JOSH HOOVER: It was fine. It was good. We did a good job I thought breaking the huddle on time. Coach did a good job with the communication within the game, giving me some reminders every now and then about, Tell Savion a (indiscernible) ball, stuff like that, just to help with communication. I thought it was really good. The process was really good for us.

There was maybe a time or two where it was kind of hard to hear. I think that's just part of the crowd noise. They had the music up both times. I think at some of the games where it's louder, you have to cover your ears and try to communicate that a way.

I thought it went well. Pretty smooth for the first time out.

Q. What can you say about Cam keeping the process going?

JOSH HOOVER: I told Cam just to continue trusting him up front. Those gaps are going to be there. Sometimes we all have a tendency early if something's not going well, the holes aren't there, exactly where you think they are, guys kind of start trying to do too much. The thing I said to him was just to continue to trust him and it's going to open up. They're going to get it going up front. They did.

Props to Cam for continuing to press it and doing a good job of running the ball.