California Head Coach Sonny Dykes
General Comments:
“First of all, I want to give Stanford credit. They played a good football game and the kids played hard. They have a good football team, and I think their staff did a better job at getting them ready to play than we did. Congratulations to those guys. I am disappointed in the way that we played. I anticipated us playing better football. It was a bit of a strange football game, and it certainly didn't start the way we wanted it to start.”
On using Rubenzer:
“We felt like he was going to give us some opportunities to run the football. We saw a lot of two-safety looks, so it gave us an extra gap in our run game. We felt like that was going to be a nice little change up for us. We put him in the game and he gave us a little bit of a spark, so we played him some. We wanted to get him some playing time again, and we didn't want Jared to get hurt, so we played him a lot down the stretch.”
On Turnovers:
“They are a physical football team, and they laid some pretty good hits on us. They did a nice job tipping a couple of passes, so you have to give them credit for that. We have to make sure we move in the pocket and make space. A lot of times, tipped passes are on the quarterback, if we are not finding a throwing lane. I can't say specifically what happened in this game. I would have to look at the tape to make those determinations. It was frustrating. Our kids really wanted to play well. We really wanted to play well as a coaching staff. Our fans wanted us to play well. We didn't make a very good showing today and I am really disappointed about that.”
On Jared Goff:
“It is hard to say right now. Just looking at the numbers, it is certainly not one of his best games. We will go through and figure out why. That is going to take a lot of reviewing film and figuring out why we weren't in-sync when we should have been. When you face a good defense, you have a really small margin for error. Five turnovers are pretty significant errors.”
On Future Games:
“We will see what we are made of as a team next week. That is what I told our guys. We are going to play against a BYU team that is going to be bigger than the team we just played on its offensive and defensive fronts. They are the same team that went down to Austin, Texas, and beat Texas, 41-7, earlier in the year. It is not going to be easy. They are going to have some confidence coming in, and they will feel good about their chances of beating us.”
On Lowe's Disqualification:
“It was frustrating for everybody. It was frustrating for me. In 20 years, I have never seen something like that happen during the first play of the game. That is a tough call for the first play of the ball game. I wish that something like that wouldn't affect us as much as it did. It affected me and I think it affected our players.”
California Players
Jared Goff, QB
On switching back and forth between QB's:
“We've been doing it for a while now. Nothing really affects it. He was doing a good job and running the ball well and getting good reads. I think he did a really good job.”
On the apparent gap between Cal and Stanford football:
“We certainly don't feel that the gap is as big as the score is. We just didn't play up to our potential, and we made too many mistakes and too many turnovers and really just shot ourselves in the foot all day. When you are playing a team that is as disciplined, strong and experienced as they are, and you make those mistakes, it is going to be hard to win. They are a good team.”
Stefan McClure, S
On losing Michael Lowe due to a targeting call on the first play:
“That was a tough blow to have to deal with on the first play of the game, but Bryce [McGovern] did a great job of stepping up and just making plays. He was doing great out there. He made his calls, he made his checks. He also got physical. It was great to see him step up, but yes, it was a huge blow to lose him on the first play of the game. “
On losing the Big Game:
“It is disappointing that we didn't make enough plays to make it more competitive, but coming into the game we worked all week expecting to come in there and compete. We just gave up a couple of big plays there, and a couple of drives, the first three drives and we just dug ourselves into a hole. Its disappointing we just work so hard every day at practice, and you wish you could have it coming down to one play at the end of the game instead of it being more lopsided like that.”
On the four offensive turnovers:
“Our job is already tough by itself, but it doesn't matter really what the offense does, it's just our job to keep them out of the end zone. We didn't do that today. We need to cause some more turnovers, get more three-and-outs and make them just punt the ball because if they don't score, they don't win. We just have to do our job and offense will take care of their business.”
Stanford head coach David Shaw
Overall thoughts on the win:
“Good all-around team victory for our guys. It was a hard-fought game and it was physical, both sides played extremely hard. I thought our defense played really well. We've been talking all year about trying to get turnovers and to come away with a bunch today is huge. For offense, to make something of those turnovers is big, as well. I'm just proud of our guys for how hard they played.”
On winning the Big Game:
“Our seniors did not want to be the group that lost the Axe. They've never had an experience at Stanford where they haven't had the Axe and they didn't want to lose it. It was very, very serious and the preparation all week was great. The guys just wanted to keep that Axe. Thankfully we're bowl eligible, but that wasn't even the focus this week. The focus was our seniors going out, never having lost to Cal.”
On the play of Blake Martinez:
“Blake's really been on the rise. I thought he started off the season really well, and the last month of the season he's been so good. He's so physical, so strong and has been around the ball. He hasn't had the chance to get an interception but got two today. He's just one of those guys with A.J. Tarpley that help set the tempo as the inside linebackers. They're physical, they beat blocks and they play really well. Glad to see what Blake did today."
On being bowl eligible:
“It was good to see us get that sixth victory and we'll try to get one more next week. We love the fact of being bowl eligible, and need that extra game. We love that extra game to work with the young guys, and at the same time, you want that extra game for your seniors and your guys to go out with a bowl victory.”
On offensive line play:
“They played about as well as they've played all year. It's never perfect, but they were physical. We got our runners to and through the line of scrimmage. It was a good, physical game. We did a little bit of our big personnel groupings and ran the ball between the tackles like we like to. I thought the group as a unit played about as well as they've played all year.”
Stanford Players
Kevin Hogan, QB
On winning the Big Game:
“It means a lot. We've had our struggles. It means a lot to the school, to the alumni, to us. It's a big rivalry. We didn't want to be the ones to let it slip away. No one wants be that team. We found a way to come out and fight the whole game and came out on top. It's a great feeling to keep the Axe on The Farm.”
On Ty Montgomery's injury:
“It hurts when you have a dynamic playmaker like Ty, with all the experience that he has and play-making ability. It's tough to lose someone like that, but at the same time, I felt like other people stepped up. Jordan Pratt and Francis Owusu did a great job stepping up and filling that role. So I was proud of those guys. I feel like the offense didn't miss a beat.”
On whether he considers eight wins a successful season:
“Not for our standards, absolutely not, but it'll be a nice end to the season. You could look at our season and see all the close losses, but that's the way it goes sometimes. We're going to fight until the end and hopefully the end result is eight wins because that's the best we can do. But we're going to keep doing the best we can.”
On basic approach to the game:
“We just wanted to establish the running game and take advantage of what they presented defensively, take advantage of numbers, running strong, running weak. That's what we were trying to do, and set up play-action. We converted some key third downs, which helped move the chains, and we finished in the end zone. Remound [Wright] had four touchdowns. It's great to see. It's great to have the o-line because they love running the ball. It's great to see them rewarded for it.
Remound Wright, RB
On winning the Big Game the past five years:
“It's huge. We don't want Cal to ever have bragging rights over us. Winning it four years in a row, now five, it's great.
On potential upcoming wins and how it affected thoughts during the game:
“That was secondary to just, 'it's the Big Game vs. Cal.' We don't want to worry about things. We just want to be on the attack. There's no greater opponent than Cal.
