The trees have fallen on hard times. Stanford football continued
its horrendous season on Saturday at the Rose Bowl, getting shut
out 31-0 in what was both a showcase of a revamped Bruin defense
and Stanford’s truly inept offense.
“I’m just gonna say just to be nice:
Stanford’s over, and now we’re looking forward to
Arizona,” UCLA defensive end Bruce Davis said.
Stanford starts out its campaign 0-5 for the first time in 23
years and with the easy part of its schedule behind it, the 2006
version of the Cardinal is threatening to become the school’s
first winless team since 1947.
Though the loss was certainly rough for the squad from Palo
Alto, it is not the low point of this team’s year, as it has
suffered inexcusable losses to Navy and San Jose State. The writing
was on the wall last year as well when it fell to Division 1-AA
school UC Davis.
With the nation’s 10th hardest schedule and a trip to
South Bend against Notre Dame coming up next weekend, the situation
at Stanford figures to get worse ““ maybe much worse ““
before it gets any better.
“We obviously have a lot we have to work on,”
flustered Stanford coach Walt Harris said in the postgame press
conference.
The score was by no means an indication of a complete blowout,
as the UCLA offense and special teams did everything they could to
give Stanford momentum to get into the game. To their credit, the
Cardinal defense played fairly well, shutting out the Bruin offense
in the first half.
With quarterback Ben Olson looking out of sync for most of the
game, UCLA stalled numerous times in Cardinal territory, giving
Stanford several chances to get back into the game. The Bruins
turned the ball over four times, with two interceptions from Olson,
a muffed fair catch on a punt return by freshman Terrence Austin,
and a failed fourth-down attempt on the one-yard line. But despite
these gifts, the Cardinal refused to put up a fight, totaling a
meager 166 yards of offense and failing to make it into their
opponent’s red zone even once.
“It’s frustrating,” Stanford quarterback Trent
Edwards said after the game. “We feel like we let our defense
down.”
For Harris, finding positives as the losses add up is becoming
little consolation as the Bruins’ defense forced five
Cardinal turnovers and sacked Edwards a whopping seven times.
“We need to get on the board,” Harris said.
“We need to give our guys more hope than just fighting.
Unfortunately we missed it. … If you continue to do these things,
you are not going to win. A real good effort by our players was
disguised by five turnovers.”
Stanford has suffered a series of unfortunate injuries to its
offense early on this year, as six of its returning players have
missed games due to injury this season, including its starting
fullback and two starting receivers, all of whom did not suit up
Saturday. Coming into the Rose Bowl against a UCLA team looking for
blood after being upset a week earlier by Washington did not help
much either.
“Stanford is a Pac-10 school, they have good athletes, but
they have had a lot of players get hurt,” UCLA linebacker
Christian Taylor said. “We felt like we should have shut
Stanford out and we did and it feels good. Obviously if we did it
against Notre Dame it would be a much better feeling because they
have a much more prolific offense.”
Stanford has an uphill battle if it hopes to avoid becoming one
of the most futile Pac-10 teams in recent history, as it has yet to
square off against the real top-tier teams of the conference in Cal
and USC. Though the Stanford faithful will have to suffer through
one of the most unbearable seasons their program has ever faced,
there is one undeniable positive from this year that no opponent
can take away: The Stanford Stadium renovation is amazing, even
though it may take a few years before it’s home to a quality
football program.