Washington State Football Gameday Huddle: Stanford Cardinal

Welcome back to Gameday Coug fans! It’s been a long two weeks for me, so I can only imagine what it’s been like for everybody else. Did I ever mention I hate bye-weeks? But actually in this case I couldn’t have been happier with the timing and just the general idea that a bye week was in store. We’ve been drinking whiskey on the rocks ever since the conference schedule opened, so it’s just about time to open up a bottle of champaigne, am I right?

So yeah, about that, Stanford’s not exactly the “welcome back to football” party gift one would usually look for, but if we were ever going to have a shot at Stanford… I said it earlier in the week, but don’t underestimate this Crimson and Gray squad after Leach had 2 weeks to prepare for this. The team is confident that they know the Cardinal scheme and it’s just a matter of lining up with some balls and taking it to them. Don’t get me wrong, this is the part that gets really sketchy, because if you’ll remember we haven’t done that to anybody yet. The Palo Alto army is as good as anybody in physical play for 60 minutes, so it’s going to be a serious grind one way or another.

I’m probably much more excited than I should be for this game, but if you’re looking for hope (and I always am), I have a couple bullet points that might interest.

• Let’s look at the fact that San Jose and Washington really stuck it to these guys. The same Washington that just got mauled by Arizona, two weeks after the Cats came in and also gave Stanford all they could handle.
• Another fact is that this is the perfect trap game for Stanford after 4 grueling games against hyped and solid opponents. This should be their gear-down week, before blasting Colorado next week in their attempt to get ready for Oregon and Oregon St.
• One last point to make is that the Cardinal really haven’t seen anything Tuel has to offer. Sure, they have some sample sizes and some memories of a rusty version playing them last year, but I’m sure it will be a different story today. If the receivers can make some plays for us today, you just never know.

The game will be televised via the Pac-12 Networks at 3:30 today. We’ll also have someone tweeting as the game goes along, @allcougdup if you can’t get a feed or just want our live insight. Click here for pregame facts.