It’s shaping up to be a good one at Stanford Stadium this Saturday as the Washington Huskies are out to prove they can keep up with the high powered offense of the Stanford Cardinal, while the Huskies D has to figure out how to keep Heisman hopefully Andrew Luck from taking over the game. Sark’s boys are ranked 22 in the AP Poll, their highest since 2003, and will have to play their tails off if they want to stay in the top 25.
SB Nation’s Bill Connelly broke down some offensive aspects of the game, pointing out UW’s balance on offense and charitable nature of QB Keith Price:
Washington generally strives for balance on standard downs. They run 62 percent of the time on such downs, right around the national average of 60 percent…the Cardinal rank 10th in Adj. Line Yards and first in Adj. Sack Rate and may possess the best defensive line in college football. The best way to keep a strong line off-balance is by mixing in quite a bit of quick passing
The run game is likely going to struggle, but since quick passes luckily are a large part of Keith Price’s game, that might be their best shot at getting points on the board against Stanford. Price loves to spread the wealth equally amongst Jermaine Kearse, James Johnson, Austin Seferian-Jenkins and Devin Aguilar, all of which have 15-20 targets apiece. Price is going to have to be hitting these guys a lot, especially in the end zone if the Huskies wan’t to keep up, because Luck shows no signs of slowing down.