After leading an effective 82-yard drive to bring Stanford within six yards of victory in Saturday afternoon’s game against Utah, previously-unbeaten quarterback Kevin Hogan dramatically mishandled the last two handoffs, ending the Cardinal rally and dropping Stanford’s record to 5-1 on the year.
“We line up behind the biggest offensive line in the country and everyone in the stadium knows we are going to run the ball. We’ve done it successfully for years…its the Stanford way…its who we are,” Coach David Shaw told reporters in his postgame press conference. “Kevin just needs to work on his fundamentals. You can’t have two routine handoffs sail out of the back of the endzone like that.”
Reports from within the football program indicate that offensive coaches will spend the week making sure Hogan is comfortable wedging the ball firmly into his running back’s torsos, so that his handoffs stop drifting 15 yards downfield.
“We are just fortunate that Ty Montgomery had such great field presence for most of the game and grabbed Kevin’s errant handoffs before the other team could get to them,” Shaw concluded, “We just didn’t have enough left in the tank to finish off another of our signature, unimpressive victories against a mediocre opponent.”
