A week after suffering a blow out at the hands of the Washington Huskies, the Stanford Cardinal fell victim to the same fate against the other team from Washington.

Despite returning back home, Stanford (3-2, 2-2 Pac-12) fell 42-16 against the Washington State Cougars (3-2, 2-0), marking the Cardinal’s first time losing back-to-back games since 2014.

Stanford was unable to get anything going on the offensive end, as the offense failed to find the end zone until there were 8 seconds remaining in the game and wide receiver JJ Arcega-Whiteside was able to haul down a pass for a score. The only other touchdown for the Cardinal came from an interception return touchdown by sophomore cornerback Frank Buncom.

Stanford opted to rotate between its two main quarterbacks, but it didn’t look good regardless of who was under center. Senior Ryan Burns and junior Keller Chryst combined for 194 passing yards and 2 interceptions on 17-of-30 passing completions.

Meanwhile, the dangerous Stanford running game was shut down in a similar fashion to how it was contained when the Cardinal played in Pullman last year. Junior Christian McCaffrey had 35 rushing yards on just 8 carries, an indication of the fact that Stanford fell behind early and was forced to pass for most of the game.

On the defensive end, Stanford couldn’t manage to get a stop, although it wouldn’t necessarily have helped with the way its offense was shut down. Washington State quarterback Luke Falk passed for 357 yards, 4 touchdowns and 2 interceptions, while the Cougars added 2 more touchdowns on the ground.

Stanford’s last two games have been the only ones in the last two years in which it has allowed more than 40 points. The Cardinal will clearly need to figure out a lot before it heads to South Bend next week to take on Notre Dame.

 

Contact Sandip Srinivas at sandips ‘at’ stanford.edu.