Husky RB Salvon Ahmed: “I’m never looking for my own stats.”
Washington Husky running back Salvon Ahmed knows that last week’s game vs The Stanford Cardinal was, well... “Weird”.
Weird in a number of ways. Stanford looked like a team that was on the ropes prior to saturday’s game vs the Huskies. They were 2-3 on the season, suffering losses to USC, UCF, and Oregon. Stanford’s defense was amongst the worst in the nation and the #15 ranked Huskies, fresh off of a 14 point win over USC, were looking to run roughshod over a battered and bruised Cardinal team.
But that wasn’t to be the case, as Stanford beat the Huskies in Palo Alto, 23-13. One of the keys to Stanford’s success last week was to keep the ball away from Washington’s explosive playmakers on offense. Salvon Ahmed, the Dawgs leading rusher at the midway point of the 2019 season, carried the ball just 6 times against the Cardinal. The week prior, Ahmed rushed for a career high 153 yards vs a very athletic USC defense. Boasting a gaudy 6.3 yards per carry so far this season, Ahmed would have liked to have contributed more down on “The Farm”, but understands that the game got “weird”, and the Dawgs would ultimately get away from a plan than may have included utilizing their most explosive runner. “I’m never looking for my own stats” says Ahmed immediately following practice this week. “I’m trying to win the game.” In hindsight, perhaps more stats from Salvon could have led to a Husky win over Stanford.
Nonetheless, Salvon and the Huskies have moved beyond the weird loss to Stanford and are now preparing to take on the Arizona Wildcats (Saturday - 8 PM kickoff, airing on FS1). Statistically, Arizona is again one of the worst defenses in college football (119th in total defense). There should be plenty of opportunities for the Huskies to get back on track offensively, and get their ground game going once again. They will be short one running back when they travel down to the desert. Freshman Richard Newton will be sidelined after injuring his leg late in the Stanford game. It will be up to Salvon to pick up the slack, and try to take advantage of a Wildcat defense that is giving up around 200 yards per game on the ground.
