PASADENA, Calif. — The first time Christian McCaffrey touched the ball in the Rose Bowl, he took it 75 yards for a touchdown. A few hundred yards later, Stanford’s sophomore star had smashed the oldest bowl game’s record for all-purpose yards while leading the Cardinal to a blowout win over Iowa.
Sure, McCaffrey didn’t win the Heisman Trophy, and Stanford barely missed out on the College Football Playoff.
McCaffrey and the mighty Cardinal are still headed into the new year with the Pac-12 champions’ most coveted postseason trophy — and the brightest of futures.
McCaffrey caught a touchdown pass on the opening snap and returned a punt 66 yards for another touchdown while racking up 368 all-purpose yards, propelling No. 5 Stanford to a 45-16 victory over the sixth-ranked Hawkeyes on Friday.
Three-time Rose Bowl starter Kevin Hogan, from McLean, Virginia, passed for 223 yards and three touchdowns in his final game for the Cardinal (12-2) as this unlikely Bay Area football powerhouse won the Rose Bowl for the second time in three trips over the past four years.
“It’s so fun when a team can come together,” McCaffrey said. “We’ve got a bunch of fighters on this team that will never give up. Just love playing with these guys.”
McCaffrey was sublime in his Rose Bowl debut, breaking the all-purpose yards record set by Wisconsin’s Jared Abbrederis in 2012. McCaffrey finished second behind Alabama’s Derrick Henry in the Heisman Trophy voting, but the speedy running back turned in one of the most dynamic performances in the Rose Bowl’s lengthy history.
“I think he was the best player in America before this game, so I think it’s just the icing on the cake,” Stanford coach David Shaw said. “I do think it’s a shame that a lot of people didn’t get to see him during the course of the year. Apparently the games were too late.”
The world was wide awake to see McCaffrey in Pasadena — and he scored 11 seconds in. Hogan’s throw to McCaffrey was the second-longest touchdown pass in Rose Bowl history and the longest play given up all season by the stingy Iowa defense.
“I wouldn’t say I was in shock, [but] it was like, ’Dang, already?’” Stanford left tackle Kyle Murphy said. “I knew they haven’t seen a player of his caliber all year, someone with speed like that. With all the Heisman stuff, he felt really snubbed. He’s not going to say anything about it, but all of us, we know. He’s the best player in the country. It lit a fire under him, although he’s already the hardest-working man and most motivated man.”
McCaffrey finished with 172 rushing yards, 105 receiving yards and 91 yards on kickoff returns, putting an appropriate cap on the season in which he set the NCAA record for all-purpose yards. He also became the first player ever to rack up more than 100 rushing yards and 100 receiving yards in a Rose Bowl — and he even became the single-season rushing leader in Stanford history with 2,109 yards on the ground.
Stanford and Iowa finished in the final two spots outside the College Football Playoff field, but the Cardinal showed they belong among the best with their 12th win in their final 13 games.
With a powerful offensive line and a sturdy defense, they also ruined the first Rose Bowl in 25 years for the Hawkeyes (12-2), who followed up their remarkable 12-0 regular season with two postseason losses.
C.J. Beathard passed for 239 yards and two fourth-quarter touchdowns for the Hawkeyes, whose thousands of fans proudly filled the venerable stadium with old gold and black. The faithful had painfully little to cheer after Iowa fell behind on the first snap, putting a daylong damper on Kirk Ferentz’s first Rose Bowl after 17 years as a head coach.
“Just like this game won’t define this team, one play doesn’t define a game,” Ferentz said. “We had ample opportunity after that to play, but they played a tremendous game in all phases.”
The Cardinal had the highest-scoring first quarter and first half in the Rose Bowl’s lengthy history. After McCaffrey’s opening touchdown, Hogan rushed eight yards for a touchdown and Quenton Meeks returned an interception 66 yards for another touchdown in the first 11 minutes.
Iowa had never trailed by more than seven points at any point in its magical season, which included the first 12-0 start in school history before a narrow loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten title game. The rout was really on after McCaffrey made his 63-yard touchdown return in the opening minute of the second, juking Iowa middle linebacker Josey Jewell on the way.
“He’s a guy that can move around you, make quick cuts,” Jewell said. “He has the breakaway speed, and he’s a great running back overall.”
Stanford even got creative — or cruel, depending on your perspective. Hogan appeared to fake a fumbled handoff to McCaffrey in the second quarter before popping up and throwing to an untouched Michael Rector for a 31-yard touchdown reception, making it 35-0 at halftime.
The play has a name: Hawkeye.
Iowa avoided a shutout on Marshall Koehn’s 39-yard field goal in the third quarter, prompting huge cheers and a confetti shower from the Hawkeyes’ band. Matt VandeBerg and Akrum Wadley caught Beathard’s late scoring passes.
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