Rose Bowl: Stanford, McCaffrey rout Iowa 45-16

“That’s what great players do”.

Hogan earned win No. 36, more than any quarterback in school history. The junior was 21-for-33 for 239 yards, with one interception and seven sacks. The Cardinal extended the lead to 35-0 when Michael Rector caught a 31-yard pass from Kevin Hogan and cruised into the end zone without a defender covering him.

“I think he was the best player in America before this game”, Stanford coach David Shaw said, “so I think it’s just the icing on the cake for us. It would be good to say “we were pretty good and this is a good team”. “We weren’t really expected to do this well coming into the year and just to win 11 games and how we did it and being able to be undefeated going into the Big Ten title game was something that I’m sure all Iowa fans will be proud of”. “He had it going and it was tough for us to stop it”. “We understand that we didn’t play at all the way we’re capable of this game so it’s tough to beat a team like that”.

Senior center Austin Blythe says they started the game out too slowly. OSU rolled up 496 yards of total offense and finished 12-1 while dropping the Fighting Irish to 10-3. And that helps setup the passing game for C.J. Beathard, who has the arm strength to go deep.

“For us to dominate up front and prove to people in the Big Ten that we can scrap with them, get down and dirty with them, that means a lot”. The first ended in a three-and-out after the Irish lost eight yards, and the second in a Darron Lee strip of Kizer.

Hogan then showed off his elusiveness on a TD run to cap a 74-yard drive, and Meeks erased Iowa’s first solid drive with a TD interception return down the Stanford sideline. In three career postseason games, Beathard is 52-of-82 for 600 yards and five touchdowns. J.T. Barrett passed for 211 yards and a touchdown and rushed for 96 yards as Ohio State opened a 28-7 lead in the second quarter, the largest deficit Notre Dame faced this season.

Dobbs scored on runs 14 and 18 yards, and Jalen Hurd ran for 130 yards and one touchdown for the Volunteers (9-4). “But really, the whole defense played great”. By the time the ball was in his hands, it was already too late for the poor Iowa defensive back, who was thoroughly beaten by the running back’s hesitation move. “It worked to perfection”.

Stanford’s defense put on its own dazzling performance, keeping the Hawkeyes off the scoreboard in the first half for the first time all season. The Cardinal sacked Beathard seven times for 51 yards. Hogan, Stanford’s all-time leader in rushing yards by a quarterback, also scored once on a keeper. It was, after all, a team who went 12-0 during the regular season against a Pac-12 champion that boasted the nation’s most dynamic player. He also caught three passes for 60 yards (all in the fourth quarter) with a 31-yard touchdown.

The majority of those in attendance were Iowa supporters who, like many fans across the country – like the Hawkeyes themselves – got their first in-depth look at McCaffrey.

Don Shipanik was an offensive lineman and linebacker on the Iowa Hawkeyes 57 years ago.

The game got so boring and one sided that the only excitement besides McCaffery was the Stanford band. Sure, McCaffrey had broken Barry Sanders’ record single-season all-purpose yards record, but Henry carried the load for Alabama, rushing for more than 2,000 yards and 23 scores, 15 more than McCaffrey, while guiding the Crimson Tide to a second-straight appearance in the College Football Playoff. McCaffery finished with 2,019 to break Toby Gerhart’s record of 1,871 set in 2009….

Stanford began its dominance on the first play from scrimmage.