Washington Struggles With Little Things Against Stanford

The Huskies had a lot of uncharacteristic miscues in Palo Alto.

For the second straight week, the Washington Huskies escaped an inferior opponent with a closer-than-expected win. Despite a flurry of miscues, coach Kalen DeBoer's team was able to pull out a 42-33 win over the Stanford Cardinal.

After turning the ball over four times against the Arizona State Sun Devils a week ago, the Huskies were nearly doomed by back-to-back turnovers in the fourth quarter in Palo Alto.

The first came on a fumble from wide receiver Rome Odunze, who had the ball punched out while the Huskies were in the red zone looking to go up by multiple possessions. 

The second came on another attempt to stretch the lead, as quarterback Michael Penix Jr. had a pass tipped while looking for Odunze in the end zone and it fell into the arms of Stanford cornerback Zahran Manley for an interception.

However, turnovers weren't all that Washington struggled with on Saturday.

Washington was penalized seven times for 77 yards on Saturday, including a few calls that seemed questionable at best from the Pac-12 officiating crew. The defense was responsible for five of the flags and extended multiple drives for Stanford resulting in touchdowns.

The offense wasn't perfect either, struggling with play clock management different points on the day. Even though Penix returned to form while battling the flu, throwing for 369 yards and 4 touchdowns, he looked rushed for multiple reasons.

While facing interior pressure for a second straight week, Washington snapped the ball late in the play clock throughout the game. Difficulties getting the play call in resulted in a delay of game penalty and what seemed to be overall confusion from the offense at multiple points during the game.

LETS GO DEV 😤🚨 pic.twitter.com/Q8nkrENlvq

— Washington Football (@UW_Football) October 29, 2023

Penix's stat line looked good at the end of the day, but it could have been a lot better. Washington's receivers were credited with just 2 drops on the official stat sheet, but they mishandled 4 or 5 passes from Penix that could have changed the game.

The normally sure-handed Ja'Lynn Polk had 2 drops while Odunze and Jalen McMillan both let a ball slip through their hands too. As if the mishandled balls didn't hurt the receivers enough, McMillan also had to leave the game in the first quarter after an aborted attempt to return from the injury he suffered against Michigan State.

DeBoer's team has a lot of things to work on before taking to the road once again next weekend to face the USC Trojans in Los Angeles.

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