Stanford Football: 3 takeaways from upset loss at home to Utah

Stanford football tried to pull back the deficit on Utah, but the Utes pulled away for the upset. Here are three things we learned from the #Pac12AfterDark action.

Entering Saturday night’s late action on the Farm between No. 14 Stanford and the visiting Utah Utes, the Cardinal had won 11 straight games on their home turf. That streak fell by the wayside in #Pac12AfterDark action that concluded a wild week of chaos. In defeat, Stanford became the eighth AP Top 25 team to drop their Week 6 contest.

The win gave Utah their first Pac-12 win of the season, as they took down the defending Pac-12 North champions convincingly in a 40-21 road conquest. Kyle Whittingham’s team moved back above .500 with the victory and they served notice that they could still be a dark-horse in a Pac-12 South race that is still wide open behind unbeaten Colorado.

In defeat, Stanford now sits a game behind Washington in the Pac-12 North race. We saw last year, though, that head-to-head action could ultimately prove critical in the race to determine which team ends up in the Pac-12 championship game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on the first weekend of December.

The Utes generated four turnovers in the defeat, the last coming with less than 90 seconds remaining, to run out the clock on their statement victory

What did we learn from the surprise result on Saturday night in the Bay Area? Keep reading for three takeaways from the home loss suffered by the Cardinal against Utah to conclude Week 6 action among Top 25 teams.