What if it never ends? What if Stanford's winning streak over UCLA stretches through the end of this decade and into the next? What if one day fifty years from now, in attempting to persuade a nation to take on a daunting challenge, a President of the United States asks a crowd, "But why, some say, Mars? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, ninety-nine years ago, fly to the Moon? Why does UCLA play Stanford?"
If that scenario comes to fruition, if Stanford wins over UCLA become as regular as orbits around the Sun, it's likely that historians will look back on the win in 2017 and know that regardless of what the score might indicate, this game was the one where the streak almost ended.
Things started out auspiciously enough with Bryce Love gaining 21 yards on his first two carries and Keller Chryst completing a 12-yard pass to Trenton Irwin to bring the Cardinal to the UCLA 19 just minutes into the game. Even though Chryst had struggled in the previous week's loss at San Diego State, prompting some to call for change at quarterback, his appearance on the opening drive couldn't have been a surprise to anyone. Even so, probably no one in the stadium would have benefitted more from an opening touchdown than the beleaguered Chryst, but it wasn't to be. The drive stalled, and the Laser Jet (Jet Toner) pumped in a field goal from 34 yards out to give the Cardinal a 3-0 lead.
Josh Rosen and the Bruins came out on the field next, and no doubt more than a few lonely eyes in the Stanford section looked longingly at the UCLA quarterback. I can think of no opposing player in the Shaw Era who has engendered as much angst in the Stanford fanbase as Rosen, stemming from rumors which have blossomed into gospel. Was Stanford truly Rosen's dream school? Did Coach Shaw and his staff really decide not to offer him a scholarship because of concerns about his attitude? Twenty years from now I'll sit down with David Shaw to write his biography and likely unearth the truth, but there's one question neither Shaw nor Rosen will ever be able to answer -- what might Josh Rosen have accomplished in a Stanford jersey?
But even if you understand the folly of such questions, Rosen is still an important character in the Narrative of David Shaw. If Shaw is about cerebral analysis of each play of each game, Rosen represents the opposite. Shaw has said frequently that college football is a game best played by juniors and seniors, but Rosen found spectacular success when he was just an eighteen-year-old true freshman. Shaw demands that his quarterbacks master playbooks that are as thick as their calculus texts, but Rosen would probably be comfortable kneeling in the huddle and asking one receiver to go deep and the other to run an out to the third mailbox.
Oh, and there's one other difference between the two -- David Shaw has never lost to UCLA, and Josh Rosen has never beaten Stanford. Midway through the first quarter, however, it certainly looked like the winds of change were blowing. The Stanford offense took the field with the game tied at three, and on the first play of the series Chryst kept the ball on a read option and sprinted out to his right for a five-yard gain before being tackled by two UCLA defenders. It was clear almost immediately that Chryst had taken a serious blow, and when the Stanford trainers reached the field and began talking to him and looking into his eyes instead of checking a knee or an ankle, anyone watching knew we were seeing the first stages of the concussion protocol. Chryst wouldn't return. (He won't play against Arizona State, either. Beyond that, there has been no official comment regarding his injury.)
Ryan Burns took over for Chryst, and suddenly the offense was in complete disarray. Two false starts derailed the drive (Shaw later blamed this on the unavoidable differences in the cadence of the two quarterbacks), and the Cardinal eventually punted the ball back to the Bruins.
UCLA's first mistake of the game gave the ball back to Stanford almost immediately. On 2nd and 8 from his own 9, Rosen settled into the pocket and rifled a ball to his tight end, Caleb Wilson. Wilson would finish with an impressive eleven catches on the night, but this ball ricocheted off his hands and directly into the arms of safety Justin Reid for an interception at the UCLA 18.
This time the Stanford quarterback was sophomore K.J. Costello, but the result was much the same -- the offense failed to capitalize fully on the gift from UCLA, settling instead for another Laser Jet field goal and a 6-3 lead.
As the first quarter flowed into the second, the Bruin offense hit its stride. A 49-yard run by tailback Soso Jamabo led to a game-tying field goal, and after a three-and-out by Costello and the Stanford offense, Rosen went to work again. He completed four passes for 71 yards on a five-play touchdown drive that was distressingly easy.
The Bruins led 13-6, but things would get worse, and they'd get worse quickly. A holding penalty on the ensuing kick off pinned the Cardinal at their own 7, which was troubling enough, but then another three-and-out (Burns this time) had punter Jake Bailey back out on the field again to kick the ball back to UCLA.
After finding his rhythm on the last drive, Rosen picked up where he had left off and took just three plays to push his Bruins to a 1st and goal at the 10. The game turned two plays later. With the Bruins at 3rd and goal at the 3 yard line, they seemed poised to score. A touchdown would stretch the lead to 20-6, a lead which certainly would've seemed insurmountable considering the troubles enveloping the Stanford offense, but it would also add to the momentum that was already building on the UCLA sideline. Players who had been in elementary school the last time the Bruins had beaten the Cardinal were beginning to believe, and another score would only stoke that fire. In that moment, as Rosen stood at the line of scrimmage and confidently surveyed the defense, it felt like the game was already lost; it felt like the Bruins might end their losing streak with a resounding blowout; it felt like the Cardinal was staring down the barrel of a .500 season; it felt like the Axe was in jeopardy.
Rosen dropped back to pass and spotted Theo Howard at the goal line, albeit covered fairly well. But Rosen pulled the trigger and fired a laser between two defenders and onto his receivers hands. After the game Shaw would mention this throw, a throw he said he didn't think any other quarterback in college football could make, as he was praising Rosen. But as good as the throw was, Rosen was once again victimized as his perfect pass bounced harmlessly off Howard's hands, giving the Stanford defense a reprieve. A field goal in this situation would have been a small victory for the defense, but instead of conceding those three points, defensive tackle and team captain Harrison Phillips made the most important play of the game, perhaps the most important play of Stanford's season. He bulled his way through the UCLA offensive line, reached his right hand into the air, and swatted away the field goal attempt.
The defense charged off the field, and there was the beginning of something. The offense was still full of question marks, but the players in the Cardinal jerseys were finally showing signs of life.
When Costello and the offense came back out, they brought with them some of that momentum that Phillips had created. On 2nd and 5 Costello calmly rolled out to his right and hit Connor Wedington for a simple play that seemed to be worth more in confidence than the three yards it earned on the stat sheet; on the ensuing 3rd and 2 he dropped a dime into J.J. Arcega-Whiteside's lap for eleven yards and the first earned 1st down for the Cardinal since the third play of the game, ending a fruitless stretch of more than twenty minutes of game time.
If that 1st down signaled that the team wasn't dead, the next play brought them fully to life. Love took an inside handoff and hit a hole behind left guard, cut hard to his left to avoid an oncoming linebacker, then sprinted into space and towards the left sideline. He only had to dip into fifth gear for a second or two, but it was enough to gobble up 27 yards, it was enough to remind everyone of the lightning he carries in his pocket. Two plays later Love hit that same hole and came up with the same result. He again bounced quickly out to the left after reaching the second level, then ran away towards the left sideline. The most impressive part of the run, though, was that he clearly smelled the goal line as he got closer to it. Instead of allowing himself to be ushered out of bounds, Love lowered his shoulder at the 10-yard line and ploughed into a UCLA defender, finishing his run by carrying him into the ground at the 2. Cameron Scarlett capped off the drive by diving into the end zone and tying the score at 13. Watching live, the drive seemed kind of important.
I'm not sure how this season will play out, but bookmark that drive right there. Kind of feels important.
— Go Mighty Card (@GoMightyCard) September 24, 2017
If the half had ended there, it would've been a success, but the half wasn't over, not by a long shot. Only moments before the Bruins looked ready to put a death grip on the game, but now Josh Rosen and company came back out and looked surprised to have been tied. Rosen threw three times in a row for a three-yard gain and two incompletions, an opportunistic three-and-out for the Stanford defense that gave the ball back to Costello at his own 38 with 2:49 to play.
A thirty-yard drive into field goal range would have been huge, but Costello had bigger ideas. Love picked up 14 tough yards on 1st down, crossing the 100-yard mark in the process, and two plays later Costello took advantage of clean pocket and delivered a fastball across the middle to tight end Kaden Smith for a 20-yard gain to the UCLA 30. On the next play Costello showed some nice pocket awareness by stepping up to avoid pressure, then nimbly tiptoeing to his left along the line of scrimmage before dumping the ball off to Arcega-Whiteside who squirted ahead for an 11-yard gain.
The athleticism and confidence that Costello was bringing to the game was energizing, but the best was yet to come. After a pass interference penalty gave him a 1st and goal at the 9, Costello was clearly thinking about a touchdown, not a field goal. He took the snap and gently rolled out to his right, bringing all the action towards the sideline. Fullback Daniel Marx had released out of the backfield on a route reminiscent of Spider 3-Y Banana, but since he was covered, Costello calmly motioned for him to continue upfield. Marx's movement brought two defenders with him, clearing the way for Costello to break for the end zone. Costello and three UCLA defenders arrived at the pylon at roughly the same time, but Costello dove for the cone and got the touchdown.
With one Stanford quarterback already out of the game, it was more than a little nerve-racking to watch him put his body on the line, but the result was more than just six points. When Costello leapt off the ground and into the air, the entire offensive team jumped with him as if he had just scored a game-clinching touchdown. In a way, he had. The game was his; more importantly, the team was his.
That would've been a suitable end of the first half, right? It still wasn't over. Rosen and the Bruins, now trailing 20-13, came back out with no intention of running out the final fifty-one seconds of the half. Desperate for a score that would answer the Cardinal and steal back some of the momentum, Rosen came out throwing. After two incompletions he finally found Theo Howard for a nine-yard gain, but as Howard was stood up by the Cardinal defense, cornerback Alijah Holder stripped the ball out of Howard's arms, allowing Kevin Palma to recover it at the UCLA 30. Three plays later Jet Toner pounded a 39-yard field goal as the half ran out, and the Cardinal, inexplicably, took a 23-13 lead into the locker room.
With seven minutes to play in the first half, the Bruins had been about to take a commanding -- and perhaps insurmountable -- 20-6 lead; over the final 6:32 of the half the Cardinal would outscore them 17-0, a turn around that not even the most optimistic Stanford fan could have imagined. Those six and a half minutes saved the season; just as significantly, those six and a half minutes introduced the world to Stanford's new quarterback, K.J. Costello.
Suddenly the game had the feel of every Stanford-UCLA game we've ever seen. The Bruins took the opening kick of the second half and engineered an eight-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to pull back within three at 23-20, but all the Cardinal did was answer. An electric 43-yard run from Wedington highlighted a drive that ended with 15-yard touchdown from Costello to Irwin, and the ten-point lead was back at 30-20.
A fumble on UCLA's next possession set up the Cardinal in Bruin territory, a possession that got interesting at 4th and 1 at the UCLA 33. Even though he was only a few feet shy of the 1st down, Shaw decided to send Toner out to try a career-long 50-yard field goal. Toner's kick came up a few yards short, but the play clock had wound down before the snap. The delay of game penalty pushed the Cardinal back into 4th and 6 -- so naturally Shaw sent Costello and offense back out onto the field. At first glance an aggressive play like this seems to go against the Shaw Manifesto, but it actually made perfect sense. Shaw has said many times it makes sense to take a risk like this in the middle of the field when you're up by two scores in the second half. The worst-case scenario is that the defense stops you and their offense scores a touchdown, but then you've still got the lead. It's a risk worth taking. So Costello dropped back to pass, calmly found Dalton Schultz for the 1st down, and the drive continued. Four plays later Scarlett was powering into the end zone for his second score of the game and a comfortable 17-point Stanford lead.
From this point on, it didn't really matter what the Bruins did. Stanford was dominating time of possession, dominating the line of scrimmage, and dominating the game. The only drama in my mind, really, centered around Bryce Love and whether or not he'd extend his preposterous streak of 50 yard runs in five straight games. Midway through the fourth quarter, I'd get my answer.
On 2nd and 9 from the Stanford 31, the Bruins were desperate to stop the run, and the Cardinal was desperate to run it. Stanford lined up with eight men on the line of scrimmage, five linemen and three tight ends, and UCLA countered by bringing all eleven defenders within seven yards of the ball. What happened next wasn't even surprising. Love took a deep pitch from Costello, darted through the right side of his line, made an impossible cut back to his left, spinning a UCLA defender into the turf as he went, and broke into the clear. I knew it would be a touchdown as soon as he made that devastating cut and put nine defenders behind him; all that was left was celebration of a streak that continues to boggle my mind, even a week later. His 69-yard gain put the cap on a career night for Love -- 30 carries for 263 yards and a touchdown with an impressive 8.8 yards per carry. It also sealed the game. Stanford would add another touchdown to make the final score 58-34, but that hardly mattered.
What mattered is that the season has promise again, and Stanford seems to have found a quarterback and regained its identity. Oh, and by the way, Bryce Love is leading the nation in rushing and creeping into the Heisman Runner-Up conversation.
But on a day when so many questions were resolved, one glaring question remains unanswered -- Why does UCLA play Stanford?
