Kenny Young walked into the tunnel, his helmet still on and his head down as the UCLA fans shouted words of encouragement from the railing above.
For much of the night, the junior middle linebacker and his defense had stood strong against the powerful Stanford offense, keeping it out of the end zone on each of its first nine drives. After an offseason spent bulking up to match up with teams like Stanford, the UCLA defense had done just that for 58 minutes.
But the Cardinal’s tenth and final drive looked very different from the ones before it, and that’s what stuck in Young’s mind as he ducked into the tunnel.
Ten plays, 70 yards, one minute and 41 seconds.
In terms of yardage, it was the longest drive of the night for the Stanford offense. In terms of time, it was the shortest.
The Rose Bowl was raucous as the Cardinal took the ball at their own 30-yard line down 13-9, the 70 yards in front of them seeming a daunting task for an offense that still hadn’t punched the ball into the end zone all night.
With just a little over two minutes on the clock, they’d have to throw the ball, and their inexperienced quarterback, Ryan Burns, had thrown for just 71 yards on the evening.
“Ryan Burns did not play a great game,” said Stanford coach David Shaw. “But at the end of the game, Ryan was cool. He was calm. He ran the plays that he knew. He executed.”
Burns quickly produced his longest completion of the night, hitting sophomore Trent Irwin for 23 yards on the first play of the drive, and connected on three of his next six passes to take Stanford to the UCLA 12-yard line.
A Christian McCaffrey run for a first down and a clock-stopping spike later, Burns lofted a fade to the front left corner of the end zone, where sophomore J.J. Arcega Whiteside managed to snatch the ball and tap his right foot inbounds to put Stanford on top with 24 seconds left.
“If only we could find a way to eliminate that play, or did things differently on that drive to control them,” Young said. “If it wasn’t for that, I’d be satisfied.”
Unlike the previous week, when UCLA was burned by BYU while running a prevent defense, the Bruins didn’t change anything on the final drive. They just got beaten.
“They made plays, and we didn’t at that point,” said defensive coordinator Tom Bradley.
The Bruins couldn’t score on their final possession, leaving Arcega-Whiteside’s acrobatic catch as the defining moment of a game that was very nearly UCLA’s first win over Stanford since 2008.
“It stings when you lose like that,” said coach Jim Mora. “You played so courageously on defense and did such a great job against a really good team, and then it comes down and they make the play.”
Mora’s team played 58 very good minutes of football Saturday evening.
But because of the final two subpar minutes the Bruins played, they walked into their locker room silent and sullen while the Cardinal shouted and smiled and bounced their way off the field.
One Stanford staffer, his white polo looking as pristine as ever in the dusky haze of the Rose Bowl lights, waved his arms up and down gleefully as he jogged toward the tunnel.
“Sixty minutes,” he screamed at what was left of the crowd. “It takes 60 minutes.”