Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Stanford

POSTGAME QUOTES
Stanford 49, UCLA 42
November 24, 2018

UCLA head coach Chip Kelly
on late momentum swings in an ending that felt back and forth
“Yeah, I mean we had our opportunities today, but we just didn’t capitalize on them. Give Stanford credit. They came up with the plays when they needed them at the end of the game, defensively.”

on whether a review delay in the fourth quarter hindered UCLA’s momentum
“No, I’m not into the momentum thing. I know you keep going there all the time. That’s just the way that the game goes. It’s the nature of the game, nowadays. They’ve got to look at it, if he did step out. It was closer than I thought. He didn’t, but I mean that’s part of it. That’s not an excuse. We aren’t in the excuse business. We have to score there. We’re down and we’re that close and we didn’t score.”

on the status of punter Stefan Flintoff
“No, he was not available. He was not available.”

on whether JJ Molson could have been UCLA’s punter in the second half
“We talked about a lot of things, but we didn’t have to punt in the second half.”

on quarterback Wilton Speight
“I thought that he did some really nice things. There are probably a couple that we wish he’d have thrown away. But, I thought in clutch situations, he was really good. He got hurt at the beginning of the year, so to come back and to play like he did the last couple of games tells you the type of player that he is. He’s a tough guy. He got banged around there today. He took some shots and just kept getting up and playing. I’m really happy with how he transitioned from Michigan to here. He did a great job. He was a great teammate, and I know that a lot of our players learned a lot from him.”

on tight end Caleb Wilson
“Again, it’s what Caleb has done for us all year long. He’s been very resilient. He’s a clutch player and he has a knack for getting open and makes clutch plays when we need them. I think he was a big security blanket for our quarterbacks all season long.”

on any early reflections on the season
“The game that just ended three minutes ago? I think that I’ll take a little bit more time before I reflect on that.”

on if he liked the way that his team showed up for the last few games of the season
“I think that our team showed up to play in every game this season.”

on running back Joshua Kelley
“I think that you have to give them credit. They wanted to take away the run. They played a lot more man coverage. So you’ve got to take what they did. It’s the same thing that we did. We tried to take away their run. And then you’ve got to capitalize. I thought that Costello played a really good game for them. And I thought that Wilton played a really good game for us. I think that it’s a game where I don’t think that either team was going to let each other’s running back beat them. They took ours away and we took theirs away. So, it turned into a throwing game.”

on Stanford wide receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside
“He’s obviously one of the more talented receivers in this league, and he’s a precise route runner. But I think his size is kind of what separates him from some of the other receivers in this league. He was a very tough matchup, especially for our smaller DBs today.”

on attendance being just above 38,000 today
“No, I’m worried about getting first downs and stopping people. We are trying to grow a young football team and that’s what these guys did. They learned how to compete every single week, and I’m proud of their effort. We just need more weapons.”

on Darnay Holmes’ kick return for a touchdown and calling fair catches
“We took it out because it was a safety, so the ball was kicked from the 20 and not the 35. So, we always do that if there is a penalty or a safety. We’re going to return those.”

on what weapons he needs as he moves forward
“We’ll identify it as a staff as we move forward. This isn’t he time to talk about that right now, to be honest with you.”

on how big of a factor the lack of a pass rush has been
“I mean, obviously when you’re playing against a talented kid like Costello, you can’t allow him to take as much time as he did. That’s something that we have to look at and work on in the offseason. I think that we can do a better job of generating a rush, where our DBs don’t have to cover for as long.”

on UCLA calling a timeout at the end of the first half with 44 seconds to go (on offense)
“Yeah, but if we don’t score, then, you can’t tell your guys not to score, you know what I mean? Yeah, the point of your question is that you have it automatically in your head that we were going to score. You know, we still have to score. So if we ran out of time and did not get an opportunity to score, you’d be asking me why didn’t I call a timeout? So, anybody can play that side of the fence. We have to cover the kickoff better. I don’t think it had anything to do with how much time was on the clock. I don’t care if there were 14 minutes and 44 seconds to go. We have to cover a kickoff better than that. I don’t care how much time was left on the clock. That has nothing to do with it. You’ve got to give yourself enough time to score. We scored. We were happy about that. But if we didn’t score, we needed more plays, to have more plays, you need more time. You can’t say, ‘Hey, we’re going to score.’ If we knew that we were going to score all the time, we’d manage the clock a lot differently all the time. But, you are going with the assumption that the score was an automatic. The score wasn’t automatic. So, and we had to fight to get in there. It took us a lot of plays to get in there. So, that is part of the whole process that goes on. We never want to try and say, ‘Hey, when we score, we want to have three seconds to go on the clock, so to do this, let’s do this with the timeout situation.’ We need to score. I’m not a ‘Hey you scored too fast.’ Your kickoff team has got to be better. That’s a depth issue for us, and we’ve got to do a better job there. I’m not a would’ve, could’ve, should’ve guy.”

UCLA quarterback Wilton Speight
on his performance and throwing a career-high 466 yards
“I mean, now, it doesn’t feel good. I’m not happy about my performance. It was fun during the game because up until the last play, I thought that we were going to win. So obviously when you are able to slice them apart like that in the moment, that’s fun. But when you walk off the field and if you aren’t victorious, it doesn’t matter.”

on UCLA’s last two offensive drives
“Obviously, that’s very hard when you’ve got that opportunity there and you can’t capitalize. Just, not a very heads-up play by me in the end It was fourth down. I thought that I had crossed the line of scrimmage when I had been trying to scramble to the right. I was trying to find where the yard marker was. And thought I had crossed it, so I thought I couldn’t throw it. Now I’ve got to try and run for this first down. And then just, kind of, it stuck in the heat of the moment. We got the ball back. Our defense made three great stops, and we got the ball back, and we’d been moving the ball again. We just came up short.”

on the review delay after Caleb Wilson’s 66-yard reception in the final quarter
“I mean, it might have messed up the flow. Any time that you gash a defense like that for a big play, you see, you look back on the season, Coach Kelly has a history of, ‘OK, let’s hit them in the mouth again.’ Let’s not let them gather themselves. Obviously that slowed down the pace and everything, but it seemed like every time that we dropped back, I knew that Theo was going to get open and Caleb was going to get open. The rest of the weapons and those guys made me look good, to where we felt very confident in our passing game. Yeah, any time that the clock kind of stops, or we’ve got to get held back a little bit, that can mess up the flow.”

on whether he left this program in a better condition than when he arrived
“I do. I do feel that I was able to come in and help guide this ship in the right direction. I am not saying that I took a major part in that or anything, but I just tried to show up every day and do everything that I could to better the program. When I came in here in June, we had guys that were hungry but maybe didn’t know what they were hungry for in terms of how can we operate to build a successful program – not a successful team, but a successful program. If you look at the growth from Cincinnati to Stanford, it’s a completely different ballclub like Theo was saying. That is a testament to the coaching staff, our older guys, the leadership and the young guys not saying, ‘OK this is my first year and we only won three games and I can just write this off as a redshirt or it doesn’t matter because I’ve got three more.’ It was a collective effort all the way across the board that made this year successful despite our win-loss column.”

on Theo Howard and his help with UCLA’s wide receivers and dropped balls
“One thing that I saw in Theo, I saw a stat that he’d had maybe 60 balls thrown to him and not one drop. I don’t think he dropped one. I threw a couple of low passes to him in the USC game. I threw him a ball in practice last week, and he dropped it. And you know that he’s a special wideout when the whole offensive staff – the players, the backups, like everyone – they were like, ‘Wait, what happened?’ Because it’s just so rare. So, that’s pretty awesome.”

UCLA wide receiver Theo Howard
on the Bruins’ reaction after scoring points from a safety and ensuing 93-yard kickoff return touchdown
“I think it would just be, we never have the mindset that the game is over. There is always still a game. We just didn’t have the mindset of giving up. We just stayed in the game. We kept pushing.”

on the Bruins’ growth from games one through 12
“Yeah, there was a huge difference. I just think that we matured. Obviously, we have a lot of freshmen on the team, and I think that for a lot of us and for some people, it took some people a while to get adjusted to the game. On our offensive side of the ball, we had some struggles early in the year with the line. I think that they started to mesh well. Some of our younger guys in the receiving corps made plays and got more confident. On the defensive side on the ball, we still have young people. In the next couple of years, or even next year, I think that they’re going to do very well just because they’ll get more mature. I think that we proved a lot.”

on drops having been a problem for the receivers earlier in the season
“Yeah, I think that I’ve always really taken pride in catching the ball. Like I have said before, I’ve had my struggles with drops. It’s important to be mentally strong. I think that a lot of our guys, a lot of our receiving corps, they’re mentally strong. Even though we had drops early in the season, I kind of just told them to just keep going. We caught up and made plays in practice and games and stuff like that.”

on his thoughts on Caleb Wilson’s big 66-yard reception late in the game
“Just a lot of excitement. I think those are plays we’ve seen Caleb make all throughout the year. We just know he’s a guy who is capable of stuff like that. But, just excitement.”

Stanford head coach David Shaw
opening remarks
“Another exciting Pac-12 game. First, give Chip Kelley a lot of credit, with what he’s done there in a short span of time. Through all the injuries, all the issues, guys transferring out, everything. I thought about this all week, in the back of my head, I truly believe this is the future Pac-12 championship game right here. What he’s starting to do here, I’m really excited for him. Thankful that we won the game today but give a lot credit to him. It’s going to be a lot of fun watching these two teams play over next few years.”

“Excited about our guys coming back. We did not play perfectly. We had a hot stretch like we have all year. Then a bad stretch, especially the stretch when spotted them nine points. We had a great turnover, missed a block, gave up a safety, kicked the ball to Darnay [Holmes], one of the fastest guys in America and he ran that back for a touchdown. They made it tough, but our guys kept fighting back. We had more guys get banged up, more guys get injured, more guys get helped off the field. But we just threw the next guy out there and they kept playing well. Kendall [Williamson], Obi [Eboh], those guys getting put in there and rotating in with not a lot of experience made big plays towards the end of the game.”

“I can’t say enough about what the guys on our defensive staff have done. With guys getting banged up, rotating guys through and doing everything we have to do. On the offensive side, that week off did help Bryce [Love] a little bit, and put a pep in his step. Had some really nice runs, almost got 200 yards but played really well for a guy that’s still probably not quite 90 percent. But he gives his teammates everything he has. We played really well up front, with a couple miss cues, but we’re getting better. Really proud of K.J. [Costello] – he’s coming into his own, and over the next year it’s kind of what we thought when we started the recruiting process. He’s one of the best quarterbacks in America. He sees things really well. Missed early in the ball game with a bad throw on the interception. I love the way he is, takes the coaching, comes back and plays a great one.”

on the targeting call in the fourth quarter
“It’s the right call. It’s the call they have to make. You saw it up on the big screen, and our player had his head down. We have to really work on getting their heads up. We have gotten much, much better over the years but that split second decision when you have a big body that’s getting hit by somebody else, into you. Alijah [Holder] was in perfect position but at the last second he ducked his head. You can’t do that, and I don’t blame the officials. It’s the right call, and you have to make that call. We want our guys to be as safe as possible, and we need to continue to train our guys to do it better, but it’s the right call that you have to make for the safety of our players.”

on the fake fumble playaction pass
“It had to do with the style of defense in the area of the field. We felt we can get the safeties to bite. To UCLA’s credit, the safety that really needed to bite, didn’t bite. JJ [Arcega-Whiteside] had to make his way back behind him and still get across over there. Once again K.J. [Costello] did a good job buying time so that he can find a way to get the ball to JJ [Whiteside] and let him go get it.”

on the touchdown review before halftime
“The hard part for me is that sometimes you want the officials to use common sense, and sometimes you don’t. What I mean by that is, they called it no touchdown. When you go back and review it. I didn’t see the runner cross the goal line. So, I would love for them to say it was not a touchdown. But if you really look at it, common sense tells you he was in the endzone. You couldn’t see it but the whole pile went in the endzone. I was hoping they weren’t going to use common sense, but they did. They got the call right. The guy was in the end zone. The camera was blurred, but you can tell he was in the end zone.”

Stanford linebacker Sean Barton
on Stanford’s defense, having many guys out (injury)
“We stood up when it mattered most. They made a lot of great plays down the stretch. A lot of times that discourages guys, but we stuck with it and as I said we showed a lot of heart.”

on UCLA quarterback Wilton Speight
“I was impressed. He made the right reads and scrambled when he needed to. He picked us apart in some key moments, so I got nothing but respect for the guy.”

on the variety of looks given from the offense
“I wouldn’t say we were surprised. In the first quarter, we pretty much knew exactly what was going on. They mixed it up a little bit which led to some miscommunication in the second and third quarter. Miscommunication was the reason for most of our errors.”

on having last Saturday off
“I know a lot of guys were injured and banged up but me personally, I was ready to go. That kind of threw me off, personally, getting ready for a game and the day before it gets canceled. It was a weird feeling.”

Stanford wide receiver Trenton Irwin
on anything surprising about today’s high-scoring game
“I thought we were going to be up by a lot, and then they would have an explosive play. Then they would go score off of that and I respect their fight. It was a good game, a rollercoaster of a game. Going from the safety, kickoff return, and the targeting call.”

on getting JJ Arcega-Whiteside back
“It was huge. He is a threat. You can see with his hat-trick that he is an impact player and he was having fun.”

Stanford wide receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside
on how he feels, given the bye week last week
“I had a whole other week to rest, recover and get everything healthy. It was almost like playing the first game of the year all over again because it just felt that long to me. So, it was great.”

on the quarterback K.J. Costello bouncing back after throwing that interception
“This is what I expect from him. If you guys get a chance to see and talk to him on the sideline you know that nothing affects him. That is just what you want in your quarterback. At this point we know if we throw a pick were going to bounce back.”

on playing at the Rose Bowl
“It’s just special. Who wouldn’t want to play in the Rose Bowl? I remember when I was in high school talking to my dad about wanting to play there. I want to play for these teams or against them. Luckily, Stanford came knocking on my door, and I knew then every time I go into this stadium, I have to make it special.”

on the UCLA secondary, compared to other ones that he has faced
“They were good. They were fast and athletic. They have a captain at safety whose pretty good. I just knew going in I was going to rely on technique and speed. Back to the basics and playing ball. As a receiver, that’s what you want one-on-one coverage.”

on staying hungry after beating Cal for eight straight seasons
“We don’t listen to that or watch that. As you guys saw, we almost lost tonight. It was a close game up until the fourth quarter. None of that matters until the game clock hits zero. Tradition, streaks, none of that matters.”

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Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Stanford

University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics

Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Stanford