Stenstrom leads Stanford
Cardinal QB poses
threat to Bruins’ secondary squad
By Scott Yamaguchi
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Never, never, never was it supposed to come to this.
No, not in anyone’s right mind was it imagined that Saturday’s
3:30 p.m. showdown between Stanford and UCLA at the Rose Bowl would
be a matchup of two teams playing for pride.
In fact, in August, before the college football season began, it
was generally believed that this game  in the ninth-week of
the season  would have some immediate influence on the
Pacific-10 Conference’s race for the Rose Bowl Game.
But with three games remaining on their schedule, the Bruins
(2-6 overall, 0-5 in the Pac-10) have been guaranteed a losing
season, while Stanford (2-4-1, 1-3), with four games left, is a
longshot in the bowl picture. A loss for the Cardinal Saturday
would eliminate any remaining hope, and it would seem that a senior
season without post-season play would be an injustice to
quarterback Steve Stenstrom.
The 6-foot-3-inch, 205-pound signal-caller will finish his
career at the top of virtually all quarterbacking categories in the
Stanford and Pac-10 record books, and he needs just 66 passing
yards to become only the 10th player in NCAA Division I-A history
to throw for over 10,000 career yards.
To Stenstrom, however, as with any team player, individual
accolades are secondary to team success, and in that regard, his
final season has been a disappointment.
"In terms of yards and going for records, I hope that I don’t
have to throw for as many as I did last year," he said before the
season began. "If we accomplish our primary goal of going to a
major bowl game, the records will take care of themselves."
On the contrary, the yards and the records have seemingly come
easy for Stenstrom this year, but winning games has not; as a
result, he probably has not received the recognition he so
deserves.
Stenstrom, one of 12 nominees for the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm
Award, has been one of Stanford’s only bright spots in an otherwise
disappointing season.
Under his leadership, the Cardinal offense ranks first in the
conference in passing offense, total offense and scoring offense,
but a mediocre rushing attack and a defense that ranks 10th in
scoring defense have gotten in the way of team success.
Defense was a preseason concern of Stanford head coach Bill
Walsh after last year’s squad posted similar numbers in an
eighth-place Pac-10 finish. The third-year skipper had hoped to
correct the problems this year with a more experienced team.
"Defensively, we were 149th out of 150 in the nation last year
and, obviously, there’s got to be some improvement," Walsh said in
August. "Typically, Stanford has not had some of the speed on
defense that some of the opposition has and we’ve struggled with
that over the years. But we do feel that we have some experience,
some young talent and that we’ll improve markedly."
Obviously, the defense hasn’t improved enough, nor has the
rushing game. But, in the Bruins, Stanford will be facing a team
that ranks sixth in total offense, 10th in scoring offense and 10th
in rushing defense.
And Stenstrom  who has 12 touchdowns and four
interceptions this season  will be looking for senior wide
receiver Justin Armour to take advantage of an extremely young UCLA
secondary.
UCLA’s offensive rankings, however, might not be indicative of
the team that shows up Saturday, mainly because the Bruins will see
the return of several starters  most notably receiver J.J.
Stokes  who have been heldout of competition for three
quarters of the season because of injuries.