SEATTLE — No. 4 Oregon beat Washington, 26-16, Saturday night at Husky Stadium.
Mario Cristobal recapped the Ducks’ fifth conference win.
Below are initial live updates of Cristobal’s postgame press conference. A full transcript will follow.
MARIO CRISTOBAL
— “We prepared well we just didn’t come out like we wanted to.” Overcame it.
— On rushing attack: “Reason we practice the way we do and the reason is games like this.”
— Ryan Walk, who’s on crutches. “These guys keep finding a way.”
— “They provided the extra help with the ball snapped over their punters’ head”
— On what’s next: Back on the bus, good meals and get home. “Enjoy this victory” and prepare for Washington State tomorrow.
OPENING STATEMENT
CRISTOBAL: Really proud of our guys. Really physical play in the trenches on both sides of the ball. I’m proud of the way our guys came out and showed our prowess in handling inclement weather and continuing to play hard throughout the entire game. In every critical situation it seems like our team responded to adversity pretty well and then took momentum of the game after a rough start. We threw an interception, had a safety and found ourselves playing from behind, but once we took the lead it felt like we started gaining more and more momentum. Just really proud of our guys, our coaches, our players. We played through a lot of injuries. Ryan Walk got hurt as well, a guy who is one of the hearts and souls of our team. Coming up here to play one of our rivals and coming out with a victory in that sort of fashion – rushing for 329 yards – just a really positive day.
Q. How defining of a performance was tonight for Travis Dye?
CRISTOBAL: He gets better and better all the time. He’s a game-changer and he changed it in a lot of different ways. He got banged up last week, and you would have never noticed in the way he practiced all week and the way he played tonight. Tremendous leadership skills and ability to make big plays in the most critical situations. And again Travis is just scratching the surface of what he can be.
Q. On the defensive effort, especially early in the game…
CRISTOBAL: Outstanding, I mean held them for the entire game to less than 170 yards, I believe. Without a doubt we were having a tough time finding our way on offense early. It was raining sideways just about. The passing game – we had to be smart. We had to limit what we were doing and it felt like it was a three-and-out, four or five plays and out just consistently [for the defense]. It’s not just that, it’s the way they were doing it. It’s the physicality. You could hear it. It just sounded different from the sideline, the way the front seven was playing and how much our defensive backs were smothering their wide receivers as well. Great defensive performance. I know we gave up that long drive we would like to have back, but certainly all in all just really proud of the way those guys played tonight.
Q. On the fourth down stop and the ensuing touchdown…
CRISTOBAL: That was huge. They run their wildcat package pretty consistently and our defense just knocked back the line of scrimmage, just knocked it back completely for a loss. Huge momentum swing there. We took the ball down and we scored. Great play by Anthony [Brown] to Devon Williams, reading it the entire way on the boot and certainly changing the entire momentum of the game – never looked back after that. But battled. The whole way was a battle. They have a really good football team, good players. Without a doubt that was a momentum swing and a game-changer.
Q. On Oregon’s success running the ball…
CRISTOBAL: Well offensively I think we have morphed a little bit now. We throw the ball pretty well too. It’s just, again, the rain was coming down at such a high clip that it wasn’t going to be easy throwing the ball. You had just as good of a chance that it was going to be a tipped ball or whatnot throwing the ball as you would just giving the ball to one of the best players in college football in Travis Dye behind that offensive line. And we felt that the way we practice means a lot to us. We take a lot of pride in it. We take a lot of pride in blocking and we felt that even though we’ve been down a couple of offensive linemen that we could find a couple of ways to establish the line of scrimmage and take control of it. And they had some really good plays too. But overall, just felt that our guys did a really good job and Coach Moorhead and the offensive staff did a really nice job of mixing it up with the ball inside and outside, with our gap schemes, our pin and pulls, ball on the perimeter. It was really hard to find where the ball was going. And Anthony is always a threat to run the football as well. He did a great job with his legs, his third down pass to Johnny [Johnson III) was huge later on even though we got called for something when we had first and goal at the one inch line but I guess I’ll figure that one out later.
Q. How satisfied are you with the decision to punt as opposed to kick a field goal in the fourth quarter?
CRISTOBAL: Well, we felt our defense was playing really good. We felt that our chances to get one were good and our chances to get two were not as good. We were playing to the elements of the game. It was raining. We felt it was going to be hard to move the ball and our defense was playing good and they were going to have to score a touchdown and get the two point conversion just to tie us. We felt that with the odds it played better in our favor and gave us a better chance to win to put our defense back on the field.
Q. Can you describe the feeling in the second half when you’re averaging seven yards per carry and you don’t have to throw?
CRISTOBAL: Well I think the threat of the throw helps [the run game] a lot. They know that Anthony is a really good passer and our receivers are good players. When you’re about to do that – when your players execute at that level – that’s high-level execution because they know you’re running it and there’s only a certain amount of things you can run out of certain formations and you still find success. It’s a testament to our running backs, our offensive line, our tight ends, our coaches, the play-calling, and then our Tuesday/Wednesday practices and everything that goes into that. I’m really, really proud of that man. That’s hard to do. I mean you guys have covered football for a long time. It is hard to say ‘Hey, let’s line up. We’re going to pound it and let’s roll’ and we did that tonight. I’m proud of our guys.
Q. On the flexibility on the offensive line with various injuries during the season…
CRISTOBAL: Well for the guys up front, Coach Mirabal and that offensive line, the type of work that they do, the level of teaching, the level of developing that goes on there is different and it’s really shown up this year. I’m glad – I mean, when you dissect a play like that – it’s good to know it’s being noticed for them. Not that they care. I mean, those guys aren’t asking for any kind of publicity, but it’s good that you see that because that’s a lot of work, man. When you have guys in there that are trained at all five positions and can go in and do it, it means a lot. And look when it paid off. When one of our leaders goes down, when we need a big-time play and big-time playmakers are some of your offensive linemen and George was that on that play.
Q. Will this be what we see of this defense week in and week out?
CRISTOBAL: Well, I think you saw some really great moments in the UCLA game. You’re a fourth down stop away from having the ball at their 40 up by 17 [points]. And then against Colorado, you see we pulled out our guys, we gave up 14 points but you saw some really impressive play. And then you stack this one on top of that. You’re seeing this scheme, these players, it’s all falling in, it’s all galvanizing itself, it’s all getting in sync. Guys are starting to gel. Guys are starting to become much more comfortable playing beside each other. There’s more consistency in which players are playing beside each other so we hope that’s a trend that continues to go upwards.
Q. What adjustments were made at halftime to come out and score 14 unanswered points to start the second half?
CRISTOBAL: Well we saw some things formationally where we felt we could have an advantage. They did some different things in the first half and not earth-shatteringly different but the way you play your post/safety defenses and coverages. I mean you can drop a guy in, outside the box – scoot him in, scoot him out. Again vis versa, however you do it. But either way, you’re blocking responsibilities and your leverages change and we identified a couple things we felt we could take advantage of, we did that right out of the chute, just came out and did it and it paid off for us.
Q. What allowed your secondary to have success in the passing game?
CRISTOBAL: A combination of things. I think the front seven certainly made a difference with the pressure. The weather helped some. It wasn’t a passing type of game. But I just felt that we played our leverages a lot better. We played our techniques a lot better. Our eye discipline was night and day better and that has been a huge focal point for our secondary, our coaches and it showed up big tonight.
Q. On the momentum shift after the fourth down stop…
CRISTOBAL: Well I think it further highlights the importance of those defensive stops. Because they had all the momentum. They had all the momentum and if our defense doesn’t come up with those stops that might continue. And then in a game like this where you can’t really just throw the ball down the field at will, it could have made a difference. So without question that was the momentum changer, the momentum swing. Phenomenal job by our defense making that stop. Tremendous job by the offense capitalizing.
