Keith Lewis’ reaction to the statistic said it better than any reporter ever could.
“Wow,” Lewis said, after he was told that Sun Devil quarterback Andrew Walter had just passed for 536 yards against the free safety and the rest of the Oregon secondary.
Lewis only continued after a long pause.
“I’m stunned. You can never give up 500 yards, I don’t care who you are. You can be the All-Madden team, I don’t care.”
At times during the second half of Arizona State’s 45-42 win on Saturday, it seemed like the Sun Devils were playing a video game against the Ducks. And they had it set to “easy” mode.
Walter led ASU on eight-straight scoring drives, beginning in the second quarter and ending with the game-winning 29-yard field goal from Mike Barth with 1:58 hanging on the clock. That string included Walter touchdown passes of 67 and 58 yards. Two other short touchdowns were set up by long Walter passes, a 51-yard bomb to Derek Hagan and a 34-yard pass to Matt Miller.
Walter, the fearless sophomore who didn’t even start Arizona State’s first game this season, set a Pacific-10 Conference pass-yards record in the Devils’ wild win.
“Andrew hung in there for us today,” Arizona State head coach Dirk Koetter said. “He didn’t get off to a great start, and he was a little off-balance, but we protected him better as the game went on.”
The Ducks said that protection was the main reason for Walter’s success as the game went on.
“They were max-protecting most of the time,” Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said. “And their quarterback just got hot.”
Walter was hot in the second half, like an Arizona brush fire sweeping through Autzen Stadium. He threw for 350 yards on 17 completions in the second half, tossing three of his four touchdowns in that frame. In the third quarter alone, Walter was 7-for-10 passing for 197 yards.
Like UCLA last week, Arizona State was able to break Oregon’s back with big passing plays. The Devils abandoned the running game midway through the contest — ASU running back Cornell Canidate rushed for 24 yards in the second half, 47 yards total — and won the game through the air.
“They were better throwin’ it than we were defendin’ it,” Oregon defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti said. “(Walter’s) a good quarterback, as all the guys in this league are.”
True to Aliotti’s words, Walter is not the last big-play quarterback the Ducks will see this season. USC’s Carson Palmer, Washington State’s Jason Gesser and Washington’s Cody Pickett are among the bomb-throwing quarterbacks that the Ducks will defend later this season.
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