ASU Head Coach Herm Edwards
On time of possession and the end of the game
“The first half they had it for about 20 minutes, we had it for about 10. That’s who they are though, they play time of possession. David Shaw, he’s won too many games and he's been too good of a coach for me to sit here and question how he plays football. They play and they win and hopefully we can have that similar formula when we start winning around here as well. I just think it was one of those games where when you look at the game, the turnovers hurt us. We were in position to score points and the turnovers hurt us. You can’t do that against a good football team and Stanford is a good football team, no doubt about that. I think at the end, we showed some fight, and we’ve done that in all our games, but we fell short again. We dropped a lot of balls on offense, that’s uncharacteristic of us, but I thought the spirit of the players came out in the fourth quarter and we were able to make some stops and make it a game at the end, but we just ran out of time.”
On turnovers
“That’s not giving our defense any credit, what if they throw the ball and intercept it? There’s two sides to the story and hopefully, just because they had us down doesn’t mean we weren’t going to open it up and play defense and maybe make a play or two.”
On offense
“There was a couple of times where Manny struggled with a couple of the throws and we just weren’t clicking on offense, to be quite honest. We were very sloppy and penalties hurt us on defense. It was one of those games that early in the first quarter we thought it was going to be played out that way and we got it to half time, there was no touchdowns scored. Going into this, we thought that was the type of game it was going to be. In the third quarter, we tied it up finally with a field goal and from there we made some plays, but we gave them some plays too. Those scoring drives came off penalties and turnovers. You have to give them credit because they are a good football team and we fell short.”
On defensive performance
“We did a good job of tackling the backs and really forcing them into some bad situations. It was one of those games, kind of a methodical game. Both defenses in the first half really played good defense. It wasn’t a high-scoring affair at all. After we got it tied up, they made a couple plays in the third quarter, and we didn’t help ourselves by turning the ball over and creating fouls. When you give a good team like that extra possessions and extra plays, they generally capitalize on (them).”
On Stanford running the ball
“David Shaw is going to run the football; that’s what he does. That’s what his success is. Their DNA is (running the ball) and they’re not going to change from that. He’s won a lot of football games doing that.”
On Stanford’s run defense
“Last week (against Utah) they got the ball run on them a little bit and you could tell that this week they were going to hone in on the run and not allow us to run. They played some tight coverage on us early that we didn’t get away from, but then things opened up. We started making some plays in the passing game. But when you look at the game it was too many penalties for us and too many dropped balls. When you look at those things in the context of the game, you’re not going to beat a team like Stanford doing that.”
On offensive errors
“We were down by three, we got it tied up and then all of the sudden we had a series of events take place and we didn’t recover (quickly) enough. It became a series of bad plays. On offense, it was the turnovers and obviously the pass interferences. We can’t do that.”
Senior Quarterback Manny Wilkins, #5
On the loss
"We have to score two more touchdowns. I just pride myself on taking care of the football, so two turnovers on my part is completely inexcusable. I'm beating myself up over that.”
On his emotions following a tough loss
"I feel like I let the team down. I have got to be smarter, I have got to give our team a chance there at the end. I just have to play smarter. Two turnovers, like I said, against a team like Stanford, you're not going to get away with that. But we had a chance, I just threw a check down with seven seconds left so I just got to give ourselves a chance there at the end.”
On dropping another game by less than a touchdown
"I despise and I hate losing so don't think that I'm going out there on purpose trying to lose the game, so I hate losing more than anything."
On the way the defenses were going back and forth and the impact of that on the sideline
"Yeah, I thought they did a really good job. I don't think Stanford really rushed the ball very much, so credit to our defense on that. They didn't really have too many crazy explosive plays, so early on in that game there though, the three points that we get, the interception that we threw in the red zone, you take those back and you get a field goal there or you get a touchdown it’s a different ballgame. I'm sick and tired of always coming in here and saying it's one play away. We just need to fix it."
On the last play of the game
“Yeah, I knew it exactly, I knew it right away. They had a free rusher on me. They rolled and when they switched off our switch receivers, we had switch seams. They rolled the coverage to the outside and did a really good job of fishing it out, you know what we had going on, and in my head I just knew not to take a sack. I should’ve thrown it at Eno’s feet, but instead I threw it at his chest and he caught it. It’s just poor football, poor clock management and spatial awareness on my part.”
On the halftime message to the team
“We just needed to give ourselves a chance to make some plays. We didn’t change the game plan at all. We just came out and did what we did and we just needed to score more points.”
On loose ball plays not going their way
The fumble, I thought I had two hands on it. Guy hit me the right way and I fumbled. I’m not making excuses or anything, I can’t do that. The interception, that is on me. That is what happens when you press. and you force something, and you try to make something happen. You get a negative out of it. It’s inexcusable and everyone who knows me knows I pride myself on taking care of the football and being a smart quarterback. Those are the things I beat myself up over because as I said, I can’t make those mistakes.”
On what the team can take from today’s game
“We at least gave ourselves a chance. We put together a pretty good two-minute drive there at the end and just weren’t close enough. We continue to say we are so close, but time is not on our side, not on my side. This is it.”
Sophomore Wide Receiver Frank Darby, #84
On what the team needs to do to come out on top in a close game
“I think we just need to fix the mental errors. I don’t know what it is, but it is something that needs to be fixed in practice, something that needs to be fixed in drills. But we are right there and we just need to give the extra effort.”
Stanford Team Quotes
Stanford Senior Wide Receiver Trenton Irwin #2
On winning on the road
“It’s always good to win on the road. The atmosphere was pretty good.”
On K.J. Costello running
“He had some wheels. He turned some wheels on there. I haven’t seen that in a little bit, so it was good to see that.”
On ASU’s last drive
“It was nerve-wracking for sure. They got some play makers in N’Keal Harry and they’re a respected team. I was waiting for the clock to hit zero and see the refs end it. I’m glad it ended. Our defense played great.”
On the offense coming off the bye week
“I mean we came out a little slow. You’ve got be honest with yourself. We got to look and say, ‘ok, what can we change there.’ I think third quarter, we came out hitting and then we got ahead. We took advantage of our lead and trusted our defense. That’s what you’ve got to pack when you’re going on the road to play a team. So we trusted our defense and they came through. We’ve got some things to work on offensively. Just seal the game quicker, not have it come down to that, but at the end, it’s a W.”
Stanford Senior Linebacker Sean Barton, #27
On intercepting N’Keal Harry’s pass
“I saw the reverse motion, looked back out to check the receiver to make sure he wasn’t coming back and cracking me. I saw he was running a stutter route and so stuck with it, ran with him instead of coming. I knew my guys in front would cover the reverse part of it, so I was just concerned with the long pass.”
On slowing down Eno Benjamin
“We’re always confident in our abilities, we know that if we execute and play our type of game, we’re not worried that we’re going to lose in that situation. We have a lot of confidence. We’ve been there before in a lot of different games. [There are] a lot of old guys who have been there before, who have played in tight games in the last drive, so I’m confident.”
Playing conservatively on offense shows confidence in the defense
“We take that as a confident, you know? “We’re there, we want to be there, we want to be reliable, we want to be the ones ending the game always.”
Stanford Senior Running Back Cameron Scarlett, #22
Thoughts on the game
“It was a tough power five game. We knew we were coming into a hostile environment, a Thursday night game, so there’s going to be a lot of adversity we would have to overcome… and I like the way we fought it out until the end and kept the pressure on. There are some things we definitely need to work on. As a whole, we’ll take the win.”
On Bryce Love going down in the game
“We knew this week that Bryce wasn’t going to be a full go, wasn’t expected to play the full game, so we knew that we were going to have to be ready whenever our numbers were called. We were trying to capitalize on the most of our opportunities and make the most of each one.”
Stanford’s offensive execution
“There’s definitely some things we need to work on, but there’s definitely a couple areas that we are really proud of with the growth that we made this week from our last game. We were running the ball a little better and were able to open things with the run game, which we were pretty excited about, and we still got some more steps to take, but we are going in the right direction.
On Arizona State’s late drive in the 4th
“I have full trust in the defense. I knew they were going to close that one out.”