Here is the full transcript of Steve Sarkisian's post-Stanford teleconference Sunday evening (Part I) ...
Opening statement
SS: "Just a quick recap of the ballgame last night. I think first and foremost, again, I want to give Stanford a lot of credit. They played a good football game. They made their plays when they needed to make them and they came prepared to play and they got a nice victory on the road in conference play. As far as our guys, I thought we played hard, we really did. You look at the tape, our effort was really good, our intentions were good. We just lacked execution at some critical moments. That goes back to us as coaches to make sure our guys are prepared to play in the right moments. And then ultimately the guys going out and executing those things.
"Part of that, that’s football. You have games where sometimes it gets covered up when you win a game that you don’t execute the way you’d like, but you get the win and you keep moving forward. But those things get magnified in losses and obviously ours did. The containment of the quarterback on some critical plays was huge. In the running game on first-and-10, them kind of bleeding us out, getting four, five, six yards on first-and-10 hurt. Some missed opportunities for us offensively in the run game obviously became magnified. You score 31 point but in reality we should have had 42, and 42 probably would have been good enough to win; 31 wasn’t enough. You look at a lot of the aspects of the game and I commend our guys for the effort they came with, the intentions they came with. But ultimately we have to perform better as a football team, from coaches to players to everybody involved. And that’s what our goal is this week because it’s going to take another really good effort out of us to get a win at Arizona State Saturday night."
Why weren’t you able to make Kevin Hogan comfortable?
SS: "We got three sacks on him and we got some hits on him. But unfortunately we missed him probably as many times as we hit him. And when we missed him, he mad us pay. So I think we had some more chances than maybe we thought. When you really look at the tape, we had some chances to get after him and to make him uncomfortable physically.
"We missed him and then he hurt us. Secondly, we had really good coverage on a lot of the big plays they had. He threw the ball where it needed to be and their guys caught it. We just didn’t knock the ball down. They made the play and we didn’t, when it needed to happen, especially in the red zone, especially on third down. And that’s a credit to Kevin, he’s a veteran guy, he’s been around. We knew he was a streaky player. When he gets hot, he can stay hot. Obviously, our goal going in was to try to get him out of his rhythm and we just couldn’t do it.
"As best as we tried, we brought pressure, we played coverage, we threw a lot of different things at him, we mixed things up and we hit him, we got to him, but he was able to take advantage of our rush lanes. When our rush lanes integrity weren’t good, he ran the ball, he got first downs. They called a screen, we covered it really well. Lamar (Dawson) goes and plays the receiver screen, (Hogan) pump fakes, our guys jump in the air, they don’t block 3 D-linemen, he runs forward and gets another first down. He just kind of played football. When a guy like that gets hot and gets going, they’re tough to defend. He managed the game really well for them, he managed the clock well, and he made the critical throws ton third down in the red zone that were needed to be made for them to extend drives and score points. He got it done."
What were the issues with the rush lane integrity?
SS: "There’s a variety of things. A couple of them were, when we had a natural game called, where the outside rusher can come up and under because the inside rusher is going to contain, that’s where Su’a gets one of his sacks, off that natural game. Another one, we didn’t have that natural game in, the inside rusher has to stay inside. We came up and under for the natural game and we lose contain, he gets out on the edge. We bring an internal pressure, Lamar comes free, Lamar’s unable to get him down and we’re coming up and under on the outside where we should be a contain rusher. He gets to the edge. Part of it is, out effort is really good. I talked about that earlier, we’re playing hard. We need to play hard, intelligently. That’s what we need to keep working towards. I’ve talked about this containment issue now for three consecutive weeks. We need to be better at it because we’re going to face more and more athletic quarterbacks as this season goes on, so we’re going to have to keep these guys in the pocket."
In looking at your D-line and their O-line, after reviewing film, why were they able to run the ball, or why we’re you unable to stop it?
SS: "First and foremost, I’m going to go back to, I want to give them credit. They did a good job schematically early on, giving us things that we’re non tape that I thought we made really good adjustments to as the game went on. But the part that was disappointing was I just felt like their run game, everything evolved on our side of the line of scrimmage. If you really want to defend the run and stop the run, it has to start on their side of the line of scrimmage. And I felt like we didn’t get enough penetration. We didn’t disrupt the run game enough at the point of attack to make it hard on them.
"Not that we weren’t fitting it right, we were fitting everything really well, we recognized the run, but all of that was happening on our side of the line of scrimmage, which in turn means they’re not getting negative runs, the worst-case scenario is they fall forward, they get two, three, four yards. The best-case scenario, they get 10, 12, 15 yards. What was happening the majority of the night was they were getting four, five, six yards and it wasn’t these huge runs that hurt us. It was just the first-and-10, they get five, its second and five and they run it again and they run it again, it’s third and two, they convert the third down. The point being is, we need to be better at the point of attack, we need to force team’s run game to occur on their side of the line of scrimmage, not on ours. Last night there was far too many times where the run game was occurring on our side of the line of scrimmage.
Was Tre Madden hurt on the reception at the beginning of the third quarter in which he landed awkwardly in the backfield?
SS: "I don’t know if I want to call it hurt or injured, but he did, he kind of tweaked his knee. It’s not, we don’t feel it’s serious. But it did bother him a s the game went on, we put a sleeve on his knee, we just dint feel like he was the same player and obviously we have a luxury where we got some pretty good backs that could replace him, so we went with some other guys."
What did you think of your team's execution of the two-minute drill late in the fourth quarter?
SS: “They played a different coverage than what was on tape. So we had to make a little bit of an adjustment there. We were trying to preserve a timeout or two, so that if we scored, which the plan was to try and go score, if we got the onside kick, that we could throw the ball down the middle of the field to get ourselves into field goal range. We were thinking two drives. We were on the two-minute drill, but we were also thinking another drive ahead as if we were recovering the onside kick. So we were trying to keep the ball on the perimeter, to give ourselves to get into range where we could throw it into the end zone, which I thought we did, but they covered us and they get enough rush to make Cody (Kessler) flush out of the pocket and chew up more time. When you get into those situations, you try to execute as best as you can, but ultimately it turns a little bit into playing at the park and it’s who’s going to make the play when you’re in those kinds of desperate situations.”
Did you consider kicking the field goal on fourth down on your final drive?
SS: “I did. I did. But there was so little time left in the game. I just felt like our best shot was to throw one in the end zone, which we did. We nearly came up with it. It was a really close play. I just felt like that was the best thing for us at the time.”
Opening statement
SS: "Just a quick recap of the ballgame last night. I think first and foremost, again, I want to give Stanford a lot of credit. They played a good football game. They made their plays when they needed to make them and they came prepared to play and they got a nice victory on the road in conference play. As far as our guys, I thought we played hard, we really did. You look at the tape, our effort was really good, our intentions were good. We just lacked execution at some critical moments. That goes back to us as coaches to make sure our guys are prepared to play in the right moments. And then ultimately the guys going out and executing those things.
"Part of that, that’s football. You have games where sometimes it gets covered up when you win a game that you don’t execute the way you’d like, but you get the win and you keep moving forward. But those things get magnified in losses and obviously ours did. The containment of the quarterback on some critical plays was huge. In the running game on first-and-10, them kind of bleeding us out, getting four, five, six yards on first-and-10 hurt. Some missed opportunities for us offensively in the run game obviously became magnified. You score 31 point but in reality we should have had 42, and 42 probably would have been good enough to win; 31 wasn’t enough. You look at a lot of the aspects of the game and I commend our guys for the effort they came with, the intentions they came with. But ultimately we have to perform better as a football team, from coaches to players to everybody involved. And that’s what our goal is this week because it’s going to take another really good effort out of us to get a win at Arizona State Saturday night."
Why weren’t you able to make Kevin Hogan comfortable?
SS: "We got three sacks on him and we got some hits on him. But unfortunately we missed him probably as many times as we hit him. And when we missed him, he mad us pay. So I think we had some more chances than maybe we thought. When you really look at the tape, we had some chances to get after him and to make him uncomfortable physically.
"We missed him and then he hurt us. Secondly, we had really good coverage on a lot of the big plays they had. He threw the ball where it needed to be and their guys caught it. We just didn’t knock the ball down. They made the play and we didn’t, when it needed to happen, especially in the red zone, especially on third down. And that’s a credit to Kevin, he’s a veteran guy, he’s been around. We knew he was a streaky player. When he gets hot, he can stay hot. Obviously, our goal going in was to try to get him out of his rhythm and we just couldn’t do it.
"As best as we tried, we brought pressure, we played coverage, we threw a lot of different things at him, we mixed things up and we hit him, we got to him, but he was able to take advantage of our rush lanes. When our rush lanes integrity weren’t good, he ran the ball, he got first downs. They called a screen, we covered it really well. Lamar (Dawson) goes and plays the receiver screen, (Hogan) pump fakes, our guys jump in the air, they don’t block 3 D-linemen, he runs forward and gets another first down. He just kind of played football. When a guy like that gets hot and gets going, they’re tough to defend. He managed the game really well for them, he managed the clock well, and he made the critical throws ton third down in the red zone that were needed to be made for them to extend drives and score points. He got it done."
What were the issues with the rush lane integrity?
SS: "There’s a variety of things. A couple of them were, when we had a natural game called, where the outside rusher can come up and under because the inside rusher is going to contain, that’s where Su’a gets one of his sacks, off that natural game. Another one, we didn’t have that natural game in, the inside rusher has to stay inside. We came up and under for the natural game and we lose contain, he gets out on the edge. We bring an internal pressure, Lamar comes free, Lamar’s unable to get him down and we’re coming up and under on the outside where we should be a contain rusher. He gets to the edge. Part of it is, out effort is really good. I talked about that earlier, we’re playing hard. We need to play hard, intelligently. That’s what we need to keep working towards. I’ve talked about this containment issue now for three consecutive weeks. We need to be better at it because we’re going to face more and more athletic quarterbacks as this season goes on, so we’re going to have to keep these guys in the pocket."
In looking at your D-line and their O-line, after reviewing film, why were they able to run the ball, or why we’re you unable to stop it?
SS: "First and foremost, I’m going to go back to, I want to give them credit. They did a good job schematically early on, giving us things that we’re non tape that I thought we made really good adjustments to as the game went on. But the part that was disappointing was I just felt like their run game, everything evolved on our side of the line of scrimmage. If you really want to defend the run and stop the run, it has to start on their side of the line of scrimmage. And I felt like we didn’t get enough penetration. We didn’t disrupt the run game enough at the point of attack to make it hard on them.
"Not that we weren’t fitting it right, we were fitting everything really well, we recognized the run, but all of that was happening on our side of the line of scrimmage, which in turn means they’re not getting negative runs, the worst-case scenario is they fall forward, they get two, three, four yards. The best-case scenario, they get 10, 12, 15 yards. What was happening the majority of the night was they were getting four, five, six yards and it wasn’t these huge runs that hurt us. It was just the first-and-10, they get five, its second and five and they run it again and they run it again, it’s third and two, they convert the third down. The point being is, we need to be better at the point of attack, we need to force team’s run game to occur on their side of the line of scrimmage, not on ours. Last night there was far too many times where the run game was occurring on our side of the line of scrimmage.
Was Tre Madden hurt on the reception at the beginning of the third quarter in which he landed awkwardly in the backfield?
SS: "I don’t know if I want to call it hurt or injured, but he did, he kind of tweaked his knee. It’s not, we don’t feel it’s serious. But it did bother him a s the game went on, we put a sleeve on his knee, we just dint feel like he was the same player and obviously we have a luxury where we got some pretty good backs that could replace him, so we went with some other guys."
What did you think of your team's execution of the two-minute drill late in the fourth quarter?
SS: “They played a different coverage than what was on tape. So we had to make a little bit of an adjustment there. We were trying to preserve a timeout or two, so that if we scored, which the plan was to try and go score, if we got the onside kick, that we could throw the ball down the middle of the field to get ourselves into field goal range. We were thinking two drives. We were on the two-minute drill, but we were also thinking another drive ahead as if we were recovering the onside kick. So we were trying to keep the ball on the perimeter, to give ourselves to get into range where we could throw it into the end zone, which I thought we did, but they covered us and they get enough rush to make Cody (Kessler) flush out of the pocket and chew up more time. When you get into those situations, you try to execute as best as you can, but ultimately it turns a little bit into playing at the park and it’s who’s going to make the play when you’re in those kinds of desperate situations.”
Did you consider kicking the field goal on fourth down on your final drive?
SS: “I did. I did. But there was so little time left in the game. I just felt like our best shot was to throw one in the end zone, which we did. We nearly came up with it. It was a really close play. I just felt like that was the best thing for us at the time.”
