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ROSE BOWL GAME: IOWA VS STANFORDDecember 28, 2015Kevin HoganPasadena, California Q. What lessons did you take from him that you still incorporate today? KEVIN HOGAN: There's so many things that he instilled in me, the values, the voice, and how he carried himself as a person, and always so humble and interested in other people. That's something I've really kind of tried to be like myself. Don't be afraid to communicate and be interested in other people's lives. One of the things football-wise is just going out and having fun and enjoying the game I've been playing my whole life, and that's something that I've been trying to do is just keep it simple. It's a game, so treat it like a game. It's not like you're going to war. There's a lot of different things going on in the world, and so it just really changed my perspective on the sport. Q. You mentioned over there it didn't really affect your play, but that's a lot to bottle up for a kid, I assume. KEVIN HOGAN: Yeah. It definitely was tough at times, but it was reassuring knowing that I was doing the right thing, just knowing that that's what he wanted, and he was battling something much greater than what I was. It made it easier to a certain degree to kind of keep it to myself because I knew that's what he would like and would appreciate. You know, I don't feel anything about that like in a negative way, I guess, but it is definitely challenging. But in terms of the way last season went, there were so many things that went into it that I wouldn't attribute to that. Q. Your comments from your coaches are that you seem more relaxed this year. Do you feel more relaxed? Does it show? If so, how? KEVIN HOGAN: Yeah. I mean, I think I'm just enjoying the present more. I'm not really looking too much past. I'm playing one play at a time, and I'm trying to do my best on that one play each time. There's a lot of room to be relaxed. I'm not thinking what's going to happen one moment when we're at third-and-long or what's going to happen in the fourth quarter of the game. I'm just playing one play at a time and enjoying myself, and it's just allowed me to kind of relax my shoulders and just play the game that I know how to play. I've gone through practice, been through all the drills, and it's just about going out and the 30-second nature, just executing. Q. Iowa is simple, they keep things simple. Is simple harder to go against than maybe more gambling kind of defenses? KEVIN HOGAN: Yes and no. I mean, if it's a bad team, simple is good for us. But it seems like Iowa where they keep it simple and they do their jobs really well, they execute their techniques and do a great job of holding coverages, holding blitzes until the snap of the football, it's going to be really tough because you don't know exactly what you're going to get. You kind of have your mindset of what their defense is going to be before the snap, and all of a sudden they just throw something else at you. So it's definitely going to be a challenge, and we're just going to try and keep it simple ourselves. Just run our bread-and-butter plays, and it comes down to execution. It's not going to be anything crazy. We're just going to try and execute our simple plays and hope that our preparation and work ends up better than theirs. Q. Is it almost like mirror images in some ways, these programs? KEVIN HOGAN: Very similar, yeah, very similar to Northwestern, to Michigan State, even Maryland a little bit. But I've compared them a lot to Michigan State's defense. They line up in a 25-front or a field-under front, cover four, and they line up every time, and they might play something standard, and then they might at the snap of the ball roll to 3 buzz and bring their cross star blitz up the middle. You never really know what they're going to do, and that's a challenge. But I think it's definitely an advantage having played teams like this before and learned. I think that that'll definitely help with our game plan. Q. They run that stand-up blitz package. They call it the Raider Package. How do you deal with that? KEVIN HOGAN: We know who's coming. We'll be all right. Q. Do you figure that out on film? KEVIN HOGAN: I mean, there are tendencies that we feel like we can game plan. We'll see. Hopefully we do pick it up. I mean, it's an interesting defense. Teams try and kind of walk around and attack a lineman with one guy and then have a looper or something. But we've seen it a few times, and I can't remember the last team that does it, but we've seen it a few times this year. So hopefully our protection plan is good. I feel confident in it, though. Q. What impresses you about Desmond King? KEVIN HOGAN: He's very good. I mean, it goes without saying. He's very physical, not afraid to get up and press, and then does a good job kind of sticking to the player downfield. So I mean, he's going to be a great player to go against. I'm excited. He's made a lot of big plays for that team this year, so he's definitely someone that their defense can count on to make a play in crunch time and in big-game situations. That's a huge credit to him and the clutch player that he is and the talent that he has. Q. [On Stanford's style of offense...] KEVIN HOGAN: Yeah, our offense has a lot of moving parts, but at the end of the day, we just want to keep it simple in the sense that just run our bread-and-butter plays. We could be getting to the same set from a bunch of different motions and shifts and whatnot, but at the end of the day, we're just running our normal schemes. We love running power and zone-run plays, and then our just normal passing concepts. We might show things in a different way than we might have before, but in the end we're just getting back to our simple day one installs. Q. You said your playbook formations are immense, so how do you whittle it down to those plays? You can't practice them all. KEVIN HOGAN: Yeah, well, we practice the plays over and over again nonstop, and then just the way that our offense works with just the verbiage. I mean, the plays are so long and everyone is being told what to do that it allows you to create all kinds of different formations and get to different formations from sending motions to shifts to lining up in a different way and having the different people run the play. But it's the same concepts. It's stuff that we know. It's stuff that we're comfortable with, and whether it's Rector running the corner or Hooper, it's the same concepts, just different formations, different personnel groupings, and it's just a lot to do what we do but just kind of show the defense something different. Q. Does it help being a Stanford guy to almost process it all and put it into action, given the academic standards at your institution? KEVIN HOGAN: Absolutely. We have a lot of bright guys on our team, and coaches have done a great job going out all over the country and finding us, and it takes a lot of hard work to learn this offense. It took me a long, long time. But it's necessary. It allows you to be successful, to have guys in the huddle be able to handle three, four plays in the huddle, and being able to go up and communicate each call, and if I kill a play or loop a play with five seconds left on the play clock, they can get their calls out and be ready to go, and that takes a lot of processing, a lot of quick decisions. So it's a testament to the recruiting that we do, to the guys that come to Stanford, that they're able to process it and handle it and then still go out and execute the play. Q. Were you here when Andrew Luck was here? KEVIN HOGAN: Yeah, I redshirted his senior year. Q. What did you learn from him? KEVIN HOGAN: Oh, so much. I mean, Andrew is a different beast. Just his preparation, the way he carried himself in the huddle, in the locker room, outside the locker room. I learned so much just by watching, and didn't need to do a whole lot of talking, but just kind of watching from afar. I'd go in there and we'd have mandatory study hall on some nights, and I'd sneak away across the hall and go into the quarterback room and he'd just be in there watching film. I took advantage of that as much as I could to just kind of go in and be the young guy kind of watching over his shoulder. I don't even know if I can -- if I know how much I learned. It's almost subconscious. But I've learned a lot. Q. Looking back on your career, what is the difference between Hogan the first-year starter in the Rose Bowl in 2012 versus the one that's coming to start in your fifth-year senior year now? KEVIN HOGAN: I don't know. I feel so much more comfortable. I feel like I've mastered the offense, and I think at times throughout my career I was maybe trying to be too perfect, and now I've been able to relax and kind of just take a keep breath and enjoy the moment. At the end of the day, we all know how to execute the play. We can all throw. I can throw a hitch. I can throw a curl. I can do all of that, and it's just going out and doing it, and just being able to relax and go out and not really put pressure on myself to be perfect. It really allows you to execute and do the things that you've been doing but just on a bigger stage. Q. Some of the coaches and some of the guys we've talked to said you're more vocal now, that you used to lead by example and now you talk a little bit more in the huddle and you're one of the guys that's yelling at somebody, in a positive way obviously, when something needs to happen. When did that change kind of happen for you? KEVIN HOGAN: I think that it's something that carries over from the off-season with Coach Turley. He puts us through so much adversity, especially this past off-season. I mean, he beat us down so hard, and it was just an opportunity for us to kind of rise up and build each other back up. It definitely helped, and you've got to know when to kind of give the guy like a push and get him going, and you need to know when to put your arm around his shoulder and say we've got this. We've done this a million times before, it's just pitch and catch. So you've got to know the different people and the different situations and what they need and just know that you always have their back, and that's reassuring to them. I mean, I can't really point to anything in specific, but I definitely feel more comfortable in the huddle being able to tell someone to stop talking and in the meeting rooms tell people to get their notes out and pay attention, and I take this stuff seriously because if one guy doesn't do their job it affects the whole play on offense. A defense can have three or four guys do their own thing and still have a sack in the backfield, whereas an offense it needs to be 11 moving parts working in sync. Just kind of expressing the importance of that, and we all are smart guys, we're all great friends off the field, we stick together, and it's that friendship and trust that really helps us and allows me to feel comfortable with telling my buddy, you know, let's go, this is important. We've got to be focused and locked in. So I think that's definitely one of the things. It's just that comfort level has grown. With it comes more of an ability to kind of leave the way you feel. Q. Can you describe the difference in the huddle last year when you guys were struggling, scoring 23 points a game, to now one of the top offenses in the nation, over 40 a game? How different does it feel in there? KEVIN HOGAN: Oh, it's awesome because we feel that every play is going to be successful. We know that we can go out and execute against anything, and it's a lot of fun. It's fun putting points on the board, and it's awesome that you're doing it with your boys. In the huddle it's definitely been great this year. At times in the past when we've been run heavy, find people sighing or whatnot, but now everyone knows that each play is with a purpose and everyone needs to get their job done, and no one is really worrying about their own stats or how many times they touch the ball or what kind of play is called, and I think that's definitely a key to our success is no one cares who gets the credit. I remember -- I forget what team we were playing, but it was a few weeks ago, and the coaches -- I think Coach Bloom had texted the receivers asking what their top three concepts were, and one of the plays that Devon Cajuste said was his favorite play in the game, we call it an angle post to Rector, and Coach asked him, you're not even the primary read, and you're likely not even getting the ball on this play, and he said, it doesn't matter, I think Rector will score on it. So it just shows that everyone cares about each other. No one cares about their individual stats because that'll come with the overall team's success, and it just shows the kind of guys that we have in this locker room, that we've been together for so many years and gone through so much that it's definitely a different feel this year. Q. Iowa's coaches said that on and off the field their players are best friends, and same situation with you guys. How important is that, to have that vibe or relationship with the guys on the team? KEVIN HOGAN: It's amazing. You know, I tell people that we have the closest locker room, the tightest-knit family, and if you look at our roster we're from all over the place, all over the country. So many different cultures, backgrounds, people from South Florida to -- I'm not even going to try and pronounce Josh's hometown because he'll get mad at me, but somewhere up in Washington, and the fact that we're able to gel together and get together, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from, it makes that bond and friendship that much better because we feel like we were brought to Stanford for a reason. We feel like there's a certain formula that brings us together and allows us to mesh, and we believe in that. So it definitely helps us want to go out and be successful for each other. Q. I know you touched on it earlier, the leadership, but how important is it to have the quarterback in the room be the leader of the offense? KEVIN HOGAN: I think it's very important. I mean, he's the guy who touches the ball every play. You set the play, make sure that you're doing your best to put the offense in the best position to succeed, so it's very important. It doesn't matter if you're a young guy or an old guy, you've got to be the leader of the ship, and I know that my guys trust me. I know I can go out, and I don't need to worry about making mistakes because I know that they have my back. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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