Costello makes it look easy for Cardinal
Freshman has been a difference-maker since taking over as Stanford’s starting quarterback
SANTA CLARA» K. J. Costello is not the only difference in the Stanford football team since its first meeting with USC three months ago.
But can Costello be a difference-maker when the No. 14 Cardinal (9-3) and No. 11 Trojans (102) square off in the Pac-12 championship game Friday night at Levi’s Stadium?
The red shirt freshman quarterback has progressed in each of his five starts, and last week showed star quality while throwing four touchdown passes in a 38-20 win over Notre Dame. Yes, the same Fighting Irish squad that crushed USC 49-14 six weeks ago.
“Amazing,” said running back Bryce Love, who has been called that repeatedly this season. “It’s definitely not easy. But he makes it look easy.”
Keller Chryst was Stanford’s starting quarterback on Sept. 9, when it lost to USC 42-24 in Los Angeles. Chryst didn’t play poorly, but Costello has provided the Cardinal with a different level of playmaker that has allowed it to storm back from a 1-2 start.
Stanford has made other changes, including significant shuffling on the offensive line. But Costello gives the offense a different dynamic, loosening opposing defenses by forcing them to account for a downfield passing game.
Asked how his team has evolved this season, coach David Shaw
said, “At the beginning of the year I thought we were talented ( but) I thought we we were still figuring it out. Now I think we have a better handle of who we are, of what we are.”
When USC coach Clay Helton looks at who Stanford is now, he points to Costello as the factor that has most changed the equation.
“Earlier in the year, everything kind of ran through Bryce Love and the talented offensive line,” Helton said. “Here lately, K. J. has done a really nice job of stepping in andmaking the most of his opportunity — and really protecting the football while making explosive plays down the field.”
Against the Irish, Costello showed off a range of arm skills. He dropped a pass over a defender to Trenton Irwin for one touchdown. He fended off the rush and successfully threw off his back foot to J. J. Arcega-Whiteside in the end zone. And he made a laser-beam delivery to tight end Kaden Smith for the go-ahead touchdown.
“Watching him become more confident in the huddle has been really cool,” said tight end Dalton Schultz, who caught Costello’s other touchdown pass against Notre Dame. “He’s shown that he’s able to stand in the pocket and deliver throws like that.”
Costello is 4-1 as a starter, with three of those games against Top-25 opponents. The 6- foot- 5, 217-pounder has completed 61 percent of his passes for 1,169 yards with nine touchdowns and two interceptions. With Costello at the helm, Stanford has only one turnover in its past three games. Love, who has battled an ankle sprain for the past month, came out of the Notre Dame game feeling good. He enters the Pac12 title game needing 152 rushing yards to reach 2,000 for the season.
Suddenly, it’s a balanced formula that looks imposing.
“You saw exactly the M.O. of what David would love to have — a fabulous run game with a quarterback that hits his shots down the field,” Helton said. “Any time you have that running game and you’re able to have a playaction game with quarter- backs and big receiving targets making their plays, man, that’s a hard offense to stop.”
Getting to this point has been a process, and Shaw said Costello still has much to learn.
“But for a redshirt freshman, he’s doing really well. And I’m really excited about where he’s headed,” Shaw said.
Shaw’s trust in his young quarterback grew to the point last week that the coaching staff gave Costello responsibility for making calls on 90 percent of Stanford’s snaps, changing protections or switch- ing the play at the line.
“We put a lot on him,” Shaw said, “and I thought he did a great job.”
The Irish showed “some funky stuff up front” early in the game that Costello said required him to diagnose what he was seeing.
“I wasn’t frustrated, but I was upset at the fact that I couldn’t get to the right answer early,” he said. “Then I started to settle in and we got in a rhythm. There were a lot of ups and downs, but at the end of the day we did what we needed to do.”
Sort of the story of Stanford’s season.