Troy Taylor reacts to epic comeback win over Colorado, what it means for Stanford
Troy Taylor didn’t have a special message for his team at halftime.
“Nothing that I said at halftime changed anything,” the Stanford head coach said. “I’ll give you the message, it was that we didn’t play very well in the first half but then wait to see how you compete in the second half – and that was that. They went out and got it done.”
Stanford entered the halftime break on the road trailing Colorado 29-0.
Stanford won in double-overtime, 46-43.
It was a signature win for Taylor in his first season as the Cardinal head coach. It was against Coach Prime and the Buffs, which meant more eyeballs than normal were going to be on the performance. A top-25 win? Not exactly. Against an elite team? It remains to be seen if Colorado (4-3, 1-3 Pac-12) is even a bowl team.
But to erase that kind of a deficit when the quarterback on the other sideline was capable of just continuing to pile on, Stanford had every reason to celebrate.
The win snapped a four-game losing streak and gave Taylor his first conference victory.
“I’m really happy for our guys, they’ve been through a lot,” Taylor said after the game. “Early in the year, we had a couple of tough games and we had a couple of losses where we could have won easily. I was really worried about how demoralized it gets, so I spent a lot of time meeting and talking with them, but after about three or four weeks, I realized that these guys are never going to quit. They’re never going to stop preparing and competing.
“We’ll enjoy this one — they’re all big games — but it’s a special game for these guys to be down 29-0 against a really good football team and to just not quit and continue to make plays. Colorado went right down and scored when we closed it and we came back and scored. The overtime periods, easily guys could have kind of given up a little bit, but they have never done that since I’ve been here. Just really proud. I tell them they inspire me. This is an inspiring group. I’ve never been around this quality of a group of men that just give everything they got regardless of what they’re going against.”
The Cardinal have struggled to open the Taylor tenure.
They beat Hawaii on the road in Week 1, but were embarrassed by USC a week later. Sacramento State went to Stanford Stadium the following week and handed Taylor another loss. Oregon thoroughly dominated the Cardinal before the bye week.
Stanford had some things to look at during the off week. At quarterback, they moved away from the rotation used before and stuck with Ashton Daniels at quarterback. They force-fed the ball to receiver Eric Ayomanor and let Daniels get some rhythm.
Now, there’s some momentum heading into a gauntlet — five ranked opponents in the last six games.
“We’re gonna get it done here, there’s no question,” Taylor said. “I think we got a chance to see a little bit of what we can do here. We have a long way to go, there’s no question about that. The things that are really important: the resolve, the tenacity, the courage, the willingness, and the need to be great at something we have, we have all that now. We just have to continue to improve and get better.”