PULLMAN – After four games Connor Halliday leads the nation in passing yards and that’s a fact that surprises nobody. As the quarterback of Washington State’s Air Raid offense Halliday is going to throw as much as possible, and the Spokane native proved last year that he’s capable of putting up numbers that seem eye-popping even in WSU’s pass-heavy system.
Likewise, the fact that Oregon’s Marcus Mariota is No. 1 nationally in passing efficiency isn’t going to give many pundits cardiac arrest. But the fact that he’s just ahead of Utah’s Travis Wilson, who ranks No. 3, might drop a few jaws.
The tops of national statistical lists are littered with Pac-12 players and if the conference doesn’t have the leader in a given statistical category than almost certainly it has a representative in the top five.
Utah’s Kaelin Clay leads the nation with three total kicks returned for touchdowns. Arizona State’s D.J. Foster ranks No. 5 nationally with 170.0 rushing yards per game.
Nobody has broken up more passes in a game than WSU’s Daquawn Brown, who had five in the Cougars’ win over Portland State. And nobody has completed more passes in a game than the 47 Arizona’s Anu Solomon did against California.
Seemingly every Pac-12 team has at least one superlative player that even the conference’s best teams must take special notice of.
This week Stanford’s offensive line faces national sack leader Danny Shelton from Washington. Even if Shelton isn’t able to add to his six sacks it’s no guarantee that the Huskies weren’t able to get to the Cardinal quarterback – teammate Hau’oli Kikaha is tied for No. 2 with five sacks.
“It’s the biggest challenge we’ve had to date,” Stanford coach David Shaw said. “We thought USC was extremely good, they had one superstar (Leonard Williams) with a bunch of good players. These guys have two superstars and a bunch of good players. It’s a challenge because somebody is going to have to block those guys one-on-one periodically.”
Halliday’s success throwing the ball has naturally led to some pretty big numbers for the guys who catch it, and receiver Isiah Myers ranks ninth nationally with 424 receiving yards, and is tied for third with five receiving touchdowns.
The only players ahead of Myers in the latter category are Arizona’s Caleb Jones, who has six receiving touchdowns, and Colorado’s Nelson Spruce, who has seven.
Pac-12 playoff
Last weekend the highest-ranked Pac-12 team, Oregon, eked out a win against Washington State, the first conference team to lose three games. It wasn’t a fluky game in any regard, Halliday passed for 436 yards and four touchdowns, while the Cougars defense sacked Mariota seven times.
“I have a lot of respect for Mariota and I have a lot of respect for Connor,” WSU coach Mike Leach said on Tuesday. “Connor had a better day than Mariota did.”
The game illustrated the league-wide parity that makes navigating the Pac-12 this year difficult for even the most talent-laden teams.
“Many of us talked about that openly, and we’ve talked about it privately,” Shaw said. “It’s going to be difficult to go through our conference unscathed because everybody is going to have three really tough games in a row and then that fourth game, you’re going to look up and you might be tired, you might be gassed and somebody’s going to be gunning for you.”
It’s very possible, if not probable, that the eventual Pac-12 champion will have one or more losses.
Leach says that it’s “inconceivable” that a team could win the Pac-12 and not be given the opportunity to compete in the playoff for a national title, and that the flaw will eventually lead to a greater number of playoff teams.
Shaw said that if those losses prevent the conference’s best team from taking part in the inaugural four-team college football playoff, then the Pac-12 coaches will tell commissioner Larry Scott that they want to start easier nonconference schedules.
Leach said that teams already don’t help their chances by scheduling more matchups against tough opponents.
“All this strength of schedule right now, all it is, is rhetoric, and it’s nothing more than rhetoric,” Leach said. “Strength of schedule and then some guy, who nobody knows where he’s at and he’s got a computer somewhere in some place known only to him, which evaluates strength of schedule. They’ve never considered strength of schedule, it’s a fact.”
