Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Stanford (Oct. 29, 2022)
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 38, Stanford 13
Pasadena, Calif. (Rose Bowl)
October 29, 2022
UCLA head coach Chip Kelly
on the Bruins’ defensive effort against Stanford
“It was a collaboration with our whole defensive group. Billy [McGovern] was here all week long. He helped institute the game plan. I thought our players really executed. They played hard from the opening whistle. I think that they [Stanford] took that first drive and went down and kicked the field goal. After that, our first defense did an unbelievable job the entire game. I thought that we generated a pass rush against a really good quarterback. I thought we did a really good in coverage and some really good receivers, so I am really proud of everybody involved in our defense tonight.”
on UCLA’s offensive line
“I thought that our o-line did a really good job. And whenever you can rush the ball for over 300 yards, they’re establishing the line of scrimmage. That is what we thought we had to do in this game. We really needed to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, and I think that our o-line played really well tonight.”
on running back Zach Charbonnet
“And he also helped a lot in the pass game. I don’t know what his numbers were, in terms of receptions and yardage and things like that, but he is a three-down back. That’s why he’s going to have a career after UCLA, playing professional football, because he can do it all. He can pick up a pass protection. He’s a weapon coming out of the backfield, and obviously we saw what he’s like when he runs the football. I thought Zach played outstanding today.”
on UCLA defensive coordinator Bill McGovern being away with an illness
“Billy was at home. We FaceTime’d him in the locker room. He celebrated with us. I think he poured water on himself. He’s good.”
on the team moving on from last Saturday’s 45-30 loss at Oregon
“We don’t talk about that. So that’s not our world. Our world is every week is an entirely new season – it doesn’t matter if you win or you lose. We just came back on Monday, and I thought that our guys were great on Monday. We didn’t really talk about getting back on track and all that. I think that when you live your life in the past – I feel really bad for people that do that. We don’t live our life in the past. We don’t have a rearview mirror in our office. We don’t have a rearview mirror on our practice field. We are always looking for the next opponent and who we’ve got next. And it’s the same thing with these guys. They can enjoy this win as much as they want tomorrow, but when we come back in on Monday morning, we’ve got to set our sights on Arizona State.”
on the Bruins’ philosophy and focus
“They bought into the philosophy and they did it.”
on the value of Kazmeir Allen
“Really valuable. He’s starting to really carve out a niche for himself. There are different ways to do things. We knew that we were going to run the ball in the fourth quarter, so the fact that we could take a little bit off Zach [Charbonnet] there and get him in there, he has done that a ton in practice and obviously started at that position. So the fact that we could get him a couple of runs in the backfield and then use him as a weapon outside and also use him as a returner makes it difficult to defend him. He is a guy that has a chance to hit a home run every single time he has the ball in his hands. I was really happy to see that he got a rushing touchdown today.”
on UCLA linebacker Darius Muasau
“I just think that he’s been the rock that we kind of build around. He has to make all of the calls on the defensive side of the ball, get us set up. He’s a really instinctive football player. He’s one of those guys who is calling out plays before they happen because he studies tape so much. He has a really good feel for what they’re doing. They scored on their first possession. We drove down the field. But then, I think that things flipped when he got that interception. And then we scored one play later, and then all of a sudden, it becomes a little bit different of a football game. And that was him, through film study, they like to RPO off of that look and he was where he was supposed to be. He made a huge play for us. But he has made a huge impact on this football program.”
on Zach Charbonnet’s work ethic and consistency
“Yeah, that’s Zach. The best thing about Zach is that he does it every day. It is not easy to do it every single day. There are days where you don’t feel 100 percent. But you could never tell that when you’re around him. It’s kind of infectious when you see him. It’s just, every day, he is the same person. He’s got that work ethic, that mindset. And even when you tell him, as we got to the fourth quarter, that he was out, he doesn’t want to be out. He wants to continue to play. He’d play for 60 minutes, and he’d play special teams if you asked him to. He’d play defense if you asked him to. He’s just one of those throwback players that is a lot of fun to be around.”
on UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and how he’s feeling
“He’s good. I think that’s one of Dorian’s greatest qualities is his toughness. The kid is a warrior and I think that our team thrives off what he does. I thought he played outstanding. I thought he really kept some drives alive with his feet today. We had some uncharacteristic drops, where the numbers in the passing game would have been higher, but I thought that Dorian played outstanding.”
UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson
on the team’s offense
“I thought we did really well executing the overall game plan. I think the little details have got to get cleaned up. I think overall we did a good job collectively, though, for sure.”
on how he’s doing physically after taking some hits in the game
“I’m doing good. Nothing serious. Probably a little sore in the morning but glad to get the win for sure. Always makes it feel better.”
on bouncing back quickly
“I think it just shows the maturity level. We have a lot of older guys on this team, especially guys on the defensive side and offensive side of the ball. Being able to step in throughout the week and kind of let guys know here and there we’ve got to get stuff corrected. I think overall it shows the maturity level of people.”
on Zach Charbonnet
“I always watch the replays because I’m trying to pull defenders with my play fakes, but getting to hear the crowd hyped and everything definitely brings juice to the team. For me personally, Zach’s someone I always try to feed off of. He makes a big play here, I make a big play there, and vice versa. Zach is definitely a great dude to defend off of when things aren’t going my way. I can always look to him and lean on him for sure.”
on going into November with a viable shot at winning the Pac-12
“This is what we wanted, this is what we expected. And now that it’s here, it’s time for the real work to start. We haven’t been in this position, at least as long as I’ve been here, so we’ve got to find some deep digging to do and really clean some stuff up so that we can get this thing done.”
on having Zach Charbonnet and Kazmeir Allen as a 1-2 punch
“Really all of our offensive weapons, it’s a blessing and a blast to be out there with those boys. It makes my job a lot easier. I’m really not out there doing a whole lot besides just operating what’s given to me, and I have a lot that’s been given to me with the boys on this team. It makes my job really easy. But in terms of Zach and Kaz, especially when you move Kaz to back and you see his speed. We get on him for getting caught all the time and not getting all the way through, so for sure was happy to see him break one finally.”
on when the team had flushed the Oregon loss
“I could tell as soon as we landed in LA Saturday night. That was a really tough plane ride. A lot for us to sit there and think about up in the air. Once we touched down, we had a different taste in our mouth and were ready to go and get back on the field again and get one more shot at it. Especially for guys like me - I only have four or five more weeks here as a Bruin before we start in a Bowl game. I’m trying to take advantage of every opportunity I can. I can’t hang my hat on stuff we’ve done in the past or cry about it. This whole team has had that mindset, and that comes from the top down. We’ve got to look for it every time, you can’t look in the past anymore; you’ve got to get stuff corrected.”
on getting a win over Stanford
“I’m not really looking at the opponent; I’m just happy to be 1-0 this week and be able to get back on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and correct the things we didn’t do in this game.”
UCLA linebacker Darius Muasau
on getting the interception
"I actually have been waiting for that play since the beginning of the game. I saw that on film, on the bus ride here I was watching the film, and they ran that against ASU in their previous game, and I was waiting for it. I saw that they ran it a couple of times, they run a little power and get the linebackers to bite on the run and do a little pop pass, but I was waiting for it"
on Defensive Coordinator being out
"We played well, Coach Clancy (Pendergast) stepped in, it's like nothing happened."
on bouncing back from the Oregon result
"We emphasized this whole week on just going back to fundamentals, tackling, stopping the route, and just keeping it simple. Last week we were thinking too much I would say, and tonight we just went back to the fundamentals, tackling and stopping the run."
On being trusted as middle linebacker as a transfer
"It means a lot to me, taking this role of linebacker, I see it as the quarterback of the defense, so I take a lot of pride in that I lead this defense. They call on me and I call on them, it's a brotherhood relationship. Being given this role by the coachers and my teammates really means a lot to me. I really try to show up every game for them, not just for myself, but for my teammates."
On if the D-Line felt extra pressure to bounce back after last week
"I feel like we were walking in with a big chip on our shoulder. We knew we had to show up, our offense was keeping us in the game the whole game last week, so we have to carry our weight for the team and I feel like we did a great job tonight."
Stanford head coach David Shaw
opening remarks
“Bottom line, that was our worst game in a month. Didn’t play well. Offensively we marched down the field and missed two opportunities to score touchdowns and had to kick a field goal. I’ve been saying it in the press, been saying it repeatedly to our team all week, we just can’t come down and play the field goal game with this team, they’re too talented and have some elite players. You have to score touchdowns to beat teams like [UCLA]. Defensively we held on for a while, but eventually that runner … he’s special, he’s big, he’s fast, he wears you down. Offensively we didn’t keep the ball enough, defensively [Charbonnet] started getting too many yards. Pass coverage-wise, we held up pretty well. A team like this, you have to be disciplined in your pass rush, in your coverage, in your gaps. They make you play close to a perfect game to stay with them, and we did not. The opportunities were there on the offensive side, we’ve missed too many connections, especially as we cross the 50. Had opportunities, and didn’t hit them. Lot of things to clean up from this game. Probably our worst game in a month. It happens sometimes, I’m not making any excuses. We’ll look at some things we can correct, correct those things, and looking forward to giving a much better effort all-around next week.”
on the passing game
“The big this is diagnosing what the issue is. If it’s one guy, then you take that one person out. It was a myriad of things today. A couple times we didn’t get good releases at the receiver position. A couple times we didn’t get the throw we needed from the quarterback. More than a few times, we didn’t get the protection that we needed. Twice, possibly three times, we had guys going down the middle with opportunities to score a touchdown or change field position, and we didn’t have time to make the throw. It’s part pass protection, part releases, part making the throws we need to make.”
on whether the game hinged on fourth-down conversions
“The game hinged on [UCLA]’s quarterback. Every time we had him stopped, he’s a guy that made the plays. Dropping back and taking off. Two quarterback-designed runs, got him on the edge, we had a guy out there and their guy was just faster than our guy. You have to find a way to contain him. Second half, I thought we did a better job, but there was already a big lead, and he does not throw the ball to dangerous spots, maybe one tonight, because if everyone’s covered, he just takes off. We got in his face a couple times, got him on the ground a couple times, needed those earlier in the first half to keep the game close. But defense got a bunch of stops in the second half. Offensively we just couldn’t get over the hump.”
on if scoring a fourth-quarter TD will provide momentum going forward
“We need more than that. I was just down there, and it was a good fourth down call. We worked that play for the last few weeks. It was just time to call it. That wasn’t about momentum, it was just about punching the ball in. There are a lot of things we need to clean up for momentum. The biggest things really are protection and connection between our quarterback and receivers. It’s something we work on all the time, we really need to get better.”
Stanford linebacker Ricky Miezan
on the morale in the locker room
“It was probably one of our worst games in a while, but I think overall the way we think about it, we still have a lot to play for. Even if we didn’t, we’re always going to go hard no matter what. Once the new week starts, it’s a new week, put our head down and grind. That’s always our mentality. But, this one hurt. We have to go back and evaluate it tomorrow, and then get back to work Monday.”
on facing Charbonnet
“Probably the most physical [running back] we’ll see this year. One of the harder running backs to tackle in all of college football. You really have to bring your feet, take up space, wrap up, all of that. We had opportunities to do that, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t. You saw what happen when we didn’t, he got free and made some plays.”
on UCLA converting on fourth downs
“Those were big momentum plays to start the game. Honestly, a couple of them were good plays. They went into a sneak look, and then Dorian just ran out the back end. That’s a tough play. I have to look back at the film. That was the most glaring one. Either way, we have to get off the field on fourth down. Those are big, big plays that change the game.”
on playing defense when
“Probably the most physical [running back] we’ll see this year. One of the harder running backs to tackle in all of college football. You really have to bring your feet, take up space, wrap up, all of that. We had opportunities to do that, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t. You saw what happen when we didn’t, he got free and made some plays.”
Stanford tight end Benjamin Yurosek
on Touchdown near the end of the game
“It’s a play that we have had in the playbook for a while now and we were waiting for the right situation. Once we were in the red zone, the play was called and luckily I was open enough that Tanner [McKee] threw to me and trusted me.”
on why it has been such a struggle on offense
“I think the biggest thing is we have to protect our quarterback. At the end of the day if we don’t give him time to throw the ball, the passing game is not going to be too good, it’s pretty simple. We have talented guys and we just have to do our best job to get the ball in the end zone.”
on how good it felt to get in the endzone for the first time
“Truth be told, not a lot of happiness coming out of that game or even that play. The team is bored at the end of the game and the score showed it. Maybe a little bit of relief, but no the job as a team was not done today. Anything singular or personal, I do not care about.”
on getting ready for next week
“I think we have already proven this before; we went through a slump in the beginning of the season. We had a tough three-game stretch and at the end of the day we have proven to ourselves that we are resilient, that we can bounce back. It’s going to hurt tonight, it should, it should hurt tomorrow, but at the end of the day, Monday we just got to come back to work.”
UCLA 38, Stanford 13
Pasadena, Calif. (Rose Bowl)
October 29, 2022
UCLA head coach Chip Kelly
on the Bruins’ defensive effort against Stanford
“It was a collaboration with our whole defensive group. Billy [McGovern] was here all week long. He helped institute the game plan. I thought our players really executed. They played hard from the opening whistle. I think that they [Stanford] took that first drive and went down and kicked the field goal. After that, our first defense did an unbelievable job the entire game. I thought that we generated a pass rush against a really good quarterback. I thought we did a really good in coverage and some really good receivers, so I am really proud of everybody involved in our defense tonight.”
on UCLA’s offensive line
“I thought that our o-line did a really good job. And whenever you can rush the ball for over 300 yards, they’re establishing the line of scrimmage. That is what we thought we had to do in this game. We really needed to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, and I think that our o-line played really well tonight.”
on running back Zach Charbonnet
“And he also helped a lot in the pass game. I don’t know what his numbers were, in terms of receptions and yardage and things like that, but he is a three-down back. That’s why he’s going to have a career after UCLA, playing professional football, because he can do it all. He can pick up a pass protection. He’s a weapon coming out of the backfield, and obviously we saw what he’s like when he runs the football. I thought Zach played outstanding today.”
on UCLA defensive coordinator Bill McGovern being away with an illness
“Billy was at home. We FaceTime’d him in the locker room. He celebrated with us. I think he poured water on himself. He’s good.”
on the team moving on from last Saturday’s 45-30 loss at Oregon
“We don’t talk about that. So that’s not our world. Our world is every week is an entirely new season – it doesn’t matter if you win or you lose. We just came back on Monday, and I thought that our guys were great on Monday. We didn’t really talk about getting back on track and all that. I think that when you live your life in the past – I feel really bad for people that do that. We don’t live our life in the past. We don’t have a rearview mirror in our office. We don’t have a rearview mirror on our practice field. We are always looking for the next opponent and who we’ve got next. And it’s the same thing with these guys. They can enjoy this win as much as they want tomorrow, but when we come back in on Monday morning, we’ve got to set our sights on Arizona State.”
on the Bruins’ philosophy and focus
“They bought into the philosophy and they did it.”
on the value of Kazmeir Allen
“Really valuable. He’s starting to really carve out a niche for himself. There are different ways to do things. We knew that we were going to run the ball in the fourth quarter, so the fact that we could take a little bit off Zach [Charbonnet] there and get him in there, he has done that a ton in practice and obviously started at that position. So the fact that we could get him a couple of runs in the backfield and then use him as a weapon outside and also use him as a returner makes it difficult to defend him. He is a guy that has a chance to hit a home run every single time he has the ball in his hands. I was really happy to see that he got a rushing touchdown today.”
on UCLA linebacker Darius Muasau
“I just think that he’s been the rock that we kind of build around. He has to make all of the calls on the defensive side of the ball, get us set up. He’s a really instinctive football player. He’s one of those guys who is calling out plays before they happen because he studies tape so much. He has a really good feel for what they’re doing. They scored on their first possession. We drove down the field. But then, I think that things flipped when he got that interception. And then we scored one play later, and then all of a sudden, it becomes a little bit different of a football game. And that was him, through film study, they like to RPO off of that look and he was where he was supposed to be. He made a huge play for us. But he has made a huge impact on this football program.”
on Zach Charbonnet’s work ethic and consistency
“Yeah, that’s Zach. The best thing about Zach is that he does it every day. It is not easy to do it every single day. There are days where you don’t feel 100 percent. But you could never tell that when you’re around him. It’s kind of infectious when you see him. It’s just, every day, he is the same person. He’s got that work ethic, that mindset. And even when you tell him, as we got to the fourth quarter, that he was out, he doesn’t want to be out. He wants to continue to play. He’d play for 60 minutes, and he’d play special teams if you asked him to. He’d play defense if you asked him to. He’s just one of those throwback players that is a lot of fun to be around.”
on UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and how he’s feeling
“He’s good. I think that’s one of Dorian’s greatest qualities is his toughness. The kid is a warrior and I think that our team thrives off what he does. I thought he played outstanding. I thought he really kept some drives alive with his feet today. We had some uncharacteristic drops, where the numbers in the passing game would have been higher, but I thought that Dorian played outstanding.”
UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson
on the team’s offense
“I thought we did really well executing the overall game plan. I think the little details have got to get cleaned up. I think overall we did a good job collectively, though, for sure.”
on how he’s doing physically after taking some hits in the game
“I’m doing good. Nothing serious. Probably a little sore in the morning but glad to get the win for sure. Always makes it feel better.”
on bouncing back quickly
“I think it just shows the maturity level. We have a lot of older guys on this team, especially guys on the defensive side and offensive side of the ball. Being able to step in throughout the week and kind of let guys know here and there we’ve got to get stuff corrected. I think overall it shows the maturity level of people.”
on Zach Charbonnet
“I always watch the replays because I’m trying to pull defenders with my play fakes, but getting to hear the crowd hyped and everything definitely brings juice to the team. For me personally, Zach’s someone I always try to feed off of. He makes a big play here, I make a big play there, and vice versa. Zach is definitely a great dude to defend off of when things aren’t going my way. I can always look to him and lean on him for sure.”
on going into November with a viable shot at winning the Pac-12
“This is what we wanted, this is what we expected. And now that it’s here, it’s time for the real work to start. We haven’t been in this position, at least as long as I’ve been here, so we’ve got to find some deep digging to do and really clean some stuff up so that we can get this thing done.”
on having Zach Charbonnet and Kazmeir Allen as a 1-2 punch
“Really all of our offensive weapons, it’s a blessing and a blast to be out there with those boys. It makes my job a lot easier. I’m really not out there doing a whole lot besides just operating what’s given to me, and I have a lot that’s been given to me with the boys on this team. It makes my job really easy. But in terms of Zach and Kaz, especially when you move Kaz to back and you see his speed. We get on him for getting caught all the time and not getting all the way through, so for sure was happy to see him break one finally.”
on when the team had flushed the Oregon loss
“I could tell as soon as we landed in LA Saturday night. That was a really tough plane ride. A lot for us to sit there and think about up in the air. Once we touched down, we had a different taste in our mouth and were ready to go and get back on the field again and get one more shot at it. Especially for guys like me - I only have four or five more weeks here as a Bruin before we start in a Bowl game. I’m trying to take advantage of every opportunity I can. I can’t hang my hat on stuff we’ve done in the past or cry about it. This whole team has had that mindset, and that comes from the top down. We’ve got to look for it every time, you can’t look in the past anymore; you’ve got to get stuff corrected.”
on getting a win over Stanford
“I’m not really looking at the opponent; I’m just happy to be 1-0 this week and be able to get back on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and correct the things we didn’t do in this game.”
UCLA linebacker Darius Muasau
on getting the interception
"I actually have been waiting for that play since the beginning of the game. I saw that on film, on the bus ride here I was watching the film, and they ran that against ASU in their previous game, and I was waiting for it. I saw that they ran it a couple of times, they run a little power and get the linebackers to bite on the run and do a little pop pass, but I was waiting for it"
on Defensive Coordinator being out
"We played well, Coach Clancy (Pendergast) stepped in, it's like nothing happened."
on bouncing back from the Oregon result
"We emphasized this whole week on just going back to fundamentals, tackling, stopping the route, and just keeping it simple. Last week we were thinking too much I would say, and tonight we just went back to the fundamentals, tackling and stopping the run."
On being trusted as middle linebacker as a transfer
"It means a lot to me, taking this role of linebacker, I see it as the quarterback of the defense, so I take a lot of pride in that I lead this defense. They call on me and I call on them, it's a brotherhood relationship. Being given this role by the coachers and my teammates really means a lot to me. I really try to show up every game for them, not just for myself, but for my teammates."
On if the D-Line felt extra pressure to bounce back after last week
"I feel like we were walking in with a big chip on our shoulder. We knew we had to show up, our offense was keeping us in the game the whole game last week, so we have to carry our weight for the team and I feel like we did a great job tonight."
Stanford head coach David Shaw
opening remarks
“Bottom line, that was our worst game in a month. Didn’t play well. Offensively we marched down the field and missed two opportunities to score touchdowns and had to kick a field goal. I’ve been saying it in the press, been saying it repeatedly to our team all week, we just can’t come down and play the field goal game with this team, they’re too talented and have some elite players. You have to score touchdowns to beat teams like [UCLA]. Defensively we held on for a while, but eventually that runner … he’s special, he’s big, he’s fast, he wears you down. Offensively we didn’t keep the ball enough, defensively [Charbonnet] started getting too many yards. Pass coverage-wise, we held up pretty well. A team like this, you have to be disciplined in your pass rush, in your coverage, in your gaps. They make you play close to a perfect game to stay with them, and we did not. The opportunities were there on the offensive side, we’ve missed too many connections, especially as we cross the 50. Had opportunities, and didn’t hit them. Lot of things to clean up from this game. Probably our worst game in a month. It happens sometimes, I’m not making any excuses. We’ll look at some things we can correct, correct those things, and looking forward to giving a much better effort all-around next week.”
on the passing game
“The big this is diagnosing what the issue is. If it’s one guy, then you take that one person out. It was a myriad of things today. A couple times we didn’t get good releases at the receiver position. A couple times we didn’t get the throw we needed from the quarterback. More than a few times, we didn’t get the protection that we needed. Twice, possibly three times, we had guys going down the middle with opportunities to score a touchdown or change field position, and we didn’t have time to make the throw. It’s part pass protection, part releases, part making the throws we need to make.”
on whether the game hinged on fourth-down conversions
“The game hinged on [UCLA]’s quarterback. Every time we had him stopped, he’s a guy that made the plays. Dropping back and taking off. Two quarterback-designed runs, got him on the edge, we had a guy out there and their guy was just faster than our guy. You have to find a way to contain him. Second half, I thought we did a better job, but there was already a big lead, and he does not throw the ball to dangerous spots, maybe one tonight, because if everyone’s covered, he just takes off. We got in his face a couple times, got him on the ground a couple times, needed those earlier in the first half to keep the game close. But defense got a bunch of stops in the second half. Offensively we just couldn’t get over the hump.”
on if scoring a fourth-quarter TD will provide momentum going forward
“We need more than that. I was just down there, and it was a good fourth down call. We worked that play for the last few weeks. It was just time to call it. That wasn’t about momentum, it was just about punching the ball in. There are a lot of things we need to clean up for momentum. The biggest things really are protection and connection between our quarterback and receivers. It’s something we work on all the time, we really need to get better.”
Stanford linebacker Ricky Miezan
on the morale in the locker room
“It was probably one of our worst games in a while, but I think overall the way we think about it, we still have a lot to play for. Even if we didn’t, we’re always going to go hard no matter what. Once the new week starts, it’s a new week, put our head down and grind. That’s always our mentality. But, this one hurt. We have to go back and evaluate it tomorrow, and then get back to work Monday.”
on facing Charbonnet
“Probably the most physical [running back] we’ll see this year. One of the harder running backs to tackle in all of college football. You really have to bring your feet, take up space, wrap up, all of that. We had opportunities to do that, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t. You saw what happen when we didn’t, he got free and made some plays.”
on UCLA converting on fourth downs
“Those were big momentum plays to start the game. Honestly, a couple of them were good plays. They went into a sneak look, and then Dorian just ran out the back end. That’s a tough play. I have to look back at the film. That was the most glaring one. Either way, we have to get off the field on fourth down. Those are big, big plays that change the game.”
on playing defense when
“Probably the most physical [running back] we’ll see this year. One of the harder running backs to tackle in all of college football. You really have to bring your feet, take up space, wrap up, all of that. We had opportunities to do that, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t. You saw what happen when we didn’t, he got free and made some plays.”
Stanford tight end Benjamin Yurosek
on Touchdown near the end of the game
“It’s a play that we have had in the playbook for a while now and we were waiting for the right situation. Once we were in the red zone, the play was called and luckily I was open enough that Tanner [McKee] threw to me and trusted me.”
on why it has been such a struggle on offense
“I think the biggest thing is we have to protect our quarterback. At the end of the day if we don’t give him time to throw the ball, the passing game is not going to be too good, it’s pretty simple. We have talented guys and we just have to do our best job to get the ball in the end zone.”
on how good it felt to get in the endzone for the first time
“Truth be told, not a lot of happiness coming out of that game or even that play. The team is bored at the end of the game and the score showed it. Maybe a little bit of relief, but no the job as a team was not done today. Anything singular or personal, I do not care about.”
on getting ready for next week
“I think we have already proven this before; we went through a slump in the beginning of the season. We had a tough three-game stretch and at the end of the day we have proven to ourselves that we are resilient, that we can bounce back. It’s going to hurt tonight, it should, it should hurt tomorrow, but at the end of the day, Monday we just got to come back to work.”