Deep Thoughts for McEwan

Fortunately for Scott McEwan, he didn’t have time to think about the significance of his fourth-and-six play against Stanford here Saturday, with three minutes left and UCLA trailing, 31-28.

Had he, much of the following might have occurred to him:

* His school’s bid for a national championship was on the line, something it hadn’t achieved since 1954.

* The opportunity for the Cinderella story, a chance at a national title appearance Jan. 3 on UCLA’s home field, the Rose Bowl, was six yards from staying alive and 57 from a miracle rebirth.

* With success on that play, leading to a winning touchdown, he personally could have emerged from “Scott Who?” to a spot in Bruin lore, as in: “Remember the kid who came into the Stanford game at halftime back in ’01 and kept UCLA’s national championship drive alive?”

Sadly, for Bruin fans and McEwan, this was a situation made for Cade McNown, or Tom Ramsay, or Troy Aikman. Not for a fifth-year, career backup quarterback from Thousand Oaks High, who has thrown 51 passes in his career, who didn’t get his first touchdown pass of that career until there were 53 seconds left in the third quarter of this wildly unpredictable game, and whose previous best effort was in relief of starter Cory Paus in the 2000 Sun Bowl against Wisconsin.

This moment was far from the Sun Bowl, and McEwan, playing his best game ever, gave it his best shot, flawed as it turned out to be.

With time still left to drive the remaining 57 yards, the play that was chosen on fourth and six was what McEwan called a “layered pass pattern.” That meant one receiver went out at short depth, probably around the six yards needed for the first down. Another went out 12-15 yards and the third, in this case wide receiver Ryan Smith, took off at full speed on a fly pattern.

Under pressure from both the Cardinal rushers and the game situation, McEwan chose to go for it all, uncorking a pass that traveled about 50 yards in the air and, unfortunately for Bruin fans, five yards beyond the outstretched reach of Smith. Smith gave it his all, diving and crashing hard on a shoulder that had been dislocated earlier in the game.

But the ball bounced aimlessly away, and with it all realistic hopes of a national title for the now 6-1Bruins.

Just as all credit should have been heaped on McEwan had he pulled off this Houdini act for a team that trailed at halftime, 28-7, and looked mostly befuddled until he got them settled down after halftime, so should any blame be tempered. This was not a stage he set, nor a mopup operation he deserved.

The starter, Paus, looked dreadful in the first half and ended up smacking his throwing hand on a helmet on the last play of the first half, bruising his thumb so badly that he couldn’t hold a football. And the vaunted UCLA defense turned out to be a burst Bruin bubble in this one.

Yes, McEwan probably made a bad choice on the crucial fourth-down, last-gasp play.

“I may have missed the first-down guy open,” he said. “That would have been Craig Bragg, crossing over the middle. In that situation, it was tough. There were lots of things going on.”

Coach Bob Toledo saw it about the same way. “Scottie took a shot deep,” he said. “I don’t know if the first-down guy was covered.”

But Hail Mary finishes are pretty much the domain of Doug Flutie, and his didn’t come with a national championship still alive.

McEwan said he didn’t think that play would be the last one because there were still three minutes left. But Stanford, given the ball back with the fourth-down incompletion, quickly scored for a 38-28 lead, and that left the game out of reach and UCLA thinking once again of what might have been.

“This was probably my best game ever,” said McEwan, who completed 15 of 24 passes for 221 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. “But that doesn’t mean anything when you don’t win. A lot of guys say that, but it is true.”

Also true is that Toledo has something even worse than a quarterback controversy. He has a quarterback void. In addition to Paus’ thumb, McEwan hurt his right ankle badly enough to have to give way to third-stringer Ryan McCann in the last minute. And the next two stops on the Pacific 10 parade are games against Washington State and Oregon, both title contenders.

To the quarterback issue, McEwan responded with the learned appropriateness of a career backup.

“Cory going down is not going to start a quarterback controversy,” he said. “If he can go, he has proven himself.”