STANFORD, Calif. — While phrases like big-game letdown and road struggles will be dripping off the lips of University of Washington fans this morning, the thumping heads of the Huskies’ hangover digs much deeper than that.
And it was Stanford’s Toby Gerhart who carried the hammer on Saturday night.
Led by a bruising back who exposed UW’s biggest weakness, the Cardinal tap-danced all over the Huskies’ feel-good season by way of a 34-14 Stanford victory. Gerhart ran for 200 yards and a touchdown against a UW defense that gave up more than 200 total rushing yards for the second week in a row.
“There’s issues,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said of a run defense that allowed 321 rushing yards Saturday. “But we knew coming in that they were a really good running team. That kid (Gerhart) is a stud.”
When Gerhart wasn’t crushing the Huskies, turnovers were. Three key giveaways abruptly ended UW drives, while two other drives concluded on failed fourth downs.
The Huskies also gave up a return touchdown on the opening kickoff.
“It’s pretty shocking,” said wide receiver Jermaine Kearse, who scored the Huskies’ only offensive touchdown Saturday. “We’re not that type of football team.”
It marked the Huskies’ first game since joining the Associated Press Top 25 one week ago today. UW, ranked 24th overall, hadn’t been a part of the poll in nearly six years, and it’s a safe bet that the Huskies will fall back out after Saturday’s performance.
But Sarkisian was adamant that the so-called “letdown factor” was not why the Huskies (2-2) lost on Saturday.
“Not at all,” he said. “I thought our kids understood the gameplan. But inevitably, we couldn’t get them to stop running the football.”
The wheels started to come off on the opening kickoff, when Stanford’s Chris Owusu rambled 91 yards for his third kickoff return for a touchdown of the season — tying the Pac-10 record for kickoff returns in a single year.
Things didn’t get much better on the Huskies’ opening possession, which started promising but ended with a Jake Locker interception on an underthrown pass near the Stanford goal line.
That play started an odd hot-potato exchange that resulted in four turnovers on four consecutive possessions. Stanford put together an 87-yard drive but fumbled away the football when UW’s Daniel T’eo-Nesheim stripped Gerhart inside the Huskies’ 20-yard line.
Washington gave the ball right back a few minutes later, courtesy of a fumbled quarterback-center exchange at the Stanford 45.
Three plays later, the strangest turnover of the game resulted in the Huskies’ first points and a tie game.
After Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck stepped up in the pocket and started to run, only to unload the ball just as he reached the line of scrimmage. His quick throw to tight end Jim Dray bounced off Dray’s back shoulder, hit the turf and bounced forward into the arms of UW safety Justin Glenn. Every player on the field stopped, but the whistle never blew, so Glenn took off running at the behest of teammate Mason Foster.
Glenn rambled 51 yards for the score, as Luck’s pass was correctly ruled a backward lateral, and the score was tied 7-7.
After that, Gerhart took over. The 235-pound cinder block broke off a 60-yard touchdown run on the first play following Glenn’s score, and Gerhart eventually plowed through UW’s defense for 128 yards on his final eight carries of the first half — a span of less than 17 minutes.
Stanford went into halftime with a 24-14 lead, thanks in large part to Gerhart’s 156 rushing yards in the first half. The Cardinal had 194 yards on the ground as a team.
By the time Gerhart and the Cardinal had extended that lead to 34-14, the game was no longer in doubt. Sarkisian, who for the first time allowed the Huskies to practice in silence last week because he wasn’t overly concerned about the noise at Stanford’s home field, had to listen to chants of “Over-rated! Over-rated!” with five minutes left in the game.
“We’ll regroup,” he said a few minutes later. “We have to learn from the mistakes we made. We have to keep morale up. Every week is a different week.”
The past two weeks have been too similar for a UW defense that has allowed a total of 571 rushing yards to USC and Stanford.
“It comes back to having physical players,” defensive coordinator Nick Holt said. “We have to find guys like that. We’ve got a couple, but we have to find some more.”
Stanford finished with 321 rushing yards on 50 carries, throwing just 14 passes. The Cardinal (3-1 and 2-0 in the Pac-10) averaged 6.4 yards per run play.
“They were running the same play at us — Power — and it came down to guys not doing their responsibility,” senior linebacker Donald Butler said. “We knew what they were going to run at us, and we couldn’t stop it because we had guys out of their gaps and guys not doing things we’ve been talking about since Day 1.”
Holt didn’t name names, but he did confirm that several players were out of position at times. Glenn admitted that he was out of position on Gerhart’s 60-yard touchdown, but he wasn’t the only UW defender to blow a read Saturday.
“We played a lot of guys,” Holt said. “Young guys make mistakes. … The inside guys need to play better, the two (defensive) tackles,” he added, referring to starters Cameron Elisara and Alameda Ta’amu as well as top reserve Everette Thompson. “I can’t pinpoint who, but when a team runs like that, you’re staying blocked inside.”
Afterward, the UW players weren’t content on staying down.
“I think they’re (ticked),” Sarkisian said. “They don’t like this feeling. There’s an expectation around here for the way we play, and we didn’t play that way (Saturday).”
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