SEATTLE – Derrick Doggett had a point to prove.
The Oregon State strongside linebacker had read all week that Washington quarterback Isaiah Stanback would be the fastest man on the field Saturday. Doggett, 6-foot-3, 220 pounds of flash flood, took it with him into Husky Stadium and helped hang a 27-17 loss on Washington.
“I read that he was faster than me and I felt disrespected,” Doggett said. “I just knew I had to go out there and show my speed.”
Doggett and the breakneck quick Beavers did what Fresno State, Arizona and, to a lesser extent, USC couldn’t do: They bottled up the Huskies’ leading playmaker and made his movement look average.
Stanback left in the fourth quarter with what appeared to be a serious foot injury.
Doggett led the way with 10 tackles, two for loss, and a sack. In all, OSU’s defense sacked Stanback six times and flushed him out of the pocket many more. Stanback managed just 33 rushing yards, acreage that he used mostly for running for his life, and completed just 12 of 24 passes for a pedestrian 162 yards. Fifty-six of those yards came on the first play from scrimmage.
“We focused on angles all week, because he’s a fast guy and he can get to the edge,” right end Jeff Van Orsow said. “We were able to get the angles and run him down.”
They ran Stanback down by refusing him space to roam. The defensive line of Van Orsow, end Joe Lemma, along with tackles Ben Siegert and Curtis Coker blew apart the UW offensive line and allowed linebackers full speed at a helpless target.
Doggett served as a spy, lining up on the opposite side of the tight end to get an unobstructed view at Stanback. If Stanback broke out of the pocket, it was up to Doggett to run him down.
The Beavers’ domination started up front. Two plays after Stanback’s bomb to Anthony Russo, the Beavers flooded Washington’s backfield, making the Huskies’ front do a convincing impression of a sieve, and dropped the UW quarterback for an 11-yard loss.
On a telling play late in the third quarter, Beavers linebackers so thoroughly trapped tailback Kenny James on a sweep right, that he foolishly changed direction and was dropped for a 5-yard loss by Doggett.
“There were times when it looked like we had 12 or 14 guys on the field,” Van Orsow said.
The play helped thwart a possible Husky drive made possible by a Beaver fumble at the OSU 37-yard line. Washington, in fact, went backward and had to punt.
The mugging continued when OSU had the ball and also started with superior line play.
Yvenson Bernard, a 5-9, 204-pound fireplug routinely bounced off UW defenders and kept his legs relentlessly churning to the tune of 144 yards on 29 carries. Of his total, 106 yards came by intermission.
Bernard should take his line out to dinner this week, the way it blew cavern-sized holes in the UW front, especially in the first half.
The Huskies didn’t register a sack. They yielded 180 rushing yards, 68 above their per-game average. Matt Moore, booed in Corvallis for ineffectiveness, was 14-for-19 passing for 308 yards. His favorite target was Sammy Stroughter, who grabbed seven passes for 223 yards.
The Beavers survived three turnovers against the Huskies, who didn’t turn the ball over at all. That further demonstrates OSU’s unqualified supremacy.
To many, the game was supposed to be a continuation of Washington’s startling season, an almost certain victory against a struggling Oregon State team that had lost two in a row and hadn’t scored a touchdown in eight quarters.
Indeed, the crowd, announced at 62,656, seemed particularly amped following victories against Fresno State, UCLA and Arizona, followed by a narrow, controversial loss to USC.
Instead, it was something quite different and, for the Huskies, altogether too familiar. Reduced to its bare bones, this was Washington’s second straight loss and the third straight defeat to the Beavers in Husky Stadium.
To top it off, powerful Cal looms Saturday and the Huskies may be without Stanback.
“It wasn’t a great day for us anywhere – offensively or defensively,” UW coach Tyrone Willingham said. “There wasn’t that sharpness.”
Not by anyone wearing purple, anyway.
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