Well, that was a boring football game. Stanford emerges from Husky Stadium with a 41-0 win, a 7-1 record, and a very good chance to be back in the AP poll’s top ten with a win next week on the Farm against Arizona. Although the story of this afternoon’s game was quite simple–Stanford played well and Washington played horrendously–there are several points worth discussing. We provide them to you here:

• Andrew Luck had his best rushing game of the season, in running for 92 yards and a touchdown on 5 carries. Luck’s performance on the ground today invokes memories of his running performances early in the season against UCLA and Wake Forest, in games where the Cardinal were as dominant as they were against Washington today.
• Stepfan Taylor‘s 104 rushing yards mark the 4th consecutive game in which he has run for over 100 yards. Tyler Gaffney also returned after an injury that kept him out of the previous 3 games, and contributed 50 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries.
• The Card defense sacked Washington quarterback Jake Locker 3 times, 2 of which came at the hands of senior defensive end Matthew Masifilo. Linebacker Chase Thomas, who led Stanford with 9 tackles on the afternoon, had the other sack.
• Locker’s 64 passing yards, 2 interceptions, and 0 touchdowns on 7-14 throwing provides further evidence that the Washington signal caller may be be cut out to be an NFL franchise quarterback. Do give Locker some credit, though: his offensive line gave him insufficient pass blocking, the Washington run game never took off (Washington’s leading rusher, sophomore Chris Polk, managed a measly 17 yards) and Locker is still nursing serious rib cage problems.
• Nearly 70,000 people entered Husky Stadium to watch the Cardinal-Husky match-up. At halftime, Washington football beat writer Bob Condotta tweeted that only about 20,000 were still in the stadium.
• The Stanford defense put up what was easily their best defensive performance of the season, and the first good one since the Notre Dame game on September 25 in South Bend.
• There were 3 penalties in this game for a combined 25 yards. Stanford was responsible for just one of those (although Michael Thomas got away with a blatant pass interference early in the game and then taunted the crowd about it) which poses a stark contrast to the Cardinal’s penalty-ridden performance during last week’s Washington State game.
• Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian–the offensive guru responsible for much of USC’s success when he coordinated the Trojan offense from 2007-08–won’t sleep well in Seattle tonight.

Related Posts:

• Postgame Report Card: Stanford-Washington (2010)
• Predicting Stanford-Washington (2010)
• Quick Reads: Stanford-Washington