“He wants everything to be flawless”, coach David Shaw said. “There were a couple drives where we ran the ball reasonably well, but we struggled most of the night to run the ball. We’re so much better.’ It’s not about his yards, not about his carries, it’s about our machine when we’re humming”. With the departure of Kevin Hogan, the Cardinal are going for Ryan Burns as the starting quarterback.
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“Not clean, not pretty in the second half”, Shaw said. “We have been working so hard ever since the offseason, so we just want to go in there and win”.
Burns started fast by completing his first 10 passes, including a 40-yard touchdown strike to Michael Rector on the opening play of the second quarter. Stanford took over and McCaffrey, held in check throughout the second half, broke a 41-yard touchdown run on the first play.
Ertz was tackled in the end zone by Jordan Watkins for a safety with 4:11 left in the fourth quarter to put the Cardinal ahead 19-6.
“It’s not necessarily the most desirable thing, but I like the way they have come along and progressed”, coach Bill Snyder said.
Not even Kozan, who himself was a late addition to Auburn’s signing class in 2012, believes his power of persuasion would’ve been enough to get McCaffrey, who finished runner-up for the Heisman Trophy last year after setting the NCAA record for all-purpose yards and was named Player of the Year by the Associated Press, to come to Auburn over Stanford. That said, Kansas State was 3-2 against the spread as a road team, winning by an average margin of 5.4 points per game.
“I was telling coaches like ‘we got to get this guy, we got to get him, ‘” Kozan recalled with a laugh.
Depth in the trenches and linebacker core played a key role for Stanford, which racked up eight sacks. “Part of it was self initiated and part of it was he hit some (plays) in the second half where everybody knew where he was going to throw it, and the defenders were back, and created some problems for him”.
Sefo Liufau threw for 318 yards to become Colorado’s all-time leading passer and offensive lineman Alex Kelley recovered a fumble for a score as the Buffaloes rolled past Colorado State, 44-7. The Cardinal had just one first down in the second half before McCaffrey’s second TD run. The only problem was an illegal block by Curtis Robinson that wiped it all out and forced Stanford to start a drive on its own 2.
Georgia State struck in the first two minutes of the game when Jerome Smith intercepted a pass from Ball State’s Riley Neal and returned it 48 yards for a touchdown. At home, the Cardinal have won eight straight season openers by an average of nearly four touchdowns, but Kansas State should be a solid opponent. They played tough against the eighth-ranked Stanford Cardinal, but Stanford was the better team on Friday night.
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“We set the bar for where we are, and in two weeks it’s got to be higher”. With an injury of unknown severity to Phillips, as well as an offense that was shaky for most of the second half, the Cardinal have plenty to figure out during its bye week before it hosts USC in two weeks. “I don’t feel like we got dominated”.
