Stewart Second To None In Cougars Secondary
When Duane Stewart first set foot on the football practice field at Washington State in the fall of 1993, he must have felt like he had just landed in Oz.
Herded into a corner with the rest of Washington State’s defensive backs, the 6-foot-3, 208-pounder, was surrounded by a bunch of munchkins.
There was Torey Hunter, John Rushing, Greg Burns and Singor Mobley, a quartet of immensely talented - but under-sized - defensive backs that then-secondary coach Mike Zimmer called his “Smurfs.”
Mobley, at 6-foot and 178 pounds, was the biggest of the four. None of the others stood taller than 5-10 and Stewart was wondering if there was, indeed, some method to Zimmer’s recruiting madness.
“I couldn’t figure it out,” explained Stewart, who is bigger than most of the linebackers WSU has used in recent years. “They had recruited all of this short guys and all of a sudden they have this big tall dude. I was, like, where do I fit in with all of this?
“I was the tallest guy here, but I was fourth-string and all of these shorter guys were in front of me. I was wondering if I was going to be able to make it.”
It took awhile.
Stewart redshirted as a true freshman and lettered as a special teams player last fall as WSU went 8-4 and beat Baylor 10-3 in the Alamo Bowl.
He was a backup at the start of the this season. But when the Cougars (2-0 in the Pacific-10 Conference and 3-2 overall) kick it off against fifthranked Southern California (3-0, 5-0) in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon, Stewart will start at strong safety.
A self-confessed “run-conscious” defender, Stewart brings a new dimension - size - to the WSU secondary, along with a big-hit threat that could strike a slight hint of fear into USC’s running backs.
When asked if he relishes contact, Stewart enthusiastically replied, “Yes, I do!
“That’s what you play football for,” he added. “You don’t play just to go up and touch ‘em on the shoulder and hope they fall down. We’ve got helmets, we’ve got shoulder pads, we’ve got all this stuff on to protect us, so we might as well use it.
“I use mine to hit people, and if they don’t like it, they can stop playing.”
Cougar secondary coach Craig Bray, who replaced Zimmer prior to the start of the 1994 season, calls Stewart a “good” hitter.
“But he’s going to become a deadly hitter,” Bray said. “He’s a good solid tackler, but he can become more devastating. He just needs to spend more time in the weight room.”
Finding time to lift has been a problem for Stewart. Since arriving at WSU in the fall of 1993 he has been unable to divorce himself from this first love - baseball.
Last spring he received permission from coach Mike Price to try out for the Cougar baseball team. He ended up starting 27 games for Steve Farrington’s Pacific-10 Conference North Division champions, but struggled at the plate, hitting a meager .155.
However, Stewart, who was forced to juggle baseball and spring football, emerged during the spring football season as one of the Cougars’ hardest hitters and smartest defenders.
Still, Stewart came into fall camp as the No. 2 strong safety behind junior Derek Henderson. He stayed there for the first two games. It was during the bye week that followed WSU’s 38-21 win over Montana that Henderson was moved to free safety, replacing Terrell Henderson, and Stewart was promoted to a starter.
He responded with an inspired effort in the Cougars’ 24-15 win over UCLA, momentarily knocking the Bruins’ top two quarterbacks - Ryan Fien and Cade McNown - out of the game with vicious hits on safety blitzes.
He has been a starter ever since and will enter Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. showdown against USC as WSU’s eighth-leading tackler with 20 tackles and two pass deflections.
“He’s just made a helluva difference back there,” Bray admitted. “He mentally picks things up better than any of them back there, so he’s kind of become a leader in the sense of making the calls.
“At times, you look at him and he doesn’t look like he’s very fast, but he covers a lot of ground. I hope he never outgrows it back there, because I’m really happy with what he’s done.”
Stewart considered giving up football after moving from the Los Angeles area to Ontario, Calif., at the start of his freshman year. And it wasn’t until the last half of his sophomore year that he finally earned a starting position as a defensive end. By his senior year Oregon, WSU and UCLA were expressing interest in offering him a scholarship.
The Bruins eventually backed off and Stewart ended up picking the Cougars over the Ducks.
As he looks back on his decision, he admits there are times when he thinks about the Rose Bowl ring he would be wearing right now had he signed with UO.
“But I don’t think about it too long,” he added. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather be in Pullman than Eugene. Sure, a Rose Bowl ring would be fine and everything, but I feel like we can get one here.”
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