STANFORD, Calif. -- Micah Ford scored his third touchdown on a 2-yard run with 1:41 to play, and Stanford rallied after nearly blowing a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter to beat Hawaii 37-27 on Saturday in the first game under new coach Tavita Pritchard.
"It's been a theme throughout our entire early goings together through the offseason, in the spring, up until training camp is how we finished," said Pritchard, a former Stanford quarterback who played for the Cardinal from 2006 to 2009. "We finished tonight."
Davis Warren threw for 310 yards and one touchdown in his debut for the Cardinal and engineered the winning drive after Hawaii had scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to turn a 23-7 deficit into a 27-23 lead.
But instead of the biggest fourth-quarter comeback in school history, the Rainbow Warriors fell just short of beating the Cardinal for the second straight year in the season opener with the final attempt at a comeback ending when Micah Alejado fumbled and Tevarua Tafiti returned it 31 yards for the game-sealing touchdown.
Warren made his first start since finishing the 2024 season at Michigan with wins over Ohio State and Alabama. He sat out last season with a knee injury and then transferred to Stanford where he won the starting job this summer.
He finished 22-of-34, committed no turnovers and set a career high in yards passing. He threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Atticus Joseph and set up Ford's first two TD runs with long passes, connecting on a 57-yarder to JonAnthony Hall and a 48-yard deep strike to freshman Zion Robinson to the Hawaii 4 on Stanford's first drive of the second half.
He then went 5-for-5 for 58 yards on the winning drive.
"I'm just happy that we have a quarterback that can lead us through that and stay poised in that type of situation because it's definitely not easy," Ford said.
Alejado went 30-for-50 for 269 yards and two TDs that both came during the fourth-quarter comeback. His 29-yarder to DeVon Rice had given Hawaii a 27-23 lead with 4:06 to play.
The first game under Pritchard was an exciting one with the Cardinal passing game looking sharp with Warren running a balanced attack. There were five pass catchers with at least 40 yards receiving.
Stanford hosts No. 7 Miami on Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.