Football: QB Nunes named Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week on heels of comeback win

Oct. 8, 2012, 5:01 p.m.
Football: QB Nunes named Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week on heels of comeback win
Redshirt junior quarterback Josh Nunes first showed off his legs in upsetting No. 2 USC on Sept. 25, but those skills came in handy again last Saturday when he rushed for three touchdowns in a comeback win against Arizona. Nunes was named Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week on Monday for his five overall touchdowns and 360 passing yards. (SIMON WARBY/The Stanford Daily)

Redshirt junior quarterback Josh Nunes became the second Stanford player in 2012 to be named Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week, earning the distinction Monday after he brought the No. 17 Cardinal back from a two-touchdown deficit in the fourth quarter of its win against Arizona.

Stanford (4-1, 2-1 Pac-12) would not have bounced back from its sole loss last week without Nunes. Just nine days after he and the rest of the Cardinal offense floundered against Washington, not scoring a touchdown, it put up 54 against the Wildcats (3-3, 0-3).

Nunes accounted for five touchdowns — three of them on goal-line quarterback keepers — and threw for 360 yards. By comparison, it took Andrew Luck, Nunes’ predecessor and the first overall pick in last year’s NFL Draft, seven games to break the 300-yard mark in his rookie season; his first such performance came on Oct. 17, 2009, when he threw for 423 yards in a 43-38 loss to those very same Wildcats.

Nunes is the first Pac-12 quarterback to rush for three touchdowns in a game since 2009. He beat out Arizona quarterback Matt Scott, who completed a conference-record 45 passes in the game, for this week’s award.

Senior running back Stepfan Taylor also won conference player-of-the-week honors after the Cardinal’s 21-14 upset of then-No.-2 USC on Sept. 15. Lineman Ben Gardner took home the equivalent defensive award the very same week.

—Joseph Beyda

The Daily Sports Staff is the collective moniker of an overworked, beleaguered, underpaid collection of sportswriters that feel comfortable enough with their own self-identities to give up any sense of individualism for the good of the sports section. To contact The Daily Sports Staff, send an email to the managing editor(s) of the sports staff (sports 'at' stanforddaily.com), keepers of the souls of those sportswriters.

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