Stanford’s game plan of keeping the ball from the high powered UW offense was executed with precision Saturday in Palo Alto. Stanford took opening kickoff drove 80 yards on 11 yards and took a 3-0 lead on a 20 yard field goal .
UW answered with a Jacob Eason to Cade Otton 3 yard pass to take a 7-3 lead. The was the only time the Huskies would cross the Cardinal goal line .Stanford’s strategy of moving quarterback David Mills out of the pocket to avoid the Husky defensive pressure eventually wore out the Husky defenders .
In addition to chasing Mills all over the field the Husky defenders were taking gut punches from Stanford running back Cameron Scarlett who gashed them for 151 yards on 31 carries. The majority of Scarlett’s run where at the heart of the Husky defense. Stanford racked up 482 offensive yards with 182 of those via the run game.
Well, credit to Stanford. They just
Husky head coach Chris Petersen on the Stanford game plan
executed their plan a heck of a lot better than we did.
Kind of felt like déjà vu, about two years ago, coming
down here, very, very similar. They held the ball.
Converted, you know, opportunities when they need to
on third downs, those type of things, and on offense,
we got knock going. And so we got into no sort of rhythm and again, credit o Stanford. They hold the ball. They keep you on the
sideline. Kind of start pressing a little bit and you know,
you really got to be efficient on offense and we
certainly weren’t tonight. I thought special teams was a stalemate, and we probably didn’t tackle well enough on defense and we
certainly didn’t, you know, get anything done on offense
that was — what we need to do in terms of running the
ball or explosive plays or anything like that.
PASSING GAME WOES
Eason started the game 5 of 5 and never found his rhythm once Stanford pressured him out of the pocket. Once outside of the pocket Eason became erratic with his passes throwing long and short to his receivers. Eason completed 16 total passes, 9 of the 16 passes where caught by Fuller and two by Cade Otton. The other five passes were caught by five different receivers. While Eason gets the blame for erratic pass play and bad decision making in holding on to the ball too long the offensive line and running backs inability to pick up the Stanford blitzes directly contributed to Eason erratic play. Petersen was asked what went wrong with the passing after the game.
That’s a good question.
Dropped balls. Have to give our quarterback a couple more
answers, too. A couple times he was standing back
there with not answers — couple that with protection
stuff and he was running around, a couple guys didn’t
make plays for him and when you’re not going to get
the ball a bunch, you’d better capitalize.
Q. When you talk about giving him more answers
does that start with receivers getting open?
CHRIS PETERSEN: I think it’s everything. We’ll look at
the tape here but like I said I know a couple times, we
just got to cut our losses. He threw a couple good balls
in there that we didn’t make plays on. We’ve got to do a
better job, there’s no question, in the pass game.
STANFORD DEFENSIVE BACKS ARE REALLY GOOD
Going into the Stanford game Husky coaches were well aware of Junior cornerback Paulson Adebo, AP Preseason All- American first team as well as All Pac-12 Preseason selection. Adebo played up to his billing recording four tackles and four pass breaks.
Freshman Ky Blu Kelly player played opposite Adebo and it will be a matter of time before he receives Adebo’s accolades as one of the top cornerbacks in the country. Kelly finished the game with two pass breaks and one interception.
