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ROSE BOWL GAME: IOWA VS STANFORD

December 27, 2015

C.J. Beathard

Pasadena, California

Q. Have you done anything fun?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah. We went to Disneyland yesterday.

Q. Did you get on Space Mountain?
C.J. BEATHARD: No, we didn't get to do that.

Q. That's the one on the internet, right? The crazy pictures?
C.J. BEATHARD: The what?

Q. They had a camera in there that take pictures of people right before the moment of truth. They take a picture of people and put them on the internet.
C.J. BEATHARD: Oh, wow, that's wild. I don't know.

Q. Getting to know Stanford's defense a little bit, people that you've talked to, they're a lot like you guys in that this year coming into the year nobody expected a lot from the offense. Nobody expected anything from nine new starters. Did you guys carry a chip on your shoulders from that?
C.J. BEATHARD: Not really. We don't really listen to that. We felt like we had something special going into the off-season and into camp, and we've kind of carried that over into the season. And we kind of got a rhythm going and we felt comfortable with ourselves as an offense and felt like we were playing pretty well.

Q. How do you feel like you can attack Stanford?
C.J. BEATHARD: They're a good defense. They're not easy to -- we are not just going to go in there and score a bunch of points on them. They're a good team, they're well coached, they have good players and it's going to be a battle, and we just gotta go in there and execute the game plan to the best of our abilities and take our shots when they're there, and you take care of the ball, you have a chance to win the game.

Q. How has Matt's contributions helped you guys?
C.J. BEATHARD: Matt's a great receiver. He's been working hard ever since we got here. Played as a true freshman and caught a couple of balls in his freshman year, and ever since then he's continued to get better. And he has a great knowledge of the game. He's a very smart receiver, and he knows where to be at the right times. And I just trust him.

Q. Doesn't look like your typical wide receiver. Usually the wide receivers are stockier, shorter.
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, exactly. I mean Matt's a very good athlete. He's very fast and he's got a lot of speed. He's a great slot receiver. If we put him on the outside, he'd do just as good there as well. He's just a good all-around player and he's a team player and he does what he has to do to make the team better.

Q. Going into the spring, obviously everybody thought Jake Duzey (inaudible). How did your relationship grow on the field? I think you got a feel for Henry, and you guys got a feel for each other. Good things happened there. How long did that take before you guys had it?
C.J. BEATHARD: I don't know. We worked hard this off-season, and during off-season we get together with the tight ends and throw routes. And Henry had a lot of good intangibles. He has great hands, and he has a big body at tight end, and honestly, he was going to be our tight end, Henry was, and Duzey was going to be our B. And we use a lot of two tight end sets and work George in there as well. And without Duzey, George had to step up and did a great job in the run game as well as the pass game. And so has Henry. Henry has done a great job in the run game and pass game as well.

Q. Those guys, was it easy to build that? They were a little bit more experienced coming in?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, definitely. It wasn't very hard. I mean, they're a year older than me. I've been here for, this is my fourth season here, and this is their fifth. And that's a lot of balls thrown to them. I've thrown a lot of balls to Duzey and Hank and George, and we've got a lot of chemistry there, so it wasn't too hard.

Q. You're from the same area as Graham Shuler, the Stanford center?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, we did.

Q. How close were you guys?
C.J. BEATHARD: He went to one of our rival high schools, Brentwood Academy and we used to play them a couple of times a year, and they were in our division in a lot of sports. And we used to hang out. And I was trying to meet up with him yesterday at Disneyland, and coming to such a big place, it's hard to meet up with him. But yeah, I know him well.

Q. Have you guys kept in touch?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, definitely. We found out we were going to be playing each other in the Rose Bowl, and gave each other texts and stuff like that.

Q. What point did that cross your mind when you heard the announcement?
C.J. BEATHARD: Pretty soon. Shortly after, because you know, you play teams not very often but yet you know a guy on a team from the West Coast that's from your hometown. And just happened to be that way where Graham's from the same city I am, and he went out to Stanford and we're playing each other in the Rose Bowl.

Q. Stanford's secondary has had a couple of rough weeks throughout the year. It looks like they're going to be fully healthy this week. What have you seen from them on film?
C.J. BEATHARD: No, they're a good team. I think they do a lot of good things defensively as well as offensively, but they focus on defense. And they've done a good job all season long, and it's just a matter of us going out and executing our game plan. Coach has put together a good game plan for us and the best opportunity for us to win. It's just a matter of us going out and executing it.

Q. One of the big issues for Stanford has been the lack of ability to generate pressure. Does that give you more comfort in that pocket?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah. I don't know. We'll see come game time. But if they're a team that doesn't put pressure on the quarterback, any quarterback would like that. I'm not saying if they do or don't, but anytime you have more time in the pocket to throw the ball, it's nice and gives the receivers more time to work.

Q. How much of a key is time of possession?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah. I mean that's a big part. We like to grind the clock out. That's just the way our offense works. We're going to run the ball and try and establish the run. That's what we do. And we know we got a good offense and they've had a good offense all season long. And as much as we can we'd like to keep our defense off the field and our offense on. It's easier said than done, and each game portrays its own troubles and stuff like that, so it's just a matter of us going out and trying to execute and we'll see how it goes.

Q. [On his last haircut...]
C.J. BEATHARD: I haven't cut it. No, I cut it since then, but it was probably a few weeks right after, and just trimmed up. I'm going to get it cut when I get home after the game. Yeah, it's getting real long.

Q. You were that redshirt freshman year at one point. What did you get out of bowl prep, and what do you see Boyle^ getting out of bowl prep?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, I did bowl prep a couple of years, and it's a lot. When you're young like that, you don't get as many reps as the older guys do because you're always on the scout team and stuff. Especially true freshmen year, all you do is scout. You almost forget you're on offense. That's pretty much all you do.

That's a big part for them. They've been doing a lot of reps for Ryan and Drew. And they're continuing to get better, and it's a great time for them to get better and improve and for the coaches to see that because there's so many days here and there was so many days where we have three weeks before our next game. So it's a good time for them to get better and improve.

Q. Do they lean on you at all? Do they talk to you because if you're a scout it's like a different world.
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, definitely. They do. They still have to know the checks. Obviously not as good as me and Tyler do, but they need to know them because they're still in a period where you quiz them on checks. And anytime I can help them with anything, whether it be reading coverages and getting in the right checks, I'll help them because their mind is still going fast, 100 miles an hour, and it'll stay that way for a while and it'll start to slow down as they get older, but right now I can only imagine how much stuff they're thinking about and what's going through their head right now.

Q. Have you seen a lot of progress from Wiegers?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, definitely. He's getting a lot better over the past season, especially since camp. I think a lot of that is getting more reps. With me being not 100 percent, he's gotten more reps than he would be having, and that's helped him improve as a player, and he's done a good job. And he's gotten a lot of reps this bowl prep as well, and he's continued to improve. And he's a smart guy and he's doing a great job right now.

Q. What do you see defensively in Stanford? What's the biggest challenge?
C.J. BEATHARD: They're a good team. There's a lot of challenges within their defense. They've got a lot of good players on defense. They're a good team. It's just the way they're coached. It's going to be a tough, hard-fought football game. And in order for us to win, we're going to have to go out there and execute our game plan to the best of our ability. And we know that's not going to be easy, and we know there's going to be ups and downs. So we just gotta stay steady through all that.

Q. A lot like Wisconsin?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah. I'd say it's like that because the 3-4. They run a lot of 3-4 stuff. They'll throw a 4 down in there a little bit as well, but they base off a 3-4 defense and we played a lot of 3-4 teams throughout the season and it's a little bit different. But we've had some time here to prepare for that, and hopefully we'll go in there and play our best football.

Q. You look tired, are you okay?
C.J. BEATHARD: I just woke up not too long ago, so yeah, I am a little tired. And the way the schedule is, we feel like we're going everywhere. There's not much time to just relax and hang out in your hotel room. And we're Disneyland here and then we're practicing, and then we're back over here for media. A lot of running around, a lot of doing stuff. And you get tired after a while. But it's part of it. It's part of being in a big game, and you gotta embrace it.

But yeah, it's been fun. It's our third day out here, and it's been a good experience, great city and everything. And we're out here for one task, and that's to win the game. But we gotta embrace the whole experience as well.

Q. Are you looking forward to a down day or off-day?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, definitely. That'll be nice. Down day, off-days are nice, where you can just relax and kind of sit back. But we usually do have time at night to do that. Last night we were at Disney World and trying to get back to the hotel. And you're walking around -- Disney is obviously huge, and if you're walking all day long, it can be tiring after a while.

Q. What was the highlight of the Disney rides?
C.J. BEATHARD: Me and some guys, we were just trying to get on as many rides as we could. We had some fast tests and some good rides. We were just running around trying to get all the good rides. I like going on the roller coasters and stuff like that. There's not many of them here at Disney, but there are some and we tried to find all of them and get on them.

Q. Who are you rooming with?
C.J. BEATHARD: Jordan Lomax.

Q. [On his relationship with Lomax...]
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, we did. Me and Lomax are good friends. He matched last spring break with me and we're close and he's just a good dude.

Q. [On where the team can get better...]
C.J. BEATHARD: I think we need to improve in every aspect, obviously. I forget -- yeah, it was against Nebraska we were O-for-whatever on third-down conversions and we won the game but we didn't convert a third down, as crazy as it sounds. We got the job done and won the game. Michigan State we had the opportunities to convert, and it's easy mistakes that we can could have corrected, dropping balls or missing throws or whatever.

But we gotta get better on third-down conversion and just play a cleaner game all around and we turned the ball over a couple of times against Michigan State and we don't want to do that. When you don't turn the ball over you have a good chance to win the game and we don't want to do that.

Q. Any of the other freshmen that have jumped out at you this year?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, Jerminic has done a great job all season long. He got in there as a true freshman. It's not easy to do. When Tevaun was hurt, he came in there and made some big plays down the stretch. He did a good job.

And then obviously James Daniels stepped in there as a true freshmen. It's tough to do especially as an offensive lineman at the school, we go to there's a lot of mental stress on the linemen; you gotta think about a lot. It's a tough job. But he did a good job when he came in there. And he's going to be a great player.

Q. Falconer?
C.J. BEATHARD: He's young and still learning, but he's got a lot of great natural ability and he's got great hands and good speed, and he's a bigger body, too. It's just a matter of him grasping the offense and learning it better. Right now his mind's still going fast. He's thinking about a lot, but as he gets older that stuff will slow down and he'll get better.

Q. [On Jake Duzey...]
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, definitely. That's big. Jake's a great player, and he's a good tight end for us. He has been the past few years that he's been playing here. But you know one thing about that situation is he was hurt coming into the season really, so we were unable to use him very much with his knee injury before the season even started. So we kind of got used to George and Henry doing a good job in there, and then he's getting back and it's a shame that it's the last game and he ended up getting hurt in practice. I feel bad for him, but I think we'll push through it.

Q. Is he going to play at all?
C.J. BEATHARD: Duzey?

Q. Yeah.
C.J. BEATHARD: No. He won't play.

Q. How long did it take to get over that Michigan State game?
C.J. BEATHARD: Took a few days. That was a tough loss. But win or lose, you gotta get over those games. You gotta move past them. And what's what we did. When we found out we were playing the Rose Bowl, that was big excitement. We're excited to play in this game and we moved past that.

Q. Does being here sort of wash away some of the disappointment of not maybe being in the Final Four?
C.J. BEATHARD: We found out we were playing in this game against Stanford we were excited, and we got past it. And that's what we've done all season long, you gotta move past those games, and we did a good job of doing that all season long and regular season and it's no different in the Big Ten championship game, and move past it and move to our next opponent, which is Stanford. And we found out who it was and that's what we've done.

Q. 25 years since Iowa has played in the Rose Bowl. Do you feel that kind of weight on your shoulders or maybe there's the hopes of a straight program school?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah. Obviously you know it's been that long. That's a long time. It's crazy. And I think Coach Ferentz said he was -- it's just crazy. It's crazy to think like that. But I don't feel any pressure. It's just another game. Obviously it's a big game, one of the biggest of them all, biggest of the season but we've played in a lot of big games in the season so far and we've handled those well and there's no reason to think we would handle this game any different with our focus and preparation.

Q. Have you been there before?
C.J. BEATHARD: Yeah, I've been there before when I was a kid, the one in Florida, Disney World more recent. But yeah, it was fun. It was a good time. Long day, though. Walking around your legs get tired.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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