If you had missed Friday night's game against San Diego State and clicked on the TV in the middle of a talking head recap and heard something like "...226 yards and three touchdowns," you wouldn't have been surprised at all. You would've nodded your head confidently and said, "That's just Bryce being Bryce." Then you would've noticed the final score flashing across the screen, and you would've said, "Smooth sailing, just like I knew it would be."
Turns out you would've been wrong on both counts.
The game started out as most probably expected. In front of a predictably sparse crowd, head coach David Shaw and the Cardinal came out of the tunnel looking to rebound from a disappointing season, and it was appropriate that this new season would begin with San Diego State. Of Stanford's five losses last season (and let's take a moment to reflect on the idea that a 9-5 season is now seen as a disappointment at Stanford), four of them came by three points or less, which led to a team-wide focus on finishing games. When I asked wide receiver J.J. Arcega-Whiteside about this in July, he said that the focus all spring and summer had been finishing games. "We finish everything. We even finish our meals." The issue against San Diego State last season was not finishing, however; the Cardinal was outplayed throughout the game, so it seemed fitting that the Aztecs would be first on the schedule in 2018.
Early on, however, there were concerns. As K.J. Costello and the Stanford offense approached the line of scrimmage for the first play of the season -- a play which must have been scripted and called long ago -- Shaw was forced to take a timeout to avoid a delay of game penalty. We've talked this to death, but I'll say it again. Delay penalties are an unfortunate side effect of the complex Stanford offense, but there is simply no excuse for delay penalties like this. Costello wasn't standing behind center trying to decipher the defense and diagnose a plan of attack, he was breaking the huddle. It was not an ideal beginning to the season. (Shaw would later explain that it had to do with confusion about a new rule governing when the play clock starts after a kickoff, but still.)
After the timeout a screen pass meant for Love was nearly intercepted for a touchdown, and suddenly blood pressures were rising throughout the Cardinal Kingdom. But when Costello calmly completed a nice 13-yard pass over the middle to tight end Kaden Smith to convert a 3rd and 8, and then Love pounded his way for seven yards on the next play, things were looking up. Two more back-to-back first downs -- a five-yard plunge from Cameron Scarlett on 3rd and 1 and a 21-yard pass to J.J. Arcega-Whiteside -- raised spirits further still, so much so that it almost didn't matter that Jet Toner pulled his 38-yard field goal attempt.
If anyone was concerned by that opening drive and all the reminders it held from last season, those concerns were surely washed away when the defense came out on the field and threw down an impressive three and out, actually pushing the Aztecs three yards backwards. The defense, after all, held far more question marks than the offense. It was easy -- convenient, even -- to take this small sample of success and assume it would continue.
But then things went downhill quickly.
If all you saw about this game was the final score, it's important to understand how dark things were for much of the first half. San Diego State's second possession began at its own 8 and featured the dominant running of tailback Juwan Washington. Washington carried the ball on seven of the eight plays on the Aztec drive, and his runs looked like this: 1, 3, 22, 10, 40, 4, and finally a 4-yard touchdown. Each run was the same: the offensive line would rip a large gash in the Stanford front, Washington would hit the hole, he'd run through an arm tackle or two, and then he'd ramble for a while until someone finally pulled him down. At no point in the drive did it feel like the Cardinal defense had any answer for him. When his touchdown gave the Aztecs a 7-0 lead, things started to feel a bit gloomy.
Meanwhile, Bryce Love was having no success at all. With all summer to plan for this game, the San Diego State defense made no secret of their prime directive: Stop Bryce Love. Can you blame them? For years now, whether the quarterback was Kevin Hogan or Ryan Burns or Keller Chryst, Stanford offenses have faced defenses geared towards stopping the run. With seven or even eight defenders within two or three yards of the line of scrimmage, opposing teams have committed massive resources towards the trenches as they dared the Stanford quarterback to beat them.
Never before, however, has this strategy been employed to the extreme that we saw from the Aztecs. There were typically eight defenders in the box, but then there would usually be a ninth, a safety, who was keying on Love and flying towards the ball whenever Costello turned to hand it off. As a result, Love never had a chance to breathe, let alone gain any positive yardage. He gained a modest 12 yards on four carries on the Cardinal's first possession, but the rest of his half looked like this: 0, 1, -3, 2, 0, -5. As mind boggling as his numbers were a year ago, this is even more shocking: Bryce Love finished the first half with 10 carries for 7 yards. A year after getting more than eight yards a carry, Love averaged a mere 25 inches per run over those first two quarters.
The good news, if there was any at this point, was the Stanford defense was holding strong. After offering little resistance as the Aztecs marched down the field for that early touchdown, the defense stiffened, helped by the typical brilliance of punter Jake Bailey. Four minutes into the second quarter, Bailey smoked a 63-yard punt that darted out of bounds at the one-yard line, and the much-maligned Stanford defense did the rest. On 3rd and 6 from his own 5, Aztec quarterback Christian Chapman dropped back into the end zone and rolled out to his right. The rollout freed linebacker Bobby Okereke from any inside responsibilities, so he immediately began tracking Chapman and plotted a course for the corner of the end zone. With his receivers covered, Chapman could have given up on the play and flipped the ball out of bounds, but instead he kept running and eventually ran out of room. When Okereke finally caught him and began to pull him down, Chapman panicked and rolled the ball away, but it was too late. Okereke earned the safety and two points, and the Cardinal was finally on the board.
As important as those two points might have been for the psyche of Stanford fans around the world, the most important play of the game came two possessions later. The Cardinal took over on its own 21 with 2:20 to play in the second quarter an opportunity to end the half on a positive note. After moving the ball across midfield, Costello faced a 3rd and 5 at the Aztec 39. At this point, even a short gain and a field goal attempt would've felt like a small victory for the offense, but instead the worst happened.
Costello took a short drop and immediately saw wide receiver Trenton Irwin wide open in the right flat for what looked like an easy 1st down. But Costello's pass never made it past the line of scrimmage. Blitzing linebacker Andrew Aleki managed to get a hand on the pass and knock it high into the air, and it came down into the waiting arms of defensive end Noble Hall for the interception. Hall was only able to take two strides, however, before Irwin tracked him down from behind, stripped the ball out of his grasp, and recovered it at the Stanford 48.
It was a play immediately reminiscent of Harrison Phillips's field goal block against UCLA last season. Just has Phillips could've relaxed and conceded that chip shot field goal and trudged to the sideline trailing by ten points, Irwin could've hung his head and shrugged, knowing the unlucky play really had had nothing to do with him. But just as Phillips dug deep and came up with a game changing play, Irwin never stopped. We'll never know what would've happened if he hadn't gotten that ball back, but we do know what did.
With 69 seconds left on the clock, the Cardinal had new life with a 1st down at their own 48, and then eventually another 1st down at the Aztec 38, from which point Costello cashed the check that Irwin had written. It was a simple play, really. Arcega-Whiteside ran a post pattern from the right, and Costello only had to navigate minimal pressure, stepping up into the pocket before launching a laser towards the goal line. Arcega-Whiteside, who isn't supposed to be a deep threat, had beaten his defender, so all he had to do was pick Costello's pass out of the air for a 38-yard touchdown.
Just minutes earlier the game seemed to be heading in the wrong direction, but suddenly the Cardinal had seized the lead at 9-7, and they wouldn't trail again.
After the defense stopped the Aztecs with a three and out to open the second half, the offense picked up right where it had left off. Love still couldn't find any running room, but Stanford's advantage in the passing game became more apparent as the game continued to stretch deeper into the night. It isn't that the San Diego State defensive backs weren't talented, they were simply overmatched, and with the Aztecs' stubborn refusal to abandon their anti-Love campaign, they were on their own all night long. On this drive, they resorted to clutching and grabbing, as first Arcega-Whiteside and then Irwin drew pass interference penalties on consecutive plays, moving the ball into the red zone. On 3rd and 9 from the 19, Arcega-Whiteside somehow found himself unguarded in the middle of the field, and Costello hit him for an easy touchdown and a 16-7 lead.
An Aztec field goal cut that lead to six, and when the Cardinal fell into a 3rd and 15 hole at its own 20 just a few minutes later, San Diego State fans might've felt like the game was turning back around for them, but Costello doused that flame immediately. Normally this might've been a give-up down, a simple handoff to Love that would eliminate any possible negatives while holding the potential of a big play, but with San Diego State's continued success stopping Love (he had had three one-yard gains in the second half at this point), a passing play was sent in instead of a run. The Aztecs probably don't appreciate this irony, but their success led to their downfall.
Costello took the snap and gently drifted out of the pocket to his left and waited. Arcega-Whiteside had lined up out wide to the left, and he ran a simple route up the sideline. At an even six feet, Kyree Woods isn't a small defensive back, he just wasn't ready for the physical challenge posed by Arcega-Whiteside. Once he fell a stride behind his mark, there was no way Arcega-Whiteside would let him back into the play. There was a little bit of jostling between the two as the ball arrived, but Arcega-Whiteside won the battle. The defensive back fell to the turf, and the receiver made the catch before turning and racing the final forty yards for an 80-yard touchdown.
Looking for a standard 14-point margin, Shaw decided to go for the two-point conversion, which naturally meant another throw out wide to a big target matched by a smaller defender. Again it was Arcega-Whiteside, and again it was Woods, and this time I felt a little sorry for him. You can't call what happened next a pass route; Arcega-Whiteside simply ran to the end zone, turned to face Costello, and boxed out Woods as if he were waiting for a rebound instead of a pass. Again, Woods isn't that much smaller than Arcega-Whiteside, but he essentially disappeared from view for a moment as Costello put the ball on target for an easy two points.
Costello would throw a fourth touchdown pass, this one to tight end Colby Parkinson, and he'd finish with a career high 332 yards in the air while completing 21 of 31 passes. As impressive as those numbers were, however, the story of the game was clearly J.J. Arcega-Whiteside. The senior captain finished with six catches for 226 yards and three touchdowns. That receiving total is historic. Only twice in school history has anyone amassed more receiving yardage; Stanford legends Troy Walters and Darrin Nelson went for 278 and 237 respectively. And here's something even more interesting. Stanford's last thousand-yard receiver was Walters in 1999, and given the nature of Stanford's offense, it was beginning to look like we might never see the feat duplicated. With his performance in Week 1, however, Arcega-Whiteside has this milestone firmly in his sights. It will be something worth watching this season.
Also worth watching will be the prolific Stanford offense. Love's 29-yard performance is certainly part of the story of this game, but defensive coordinators throughout the conference aren't fooled by that, I assure you. What will keep them up late into the night studying film will be K.J. Costello and his stable of receiving weapons. The film from this game just might be enough to keep defenses honest, and if that's the case, Bryce Love will run wild again. If, on the other hand, opposing teams choose to continue daring Costello to beat them, he certainly will. It's a win-win proposition for Stanford, and win-win they will.
[Photo Credit: Tony Avelar/AP Photo]
