By: Ben Leonard
Follow @ben___leonard

photo credit: oregonlive.com Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan in action

LOS ANGELES–Stanford’s Rose Bowl hopes could have ended on a bright Saturday morning in Evanston. The heavily favored Cardinal had all the confidence in the world heading into a game against unranked Northwestern — until they stepped on the field. 

Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong — the offense sputtered to score just six points, accrued needless penalties, and turned the ball over twice. Even Heisman finalist Christian McCaffrey was bottled up, rushing for just 66 yards.

 Not exempt from the team’s struggles was fifth-year senior quarterback and team captain, Kevin Hogan, who posted the second lowest yards per attempt mark in his career. Back then, nobody would have guessed that the Cardinal would be playing the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Rose Bowl on Friday.

Hogan expressed disappointment after the loss, one that had made many believe the Cardinal were in for a long season: “It was very disappointing, just because we knew we were such a better team than that. And we were playing a great Northwestern team, and there’s a lot of things going against us that day, but we still feel like we could have executed better and worked our game plan better.”

The team’s leader could have given up — but Hogan doesn’t know how to quit. The week after the crushing loss, the captain rallied his troops, gathering the team with his fellow captains.  Hogan and his captains that told the Cardinal not to lay down. To get back to work. Not to quit.

Hogan knows a fair amount about dealing with adversity. For all of last season, Hogan knew that his father was dying of cancer, but none of his teammates or coaches knew until the very end, when he passed away after the end of the regular season.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hogan explained how the loss changed him: “It changes your mind-set on a lot of things; it changes your perspective. At the end of the day, it’s just a game we’re playing. You have to treat it that way. Have fun with it, relax. You can’t tense up. That’s what I’ve been trying to do all year, and I feel comfortable out there. I’m never nervous.”

So when Hogan and the other captains told the team not to quit, they listened. As Hogan put it, “the guys bought in. It was total buy-in. Great leadership all around. [We] got back to work and put on a nice little streak there.”

A nice little streak it was — led by Hogan, Stanford won 11 of its last 12 games. Over that stretch, no signal-caller had a better quarterback rating than Hogan. Not Heisman finalist and Clemson quarterback DeShaun Watson, and not even Cal’s star quarterback Jared Goff.

However, that one loss stands out because the normally steady, poised Hogan fumbled twice down the stretch. Two muffed snaps gave Oregon a 38-36 victory, ending Stanford’s chance to control their own destiny to make the College Football Playoff. But even then, he almost singlehandedly brought Stanford into overtime against the Ducks, engineering a brilliant 49-yard two-minute drill to get Stanford within two. His throw on the two-point conversion was just too low, and the Ducks ended up upsetting the Cardinal.

Even after that heart-crushing game, Hogan got right back up and won the Big Game, and then led his team to an emotional victory on Senior Night over Notre Dame, setting up a last-second game-winning field goal with another brilliant drive.

Some might say perseverance is his middle name. After the win over the Irish, head coach David Shaw gushed about his quarterback: “After all he’s been through, he’s come out so mature and so confident. He’s a great leader, and such a great football player.”

Even after knocking off undefeated Notre Dame and ending the Irish’s playoff hopes, the unflappable Hogan didn’t let the moment get to him. All business even when Shaw spoke with him after the instant classic, Hogan smiled and said “we got to play USC next week.”

Shaw always had known Hogan had it in him. “We had very, very high hopes for Kevin because, number one, ultimately, he is extremely competitive,” Shaw said Tuesday. “He’s very competitive. He’s very athletic. We knew he had a high ceiling when he came as a starter, though we tried to nurse him along a little bit. Last year was rough on all of us, on everybody at every position and Kevin both on and off the field. Then this year to watch him start the season with such maturity and such toughness and be the kind of leader that you want a fifth-year senior to be, it’s been great. It’s been truly special because we’ve leaned on him a lot, both on and off the field.”

Lesson learned: don’t try to knock down Kevin Hogan — he’ll get right back up off the mat and knock you out.