Chris Petersen happy that Huskies ‘once again came out of the gate quickly’ (and other postgame quotes)

Here is what both coaches and a few players had to say after Washington’s 41-17 victory over Oregon State on Saturday at Husky Stadium. Transcriptions courtesy of UW athletics.

(Opening Statement) “Well it was good to get off to a fast start. These guys have once again come out of the gate quickly. Defense answered right away. Again, I am not sure what the magic formula is there but that sort of helps things. Really good, clean first half. I am excited and proud of these guys. I know as we head down the stretch here, it is not going to always be like this with these teams we have coming. It is something we talk about and work on. That will be a new challenge for us. But pleased with how hard these guys played. Coming off a bye sometimes it can take a minute to get going and it really didn’t. Pass game was pretty explosive. A little bit different that we have kind of had in the past. Sometimes we are ball control and high completions. And we were throwing it down the field and taking chances. I think we got three touchdowns in the air on these guys which have been pretty stingy for most of the season not giving up anything through the air. So it was good to get that going a little bit.

(How much does it change the way you are able to call the game when you are up 21-0 in the first quarter as consistently as you have been?) “Well it certainly gives it a different vibe. Again, you certainly like a lead but sometimes it can change the energy and I thought the energy changed a little bit at halftime coming back out. I think in the whole stadium with our guys a little bit. I still think our guys were playing hard. I like to see that intensity from how it is in that first quarter, throughout the whole game. I think we got a lot of guys in, it was good to see.”

(On the design of the flea flicker play) “Well certain plays like that we work on for a while and sometimes they don’t get called. We think if it will fit the scheme that we are going to see we will carry it over. It was not designed other than to try to get an explosive play. They did a good job with that.”

(On how Jake Browning played today) “I think it was a little bit different game just in terms of the type of things we were calling, the explosive down the field. I thought the pass game was explosive. I will be anxious to go back and put the tape on and just look at the whole thing. Half of the plays I forget, the ones that are kind of non-descript. You always kind of remember the really good ones and the really bad ones. I don’t know if there were a bunch of really bad ones. I thought one into the end zone that might have been picked off, he got pressured and couldn’t throw it was a long, deep throw. He couldn’t throw it on time so that caught us a bit. I am proud of our offense for not turning the ball over. Those guys are pretty stingy with giving it away for the most part, if we don’t put our defense in a real bad situation, good thing for us.”

(On not having many letdowns this season) “I think this has been a pretty focused crew all along. They go to work and practice hard. That is their job, that is what they should be, be excited to play and all those things. I will tell you, we expect a lot out of these guys when they come in this building. We do not go through the motions. We will go onto the practice field tomorrow, as the day we go out there and we will get some work done. We have a lot of things we need to clean up and correct and the intensity that they study the tape in the meetings and how serious they take it. All that has been really, really good and we have been telling them all along. We are going to need that to continue to progress, certainly with the teams we have coming on our schedule.”

(On Joe Mathis and how much it impacted the defense not having him out there) “Joe is a good player. We expect to get him back, we will see. But he is an explosive pass rusher. So anytime a guy like that, you don’t have, that changes things. It is great to see other guys, Connor, get in there. It is next man up. That is kind of how it goes. We are optimistic that we will get Joe back in there soon. I don’t know when, but soon.”

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WASHINGTON PLAYERS

QB Jake Browning

(How did you feel that you threw the ball today?) “I had a couple that I want back but I mean you are never going to play a perfect game so go to practice this week and work on those to get ready for Utah.”

(Two receivers over 100 yards receiving, first time since 2002. What were they doing to get that open?) “I thought there was a lot of yards after the catch that helped a lot. Dante has done a good job. He is very crafty and he has a had a couple of good runs after catching the ball. Ross has made big plays. He’ll be hearing about getting caught up to on the big one, but he is a hard worker and it is good to see them playing well.”

(500-yards total offense but you guys seemed to sputter in the second half. Any explanation?) “You are playing the fine margin of do you run the ball and get conservative or do you run your normal offense and see how that goes. You go back and forth kind of. When you get these fast starts, you have to keep playing the whole game. When you are up by that much you really have to stay focused. We are going to run the ball. They know we are going to run the ball. They are putting eight people in the box. That’s why Dante was so open on that one on third down because there was literally 10 people in the box. Are you going to launch it on them or throw the ball so we obviously need to get better on some of that stuff. They are a very well coached team and systematically, pretty good.”

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S Budda Baker

(On coming together as a team) “We are coming together as a whole team, offense and defense. We feel like we can talk to anybody. There are no cliques or that type of stuff. Anybody can talk to anybody. I can go up to an offensive lineman and mess around with him and have a conversation with him. That’s a big thing, us coming together as a team.”

(As the defense, when you are dominating but you give up touchdowns at the end, is that frustrating?) “Of course. It frustrates all of us. People that are playing and people that aren’t playing. For us, as a defense, we would love for them to not get any points but they have players too and they are going to make plays.”

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WR John Ross

(They stacked the box, which allowed you and Dante to get open quite a bit) “Yeah, with our tremendous running game I think that is what they were trying to do but as you can see, Dante does an amazing job and I do a pretty good job myself.”

(With the bye week, do you feel like you guys were a little rusty or were you right on?) “I can mostly speak on the offense but we came, out pretty hot. We had a great week of practice and those are the kind of weeks that we need to stay consistent.”

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RB Myles Gaskin

(On Utah) “They are a great team. Physical. They know how to play ball and I haven’t looked at film. Like I said, we haven’t looked at them too much but I caught one of their games earlier this season. They are a good team. Well coached. It should be a good matchup and it will be fun.”

(Possibility of College Game Day next week going to Utah) “It doesn’t really matter. That is all media stuff. That is for the fans and all of that and we appreciate our fans, don’t get me mistaken but that is the outside noise. At the end of the day, College Game Day, whoever could show up to the game, we really don’t care. It is all about what we do on the field on Saturday.”

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Oregon State coach Gary Andersen

(Opening statement) “Start off by saying obviously that’s a very good football team we played. What I thought we’d get, which is not really a weakness out there, and they come to play every week. They’re a mature football team that is sprinkled in with a little bit of youth, they’re very talented. So congratulations to them, they played well. On our side of things, we had opportunities. There were too many big plays in certain situations and scenarios and that’s what good offenses do. We weren’t able to execute. I felt like we had four or five opportunities to really help Marcus (McMaryion), and we didn’t help him as much as we needed to as an offense. He battled to stay off in there and we’ll continue to work with that and continue to work to get better. I think we ran the ball well in the second half which was good to see. The kids took the adjustments which I thought were solid at halftime on both sides of the ball and executed them pretty good. So again congratulations to a very good team and we need to continue to work to get better to hang with these guys, and make sure we grow up, make sure we work our tails off in all areas to find a way to catch what is obviously an elite team.”

(On Marcus’ performance tonight and trying to improve the passing game) “Marcus was solid. He had some opportunities and no throws are going to perfect. I thought he got rid of the ball, had some drops that I thought were significant and he’ll continue to progress and continue to work, and so will the offense.

(On what he saw on the big plays they gave up) “The wide open, the big one there in the second half on the short yardage scenario, that’s going to be a learning scenario and situation for the kids involved. There were numerous calls in that setting, not just on that play, but that their big plays led to. They’re an explosive offense, they’re going to have some of those, they have them every single week. They do a nice job of timing them up to get you in an opportunistic time and they take their shots. So, we handled a couple of them well and a couple of them not so well. They’re a good offense, they have good players they’re getting the ball to.”

(On Tim Cook’s performance) “Tim Cook was solid. He was a physical runner. I think again the credit goes to the guy that has the ball in his hands. Without question Tim was solid. Got his opportunity and took advantage of it. And I would also say up front, those dudes they got, those are real guys. They’re real guys. They did a nice job finding a way to create some creases. If you watch college football or care about defense or care about the Pac-12 on defense, you know how good those guys are up front and they are elite. So our ability to be able to move around a little bit there was positive.”

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OREGON STATE PLAYERS

S Devin Chappell

(On Washington offense) “I think they have a lot of great individual players but nothing we couldn’t have handled. I think their offensive coordinator did a great job as well, he called all the right plays. Washington is a great team. At the end of the day they execute very well so I think they are as good as people build them up to be.

(On Washington making it to the playoffs) “Honestly, I hope they do make it to the playoffs; it would be great for the Pac-12. They’re doing a great job so far this season. Hats off to them and I definitely hope they make it.”

(On OSU’s defense) “If you watch the film we gave them a lot of lay-ups. The coaches were making all the right calls for most of the game so that was on us a defense to execute them. We know they do a lot of shifts and they’re a tricky team. The coaches prepared us very well but in the end it’s on us to execute it as a defense.”

(On the young starters from the night) “I think everybody that stepped up did a great job. Obviously we have to watch film but I’m so proud of how all the young guys played tonight. There’s not a doubt in my mind that they played their tails off. I feel like we all played hard tonight, but in the end it comes down to execution.”

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QB Marcus McMaryion

(On thoughts of game and starting) “There was a lot of hype going into the game today with me starting, but personally I think I could have done a lot better. I left a lot on the field tonight. The guys around me did a great job. They did everything they could tonight.

(On Husky defense) “They’re a great defensive team, you can’t take that away from them. They definitely showed that tonight too. Our coaching staff had a great game plan going in, and it was on me to execute it. The guys ran the right routes, the coaches called the right plays but I just needed to execute better.”

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LB Bright Ogwoegbu

(On team attitude) “We have a lot of leaders on this team. The seniors especially are always helping the younger guys and on the sidelines helping the guys out. Our team prides itself on having the mentality of if one guy goes down the next guy is up. We have to keep everybody bought in and keep everybody focused on the game.”

(On lessons from Washington) “When facing a team like this you have to be more disciplined. We can’t make any mistakes and we have to capitalize on their mistakes.”

This story was originally published October 22, 2016 at 9:06 PM with the headline "Chris Petersen happy that Huskies ‘once again came out of the gate quickly’ (and other postgame quotes)."