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STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 7, 2013David ShawOREGON – 20 Q. Coach, Tyler Gaffney, 45 carries, broke the single game record. How impressed were you and how proud are you of him, and was that symbolic of how tough he is as a back? COACH SHAW: There is no question. When Tyler came back from baseball, he talked about missing Stanford University, he talked about missing his brothers, and he used the word brothers. It hurt him so bad. Even though he was doing great playing baseball, I think it hurt him watching his team play without him last year. Now to come back and be a part of it, he bulked up. He's 220 pounds. He has a love and a passion for the game of football. He doesn't want to let his guys down. Every yard he gets is because of the guys around him. We knew he was ready tonight. The extra couple days helped a ton, I think, for him and the whole team gets back fresh. Tyler Gaffney ran the ball tonight the way running back backs are supposed to run the ball in this game of football. When you walk into our new facility, the players only entrance, to the left is the offensive line, to the right is the picture of the defensive line. That is what football is about. You control the line of scrimmage, and you have a chance to win. We talked about defensively all week, last week and a half, being able to control the line of scrimmage, keeping them balled up, keeping them inside, not letting Marcus get out. He still got at us a couple times, but they weren't touchdowns, they were first downs. As long as we could push him out of bounds and get him a chance to play in the lineup, we knew we had a chance. Offensive line, what can we say? To get two, three, four, six, eight, 12, 14 yard shots, Coach Bloomgren did a phenomenal job with the running game. Our receivers did a great job blocking. Our big guys up front Ryan Hewitt did a heck of a job all night. Q. Coach, all week long the national media has been saying that Stanford football is soft. Do you think today's performance will help change their narrative? COACH SHAW: Yeah, and I know what you're referring to. There's been a lot of talk about Jonathan Martin, God bless him. He'll be back playing the game that he loves soon enough. And do Stanford guys have a problem?  Funny thing is that question usually comes after, boy, your team is so tough and so physical, and plays so great on the offense and defensive line, and then follow that up with a question about well, Stanford has that problem. I think we have one of the best quarterbacks, the best corner in the league, and Doug Baldwin's doing great. We have a bunch of guys playing well. Tonight you see who we are, a big, physical team that plays extremely hard and plays very well together. Q. You guys always seem to be at your best when it's you versus the world. What happens in the locker room when you guys get that mentality and pull together? COACH SHAW: You know, it's November. It's November. We talked as a team about it's time to play our best football. No one has seen our best football, and that's including us. Tonight was about three‑and‑three‑quarters quarters of it, you know, and that's what we talked about. We can't be satisfied. We can't be satisfied with how we finished the game. I'm not happy about that one bit. We can't be satisfied with just one win. We've got to win in November. We've got a tough game next week against an outstanding USC team that's playing great, and we've got to be ready to roll. Q. How would you compare this performance against the one against Oregon last year? COACH SHAW: I would say this is the more complete performance. I thought last year we played great. Becker had a phenomenal game, Stepfan Taylor, some individual performances, but we passed on so many opportunities that last game last year. We turned the ball over multiple times, and we missed a field goal, and we missed a 4th and 1 that was a makeable throw and catch. So there were opportunities there that we needed to take advantage of. I thought we took advantage of those opportunities. Q. At the end of the first half, Coach, what was going on? You were out of timeouts. You were going to go for it, then they called a timeout and let you kick the field goal. Were you surprised that they called timeout? COACH SHAW: A little bit. We were still talking about it, honestly. If it was 4th and short, we were going to try to get it in once it got backed out. We didn't take that step. We were still talking about it when they took the timeout. Q.  Back to the offensive line, what did they do in one week? It seemed like they had some trouble, and I don't think you were too happy with the Oregon State performance overall. What happened in this ensuing week to turn it around like this? COACH SHAW: We played up to our capabilities. But I will say: This not to take anything away from Oregon State, because they always play us extremely well. We have a bunch of big guys on the offensive line. They have the more undersized defensive linemen, and they get under our pads and knock us back. It's obvious when you look on the film that's what happened. So we're constantly playing lower, playing smarter. We were much better in pass‑pro tonight. Thought pass‑pro was phenomenal tonight. We let our guys tee off in the running game and did a good job. Q. I understand coaches do this one game at a time. Could you explain what this does for your image on national TV and in terms of the National Championship picture? COACH SHAW: For us, it doesn't do anything. It's everybody else, the smart teams, the good teams only worry about their next game. Let the people talk. So our guys, I don't care. We might go down there after that fourth quarter, which is fine, which is fine. We can't care. People may say we're overrated. That's fine. That's no big deal. What we have is next down to make. That's for us. That's what our guys have to understand. We get football. We get the games. Let everybody else talk and do whatever they want. But for us we get to play football and that's what our guys love to do. Q. I understand the mission is to keep the other team from scoring, but how surprised were you when you looked up there early in the fourth quarter and the other team still had zero points, and what were the two or three biggest factors when that happened? COACH SHAW: I wasn't surprised because I know what we're capable of defensively. I wasn't surprised that they were zero because we had two big turnovers, two huge turnovers in the red zone that kept it to zero. It wouldn't have been zero without those turnovers. But in the back of my mind, all of us, everybody in this room, you all know they were going to make a run. That's who this team is. We were ready for it, we knew it was going to happen, and then it started. It didn't feel like it was ever going to end. But our guys didn't panic. We talked about it. We talked about not panicking. We talked about watching these guys on film. People play them tight, and then they make a play, and next thing you know it's a water fall. But we wanted to turn the faucet off. Our guys did that, and thankfully there was Jeff Trojan at the end filling in for us. Q. What were the biggest factors in the turnovers (No Microphone)? COACH SHAW: The biggest factors were the turnovers first and foremost and no big plays. That is the thing. You have to keep these guys limited in their big plays. Part of this game, yeah, but it's making tackles. It's making tackles. These guys are tough at tackling and our guys did a great job. Q. Did you expect Mario to run as little as he did? Did you have any inkling he was a little gimpy? What did you game plan for? COACH SHAW: We game planned for everything they had. I don't know how much we planned on running. We tried to force the ball out of his hands a couple times, and it wasn't a smart thing to do. Because if you let them choose the whole time, then it's tough. Try to force the ball out of his hands and (No Microphone). But if he was gimpy, he was still fast. Q. You're the only Pac‑12 team that's beaten them each of the past two years. I mean, nobody else has even kept them that close to that low an offensive production. Is it something‑‑ is it the way you guys are built that helps you match‑up so well with Oregon or is it just you have the players? COACH SHAW: It's a combination of everything. I think we've got players that fit our scheme. We've got very, very good players. But you have to play. You have to play. You have to be smart. You have to play smart. These guys are good. They're dangerous, you know? I'll say this: I'd like to know if anybody's played a tougher schedule than we have? I'd like to know if there is. Our conference is really, really hard. It's tough to come and play every single week. You take a week off and you see what happened in Utah. You don't play your best football. Our guys played extremely well today. The fact that we've won two in a row against these guys, credit to our players, the coaches and preparation. Bottom line, they didn't give it to us. They didn't give it to us. We had to play our game and finish the game at the end, and we did. Q. Did you expect to get as much out of Henry Anderson as you got today? COACH SHAW: I was hoping. I was hoping. We weren't nervous about conditioning. That was the one thing we felt really good about but you never know until they start playing football, and he played a lot. We tried to roll him through get him some rest, but he said he was ready to go. But you never know how much bike work translates to football. He's been working on the bike and trying to keep his conditioning. But he did great. I thought all our guys up front played well. Josh Mauro played great also. All those guys played a really good game up front. Q. I thought I saw some new wrinkles in the offensive play calling and the defense. Do you guys kind of buildup and save some stuff for these really big games in terms of bringing out the last stages of the playbook that we might not see otherwise? COACH SHAW: No, I think we kind of always have them up. You see our quarterback a lot of times at the line of scrimmage is changing plays. We'll call three plays in the huddle sometimes, so sometimes you have one of those. Last week we played one and we'll call a different play. So those plays are always up. That's part of our base. Q. Is this sort of what you needed out of Kevin Hogan? Not a lot of big numbers, but he ran the ball more today and effectively and looked like he controlled things for you? COACH SHAW: Oh, I thought he played great. I thought he played absolutely great. Just kind of missed the big one to tie. The ball thankfully got together. The pass interference call, kind of missed that one. We got a little pressure in his face. I thought we were going to have to get at least two more big plays in the passing game. I thought we were going to need two more of those in order to come away with the victory. But we worked a lot out there on the deep ball and getting his base back underneath him, and I thought he played great. Q. What do you think of Thursday Night Football? COACH SHAW: Honestly, I'd rather play on Saturday. But you know what? It's great to have the stage and not share it with anybody and let the country see what we're all about. Just play a big game like this. None of us at Oregon or Stanford were surprised when this game was picked to be Thursday night. I'd say right now pick it again next year. It's going to be a great game, two really good teams going at it. Give them a lot of credit, because they didn't make it easy. That was one heck of a run. I don't know how fast they scored those 20 points, but they came up pretty fast. Q. Is this your biggest win as head coach at Stanford? COACH SHAW: It's going to be hard for me to put anything above the Rose Bowl. The Granddaddy was pretty special. This is good, this is good. But the season's not over. We have a lot of football to be played. Hopefully our best football is out there for us. Q. Just wondering if you could speak to the job Derek Mason has done in the last two years now against Oregon? COACH SHAW: Derek's done a great job. Preparing the team, preparing the guys. As much as it is scheme, it's recognizing what kind of guys that we have and putting them in position to be successful. All of us coaches say that. But Derek does a great job putting it into the practice. You have to put guys in position to be successful. The team doesn't matter if you're just scheming and we put guys like Henry and Shayne in bad position. You have to know your people, you have to know who you're playing against, and put the scheme and personnel together and he's done a great job. Q. To hold Oregon's offense at 17 minutes of possession time and 20 points after De'Anthony Thomas's prediction, was that bulletin board material this week? COACH SHAW: Not at all. We never worry about what people say. You can say whatever you want. People talk bad about us, people say things about us, opposing players talk sometimes, and that's fine. We don't get upset about it. Talk doesn't win football games. We talk with our pads and we did that tonight. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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