Cardinal’s bowl chances fading fast
STANFORD >> Three weeks after stunning No. 3 Oregon, Stanford is last in the Pac-12 North and will need at least one more upset to reach bowl eligibility.
Of its four remaining opponents, only Cal has a losing record. Oregon State and Utah both are 5-3. Notre Dame (7-1) is ranked No. 8. Stanford (3-5) must win two of those games or it will be home for the bowl season for a third straight year. The Cardinal went 4-8 in 2019 and opted out of bowl consideration last year.
“This team is better than it’s playing,” coach David Shaw said, “and it’s up to me to find out why we’re not and what we can do to get there because we can play much better than we played tonight. I’m tired of saying that. We’re going to find a way to get more out of this football team and get us back into the win column.”
It didn’t happen Saturday night. Stanford lost 20-13 when Washington scored a touchdown and added a 2-point conversion with 21 seconds left to play. In its last game, a 34-31 loss to Washington State, the Cardinal allowed the winning touchdown with 90 seconds to play.
Whatever Stanford worked on in the bye week didn’t help solve its biggest issue — the inability to run the ball or stop the run. The Cardinal entered Saturday last in the conference in rushing and rushing defense, while Washington was second-to-last in both categories. The Huskies ended up with a 229-71 edge on the ground — a dominance that raises the question of whether Stanford can have success in the ground game on either side of the ball against any of its remaining opponents.
“The numbers from today and from past games makes me sick looking at them,” said linebacker Levani Damuni, who had a team-high 12 tackles against the Huskies. “There’s not enough gap integrity. Just need more of that grit, more of that nastiness on the first and second downs to make the third downs easier.”
Stanford also needs to clean up its turnover issues — opponents have an 8-1 advantage in takeaways during the Cardinal’s three-game losing streak against the Washington schools and Arizona State.
The Cardinal don’t have much time to regroup. Utah, which leads the Pac-12 South with a 4-1 record, comes to Stanford Stadium on Friday night.
Facing the Utes at home on a short week may seem like an advantage, but Stanford Stadium hasn’t provided any edge for the home team recently. The Cardinal are 4-7 at home over the past three seasons, and if Saturday night’s announced crowd of 28,014 was any indication, there won’t be many fans in the stands this Friday either.
“It’s so frustrating because we know how talented we are, how talented our quarterback is, guys on our D-line, defense,” Damuni said. “We have the talent.”