CardinalReport.com - Harbaugh Radio Show Recap

October 11, 2009

Rick Jones
CardinalReport.com Publisher

Stanford Cardinal football coach Jim Harbaugh held his weekly radio show Sunday evening and talked about the loss to Oregon State and where the team goes from here. Coach Harbaugh was very pointed in his comments about the Pac-10 officials and is his assessment of the Cardinal defense. The head coach praised the Cardinal for fighting back in the second half, calling it the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here are some selected comments from coach Jim Harbaugh.

Feel today like I do when I go to a funeral

I am excited to see how the team will respond, they will find out who they really are. I have confidence the team will rally and respond

Lots of plays, things we needed and could have done but we didn't

We drop a sure touchdown pass, we aren't getting guys tackled on the perimeter. We are not athletically getting our bodies in front of the ballcarrier. We are not getting them fronted up. Teams are getting too many chunks of yards too easily against us.

We are not tackling and we are not athletic enough to get there, I guess. Either you get there or you don't, or you make the tackle or you don't. We are running by tackles and we are not getting those plays fronted up on the perimeter, that's the bottom line.

They get three pretty easy scores in the ballgame. I was a little disappointed before the half, we have a drive going and we get a penalty called against us for holding, which is really ironic when you go back and look at the tape and see how many times we were held in the game and we get that one at that point. Instead of us getting seven on the drive we fumble and Oregon State ends up with three. That's a pretty big swing in the ball game, 10 points.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel in the way the guys came back and played in the second half. We end up winning the second half in terms of points on the board, but again some key plays. Bo (McNally) drops an interception that was another sure touchdown, that was another seven points. Then we get a roughing the punter penalty on us and I have looked at the tape, looked at the TV copy, if anybody hit the punter it was number five from Oregon State.

There is some strange officiating going on and you just can't predict it. They are unpredictable with the way they make calls and it is a shame right now. What is consistent is how inconsistent the officiating is in the Pac-10.

It's almost like they are guessing, they are not seeing it. If you are going to make a call you have to see it, you can't think you saw a call. 'I think this is what happened', because if you think something happened, it didn't happen. That's the way it needs to be.

There is no consistency (with officiating) week in, week out

Oregon State is a good football team, you can't take anything away from them. We have got to ply all four quarters. When we are in these Pac-10 games we have to come off the bus ready to play and if we weren't then that is on me and on us

We have to get off the field when we are on defense, we got to play better on the perimeter.

Offensively I thought our guys played with great poise, they weren't fumbling the ball, turning it over, jumping offside. We did have a couple of holding penalties that hurt us.

The quarterback (Andrew Luck) was really competitive, he really fought his heart out, scrambling, getting out of trouble, we only had one sack - he had a lot pressure on him. Made what looked like a couple of overthrows but that wasn't always him; the receivers weren't in the spot they were supposed to be. He played very competitively and mature, like a lot of guys on our team did.

And that is the light at the end of the tunnel on this thing. Our guys didn't quit they, didn't pack their bags, they didn't go into turtle mode and hope and pray that the game ends quickly. They were fighting to come back.

When they were running their power play Shayne (Skov) got in there in the 2nd half, penetrated and tried to get into a gap and that is what you need to do to defend the power. Another guy is Quinn Evans, he is going to start to see some more time. Basically anybody who can tackle and athletic enough to run and get in front of ball carriers and get it turned back inside and get it stopped on the perimeter, you are going to get a chance here on our defense. Because that is what we need.

You could see Allen Smith start next week and that is not something that is due to Jonathan Martin, he is playing well. Really well, far better than we had anticipated. And so is Allen Smith and he may give us a kick start in the direction we want to go. Martin has three years and six games, and Allen has six games

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