Toby keeps chugging along
We all knew that injuries had slowed down Toby Gerhart over
the past few years. We all knew
that he was a talented back, the kind of
guy that could make an impact on a team like Stanford. But did we know he
was this good?
I certainly didn’t.
“We just kept pounding it,”
Gerhart said after the Cardinal’s 23-6 win over San Jose State Saturday. “We knew something would
eventually break open.”
Pounding it seems to be Gerhart’s M.O. and the Spartans found
out the hard way. Gerhart carried the ball 22 times for 148 yards, thoroughly
wearing down their defense in the second half. It took more than one tackler to
take down the bruising Gerhart. Though Stanford’s
defense was certainly key in the second half, the
Cardinal offense also awoke, keeping the ball out of the Spartans’ hands as the team got
into a rhythm.
And while Tavita Pritchard played one
of his best games of the year, don’t be fooled. Gerhart was responsible for the Cardinal’s
success on offense.
Anthony Kimble
has had success in the past and
is a serviceable back. But at this point, there’s
no reason to not give the ball to Toby as much as possible. He’s Stanford’s most
consistent weapon, period.
Just a third of the way into the season,
the junior already has more yards than
he had in each of his first two seasons.
It’s likely that he’ll get over the 1,000 yard mark this season, if, you guessed it,
he stays healthy.
Thoughts on Tavita
The play of quarterback Tavita Pritchard has been less
than impressive this season. Pritchard carries mediocre numbers, completing 45
of 82
passes for 469 yards in four games. He has one touchdown to
four interceptions. During Saturday’s game against the Spartans, he hung his receivers out to
dry for big hits on more than one occasion. Though he had a big game
running the ball (“He went out and
played a good game,” Coach Harbaugh said. “It was
probably the best I've seen Tavita with his feet.”), it was still a mediocre performance by
any quarterback’s standards.
But Jim Harbaugh is standing
by his man.
“I am pleased to see the way he’s handling
the nature of the business, the nature of playing quarterback,” he said during Tuesday’s
weekly press conference. “You are going to have people who doubt you, compete for your
job and people who are going to
blog in with their opinions on who should be
quarterback. That's just the nature of that job. I want to compliment him on the way
he's handled himself.”
Many
have called for Harbaugh to replace Pritchard with heralded frosh Andrew Luck, but Tavita
seems to be hanging on to the job. Sure, his play hasn’t been great this
season and he’s definitely not your prototypical
quarterback, but he’s quarterbacked the Cardinal to two wins.
I’d expect that most Stanford fans are happy, or at least satisfied, to be sitting with
a 2-2 record.
And, maybe most importantly, Tavita has handled himself
the way a quarterback should. His laid-back but professional attitude can only be a positive
influence for this team. When he was
asked after the game about the pressure of keeping
his job, he said, without the slightest trace of hesitation or angst, “You control the things
you can control.”
Now, while it’s clear that
Tavita is not going to lead the Cardinal to any kind of
major glory — he still has his deficiencies as a quarterback — he’s already
shown that he can win ballgames. Andrew Luck may be the future, but Tavita is
now. There’s no way around it. Props
to Pritchard for, in the midst of all the
talk, just minding his own business and doing what he can do to help this Stanford
team win games.
Scoping out the Red Zone
Saturday’s game was the first for hundreds of freshman,
and there was
a palpable enthusiasm going around. San Jose State brought a sizeable crowd
of a couple thousand which also roared as much as it could after big
plays. While it certainly wasn’t an SEC- or Big-12-type atmosphere, there definitely was excitement in
the stands at Stanford Stadium. Not a
bad first game for the freshman (especially compared to
my first official Stanford football experience. I’m usually a pretty loyal fan but I left at
halftime, no joke.)
It was also good to
see frosh and seniors alike singing the alma mater, even though I was down on
the field instead of the stands. There’s
nothing better than savoring the slow, melodic tune of
any school’s alma mater after a hard-fought victory. And I’m not trying to be dramatic when
I say that.
Special again
Special teams continue to come up big
for Stanford. Sophomore punter David Green had another solid
game, and of course, Aaron Zagory, affectionately known as “Zags” by teammates and coaches alike, had
a career game.
“To go out and
kick a 52-yarder like he did the other day
along with two other ones, he looks like a pro kicker out there,” Harbaugh said. “What
a phenomenal story.
“Zags has worked extremely hard. It's
[kicking] a strength of our football team. His performance the other night changed the complexion of
that football game.”
Zags' 52-yard kick
had plenty of leg, too probably room for five or more yards from my view in
the press box.
Huskies up next
Big game this
weekend for the Cardinal. Every game’s going to be a big game
for Stanford from here on out, or at least to the optimistic fans like
me who see every victory as one step closer to qualifying for a bowl game.
Stanford’s next five games all look to
be winnable (or, in other words, we won’t be
huge underdogs in any of them). This is the critical stretch of the schedule for the
team this season.
I haven’t seen the Huskies play yet
this season, but we’ve all heard plenty about Jake Locker. Harbaugh raved about the sophomore during
Tuesday’s press conference.
“We've faced some pretty talented
quarterbacks in the first four weeks and Jake Locker, in my opinion, is the best of
all of them.
He poses a huge threat,” Harbaugh continued. “He's a
great football player.”
Washington is winless, but it doesn’t take
a football guru to dismiss that information — all three losses have come against top-25
teams. Let’s just hope that the Cardinal
can duplicate its performance in Seattle two years ago,
when it won on big plays from the defense in the team’s only victory of that
miserable, miserable year.
********** ********** **********
Junior Jack Salisbury covers Stanford football for the Stanford Daily.
Contact him at jack24 at stanford.edu.
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