2009 Big Game Program: Late Interception Dooms Cardinal

But upon further inspection, almost as much blame is on Luck. If you look in the picture and watch some of the replays, Toby was in open space without a defender in front of him. Luck threw high, though, and subsequently saw the ball fly over his head straight into Mike Mohamed’s hands.

While Stanford should never have been in that position to begin with (they were up 14-0 and then let the Bears score 24 unanswered points), some blame should go to Luck for failing to read the coverage and see Mohamed literally right in front of him.

If I remember correctly, it was a 2nd and long and Stanford had no timeouts remaining, so if Toby ran the ball, there wasn’t any assurances that Stanford would be able to get into the endzone in time (there were about 90 seconds left on the clock). The Cardinal couldn’t stop the clock, they were down six, and Cal had basically shut down Toby’s run game after the half. The real frustrating part is that the defense wasn’t able to get a stop on Cal the drive before when they scored a FG, forcing Stanford to get a touchdown as opposed to simply go for the tie and decide it in overtime.