Aztecs Drop Season Opener at Stanford 31-10

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Credit: Stanford

Palo Alto, California

San Diego State opened its 2018 football campaign, on Friday night, at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto against the 13th ranked Cardinal.

SDSU came into the game as 14.5 point underdog, but played much better and for the first 30 minutes of the game San Diego State simply outplayed Stanford.

The game started quite well for the Aztecs as Stanford drove all the way down to the Aztecs 21 yard line, but missed a 38-yard field goal. After a couple of punts by both teams, San Diego State got the ball back and Juwan Washington broke a couple of big runs for the team. He eventually got into the end zone on 4-yard TD run.

Stanford got on the scoreboard thanks to their defense, as they sacked QB Christian Chapman in his own end zone for a safety. It looked that the game would go to half time with the Aztecs up 7-2, but Stanford QB KJ Costello connected on a 38-yard touchdown pass with just 27 seconds to go in the half. That gave Stanford a 9-7 advantage at the break.

At this point it looked as though SDSU was very much in the football game, but the second half would be a different story. The Aztecs got the ball to start the second half and went three and out to give the ball right back to Stanford. The Cardinal then went to work on the young Aztecs’ secondary. After a couple of penalties against the Aztecs, Stanford found the end zone to go up 16-7. They did not look back.

The second half truly belonged to the Cardinal, as they limited the Aztecs to just a field goal, Stanford would go on to score two more touchdowns before the night was through making the final score 31-10 for the home team. The secondary was victimized plenty of times on the night.

The game really was much closer than the score indicates, as the Aztecs held Heisman favorite Bryce Love to just 29 yards on 18 carries. At the end of the night penalties and horrible miscues were simply too much for the Aztecs to overcome.

Now it’s time for the Aztecs to turn the page and look to their home opener against Sacramento State next Saturday at SDCCU Stadium. The loss was a tough, but there are plenty of positives and I fully expect coach Rocky Long to correct the miscues and get the team right.

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