OPENING STATEMENT
“This is our last game of the conference schedule. It is a big game in a lot of ways for us and for Arizona. It is a rivalry game. I think this rivalry goes back around 120 years. There is a lot of emotion this week and a lot of passionate fans are involved. It is a classic. You learn that when you are involved in it. My first time being involved in it last year was quite a spectacle for me because there are so many people in the state of Arizona that are keyed in on this game. Wether it is a grandparent or an alumni, it is just one of those games. Because we have so many young players on this team this year, I do not know if they will understand that. That will be something we talk about this week and how this thing has traditionally gone back over the history of it. After you have played in it once, you understand the importance of this game. There is going to be some choppiness. That is just part of it. As long as it does not become a factor in the game, then that will be okay. I think the officials realize that is how the game will be played. We will have to control our emotions in a game like this. I know their coach (Kevin Sumlin) is telling their team the same thing. With that being said, there will still be some chirpiness. We get that part. The game last year came down to the fourth quarter for us. We were behind for most of the game to be quite honest. We just kept plugging away. We were able to score 20 points in the fourth quarter. They had the last possession and they missed a field goal, or else they would have won that game. I anticipate it being a close, hard fought game. It will come down to the fourth quarter. So, need to be prepared to play for four quarters.”
ON TEMPERING EMOTION IN RIVALRY GAME COMING OFF BIG VICTORY:
“We talk about it. I always tell them to be a passionate team, not an emotional team. There is a fine line there. The thing I have learned about these guys is that they are so young that they sometimes cross the line. There are also some older guys that do that to. You hope it does not affect thee game in a way that when the game is over, the media is talking about it. I would like to talk about what is happening on the field, not what happened after each play. We need to stay away from things like that. When that becomes a part of the game, then it is bad for the game. You want a game to be played physically. You want to have a lot of passion in the game, but you never want the emotion to spill out and that can become the talk after the game. That is not good for football. It is not good for either program. Hopefully, that will not happen. I think it will be a very physical football game, though.”
ON BEING A TWO-TOUCHDOWN FAVORITE:
“I do not believe in that stuff. That is just people making rules of the game who have nothing to do with it. That is just stuff on paper. That has nothing to do with what will happen on the grass. That was proven last year with what took place. So, I do not buy into that. I think the guys who played in it last year or multiple seasons understand that. But, the young guys do not know what they do not know. They have no idea what this game is going to be about until they play it. They will see the emotion and the energy in the stadium. There will be energy from both parties. They have a great fan base as well. They are going to come here and cheer, similar to what the atmosphere was like against Oregon. That was an electric stadium Saturday night. Our fan base was special. They were fantastic. Oregon had their fan base too. It was one of those games that was good for television. With the way it turned out, it was good for television. It was a good TV game because it was exciting. It got too exciting for us in the fourth quarter for us with eight minutes left to be quite honest. It was a game in which our fan base helped us. Our fans and players were into the game. So, that is a good thing.”
ON PLAYERS BEING INVOLVED OFF THE FIELD AT FOOD BANK:
“It is good to be involved in the community. It is a weekend of Thanksgiving and to be thankful. Our family is involved in this as well, personally. For our players to go out today says something about them. About 20 of them went out to the food bank, which was nice. You are right, I gave them (the day) off, but that gets twisted sometimes. Not really. 30 of them showed up Sunday on their own to watch film. You do this all the time. It is toward the end of the year and we have gone through a hard month. They won a game and I know my team better than anybody. I am supposed to know the pulse of my team. Some people may ask what we do on Sunday. They come in, watch tape, feed them, stretch them out, and that is it. They do not work out. They are off on Monday. Let them breathe. It was a long night with a lot of emotion. I always look through the eyes of the player. If I was a player, I know what I would want right now. They deserved because they beat the sixth ranked team in the country coming off four losses. I think that gave them energy. On Sunday, 30 guys showed up on their own. They had their own meetings and watched tape. I anticipated that to be quite honest. So, it all works out.”
ON THOUGHTS GOING INTO OREGON GAME:
“I thought we had a great chance to win to be quite honest. But, you are asking the wrong guy because I think like that every week. When I do not think that, I will not be sitting at this podium anymore. I will go back home. Why do you all this? There are a lot of hours to this. I get into this building every morning at night and I leave at night. I spend a lot of time in this building. I look at tape and study the opponent. I try to help coaches and players. I am invested in this. This is not a hobby. This is what I do. If you do not feel good when you walk into the ball yard at home or on the road and you do not think you have a good chance to win, then this is not the place for you to be quite honest. This is not the place where you just roll the dice and hope that they turn out right. But, there is a certain way you have to play against each opponent. There is a plan that goes into it. We were able to execute our plan early in this game. We talked about making it a slow, boring game and to not let them get off to a fast start. Their (Oregon) first half scoring margin was 188-86 this year. We said that if we could make them slow it down and limit the possessions, then we would have a chance. I told them we would have to play really good. It held up until about eight minutes in the fourth quarter when they rallied. We had three possessions. Two of them were three-and-outs. When you get into that position, you have to close the game out. You have to get first downs. If we would have gotten three first downs, then the game would be over. We did not do it. Defensively, we gave up quick scores. It became a game again. It was very important for us on the last possession that we managed the clock correctly and we got off the field to win. I enjoy that. Maybe I am crazy, but I enjoy football. I enjoy the strategy of it and I enjoy watching the players work hard. Their effort is paid off when you win a game like that. For that fan base to come onto the field like that, those players saw something special. Who sees that a lot when they rush the field. You might see other people do it. Then, all of a sudden, you are involved in it. I was right involved in it. I said to myself, ‘good for them.’ I was just worried about the goal post, but I learned something too. The only guy that was mad was the groundskeeper, but I told him to let them come on the grass. It is okay. You do not realize that these guys will be talking about this 20 years from now. They will be able to say that our fans came onto the field in our backyard. That is what is great about college. You see it in basketball and football when they storm the field. Sometimes you are watching on television asking yourself how it feels. I have never witnessed it. I have never been a part of it. That was my first time. It was great. It was fantastic because it was a fan base win involving our school. It was not just our win. It was everybody’s win. That is the fun part of it. That is what makes college football so unique. For me, if you do not think you can win, then you cannot walk out onto that grass.”
ON PLAYERS IN A DIFFERENT HEAD SPACE AFTER FOUR CONSECUTIVE LOSSES:
“Yea, I think they started realizing something was wrong. The person that could do something about it was us because we had played against ourself for about a month. We did a good of beating ourself. We needed to stop all that. We did not play this game cleanly to be quite honest. There were 12 fouls, which killed and extended drives. But, the passion of the team was there. We just kept playing. When we needed a play, someone made a play. The two turnovers and the fourth down stop were big. The 3rd and 16 was a big play. I told (Brandon) Aiyuk that he could not do that. That was a 15-yard foul. He gets it. He knows. I told him I was not mad at him, but that he cannot do that because we had to kick the ball off and they would get good field position. By the way, we had not stopped them of late. All of those things become a part of it, but it was a lot of fun Saturday night for this football team.”
ON JADEN DANIELS SHOWING UP TO BUILDING ON DAY OFF:
“He is the quarterback. He has to be in the building. That is what the quarterback does. He is in the building everyday, he is a quarterback. He is the first guys who comes and and talks to me. We have to have our own little talk and get him ready for this week. We sit down and talk about some things. I prepare him for this game, tell him what is expected, and what will happen. He is always around here. He has a permanent seat in my office. He is sitting in my office when I come back from meetings during halftime. That does not surprise me. He is the type of kid that does not like losing. When we were walking down the tunnel before the game, he said he was ready. I told him to go show off. He does not like losing. In High School, he did not lose many games. He is that kind of guy. He is still learning college football. He is a freshman. He was put in a tough situation with a lot of other young guys like that. There are a lot of them that are around here. There are more of them than you would imagine. They have to do it on their own. When guys come in here on their own, it tells me that they love ball and they want to be around it. That is important for us.”
ON OFFENSE BEING TOO RELIANT ON JADEN DANIELS:
“I would like our offense to be more consistent and sustain drives. I am not complaining about the ability to hit the home run. When we become more consistent, that keeps our defense off the field. You can control the game when your offense stays on the field and is consistent. A lot of it is due to error when you get behind in down and distance because we get a penalty. All of a sudden, it is 1st and 15. It is hard. That is a part of the growing pains that we are going through right now as a football team. There are a lot of things we will learn about ourselves from this season. I am documenting it all to go over in the offseason with the staff and enforce certain areas of teaching.”
ON INTENSITY OF TERRITORIAL CUP:
“As you get into the week, similar to how I did last year, you hear from a lot of people that have played in it. I do not get out a lot. I am here in the morning and leave here late at night, so I do not see a lot of people. I kind of live in a cage for six months. You just sense it. I have been around football long enough where I can feel it when the energy is in the stadium through the fan base and the players. After that, it is a matter of coming to our senses and playing. After you win a game against Oregon, it is kind of interesting. I will leave it at that.”
ON NOT HANDLING SUCCESS WELL EARLIER IN THE SEASON:
“It is like anyone when they achieve some success in their life and they are young. They started the season beating two ranked opponents. This team has beaten three ranked opponents by the way. I think that is pretty good for a bunch of youngsters. How do handle all of that? When you are at 5-1 and no one anticipates that, you still have to work at it. That is a part of having young guys. How do they handle things when they leave the building? You get a new set of friends when you start winning by the way. You just do. They start showing up. You start listening to that and following their information on their phones more than information from our building. That is what you have when you are dealing with young people, especially ones that are very young, like most of the team is. Someone is in their head. That is what you deal with as a coach in today’s world of football. At the professional level too, but they have to play well for a living or else they are out. These guys are college players. There are a lot of people in their head, besides the coach. When they are not in the building for the four hours when we get them, we have no control of who is in their head and who is telling them what or what they are believing. When you are young, people use that and they tell you all of that. You start buying into that. You have to deal with all of that. It is part of being a ball coach. I come here every day. I come here early because I know I have 100 players, 25 coaches. Someone has a problem. Not everyone is happy like me when they come to work. Someone has an issue. So, you deal with issues. It is hard. I sign on to do it. It is what we do every day. I love it. It may sound like I do not, but I do love it.”
ON OFFENSIVE LINE GIVING PASSING GAME TIME AGAINST OREGON:
“We moved the pocket. That was critical. We did not want to block those guys. I could not have stressed this enough: 188-86. That is how they outscored their opponent in their games in the first half. When you come out for the second half, you are nervous and you have to throw the ball. They (Oregon) has some guys that can go hit the quarterback. They had 17 interceptions and 32 sacks. You would be playing right into their hand. We did not want that game. We had to move the pocket some. With that, we limited the people going on routes. We figured that if we could get some one-on-one matchups and chuck it down the field, we felt pretty good our wide outs that they could get behind people. They did and Jaden (Daniels) had to make some spot on throws. Those go routes were a yard inside the boundary. They would have to be in a spot where the guy can catch it. They were defended, but they were good throws. We moved the pocket. That was critical for us.”
ON OFFENSIVE LINE PENALTIES:
“A lot of that was snap count related. Some of it was due to the movement of Oregon’s line. Those are the ones where it should be 1st and 10, but then it becomes 1st and 15. It kills drives. It just stalls the drive out. Now, you are in 2nd and long. You are playing behind the chains and we do not want to do that offensively. We have to clean that up. We have done that all year. We have way too many penalties on both sides of the football.”
ON BRANDON AIYUK’S NFL POTENTIAL:
“Well there were 10 NFL scouts here Thursday and he is in every All-Star game you can play in. He has been asked to play in all of them. I have sat down to talk to him about the process about all of this. He was just in my office recently. He is another one who always comes into my office. There is a handful of them who are in my office. I know that they are coming. We talk. He came out of JC (Junior college). About the sixth or seventh game, you could see he started getting used to the speed of what was happening. This year, he has taken the approach of N’Keal (Harry) during practice and how hard he goes. The guy wants to play on Sundays, obviously. You get evaluated by what you put on the grass. That is your resume. He understands that. He has made a lot of plays similar to N’Keal. When we needed a play, N’Keal was the guy last year. He (Brandon Aiyuk) was put in his spot (N’Keal Harry), so he knew that there was a lot on him. The problem was that he has a freshman quarterback and a young offensive line. He has had to deal with that as long as Eno (Benjamin). As this season has gone on, he is dynamic with the ball in his hand. He is different because he is a heck of a returner. He can return the ball too. He and Frank (Darby) have both played well. Frank is kind of the hidden guy. But, he has six touchdown passes during the last three or four weeks. Every time I turn around, he is catching a touchdown or doing something. It is good to have those guys because they can score when they get the ball in their hand.”
ON MINIMIZING ARIZONA’S STRENGTHS:
“They rotate two quarterbacks right now. You can see the future guy. He (Grant Gunnell) is big and tall with a strong arm. (Khalil) Tate is Tate. He makes plays you cannot practice. That is the scary part because you cannot practice what he is going to do. When you drops back, all bets are off. If you have him covered and he decides to run, then you better hope we can go tackle him. He hurt us last year running the ball. He threw three touchdowns on us last year and ran the ball for over for about 53 yards. They had 280 yards rushing. (J.J.) Taylor is another guy that can run the ball. They ran the ball on us. They got after us a bit. We ran the ball a bit on them. We were really good when we took the ball away. We got nine points off of takeaways. We were really good in the red zone because they moved the ball on us, but we made them kick field goals. Then, in the fourth quarter we were able to rally off of some points and get back in the game. Defensively, their linebacker (Colin Schooler) is a fantastic football player. We have to block that guy. If we do not block him, then he will disrupt our whole offense because he is always in the backfield. He is a smart guy. They are doing things a bit differently. Chuck Cecil has done a good job with those guys. He was asked to be the defensive coordinator. During the last three weeks, you can start feeling his presence. He was a really good football player. They play hard for him. They present some problems. They just have been on the bad side of some games. It happens. You can see that they play hard. We anticipate that they will play hard against us. That is the kind of game it is. It does not matter what kind of record you have to be quite honest.”
ON ARIZONA BEING MOTIVATED FOR THIS GAME WITH NO BOWL GAME:
“Well, it is the last game of the season. You would want to finish in a winning note. You want the seniors to finish on a winning note. That is always important. Kevin (Sumlin), like myself, is trying to build a program. So, they are kind of where we are at. They are just trying to build it. In a game like this, it is the last game. If they win, it would be something to to look forward to next year knowing you beat your rival. That is always nice because you feel good. Although, it is kind of funny because some of the rivalry games are not at the end of the year anymore. When did that get changed? The Cal-Stanford and the USC-UCLA games used to be the last game, but I guess UCLA has another game and USC is done. Some of these games you wait every year and know that they will be on the final week. Maybe this is the case because of scheduling issues, but I do not know. I have my own worries. We play Arizona. That is our last game generally. It is always our last game, which is good. I get that part. It does not matter what your record is in this game and everyone knows that."
“This is our last game of the conference schedule. It is a big game in a lot of ways for us and for Arizona. It is a rivalry game. I think this rivalry goes back around 120 years. There is a lot of emotion this week and a lot of passionate fans are involved. It is a classic. You learn that when you are involved in it. My first time being involved in it last year was quite a spectacle for me because there are so many people in the state of Arizona that are keyed in on this game. Wether it is a grandparent or an alumni, it is just one of those games. Because we have so many young players on this team this year, I do not know if they will understand that. That will be something we talk about this week and how this thing has traditionally gone back over the history of it. After you have played in it once, you understand the importance of this game. There is going to be some choppiness. That is just part of it. As long as it does not become a factor in the game, then that will be okay. I think the officials realize that is how the game will be played. We will have to control our emotions in a game like this. I know their coach (Kevin Sumlin) is telling their team the same thing. With that being said, there will still be some chirpiness. We get that part. The game last year came down to the fourth quarter for us. We were behind for most of the game to be quite honest. We just kept plugging away. We were able to score 20 points in the fourth quarter. They had the last possession and they missed a field goal, or else they would have won that game. I anticipate it being a close, hard fought game. It will come down to the fourth quarter. So, need to be prepared to play for four quarters.”
ON TEMPERING EMOTION IN RIVALRY GAME COMING OFF BIG VICTORY:
“We talk about it. I always tell them to be a passionate team, not an emotional team. There is a fine line there. The thing I have learned about these guys is that they are so young that they sometimes cross the line. There are also some older guys that do that to. You hope it does not affect thee game in a way that when the game is over, the media is talking about it. I would like to talk about what is happening on the field, not what happened after each play. We need to stay away from things like that. When that becomes a part of the game, then it is bad for the game. You want a game to be played physically. You want to have a lot of passion in the game, but you never want the emotion to spill out and that can become the talk after the game. That is not good for football. It is not good for either program. Hopefully, that will not happen. I think it will be a very physical football game, though.”
ON BEING A TWO-TOUCHDOWN FAVORITE:
“I do not believe in that stuff. That is just people making rules of the game who have nothing to do with it. That is just stuff on paper. That has nothing to do with what will happen on the grass. That was proven last year with what took place. So, I do not buy into that. I think the guys who played in it last year or multiple seasons understand that. But, the young guys do not know what they do not know. They have no idea what this game is going to be about until they play it. They will see the emotion and the energy in the stadium. There will be energy from both parties. They have a great fan base as well. They are going to come here and cheer, similar to what the atmosphere was like against Oregon. That was an electric stadium Saturday night. Our fan base was special. They were fantastic. Oregon had their fan base too. It was one of those games that was good for television. With the way it turned out, it was good for television. It was a good TV game because it was exciting. It got too exciting for us in the fourth quarter for us with eight minutes left to be quite honest. It was a game in which our fan base helped us. Our fans and players were into the game. So, that is a good thing.”
ON PLAYERS BEING INVOLVED OFF THE FIELD AT FOOD BANK:
“It is good to be involved in the community. It is a weekend of Thanksgiving and to be thankful. Our family is involved in this as well, personally. For our players to go out today says something about them. About 20 of them went out to the food bank, which was nice. You are right, I gave them (the day) off, but that gets twisted sometimes. Not really. 30 of them showed up Sunday on their own to watch film. You do this all the time. It is toward the end of the year and we have gone through a hard month. They won a game and I know my team better than anybody. I am supposed to know the pulse of my team. Some people may ask what we do on Sunday. They come in, watch tape, feed them, stretch them out, and that is it. They do not work out. They are off on Monday. Let them breathe. It was a long night with a lot of emotion. I always look through the eyes of the player. If I was a player, I know what I would want right now. They deserved because they beat the sixth ranked team in the country coming off four losses. I think that gave them energy. On Sunday, 30 guys showed up on their own. They had their own meetings and watched tape. I anticipated that to be quite honest. So, it all works out.”
ON THOUGHTS GOING INTO OREGON GAME:
“I thought we had a great chance to win to be quite honest. But, you are asking the wrong guy because I think like that every week. When I do not think that, I will not be sitting at this podium anymore. I will go back home. Why do you all this? There are a lot of hours to this. I get into this building every morning at night and I leave at night. I spend a lot of time in this building. I look at tape and study the opponent. I try to help coaches and players. I am invested in this. This is not a hobby. This is what I do. If you do not feel good when you walk into the ball yard at home or on the road and you do not think you have a good chance to win, then this is not the place for you to be quite honest. This is not the place where you just roll the dice and hope that they turn out right. But, there is a certain way you have to play against each opponent. There is a plan that goes into it. We were able to execute our plan early in this game. We talked about making it a slow, boring game and to not let them get off to a fast start. Their (Oregon) first half scoring margin was 188-86 this year. We said that if we could make them slow it down and limit the possessions, then we would have a chance. I told them we would have to play really good. It held up until about eight minutes in the fourth quarter when they rallied. We had three possessions. Two of them were three-and-outs. When you get into that position, you have to close the game out. You have to get first downs. If we would have gotten three first downs, then the game would be over. We did not do it. Defensively, we gave up quick scores. It became a game again. It was very important for us on the last possession that we managed the clock correctly and we got off the field to win. I enjoy that. Maybe I am crazy, but I enjoy football. I enjoy the strategy of it and I enjoy watching the players work hard. Their effort is paid off when you win a game like that. For that fan base to come onto the field like that, those players saw something special. Who sees that a lot when they rush the field. You might see other people do it. Then, all of a sudden, you are involved in it. I was right involved in it. I said to myself, ‘good for them.’ I was just worried about the goal post, but I learned something too. The only guy that was mad was the groundskeeper, but I told him to let them come on the grass. It is okay. You do not realize that these guys will be talking about this 20 years from now. They will be able to say that our fans came onto the field in our backyard. That is what is great about college. You see it in basketball and football when they storm the field. Sometimes you are watching on television asking yourself how it feels. I have never witnessed it. I have never been a part of it. That was my first time. It was great. It was fantastic because it was a fan base win involving our school. It was not just our win. It was everybody’s win. That is the fun part of it. That is what makes college football so unique. For me, if you do not think you can win, then you cannot walk out onto that grass.”
ON PLAYERS IN A DIFFERENT HEAD SPACE AFTER FOUR CONSECUTIVE LOSSES:
“Yea, I think they started realizing something was wrong. The person that could do something about it was us because we had played against ourself for about a month. We did a good of beating ourself. We needed to stop all that. We did not play this game cleanly to be quite honest. There were 12 fouls, which killed and extended drives. But, the passion of the team was there. We just kept playing. When we needed a play, someone made a play. The two turnovers and the fourth down stop were big. The 3rd and 16 was a big play. I told (Brandon) Aiyuk that he could not do that. That was a 15-yard foul. He gets it. He knows. I told him I was not mad at him, but that he cannot do that because we had to kick the ball off and they would get good field position. By the way, we had not stopped them of late. All of those things become a part of it, but it was a lot of fun Saturday night for this football team.”
ON JADEN DANIELS SHOWING UP TO BUILDING ON DAY OFF:
“He is the quarterback. He has to be in the building. That is what the quarterback does. He is in the building everyday, he is a quarterback. He is the first guys who comes and and talks to me. We have to have our own little talk and get him ready for this week. We sit down and talk about some things. I prepare him for this game, tell him what is expected, and what will happen. He is always around here. He has a permanent seat in my office. He is sitting in my office when I come back from meetings during halftime. That does not surprise me. He is the type of kid that does not like losing. When we were walking down the tunnel before the game, he said he was ready. I told him to go show off. He does not like losing. In High School, he did not lose many games. He is that kind of guy. He is still learning college football. He is a freshman. He was put in a tough situation with a lot of other young guys like that. There are a lot of them that are around here. There are more of them than you would imagine. They have to do it on their own. When guys come in here on their own, it tells me that they love ball and they want to be around it. That is important for us.”
ON OFFENSE BEING TOO RELIANT ON JADEN DANIELS:
“I would like our offense to be more consistent and sustain drives. I am not complaining about the ability to hit the home run. When we become more consistent, that keeps our defense off the field. You can control the game when your offense stays on the field and is consistent. A lot of it is due to error when you get behind in down and distance because we get a penalty. All of a sudden, it is 1st and 15. It is hard. That is a part of the growing pains that we are going through right now as a football team. There are a lot of things we will learn about ourselves from this season. I am documenting it all to go over in the offseason with the staff and enforce certain areas of teaching.”
ON INTENSITY OF TERRITORIAL CUP:
“As you get into the week, similar to how I did last year, you hear from a lot of people that have played in it. I do not get out a lot. I am here in the morning and leave here late at night, so I do not see a lot of people. I kind of live in a cage for six months. You just sense it. I have been around football long enough where I can feel it when the energy is in the stadium through the fan base and the players. After that, it is a matter of coming to our senses and playing. After you win a game against Oregon, it is kind of interesting. I will leave it at that.”
ON NOT HANDLING SUCCESS WELL EARLIER IN THE SEASON:
“It is like anyone when they achieve some success in their life and they are young. They started the season beating two ranked opponents. This team has beaten three ranked opponents by the way. I think that is pretty good for a bunch of youngsters. How do handle all of that? When you are at 5-1 and no one anticipates that, you still have to work at it. That is a part of having young guys. How do they handle things when they leave the building? You get a new set of friends when you start winning by the way. You just do. They start showing up. You start listening to that and following their information on their phones more than information from our building. That is what you have when you are dealing with young people, especially ones that are very young, like most of the team is. Someone is in their head. That is what you deal with as a coach in today’s world of football. At the professional level too, but they have to play well for a living or else they are out. These guys are college players. There are a lot of people in their head, besides the coach. When they are not in the building for the four hours when we get them, we have no control of who is in their head and who is telling them what or what they are believing. When you are young, people use that and they tell you all of that. You start buying into that. You have to deal with all of that. It is part of being a ball coach. I come here every day. I come here early because I know I have 100 players, 25 coaches. Someone has a problem. Not everyone is happy like me when they come to work. Someone has an issue. So, you deal with issues. It is hard. I sign on to do it. It is what we do every day. I love it. It may sound like I do not, but I do love it.”
ON OFFENSIVE LINE GIVING PASSING GAME TIME AGAINST OREGON:
“We moved the pocket. That was critical. We did not want to block those guys. I could not have stressed this enough: 188-86. That is how they outscored their opponent in their games in the first half. When you come out for the second half, you are nervous and you have to throw the ball. They (Oregon) has some guys that can go hit the quarterback. They had 17 interceptions and 32 sacks. You would be playing right into their hand. We did not want that game. We had to move the pocket some. With that, we limited the people going on routes. We figured that if we could get some one-on-one matchups and chuck it down the field, we felt pretty good our wide outs that they could get behind people. They did and Jaden (Daniels) had to make some spot on throws. Those go routes were a yard inside the boundary. They would have to be in a spot where the guy can catch it. They were defended, but they were good throws. We moved the pocket. That was critical for us.”
ON OFFENSIVE LINE PENALTIES:
“A lot of that was snap count related. Some of it was due to the movement of Oregon’s line. Those are the ones where it should be 1st and 10, but then it becomes 1st and 15. It kills drives. It just stalls the drive out. Now, you are in 2nd and long. You are playing behind the chains and we do not want to do that offensively. We have to clean that up. We have done that all year. We have way too many penalties on both sides of the football.”
ON BRANDON AIYUK’S NFL POTENTIAL:
“Well there were 10 NFL scouts here Thursday and he is in every All-Star game you can play in. He has been asked to play in all of them. I have sat down to talk to him about the process about all of this. He was just in my office recently. He is another one who always comes into my office. There is a handful of them who are in my office. I know that they are coming. We talk. He came out of JC (Junior college). About the sixth or seventh game, you could see he started getting used to the speed of what was happening. This year, he has taken the approach of N’Keal (Harry) during practice and how hard he goes. The guy wants to play on Sundays, obviously. You get evaluated by what you put on the grass. That is your resume. He understands that. He has made a lot of plays similar to N’Keal. When we needed a play, N’Keal was the guy last year. He (Brandon Aiyuk) was put in his spot (N’Keal Harry), so he knew that there was a lot on him. The problem was that he has a freshman quarterback and a young offensive line. He has had to deal with that as long as Eno (Benjamin). As this season has gone on, he is dynamic with the ball in his hand. He is different because he is a heck of a returner. He can return the ball too. He and Frank (Darby) have both played well. Frank is kind of the hidden guy. But, he has six touchdown passes during the last three or four weeks. Every time I turn around, he is catching a touchdown or doing something. It is good to have those guys because they can score when they get the ball in their hand.”
ON MINIMIZING ARIZONA’S STRENGTHS:
“They rotate two quarterbacks right now. You can see the future guy. He (Grant Gunnell) is big and tall with a strong arm. (Khalil) Tate is Tate. He makes plays you cannot practice. That is the scary part because you cannot practice what he is going to do. When you drops back, all bets are off. If you have him covered and he decides to run, then you better hope we can go tackle him. He hurt us last year running the ball. He threw three touchdowns on us last year and ran the ball for over for about 53 yards. They had 280 yards rushing. (J.J.) Taylor is another guy that can run the ball. They ran the ball on us. They got after us a bit. We ran the ball a bit on them. We were really good when we took the ball away. We got nine points off of takeaways. We were really good in the red zone because they moved the ball on us, but we made them kick field goals. Then, in the fourth quarter we were able to rally off of some points and get back in the game. Defensively, their linebacker (Colin Schooler) is a fantastic football player. We have to block that guy. If we do not block him, then he will disrupt our whole offense because he is always in the backfield. He is a smart guy. They are doing things a bit differently. Chuck Cecil has done a good job with those guys. He was asked to be the defensive coordinator. During the last three weeks, you can start feeling his presence. He was a really good football player. They play hard for him. They present some problems. They just have been on the bad side of some games. It happens. You can see that they play hard. We anticipate that they will play hard against us. That is the kind of game it is. It does not matter what kind of record you have to be quite honest.”
ON ARIZONA BEING MOTIVATED FOR THIS GAME WITH NO BOWL GAME:
“Well, it is the last game of the season. You would want to finish in a winning note. You want the seniors to finish on a winning note. That is always important. Kevin (Sumlin), like myself, is trying to build a program. So, they are kind of where we are at. They are just trying to build it. In a game like this, it is the last game. If they win, it would be something to to look forward to next year knowing you beat your rival. That is always nice because you feel good. Although, it is kind of funny because some of the rivalry games are not at the end of the year anymore. When did that get changed? The Cal-Stanford and the USC-UCLA games used to be the last game, but I guess UCLA has another game and USC is done. Some of these games you wait every year and know that they will be on the final week. Maybe this is the case because of scheduling issues, but I do not know. I have my own worries. We play Arizona. That is our last game generally. It is always our last game, which is good. I get that part. It does not matter what your record is in this game and everyone knows that."