The Cardinal finally scored a touchdown late in the fourth quarter, ending a streak of 33 possessions without reaching the end zone.
Fortunately for Stanford, it only has one ranked team, No. 14 Utah, remaining on its schedule. The Cardinal can still make a bowl game if it beats Washington State, Cal, and BYU, who have a combined record of 11-14 . Stanford hosts Washington State Saturday at 12:30 p.m.It didn’t help that Stanford was starting a walk-on, Caleb Robinson, at running back. He was the fifth starting running back in the past year due to injuries and transfers.
“We’ll retool, we’ll see who’s healthy next week,” Shaw said. “We have to be balanced. We can’t just have a straight dropback game. We have to be balanced with the run to keep people honest. But we have some health issues with the running back position so we’ll see where we are early next week.” UCLA had no such issues. Zach Charbonnet, the Pac-12’s leading rusher at 127.7 yards a game, had 198 yards and three TDs on 21 carries. He put the game away with a 37-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-1 with three seconds left in the third quarter that made the score 31-6.
But the issues on offense went way beyond the running back position. McKee was sacked four times and hurried another four times, and Shaw said there were two or three instances when receivers were running free downfield but McKee didn’t have time to throw to them.Related Articles