Huskies’ Browning OK to sling away
This might not the best game to go into when you’re a little shorthanded on defense, not when Jake Browning is sizing you up.
Because of injuries last week against UCLA, No. 7 Stanford will be without its two starting cornerbacks, Alijah Holder and Quenton Meeks, when it faces Browning and No. 10 Washington Friday at Husky Stadium.
The Pac-12 North game matches teams with seven-game win streaks, the
fourth longest in the nation.
Browning (6-foot-2, 209 pounds) was the first true freshman on a Chris Petersencoached team to win the starting quarterback job. He’s No. 3 in the nation in pass efficiency and No. 2 in touchdown passes.
His 14 touchdown passes have come against just two interceptions as the Huskies (4-0, 1-0 Pac-12) have averaged 45.8 points per game.
Both teams have been stingy on defense. Stanford (3-0, 2-0) is giving up a conferencelow 12 points per game; Washington is next best at 14.5.
Browning, whose father, Ed, is a former Oregon State quarterback, was also tutored in the art of quarterbacking by former Cal QB Troy Taylor even before he got to Folsom High School.
At Folsom, he tied a national record with 91 touchdown passes in a season and broke the national mark with 229 career TD passes.
“We’ve known about the quarterback for a long time,” Stanford head coach David Shaw said. “Smart, accurate, strong arm, a better athlete than you think.”
Shaw said Browning is getting great coaching from Petersen, in his third year at Washington after a highly successful career at Boise State, and his staff. “And now they’ve got the weapons around him.” The Huskies have “speed everywhere,’’ he said.
Among those weapons is sophomore tailback Myles Gaskin, a 1,300-yard rusher last year. He may no longer be the best ball-carrier on his own team. Lavon Coleman, a 5-11, 228-pound junior, had 181 yards on just 11 carries in last week’s 35-28 overtime win over Arizona. That’s not bad for a guy who had 176 rushing yards all of last year.
“Both guys can get the tough yards, and both can hit the home run,” Shaw said.
John Ross, Chico McClatcher and Dante Pettis, the son of ex-big league outfielder Gary Pettis, provide some of the speed that caught Shaw’s eye. Ross has returned a schoolrecord four kickoffs for touchdowns in his career. Pettis led the Pac-12 in punt returns last year and has a 68-yard touchdown return this season.
“It used to be you just had to watch out that No. 1 (Ross) because he can run by you,” Shaw said. “Now there’s a bunch of guys with speed.”
Until it faced Arizona, Washington had an easy time of it in non-conference routs of Rutgers, Idaho and Portland State. The Arizona game raised some serious concerns about the Huskies’ run defense because the Wildcats piled up 352 yards on the ground, 176 by sophomore quarterback Brandon Dawkins in his first Pac-12 start.
And here comes Christian McCaffrey, the Pac-12’s leading rusher at 145.3 yards per game.