Heroic Hogan dismantles No. 8 UCLA in Pasadena

This was supposed to be UCLA’s year. Experts were predicting that the Bruins would win the Pac-12, crash the College Football Playoff and maybe even claim a national title. But even after those dreams seemed to be lost after a forgettable start, against all odds, UCLA pushed through a chaotic conference to the top of the Pac-12 South, with only a struggling Stanford team standing between it and a shot at the conference title.

But given how crazy the Pac-12 has been this year, of course it wasn’t so easy. Because the Bruins weren’t counting on Kevin Hogan having his finest hour in a Cardinal uniform on Friday at the Rose Bowl.

Hogan had renewed zip on his ball. He had unprecedented pocket presence. He was finding open receivers all over the field. His throws were on the money. He even threw in some stiff arms and hurdles on his runs. In all, he looked like the quarterback that Stanford fans had been expecting to see in 2014.

Junior wide receiver Michael Rector (left) reels in a 22-yard touchdown pass from Hogan in the second quarter. He finished the game with two catches for 27 yards. (KAREN AMBROSE HICKEY/stanfordphoto.com)

And in the end, behind another stellar defensive effort and über-Hogan, the No. 8 Bruins (9-3, 6-3 Pac-12) saw their postseason hopes shattered by Stanford (7-5, 5-4) as the Cardinal dominated in a 31-10 romp in Pasadena and beat UCLA for the seventh straight time.

Hogan didn’t seem to mind missing his top receiver in senior Ty Montgomery all too much. In fact, after having issues with staring down Montgomery and keying defenses in on his throws all season, Hogan had a field day spreading the ball around and keeping the UCLA secondary on its heels.

“It looked like [Hogan] finally just played,” receiver Devon Cajuste said. “It looked like he found his love of the game.”

The Bruins just couldn’t stop him in the first half, when he went 14-of-15 for 189 yards and two touchdowns, with his only incompletion being a beautiful deep ball to Michael Rector that was dropped by the junior wideout.

And in his completions, he used his receivers’ diverse skill sets to his advantage — something that had been missing for most of the season as well. He moved the chains with short passes to Austin Hooper, Jordan Pratt and Francis Owusu. And the deep ball — boy, did the deep ball come back in full force.

On his first touchdown, Hogan found Rector open down the sideline on an out-and-up in which he burned his cornerback and pocketed a perfectly floated ball into the corner of the end zone for a 22-yard score.

And then on the second, he saw pressure from his right, sidestepped it and threw up a ball for senior Devon Cajuste in the end zone, hoping that the big wideout would out-size the defense and come down with the ball. He easily did, for a 37-yard touchdown. That gave Stanford a 21-10 lead going into halftime that it never came close to relinquishing.

Senior wide receiver Devon Cajuste (left) beats two UCLA defenders to catch Hogan’s second touchdown pass of the afternoon, a 37-yard bomb that put Stanford up by two scores by the half. (KAREN AMBROSE HICKEY/stanfordphoto.com)

In the second half, Hogan only threw the ball four times — he didn’t really need to, with senior Remound Wright and freshman Christian McCaffrey punching holes through UCLA’s rush defense.

Credit should also go to the gameplan that head coach David Shaw and the Stanford staff drew up; McCaffrey was used often as both a decoy and as the explosive playmaker that he is capable of being, and they took advantage of the off-balance UCLA defense with a good balance of creativity and power in mixing in lots of different looks on both runs and passes.

The offensive line also played one of the best games of its season, remaining largely penalty-free and paving the way for 202 rushing yards against a ferocious UCLA front seven — the second-highest total of the year after a 204-yard show in the Big Game. It also did not allow a sack of Hogan and gave him plenty of time to throw all afternoon.

“I’d say it’s the best game that everyone has played all year,” Cajuste said. “There was finally a time when Stanford played all four quarters in all three phases of the game, so it’s great to see an improvement not just from Hogan, but everyone else.”

The numbers speak for themselves: The Cardinal outgained the Bruins 436-262 in total yardage, went 9-of-14 on third downs and were even a perfect 3-of-3 in the red zone, to boot.

And even though we’ve almost come to take it for granted now, lots of credit needs to be given to the Stanford defense. Let this sink in for a moment: Stanford held the explosive UCLA offense to season-lows in yards (262), yards per play (3.9), rushing yards (100), passing yards (162) and points (10).

Led up front by the ferocious fifth-year senior tandem of Henry Anderson and David Parry, who combined for 2.5 sacks and 3.5 tackles for loss, the Cardinal made sure that Brett Hundley’s senior day was one to forget, limiting him to the third-worst passing output of his career while notching five sacks.

Fifth-year senior defensive end Henry Anderson (right) sacks UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley. The Cardinal defense notched five sacks and even intercepted a fake field goal pass from Hundley’s backup, Jerry Neuheisel. (KAREN AMBROSE HICKEY/stanfordphoto.com)

In the end, Hundley will likely join fellow Los Angeles-area passer Matt Barkley as quarterbacks that will leave their schools never having beaten Stanford. Hogan, meanwhile, became the first Cardinal quarterback in the program’s history to beat UCLA four times.

It’s the most complete performance that this year’s Stanford team has given its fans by far — against a championship-caliber opponent, no less. Now, we finally know what Stanford’s ceiling has truly been all season — poor execution just got in the way of what could have been.

But if anything, it was a promising indication of what this team is capable of to close out its season in its bowl game — and perhaps even beyond, if Hogan chooses to return for a fifth year.

“Forget about what’s happened in the past: This game was indicative of how we want to play,” Shaw said. “Hopefully, we will carry this on into the bowl game.”

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dpark027 ‘at’ stanford.edu.