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The biggest hit to Andrew Luck's Heisman Trophy campaign this season might have come from his own teammates.
Stanford's running game has quietly been one of the nation's best the past few years despite often being overshadowed by Luck's passing. But after setting a school record with 446 yards rushing in a 65-21 throttling of former No. 22 Washington, the Cardinal running backs now might have a hard time hiding.
Same goes for the entire program.
Stanford climbed to No. 4 in the AP poll on Sunday after losses by Oklahoma and Wisconsin. With a stable of running backs leading the way and an offensive line as powerful as any, Luck appears to have all the help he needs heading into a big matchup at No. 20 Southern California on Saturday night.
''We're more than just Andrew Luck,'' Stanford coach David Shaw said. ''We've got a good team. We've got a physical team. We've got backs after backs. We can play both styles of football.''
Stanford's running backs gave Luck some rest to extend the nation's longest winning streak to 15 games. Stepfan Taylor ran for 138 yards, Tyler Gaffney 117 yards and Anthony Wilkerson 93 yards to help break the previous team mark of 439 in a victory over Oregon State in 1981 - when John Elway was the Cardinal's quarterback.
Stanford is averaging 219 yards on the ground per game, second only to Oregon (323 yards) in the Pac-12 and 17th overall in the country. Not bad for a team often considered a pass-first offense because of Luck's talents.
''It's been out there every game,'' Taylor said. ''The offensive lineman, the fullbacks and the tight ends get off the ball. You just follow your aiming point. The holes are there.''
The balanced offense is perhaps the biggest reason the Cardinal have run away from opponents.
Stanford has won each of its past 10 games by at least 25 points, eclipsing Boise State's mark of nine in a row in 2002. And unlike the Broncos, all of Stanford's victories - with the exception of the season opener against San Jose State - have come against teams from BCS conferences.
''They wear you out and they wear you down,'' said Huskies coach Steve Sarkisian, whose team had been off to the program's best start in more than a decade until getting run over on The Farm.
No matter what happens next week at USC, the romp against the Huskies almost guarantees that the Nov. 12 matchup versus Oregon at Stanford Stadium will decide the North's representative in the inaugural Pac-12 championship game - and perhaps the last major hurdle to a BCS title game berth.
While Luck only threw 21 passes against Washington, he still put his stamp on the offense.
Luck has complete play-calling authority, and Shaw insisted his quarterback should get credit for all of the big runs. Luck said reading running plays is a ''mental challenge'' he craves and he even broke away from his usually unending humbleness, joking, ''I give myself a little credit sometimes.''
After all, Shaw said, it was Luck making most of the final calls.
''Andrew's the coach on the field. That phrase gets completely overused, but Andrew is the truth of it,'' Shaw said. ''If I felt like showing you my call sheet, which I don't, you could see that every single play we have on the call sheet has one play killed to another play, or one play killed to a second play or killed to a third play. And on every single play you can audible to a fourth or fifth play. He has it all on his fingertips, and every single play he got us to the right play.''
All four of Stanford's running backs scored against the Huskies, too.
Taylor and Gaffney each ran for a touchdown and Wilkerson had two against Washington, including a 38-yard scamper with 1:25 remaining in the fourth quarter that gave Stanford the most yards rushing in a single game in school history. Jeremy Stewart ran for a 2-yard TD on Stanford's first possession.
After the Huskies closed within 17-14 in the second quarter, Taylor ripped through a seam on Stanford's next play from scrimmage, running 70 yards untouched for a touchdown. Gaffney, anchoring the wildcat formation, had runs of 14 and 34 yards before capping off Stanford's first drive of the second half with a 4-yard TD run.
Taylor and Gaffney became the 10th running back duo in school history to rush for 100 yards in the same game. While Luck threw for only 169 yards and two touchdowns, he couldn't have been happier with the outcome.
''As a quarterback, it's real fun to get the snap, hand it off and see those big guys work,'' Luck said. ''And it's somewhat of a thing of beauty to see those 300-pounders move on their feet.''
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Follow Antonio Gonzalez at: www.twitter.com/agonzalezAP
