Post Game Quotes UO vs. California
11/08/15 | Football
Mark Helfrich – Oregon Head Football Coach
On the victory over Cal...
"Obviously a huge win. When you get two punts blocked and you throw two picks in the end zone, the percentage chance of winning is a decimal and a lot of zeros and a couple numbers down the way, but at the same time, we never blinked when that happened. We had enough playmakers to make it happen and beat a very good team."
On the defense...
"Limiting the run game was a huge deal. Rallying up and driving together put away this game."
On the offense...
"We ran the ball really well at times, and then another oddity of the night, no rushing touchdowns. But obviously, starts up front, those guys did a really good job of neutralizing their front, getting to the second level. We broke a bunch of tackles tonight."
On what's ahead...
"Our guys are excited to flip that page, we'll start that tomorrow getting ready for Stanford. Obviously, they have played tremendously well after their opener, they are playing with confidence in every phase. We need to be, too."
On areas of improvement...
"Every area. In every phase. Offensively, defensively, special teams, there are always mistakes you make that are magnified in defeat or concealed in victory."
On the secondary...
"I hope this was one of their better games overall. I'm encouraged by their response to some things, whether it's good or bad. They should be playing with a ton of confidence moving forward."
Royce Freeman - Running Back, Sophomore
On the victory...
"It was great. It was out there and everyone was getting their fair share of the ball. There are no other words to describe it. It's what we've been working on in practice, and we showed it out there on the field today."
On the offensive line...
"It was an all night process, the holes were there. I give them a huge thanks, it was just something we haven't seen much of this season, the amount of holes that were open, just the variety of different run plays we were able to go out with today."
Darren Carrington – Wide Receiver, Sophomore
On offensive contributions…
“It feels good to be able to come back off of suspension and be able to just add a little 'umph' to my team.”
On his run after catch skills…
“That's probably my favorite part, whenever I get a catch the YAC, that's what I need.”
On teams current confidence level…
“There are a lot of sayings about how Cal had the best receivers in the Pac 12, but I think we are up there. I think that when Royce can de what he does, and our O-Line blocks we add something else to the team on the outside. I think we could go to Stanford and give them a run for their money.”
On importance of the upcoming Stanford game…
“I think we are hyped for every game, but being that they are ranked and this is pretty much the decider of who goes to the Pac 12 championship, I think we are going to have maybe a little more drive to go down there and play with confidence, and try to win.”
On third down production…
“Honestly, I hate punting. Whenever we have to punt or kick a field goal, I'm not going to lie I get mad sometimes, but whenever I'm out there and I have a chance to make a play on like a third down or fourth down, I just want to go make that play to keep my team moving, and hopefully we can score.”
Vernon Adams Jr. – Quarterback, Senior
On the line compared to past weeks
“Our whole line, it did great all night. Run blocking, pass blocking especially. When I did scramble the receivers did a great job, just coming with me and keeping the play alive.”
On connection with the offense…
“I feel really good. I'm very comfortable with the offense now, I've got my reads down. All we can do is keep it real, one game at a time.”
On the change they made to make 4 straight touchdowns…
“We just kept our heads up, and we just kept it going. We were down 10-0 and nobody put their head down, nobody was yelling at each other. We knew we were good. We just went out there and ran Oregon's offense.”
On going against the first round draft pick…
“I'm blessed, just thank God. He's still did pretty good. I had two interceptions, that's unacceptable, both in the red zone. We've got to clean that up if we want to be a better team.”
“He's a great quarterback. I watched film on him and I looked up to him.”
Charles Nelson – Safety and Wide Receiver, Sophomore
On same starting line up…
“I'd say we felt a lot more comfortable with the guys out there. We did a lot of rotating so we're getting a lot more comfortable with the secondary and defense in general.”
On winning at home…
“It felt really good to be back in the home stadium, and just get a win on the home field.”
On coach Neal in the box…
“It was different at first, but we got used to it, kind of was like he wasn't gone at all. He was still talking to us and we were fine.”
Tyree Robinson – Defensive Back, Sophomore
On secondary playing well together…
“It just feels good to play against a great team. We played well, Jared Goff, is supposed to be one of the top quarterbacks in our league. But I think we showed him different things that he's not used to seeing.”
On Neal in the box…
“Yeah, just because he can see more before it gets worse, he corrects it, and gets in down to the field. He's correcting us on the little things, whether it's our technique or finishing at the end of the route.”
On how he would grade the secondary…
“Not our perfect game, but we are close to being perfect. I'd give us an A- or a B. But like I said we still have room to improve.”
California Head Coach Sonny Dykes
“We did not play well defensively tonight. That started with our tackling. I thought we tackled very poorly. We probably missed 50-plus tackles. That's a guess on my part but we have to tackle better. I don't think we played well on either side of the ball. For most of the year, we played well on one side of the ball or the other. I thought our special teams played good. We blocked two punts. I thought we covered kicks very well against a dangerous football team. I thought we covered punts very well against a dangerous football team. I was proud of Matt Anderson for hitting a 47-yard field goal. I thought our special teams were probably the only bright spot of the game. Our offensive performance was not good. Our defensive performance was not good as well.”
On protecting Goff…
“We didn't play well at the left tackle position and we gave up a lot of pressure.”
On what was said at halftime…
“I just challenged them and told them to come out and play the second half like they're capable of playing. That's the disappointing thing, you know, when you don't play as well as you're capable, that's our jobs as coaches to get our guys to play well and I don't think we did that in the first half and I thought we came out with some fire in the second half and got ourselves back in the ball game but then we couldn't get a stop. And then when we did get a stop, we couldn't do anything offensively.”
On the missed tackles…
“Again the tackling was bad. We had guys in position all night to make plays. We dove at people's feet all night and it's just disappointing because we haven't done that.”
On the injuries…
“We got banged up tonight, that's for sure. It's no excuse and that's what happens. Guys get hurt, guys get injured and you have to battle through that. We just have to do better and we will. Our guys are excited to play next Saturday and they'll practice hard this week. I told the guys after the game, you know, they practice really well. We just have to do a better job of handling adversity in ball games when things don't go our way and just have to be a little more mentally tougher than we are right now. Bad things are going to happen in football games and I just think that we're waiting for someone to make a play when something bad happens. We just can't be that kind of football team.”
“It'll be a significant injury report this week. We got a lot of guys that got banged up.”
On the penalties…
“I thought at times we lost our composure and that's not something that we've done as a football team. It's something we'll certainly address and fix.”
On drops by the receivers…
“It's hard right now, because you know, we have to make those plays. When you can't run the ball, maybe as consistently as you would like to, and you have opportunities to make plays on the balls, you have to catch those balls. I'm pretty sure many receivers dropped balls tonight and people will talk about the weather, but it didn't have anything to do with the weather. It's just a matter of going out and making plays. We do it in practice and we've done it most of the time this year, and we can't make those drops in those critical situations.”
Jared Goff – Quarterback, Junior
On what changed after taking that early 10-0 lead…
“I think they made adjustments, and we didn't adjust very well to their adjustments. It didn't go our way for the rest of the first half. We started pretty well. It was something we had been working on, so we were happy about that. Like I said, we didn't adjust to their adjustments and didn't continue to make plays like we had those first few drives. When that happens, you tend to stall drives and momentum changes.”
On what all contributed to the loss…
“I think it really just came down to us not making plays. I wasn't throwing them where they needed to be, we weren't catching balls, we weren't making good blocks, we weren't running the ball very well. It was all around. It was everyone, including myself. We just need to be better. We just weren't making plays. We made plays on the first couple of drives. We were running around and doing good things, but after that we just kind of stalled. That's something we need to work on. When stuff does or doesn't go our way, we need to be resilient and be able to come back from stuff like that.”
On Oregon's defensive schemes…
“They didn't run anything we didn't expect. I was pretty comfortable out there with everything they were running. I had a good pre-snap on everything, and kind of had an idea of what they were doing. They did what they did on film, so it wasn't anything surprising to us. They played good man outside on our receivers. They manned them up pretty well. We tried to hit some deep balls. We hit a couple and didn't hit a couple. They did a good job.”
Hardy Nickerson – Linebacker, Junior
On Oregon's fast tempo…
“We knew going into the game that they were going to have fast tempo. We tried to keep it as simple as possible with our scheme tonight, and we just didn't execute at times we needed to. We had a couple of third and longs get away from us to keep them on the field and didn't capitalize in critical situations.”
On what makes the Oregon offense so hard to stop…
“They feed off of guys misfitting. They went fast tempo, and guys got lined up a little bit late and out of position. We just have to go back, watch the film, make sure that doesn't happen and execute in those situations.”
On what changed after Oregon's second drive…
“They just made their plays. They had a couple of third and 10's. I remember a third and 16. We have to buckle down in those situations, and we didn't tonight.”
On what he says to teammates after tonight's loss…
“It happened. We can't do anything about it now. We just have to watch the film tomorrow and get it corrected. We know we have a three-game season coming up. It's crunch time. We can't have these mistakes happen anymore.”
