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ROSE BOWL GAME PRESENTED BY VIZIO: STANFORD v WISCONSINDecember 27, 2012Shayne SkovPASADENA, CALIFORNIA Q. What do you see from their offense? They pound it out, obviously. Just curious. They probably are unlike anything you've faced? SHAYNE SKOV: I think so. Just with their interior running game and the emphasis they put on it. I think they also use different personnel packages than we've seen so far this year. It's more similar to our offense in years past with the 7, 8 line sets three times in the game. So larger personnel groups. But I think they obviously have put themselves to running the ball, and we've positioned ourself to stopping the run. So it will be interesting to watch. Q. Did you get a chance to watch the last Nebraska game? SHAYNE SKOV: Uh‑huh. Q. Was that one of the games you guys watched? SHAYNE SKOV: Oh, yeah, we definitely watched it. We watched a variety of games. They did a great job running the ball, about 500 yards on the ground. I think it just comes down to assignment football. When you've got guys going around blocks and not pulling linemen, you're going to create voids and you're going to get gashed. So we have to play our side of the football. Q. What does Ball look like to you? What have you seen of him? SHAYNE SKOV: First off, he's a great runner behind his pads. It really goes unnoticed, but every time he gets hit, he falls forward five more yards, which makes a big difference, because you're looking at 2nd and 7 or 2nd and 5, the dynamic of what you're doing from an offensive perspective. He's elusive, and I think he's faster this year than he has been in years past. So he's definitely going to be a terrific competition for us. Q. Are you leaning one way or the other about whether you're going to come back? SHAYNE SKOV: Well, no. I'm just weighing all my options. I think there are some definite positives coming back next year and graduating, playing with my teammates. We've got an incredible team. I love Stanford, so I have to take in all the information and make a decision. Q. Did you talk to Chase about his decision to come back this year? SHAYNE SKOV: Not yet. I'm not going to talk to anybody about it until after the game. Q. Tell me a little about him and what do you think his coming back meant to this team? SHAYNE SKOV: Oh, leadership. I think this defense has done really well, but what we were short on was real veteran leadership, guys with a lot of experience. I think Chase represents that, and he plays with a mentality that serves as a great model for guys that are younger, and the guys on the defense. I think they all look up to him. Diligent worker. Very serious about what he does, and those are the thing that's you want out of somebody that's going to lead this defense. Q. I've heard him described as being ornery all the time. Is that accurate? SHAYNE SKOV: He definitely has a grumpy side. Tell me the next time you see him smile. No, I mean, we all get along. But, yeah, he's got his days where you just kind of want to keep your distance or watch what you say. He's definitely focused when he's on the football field, so that might be representative of being ornery or grumpy. But he wants the best out of this defense, and he's going to do whatever it takes to make sure the guys are on task and the guys are focused. Q. Did you ask for feedback? SHAYNE SKOV: Yes, I did. Q. Can you share with us what was said? SHAYNE SKOV: No, it's a personal thing. Q. Was it enlightening though? SHAYNE SKOV: Yeah, but I think you also have a perspective of what you need to work on, and you're aware of that. I'm always looking to improve, so I'll just take the information I'm given and move forward and become a better player from it. Q. So much gets made of senior leaders on defense. What about the guys on another end, like James and the other guys that have come on this season? SHAYNE SKOV: I think one of the greater defenses this season is the depth. We've had incredible depth. We've had guys go down and guys step in. There were several games where we were rotating our entire defense on the field for stretch at a time. Two, it creates a level of faith. The guys can go out there and play lights out, and not worry about having to sit out for three, four, five plays. The future is bright. This is something sustainable. We've got guys playing well now. Guys that are behind us and ready to step up and they're only going to get better because they're all young. So it's going to be good to watch. Q. Is there any team that you guys have faced that's more like Wisconsin? SHAYNE SKOV: I don't think so. I don't think we've played anybody with the emphasis on the power running game. Obviously, they can do other things, but what it kind of reminds me of is our offense two, three years ago. Q. Your offense? SHAYNE SKOV: Just because in terms of the shifts. Having lots of shifts, and larger personnel, so, yeah, that's what I'd probably say. Q. Do you think this team at some point Stanford's program in the near future can really contend for a National Championship? SHAYNE SKOV: I don't see a reason why not. We've won 11 games three straight years now. All you can do is put your best foot forward, come out to play every week, and the nature of college football is sometimes the ball bounces your way. Sometimes it doesn't. But if you come out every single week with enough talent and enough heart and enough effort, I think eventually you get there. This year we've had close ones go our way and close ones that ended up in losses. You can take that for what it's worth. We're lucky to make it, but who knows. It's just the way college football goes. Sometimes somebody makes a catch, sometimes somebody makes a tackle. Sometimes he doesn't. There are little things that dictate whether or not you make a National Championship. I think we have the pieces, and we'll continue to have pieces to have the opportunities to put ourselves in that situation. Q. (Indiscernible) in this game this year after last year? SHAYNE SKOV: Great. I think when I was coming back, my only focus was to try to help this team and come back as soon as I could. Whether I came back week two, week five, the earlier, the better. If I could make a difference and help my teammates, I mean, we've got something really special in terms of our defense with guys like Ben, Ed, Jordan, Chase, Trent. Some incredible players. So I just wanted to get back as soon as I could to help out anyway I could. If that was playing, if it wasn't. So to be here now has made it all worth it to push myself to my limits and try to make it back as soon as I could. Q. What was it like watching last year? Was there a level of frustration? SHAYNE SKOV: Yeah, I think any time you're doing something and it's a group effort, when you're no longer able to actively participate and be involved, it's incredibly difficult. It's a lot easier last year when we were beating teams. It makes it easy to watch because you're watching people have success and dominate. But when you're family and the guys on this team and your brothers are struggling and you feel like you could help, it's tough to sit there and be physically unable to do anything. Q. The Orange Bowl statistically was your best game. Do you think it was your best game? SHAYNE SKOV: I guess. I think a lot of times stats don't give a full representation of what happens. I would have to think and look back. But I definitely can tell I missed about twice as many sanctions as I had in that game if you go back and watch it. It's one of my biggest frustrations. I could have broken the NCAA sack record if I had actually made half the tackles. But I think it's hard for me to look back and remember which one my best game was. There are moments like that game, the Oregon game this year where I think what really stands out is the team achievement and the pride and the work we've had that we've put in. I think that's also just to go off on a random tangent. That's what makes the team special. It's not the individual performances that we strive in, it's the group efforts and those successes. Like shutting out Cal two years ago, it's things like that. It's not about individual success. It's about the group performance, and that's what we pride ourselves in. Q. Where does the Oregon game rank? SHAYNE SKOV: I'd say the feeling in the locker room was very unique. I'm not going to rank it in terms of anything, but just we've come close the past two years. Winning the Pac‑12 is always one of our primary goals. It's a primary goal. If you're going into the Pac‑12, then you let the pieces fall where they may. So to fall short the past two years, go up there and not really give them much credit before you go out and play that game, and really just play dominant, defensive football, clean football on offense. I think if you had told anybody that we were going to score‑‑ I can't remember, 21 points or 17 points on offense, nobody would have given us a shot in the world. So to go out there and play great defense like that, it's an incredible sense of achievement. Any time somebody puts their heart into something and puts their heart and soul into something and ends up with the end result they were looking for, it's an incredible sense of satisfaction. Yeah, it was a really remarkable and incredible feeling. Q. (Indiscernible) to do that with that team? SHAYNE SKOV: It really means something. It's special. Q. (Indiscernible)? SHAYNE SKOV: It's a group effort, and you realize that. It's not one guy and that's what makes it special. It's probably 18, 22 guys played defense that game, and we all did it together, so that's what makes it special. Q. So if Chase is ornery sometimes, what is (Indiscernible) like? Stay away? SHAYNE SKOV: No, I think he's probably the quiet guy. He's more mellow. He definitely likes to have fun. But he's probably one of the more silent types. But he's definitely the leader of our defensive line. Everybody's got their own way of doing things. Q. Do you notice he didn't have a whole lot of options coming out of high school? Is it noticeable that he plays with a chip on his shoulder? SHAYNE SKOV: I think when he first got here one of the memorable quotes was he said he would be a starter by the time he left.  I can't remember what he fully said as a high school senior about to graduate. But I mean we saw flashes of it early on, and he just kept working and getting bigger and focused. And I think that's what he's trying to instill in the younger guys behind him is that it's a continual process. Q. He said he was thinking about shaving the mullet again this year and you're the one that stepped up and told him don't. That's what he told me. He said you were the biggest advocate because he wanted to prove that it wasn't his fault last year. SHAYNE SKOV: Yeah, we probably just told him that to make sure he'd keep it, I think. I don't know, it's unique. It's interesting. The ladies love it, so he'll probably cut it after the season's over, and then he'll probably have to twist his arm to get him to do it again next year. But we all have fun with it, and it's kind of a fun thing that the team makes sure he does. Q. (Indiscernible) Stanford seems like it's more of a traditional Big Ten model, stop the run first, run football, and then worry about everything else. You guys don't fit the mold of the traditional Pac‑12 team. Is there a little sense of irony as you go against a Big Ten team? SHAYNE SKOV: I think potentially. Q. You don't care? SHAYNE SKOV: No, we just do things different. It's just more of a traditional sense on football, but also our own ingenuity to it. I don't know if it's ingenuity, because we're not doing anything brand new. That's probably the wrong word. But the three‑four defense, we want to be physical, but we also want to attack you and come after you. So physical, but with a purpose. We're not going to sit up in the four‑three front and have big guys staying up front. We're going to blitz. We're going to penetrate. We're going to force you to dictate the terms of engagement on defense. So we do want to be physical, but that's what traditional football prides itself on. But we also want to do it in our own kind of way. Q. Is it a little easier this year‑‑ I don't know if it's easier is the right word. But last year you had two defensive coordinators, and you had (Indiscernible) on one half, and Coach Mason run the other half. Was it streamlined this year having just one guy, or was it just different? SHAYNE SKOV: It was just different. The two of them are working together, but we don't see the conversation that's go on upstairs. So they did a great job being on the same page. But this year, this is Coach Mason's defense now. He runs the ship, and we all follow. It's kept a lot of the same things intact. Just like when coach Coach Fangio left and after Coach Tarver left, things changed and people did things differently. We've had incredible success doing it, and we're having fun. Q. What do you find out about yourself? What do you learn in this sport? What does it teach you? SHAYNE SKOV: I think how much you love the game. A greater sense of awareness for your own body. I think just patience. It's a long process. It takes a long time to come back. So I guess it kind of puts it all in perspective. Q. Does it go through stages of denial? SHAYNE SKOV: I don't want to say denial. You can't believe it initially, obviously; but it's hard to realize in the first couple of weeks what you've got ahead of you. Then you just take anyway, a mountain climber or marathon runner would, you put your first foot in front of the other, and keep going, one after the other. You just stack weeks into days, days into weeks. Sorry, days into weeks, weeks into months, and soon enough, you're back. I think you have to have short term goals and just kind of set that up so it's like rungs on the ladder. You work forward and you eventually get to the top. But you have to keep it all in perspective. Q.  Or else? SHAYNE SKOV: Or else you become a prisoner in your own mind, so to speak. And tough stay positive and focused on where you want to be. It can look a lot more daunting. It could be like it's the fourth year until I'm back playing football. It's not the right way to look at things. Q. Is there any time you say, yeah, I know I'm going to make it now? SHAYNE SKOV: No, you're always a little nervous. But obviously, it's like the first time they let me jog. After that, it's the first time they let me run. First time to get back on the football field. First time to put on pads again. It's steps like that. I think even in your own frustration, God, I'd do anything if they'd just let me walk, because I'm tired of crutching around. So it's a combination of those two things, and eventually you get back to where you were. It's a process. Q. Because it's the first hit in the game, right? SHAYNE SKOV: Yeah, it's just little things. I can remember we did a period and I hit Kodi Whitfield, a freshman probably harder than Coach would have liked. But I was just getting back on the football field for the first time, so I was like a little kid again. So stuff like that. Q. Who shaved your head? SHAYNE SKOV: I went home. My barber at home does it. He cuts hair in his free time, so he did it at his house in East Bay when I was home for Christmas. Q. So Ben didn't shave his mullet? SHAYNE SKOV: We weren't going to let him cut it. It's his hair, his free will, but he would have faced the wrath of the other 110 guys on the team. So he made a wise decision. Q. What is the key to your defense? I know it's kind of general, but is it as simple of trying to prevent them from play action (Indiscernible)? SHAYNE SKOV: I think it's the same recipe we have every week. Do what we do. Dominate the line of scrimmage. Minimize big plays, and force turnovers. Those are the simple things that every defense wants to do, but it's a motto we really believe in. If you look at explosive plays to points ratio, it's really a telling stat. So we try to limit those plays. Obviously they're going to want to run the ball, and we have to stop them. So it's the same recipe of success we've had all year, and we have to continue that. Q. (Indiscernible)? SHAYNE SKOV: I think you have to be aware of what each guy is capable of and potentially how offenses try to use them. But no matter who is back there, we have to play our defense. That doesn't change your alignment, your responsibility in the scheme. So after that, if you want to be aware of who is in there and what they do with who is in the game, then, yeah, we have to focus on that. But we're just focused on playing well. Q. (Indiscernible)? SHAYNE SKOV: Takes a little while to get used to, especially a linebacker. I think your angles change a little bit when you go back to a downhill running game. But I think we're ready. The guys on the team are ready to go. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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