Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Stanford
POSTGAME QUOTES
Stanford 48, UCLA 47 (2OT)
Pasadena, Calif. (Rose Bowl)
Dec. 19, 2020
UCLA head coach Chip Kelly
on decision to go for two on final play and the decision to run the ball
“We were running out of players. I think in the first overtime, Kobey Fitzgerald -- walk-on linebacker for us -- made a heck of a play on second down. Obviously, we were down Bo [Calvert] to start the game and then we lost Dorian [Thompson-Robinson], lost Sam Marrazzo, lost [Qwuantrezz] Knight. We were just running out of some guys, so I didn’t know how much longer we could continue to go. We were going to take a shot from the three [yard line]. We threw it on the first one, and there was, obviously, a penalty -- holding. We had to re-play it. We just went to our second two-point play. We went with our first two-point play and, obviously, there were offsetting penalties on it, so we went to our second two-point play. We practice that, in terms of where we are. I didn’t have a good look on where [Brittain Brown] was. It looked like he was on top of the pile, but he came up short.”
on lost fumble late in the fourth quarter involving Chase Griffin and Brittain Brown
“I didn’t get a clean look at it. I just saw it was out. I don’t know if he got the snap clean, itself. I’ll have to see the film to see anything. I couldn’t tell you from where I was, exactly what happened.”
on Dorian Thompson-Robinson’s status
“[Thompson-Robinson] was on the sideline with us for the second half. I was just told that he was out, but Dorian was there supporting his team. I saw him, but they haven’t given me anything except that he was out.”
on how this program is moving in the right direction
“I think you look at how hard our players played. We lost a game by one, we lost a game by three, we lost a game by five, and we lost a game by six. There’s great effort, great attitude. [Fans] can be proud of these young men, I think. They gave everything. You’re down 20-3 at halftime and they rallied. Getting Davis Mills to turn the ball over, which he hadn’t done at all. They did a great job of really rectifying what was not a really pretty first half. They came back and rallied in the second half. [Fans] can be proud of these young men and this program.”
on all-Black officiating crew and Athletic Director Martin Jarmond’s defense of his job security
“[Official Michael Mothershed] has been around the league for a long time. It was cool that [the officiating crew] could do that for this game. Mike’s one of the top officials I’ve been around. All those guys -- they were great. They communicated really well with us. That part was cool. Martin called me Thursday. Whatever was written -- that wasn’t true. That was it.”
on Griffin’s performance in the second half after replacing Dorian Thompson-Robinson
“He made some really big plays to come in, in that situation. You have to replace Dorian, but we’re down. We’re down 17 at the half and we need to rally. I thought he did a great job. He was on the money with his throws. He kept some things alive with his feet, which we know he can do. I thought he played really well.”
on why the team came out flat in the first half and whether it was difficult to play a regular season game after playing USC
“No. One thing about this program -- we don’t make excuses, we let others make excuses for us. There’s two halves to football. They rallied. We had to come together as a group because we lost some guys. When you lose Sam [Marrazzo], you lose Dorian [Thompson-Robinson], and [Qwuantrezz Knight], and then not having Bo [Calvert] available to start the game. But, again, everybody else deals with injuries in this league and no one feels sorry for you, so we’re not feeling sorry for ourselves. I thought we moved the ball well in the first half, but we had a couple key penalties that just put us way behind the sticks. We’re moving the ball down the field, and all of a sudden, we’ve got a hold. Ethan Fernea scores, and they call a hold, so we back up. We felt like we could move the football and we realized that in the second half. [Brittain Brown] started getting going, started running a little bit there. That’s just the nature of it. You have to play, sometimes, the whole 60 minutes or even longer like we had to play tonight.”
on the timeline for the football program moving forward
“We’ll be back in January for training. Obviously, there are testing protocols and everything that we have to go through. We have a plan, a detailed plan that will take us to the summer. But, we also have to be able to be flexible with those plans just because it seems like the numbers continue to increase. Do they put any new restrictions in place? But, our plan is, right now, that we’ll be back in the winter term. Our guys will get back with our strength and conditioning coaches and start our offseason program with [Football Performance Coordinator] Frank Wintrich and his group. Then, we’ll see. I think we need to be really flexible because there are a lot of problems with COVID. I know there’s a vaccine, but I don’t know when that’s going to get to the regular people, so, if we get shut down, then we have to plan accordingly. Our administration has been fantastic in dealing with all of that, so we’ll see. We plan on coming back when the term starts, and then we’ll go from there.”
UCLA quarterback Chase Griffin
on second-half comeback and tough outcome
“Right now, I’m just proud of my team and the way they worked. There’s definitely some plays that I want back for myself. But as far as my teammates, the way they went out there and competed every play, they competed in a way to win. I’m very proud of my team.”
on all-Black officiating crew
“I think that’s really a special moment for the conference and UCLA overall. If it’s going to be with any institution, UCLA had to be involved with that because of the Black history that we have. ”
on executing fourth and 18 touchdown pass to Kyle Philips
“On that play, I just wanted to hold the safety. I worked to my field. All four receivers did a great job of getting open. Up front, they gave me a little escape hatch to get out and scramble, and Kyle [Philips] did a great job of getting past the defender and making a spectacular catch.”
on fumble in fourth quarter
“No, that play was on me, so I take responsibility.”
on trajectory of the program
“I think the trajectory of the program is to be a winning program – that’s our mindset every day. That’s how we fight. Days like this hurt. Days like last week hurt, but it’s supposed to hurt. We’re not playing to lose, we’re playing to win. Every day, we’re going to be focused on winning this offseason.”
on Dorian Thompson-Robinson’s role on the sidelines
“He was definitely involved and I really appreciated him. We had some good notes. Any time you're on the sideline as a quarterback you have to be eyes. That doesn’t just go for me and him, but we have a fine quarterback room, and they do a great job every game of being eyes for the starter.”
UCLA defensive back Mo Osling III
On his interception and team’s overall defensive performance
“I think the defense played great tonight, starting from the line to the linebackers. We came up with three turnovers, so that’s like an amazing accomplishment. I think we did it in one quarter, so it was amazing. On my interception, I was playing zone, so I had zone eyes. I just saw the ball in the air so I attacked it.”
on bouncing back in the second half after going down 20-3 at halftime
“This group of guys, we always fight until the end, so we just don’t give up. These guys fight hard throughout the week, so when game time comes it’s much easier to not look at the score and go out and compete.”
on Stanford’s offense and its run to comeback in the fourth quarter
“They kind of just stuck to their game plan. They ran the ball, threw the ball, so pretty much the same stuff they had been doing the whole game.”
on if the team defended Simi Fehoko differently after an outstanding performance
“No we just stuck to our game plan. Sometimes guys are going to catch the ball, that’s just part of football, so we just kept playing one down at a time.”
Stanford head coach David Shaw
opening statement
“I sound like every coach in America when we win a game. I’m proud of these guys, but I’m not just proud of how well they played tonight, but how hard they fought and how long they fought and coming out on top in the end. I’m proud of these guys to say every single thing that has come our way this year, they handled with class, did things the right way. How many teams in America made it through the entire season, starting from training camp, without a single positive COVID test? We have the right guys doing the right things. Throwing a ridiculous curveball for the first two games, and really battled back from that being 0-2. I don’t know if I’ve ever been 0-2 of any sport in my life ever. I don’t remember that. And a lot of guys felt the same way, felt that we were better than 0-2. We had some difficulties, but came back to win four straight. I told the guys at the end of regulation that they cannot be surprised by this. This was just our path this year that it was going to be difficult and it was going to be hard. We had to fight and scratch and claw our way to victory. Davis Mills had no interceptions the entire season, comes back and throws a couple doozies. Not every single one was his fault, but a couple of them were difficult. To Davis’ credit, he doesn’t get down, doesn’t get down on himself, comes down and was great on the sideline, was great with his teammates. They of course were picking him up. They trust him, they believe in him, and we came back. A combination of the guys up front doing a good job and us finding our receivers, in particular Simi Fehoko. We’ve been talking about how special Simi is since we recruited him. Since we lost Connor and Michael, Simi really just turned it on. He’s been making plays the entire year, but these last few games, I think he’s really starting to see he’s a special player. He’s going to be a coveted NFL prospect. This guy can change games, and tonight, he just let it go and it was awesome to see. Defensively, we played really well in the first half. Second half, we just had a really tough time stopping them. We had a tough time tackling the quarterback and a tough time just doing things. Came back at the end and found a way to get a stop. Don’t blame Coach Kelly one bit, we hadn’t stopped a run the entire second half. To come back and try to win the game with a two-point conversion with the ball running up the middle. Probably would’ve done the same thing. Thankfully our guys made a big play there. Still not exactly sure what happened. I didn’t see the defensive holding. I saw the intentional grounding. Bottom line was as rough as we started it, as difficult as what we’ve dealt with this entire year, our guys came back to win four straight. No matter who comes back, I’m excited about our football team for the 2021 season.
on his message to his players after the game
“I wanted them to be able to give the seniors some recognition. So I had all the fourth and fifth-years stand up and had the whole team applaud them. They didn’t get a senior day, they didn’t get any kind of normal senior year. Not scholastically, not personally, not athletically. For us to be able to do what we did the last four weeks, we can’t do that without senior leadership, so I had to make sure that on the field, we got the chance to give those guys a round of applause.”
on his team’s struggles in the third quarter
“The third quarter to me was … I don’t know, someone told me we were the second-youngest team in the conference … I just know we looked very inexperienced out there. That’s something we did not learn this year, that every opportunity we had to put somebody to win it, we just couldn’t do it. It takes a mentality and a high level of execution. This UCLA team, they really took it to USC. USC had an unbelievable comeback at the end But that third quarter was a lot of what you saw. They’re good up front. They’re physical. We gave them a couple of wide open guys, which I still don’t know how those happened. But they started gaining momentum in the run game and we couldn’t stop them. Thankfully, we had enough time, we have some special guys on the offensive side to be able to come back and put it to overtime, and make plays in the end.”
on Stanford quarterback Davis Mills’ interceptions
“The first one was a miscommunication between him and Elijah. Elijah didn’t know if it was going to go behind the safety or in front of the safety, so kind of on them both there. The last one, the pick six, was their covers that hadn’t really shown very much, and they jumped into a really quick cloud filling the slant, and Davis had to get it out quick because it looked like it was pressured, so great design by them. They caught him off guard. The corner jumped in front of him and took it. Once again we just said we had to get it back. There wasn’t any panic on the sidelines. There wasn’t a lot of yelling and screaming on the sidelines. We believe in the guys that we have. We went out there, got it down the field, and got a touchdown. Some clock things were close and I had to make some tough calls there. Defensively, we got a stop and got the ball back. Once again, a couple of guys made some big time plays. The reason why we do that two-minute drill every single week over and over again so you get those situations and guys know what to do and go out there and execute.”
Stanford quarterback Davis Mills
on his mindset and coming back after the interception returned for a touchdown in the fourth quarter
“Just got to bounce back. At that point, that was the third one of the game, a pretty low point. That was my first pick six that I’d ever thrown in my life, so I thought about that for a second but once I was back on the sideline just my eyes went back, snapped forward, and did what we had to do to get through the rest of the game.”
on wide receivers Simi Fehoko and Brycen Tremayne’s performances in this game
“It’s incredible. When you have guys like that on the edge and you can use them as targets, it makes your life easy, obviously. Simi had 16 catches for 200-plus and three touchdowns, so that’s incredible and I mean Brycen really made some huge plays when we needed them. Started off really hot in the first quarter and made some plays near the end. Obviously it’s huge when you have guys on the edge who can go and make plays like that and create mismatches all over the field.”
on how satisfied he is with this team’s legacy and the way it played out
“It was incredible. It’s been a journey all of 2020 from when the season was canceled in August I guess and then they called it back on and it kept getting delayed. Full trust in our team, we really came together and really had the mindset ‘whatever it takes.’ We leaned on that. The past couple of weeks on the road, it’s been tough, but I just commend my teammates. Everyone stepped up, guys stepped up when we needed them, and this team just really knows how to win. I was talking to Coach (Director of Offense and Quarterbacks Coach Tavita) Prichard about it too. You really need to learn how to win, especially those young guys coming in making plays. I think we’ve done a good job all year just finding ways to win even when tables are turned against us, we’ve bounced back. I love these guys. This team’s been great all year and we came out in the past four games undefeated and it’s been great.”
Stanford linebacker Gabe Reid
on how exhausting this game was relative to other games he has played and how he is feeling
“It’s definitely a grind. You know, double overtime. I don’t think I’ve played that much football in a long time, since maybe high school. Yeah, the body’s feeling it. It was a good, full, hard-fought game. So, the body is definitely feeling it.”
on the way quarterback Davis Mills and the offense responded to turning the ball over and getting Stanford back into the game
“It was definitely huge. You’re talking about trust. We were down 14, really needed the offense to come up and make a play. When Davis, the o-line, Simi [Fehoko], all those guys were able to make plays, we fed off of that. I’m just really grateful. Blessed to have a great offense, a lot of weapons to bring the juice when we were lacking and needed them.”
on what the objectives defensively were against quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and if these objectives changed when quarterback Chase Griffin came in
“I think going into the game, especially after last year’s game, we were looking to try and contain him -- just limit his scrambling yards. Obviously, he got a few on us. With him going out, I think we were still focusing on containing a mobile quarterback. We knew coming in that [Griffin] could make some plays with his feet as well. We were just really trying to stop the run game, especially QB run with him. There was a little bit of designed option stuff we were looking to limit.”
on his reaction to UCLA’s touchdown in the second overtime and ensuing two-point conversion
“It was crazy. Honestly, [it was] a blur. I got the sack, almost didn’t know what was going on. Freaking out, you know. Then to come back that next play, dropping back into coverage and seeing that catch [from Kyle Philips], it was crazy. It was a great play. It was a blur. For them to go for two, we stop them, there are penalties involved. Just really a test to the focus of our defense. I’m proud of our guys that we were able to lock in and, ‘Hey, we got a big stop and then it’s a touchdown. Two-point conversion, then stop, then penalties’. Just really proud of our defense for stepping up and focusing on finishing the game.”
on the resilience of his team both during the season overall and tonight
“I think it was fitting for the game to end the way that it did. Just with 2020 and the adversity that we had to go through as a team with COVID protocols and leaving Santa Clara County. Obviously, we would have liked to have finished it more cleanly, but I’m just really proud of our team and our guys for really bonding together and trusting each other, and making plays when we had to make plays and overcoming the challenges we faced. Just really proud of our team’s strength and resilience.”
Stanford wide receiver Simi Fehoko
on his performance tonight and his role in this win
“Obviously I had a couple drops that I wish I had back, but overall I think this whole week, this whole experience and everything that’s been going down, it’s just been crazy. It’s definitely been an experience and credit to our team, credit to (quarterback) Davis (Mills), our O-line giving us time. I’m just happy it played out the way it did. Nail biter for sure, hate them, but our last four games have been within a touchdown, one-score games so just happy to get out of here with a dub.”
on dealing with the emotions of running back Brittain Brown’s fumble in the fourth quarter that gave Stanford a chance to come back
“At the time I was talking to (Special Teams) Coach (Pete) Alamar. I was ready to go in to try to block a field goal. I was ready to do the jump in sort of like we did at Cal. But we saw that fumble. We knew we had one more possession in us whether that was going to be whatever it ended up being. We were ready to go regardless. Our offense was ready, we strapped up the helmet, we just played it like another series. And credit to (Quarterback) Davis (Mills). Davis has ice in his veins, comes back after a couple bad passes I’m sure he wants back, but he delivers. He’s a game player. He’s a player. So I was just happy with the way it turned out.”
on where this game ranks on the scale of most exhausting and most fun
“That’s like getting double tens. It’s definitely one of the craziest games I’ve played in and definitely the most exhausted I’ve been playing a game. Again, double tens. I don’t know what that is, but it’s amazing.”