Good news! UW allows season-low 466 yards

SEATTLE — Two weeks were not enough for the University of Washington to fix its defensive woes.

Or to find a way to win.

On a balmy autumn evening at Husky Stadium, an otherwise perfect night for football, Washington was anything but perfect on the defensive side of the football coming off last week’s bye.

In a game they were favored to win — and very much needed to win to retain a realistic chance at a winning or at least a .500 season — the Huskies instead allowed Stanford to score easily and often Saturday night in a 35-28 defeat.

Washington surrendered 466 yards to a very mediocre Cardinal offense — under the heading of silver linings, that defensive total was a season best — and the result for a struggling UW program was a fourth straight loss.

“Obviously we’re playing a lot of young guys on defense, and to some degree that hurts you,” said UW head coach Tyrone Willingham, “But that’s an excuse and we won’t accept that as an excuse. … We’ve got to get it right.”

The UW came into the game ranked 118th in NCAA Division I — next to last, ahead of only Southern Methodist — at 520.7 yards a game (that ranking might improve somewhat this week as Washington’s average is now 507 yards a game).

With a young UW defense, those kinds of numbers were perhaps understandable against top-25 teams like Oregon (496 yards), Brigham Young (475) and Oklahoma (591). But against Stanford, which came into the game averaging just 272.5 yards a game — 111th in Division I and ninth in the Pacific-10 Conference — they were flat-out embarrassing.

“We lost and we have to get better,” said linebacker Mason Foster. “We played hard, but we have to play harder.”

The Huskies are now yielding 40.5 points a game, which also leaves them near the bottom in Division I.

And the bottom line is that the Huskies cannot win with such inept defense.

“We just have to do a better job,” said defensive coordinator Ed Donatell. “This is a step back for us. We intended to win that game. No question about it, it didn’t come out the right way.”

Understand, Stanford was hardly an offensive juggernaut coming into this game. Before meeting the Huskies the Cardinal was 109th in Division I in passing yards at 123 yards a game, and 10th in the Pac-10. In total offense, Stanford was 111th nationally at 272.5 yards per game, ninth in the Pac-10.

None of that mattered on Saturday. Cardinal quarterback Tavita Pritchard, a product of Tacoma’s Clover Park High School, picked the Huskies apart through the air, completing 16 of 24 passing attempts for 222 yards and three touchdowns.

Another defensive flaw. The Huskies have gone four games without a sack this season, and against Stanford they really never came close. Pritchard was mostly unbothered in the backfield and was rarely so much as touched after dropping back to pass.

On the ground, Stanford churned out 244 yards, and this despite losing starting tailback Toby Gerhart, the team’s primary offensive weapon, in the first quarter to a concussion.

The Huskies gave up two long plays for touchdowns — a 61-yard pass from Pritchard to wide receiver Doug Baldwin and an 83-yard run by backup tailback Anthony Kimble.

“Things like that are killing us,” linebacker Mason Foster said of the big plays. “You can’t do that. If you want to be successful in the Pac-10, you can’t let teams do that to you.”

For the Huskies, there is no relief in sight. Next up is a very good Arizona offense next Saturday in Tucson.

“I do love challenges,” Donatell said. “Right now you’d say, ‘It’s a little hairy,’ but you always have your focus on how to get it better. … It is what it is, and it’s our job to go out and get it better. It’s my job to wake up and get better (today).”

“We like these kids,” he said. “They’re playing major-college football and they deserve a chance to have success. … I see our young guys getting better in practice, there’s no question about that. If you look at the games, it doesn’t look that way, but we love this group of guys to work with. These guys will be good players.”