By Morris Phillips

For Kevin Hogan, this was undoubtedly the easy part.

The Stanford senior, playing “the best football of his career,” according to his coach David Shaw, carved up Maryland on Tuesday night, passing for 189 yards and two touchdowns, and running for 50 more, in the Cardinal’s 45-21 rout of the Terrapins in the Foster Farms Bowl at Levi’s Stadium.

Like acing a final exam after failing the mid-terms, Hogan saved his best for last, putting an extraordinarily positive spin on a season that for spoiled Stanford fans, was a disappointment.  The Cardinal fell five times to ranked opponents as the offense sputtered and a lot of the blame fell on the senior quarterback.

But in the final three games—wins over Cal, No. 8 UCLA and Maryland—all of Stanford’s problems found solutions.  Instead of failing in the second halves to mount any offense, Stanford did all the heavy lifting early, built double-digit halftime leads each time, and coasted just as their Rose Bowl/BCS-addicted fans expected all along.  Hogan was near perfect in each outing, capping a season in which he completed 66 percent of his passes, and threw 19 touchdown passes juxtaposed against eight interceptions for what became a difficult-to-stop balanced offense.

“We finished the season strong,” Hogan said.  “Just the season as a whole, we know how good we are.  It stinks that sometimes people look at the record and judge a team off that.”

Given his stellar conclusion to the season, now Hogan must tackle the hard part.  The Science, Tech and Society major is on schedule to graduate this spring, at which time he could pursue his dream of an NFL career, where he’s considered a late round draft pick.  Or he could return to the Farm for a fifth year as the centerpiece of a Top Ten team, conference title hopeful capable of achieving all the goals that Stanford failed to reach this season.

An agonizing decision awaits.  Hogan’s prospects for a long NFL career aren’t great, but they aren’t bad either.  Returning to school means he faces the lesser possibility that he could be bypassed by one of the promising signal callers already on campus in Evan Crower or current freshman Keller Chryst.

Luckily, Hogan has one big supporter in Shaw, who stuck with his senior after flirting with making a change midway through the season after the offense was near silent in close, bitter losses to USC and Notre Dame.  So what transpired to turn things around?

“We just played better,” Shaw said. “There is no magic to it. No secret plays. It will be said but it’s not because Ty Montgomery wasn’t there. We just played better. Kevin played the best football of his career. Our offensive line just gelled. Our pass protection early on was decent but in the last half of the season it was really, really good and allowed our quarterback to step up in the pocket.”

On Tuesday, Stanford came in a prohibitive two-touchdown favorite, playing in the nearby NFL facility just a couple of freeway exits from campus, and were gifted weather that any East Coast tourist would consider a cruel joke.  With the cool temperatures, and persistent wind, the smaller Terps were that tourist.  From Testudo, the shelled mascot to Bay Area transplant Athletic Director Kevin Anderson, the Maryland contingent looked shocked, probably close to calling their travel agents to complain about the chilly arrangements.

Maryland rushed for just 27 yards and managed only 12 first downs.  Defensively, the Terps couldn’t get any push up front and allowed Stanford too much balance.  The Cardinal passed for 208 yards, ran for 206.

The Cardinal took control with three consecutive touchdowns before halftime, all byproducts of Stanford’s seamless play at the line of scrimmage, where their offensive line bought Hogan time to run or pass, and Remound Wright the push for two short touchdown runs.

Wright’s third touchdown of the night–all from close range–put Stanford up 21-7.  But the Cardinal didn’t stop there, using a 10-play drive to wear down Maryland before the half.  Hogan did it all on that drive: passing, scrambling with spin moves and showing touch and arm strength on the post slant to Devon Cajuste that put Stanford ahead 28-7 with 1:55 remaining.

Wright, acting as the team’s long sought focal point in the run game, scored nine of his 11 touchdowns in the last three games.  Christian McCaffrey may be the future star at the position; the freshman contributed 138 all-purpose yards, including a pair of hair-raising punt returns.  Barry Sanders, Kelsey Young are also in the 2015 backfield mix, for what should be a Stanford team stacked in lot of areas.

“I think we’ve recruited really well.  We have a lot of guys coming back that are chomping at the bit,” Shaw gushed.

And while Shaw waits to see which players opt for the NFL or return, he’s anticipating new faces to emerge in spring drills as well.  The Stanford defense, ranked second nationally in points allowed, won’t have disruptive Henry Anderson or Foster Farms Bowl MVP James Vaughters but Shaw envisions younger defensive players eventually becoming just as good.

Hogan could be the key.  He’s the only Stanford starting quarterback to win two bowl games, and possesses an unflappable visage causing Shaw to term him his “foxhole guy.”  The senior recently lost his father to cancer and reportedly never changed his routine or truncated his preparation for Maryland. Hogan’s focus made an impression on Shaw as well as his teammates.

“He’s a fighter,” Shaw said.  “He’s never going to back down from a challenge.”

Hogan prepped in Washington D.C. and was raised in suburban Virginia.  He knows a bunch of the Maryland players, almost all of whom Hogan admitted, got the best of him in high school.  So this was the payback, one smart quarterback decision after another until Shaw took Hogan out after three quarters with the outcome clear.

“It gave me a little bit of a boost to get extra prepared,” Hogan said.

NOTES: Stanford’s run defense allowed Maryland 17 yards on 27 carries… Maryland’s Stefon Diggs missed several games due to injury, but returned Tuesday with 10 catches for 138 yards… Stanford had never scored as many as 45 points in a bowl game… CBS Sports theorized that if Maryland gave Stanford a close game or won, standout cornerback/return man William Likely would have to contribute a touchdown on a defensive or special teams return.  Likely did, a 100-yard kickoff return, but that merely sliced into Stanford’s 42-7 lead early in the fourth quarter