Stanford - 30, Boston College - 20
Q. Coach, up 17-6 there at the end of the half, chance to make it 20 or 24. What did you see in that last few minutes? Just take me through that.
BILL O'BRIEN: 17-6, I don't know. I have to go watch the film. There's a lot to watch. We had the ball -- we had our chances. We came away with field goals instead of touchdowns or turned the ball over on the 1 yard line.
We have to go back and we have to figure it out. We're not a very good football team right now so hopefully we can get better and we can work hard to improve during the bye week. I'm not going to go through -- I don't know exactly what you're talking about.
Q. Any thought to going for it on fourth down late there in instead of the punt?
BILL O'BRIEN: I did -- we went for it on fourth-and-goal from the 1. That was the one time we went for it. I think on that fourth down, I think there was 7 minutes to go in the game. Is that right? About seven.
Q. A little over seven minutes to go, yeah.
BILL O'BRIEN: It wasn't a distance that I think was conducive to going for it at that point in time. I felt we could get the ball back, which I was wrong. You can write that I was wrong and I should have gone for it.
Q. What's the key to finding consistency offensively?
BILL O'BRIEN: I have no idea. I have no clue. I'll try hard to figure it out.
Q. Dylan threw his first interception today. Wondering what you talked to him about after he threw it. Looked like maybe it brought him back down to earth a little bit after a great start to his career.
BILL O'BRIEN: Brought him down to earth. He threw an interception and moved on to the next play. He didn't need to be brought back down to earth. He's a very good kid. He's an awesome kid. He's a consistent kid. He did not need to be brought back down to earth. I can promise you that. Like I said, we're not a good football team right now. Print that, write that, we're going to work hard to be better. Hopefully we'll improve. We've got a long way to go.
Q. You mentioned in the offseason that this team kind of needs to learn how to not lose before they learn how to win.
BILL O'BRIEN: Right.
Q. Is this one of those games, as a coaching staff, where do you go from here?
BILL O'BRIEN: This is such coach speak, I hate even saying it. I just told the team, we're all in it together. We were terrible tonight. We've got to coach better. It starts with us, starts with me. That will lead to better play. We've got to figure a lot of things out.
We've got to figure out how to stop the run, we've got to figure out how to run the ball. And you're exactly right, we have a chance to go up in the game, we fumble the ball.
Not only -- even if we get stopped there, it's still a 99-yard drive that they have to perform, right? We've got them backed up. But we don't. So it's a touchback.
We fumble a snap or there was a bad snap and then we throw an interception. Some false starts, batted balls. Can't stop the run, don't fit the gaps correctly. Just really some bad football. That's coaching.
We've got a good coaching staff. I believe in the coaching staff, but we did not do a good job tonight, and we have to do a much better job coaching.
Q. Just comment on the explosive play Stanford was able to get off those two turnovers deep in Stanford territory?
BILL O'BRIEN: It was terrible. The one run we gave up, and then the bootleg where we cut a guy loose. It was just bad communication. The run was, you didn't fit the run right. And it was kind of a problem during the week. We took care of it.
I felt we had a good practice on Wednesday and Thursday on that type of run but it showed up again. We've got a long way to go.
But you're right, hard to explain. But we've got to coach it better. We've got to figure out what we can do. There's a lot of season left.
I told the team -- I'll tell you exactly what I told the team -- everybody has a choice. You want to be here, don't want to be here, make your choice. We're only in the third game of the second year of our program, our program. And it's basically been a little bit up and down, .500 football. And so we're going to work hard to get it better and see where it goes.
Q. Obviously a unique type of road trip for you guys, one that a lot of guys probably haven't made that trip before. Not to give you a spot to make excuses; I know you probably won't. But just talk about how that is something that is hard to balance with the body clock and that weird travel for some of these guys they haven't really done that yet in their career.
BILL O'BRIEN: I thought we handled it well. I understand the question. I really did, I thought we handled it the right way. We got off the plane, went to San Jose State, had a really good walk-through felt good about it. After dinner, went right to bed.
So I don't think that's any excuse whatsoever for what we saw on the field tonight. And again, like I'll say this, like, it's not like in these games that we lose; it's very rare for us, I don't think we've ever really been blown out.
So that's why, like, Max's question about bad football, we've got to coach it better. We've got to eliminate bad football so we can win close games, because we'll be in a lot of close games, and we can't win on the road. We haven't won on the road since Florida State. We've got a long way to go. We just keep fighting. That's only choice we have is to keep working, figure things out. We're going to keep working to figure things out.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports