For a lot of Cardinal football players, the game is in their blood. The roster is chock-full of players like sophomore quarterback Tavita Pritchard, whose uncle set NCAA passing records, or sophomore right tackle Chris Marinelli, whose father, uncle and cousin have all played in the trenches of NCAA football.

Junior linebacker Pat Maynor is no different, although his journey to the Farm has perhaps been stranger than most.

“Growing up, I was a Florida Gators fan,” Maynor said. “My dad [Mark] played there, and I’d been to countless games in Gainesville. Actually, I was never a Stanford fan. I knew Stanford had a basketball team and I knew it was a good school, but the thought of going there never even crossed my mind, even as a freshman in high school.”

But after a coincidental meeting late in his high school career, all that changed.

“Stanford was recruiting a quarterback at my high school, and my head coach at the time had gotten me out of class to meet Ty Willingham, who had come to my school,” he explained. “And so from there on, even though Ty Willingham had left and Buddy Teevens was the new Stanford coach, we still kept the same connections [with the school].”

Those connections would serve the gritty linebacker well, as Maynor would go on to make steady improvement as a reliable run-stuffer after redshirting his freshman year. This season, the Jupiter, Fla. native ranks third on the squad with 70 tackles, trailing only sophomores Bo McNally and Clinton Snyder. His transformation from last year — when he recorded 44 tackles in nine starts — has been nothing short of remarkable.

“I’d say, compared to last year, just going into the games I feel a lot more prepared on my assignments and what I’m supposed to do,” Maynor said. “And the way they teach this defense, it’s about gap assignments. Everyone has a gap to protect. I think last year I would try to do too much, [but] this year I’m not doing that — I get it done and I trust my teammates that they’re going to get it done.”

Tackles, of course, can be a somewhat misleading statistic. So much depends on where and how an offensive player is brought down that trying to judge a player based on the sheer number of his takedowns can be an exercise in futility.

But Maynor leads Stanford in the critical tackles-for-loss statistic, having brought down 10 ball carriers behind the line of scrimmage this year, good for second in the Pac-10. The junior has even developed a streak of versatility, excelling in the pass-rush this year with five sacks, the second highest total on the team.

As Maynor explains, succeeding in the Pac-10 requires a relentless drive, game-in and game-out.

“You’ve got to know you’re going to face a lot of great offenses, a lot of great running backs,” he said. “You’re never going to have an off-week in the backfield. It doesn’t matter who you play — they’re all good. You’ve got to bring it every Saturday if you even want to have a chance.”

But of course, Stanford’s defense didn’t live up to that credo last weekend. The Cardinal was gashed on the ground by Washington for 388 yards rushing as Huskies running back Louis Rankin and quarterback Jake Locker demolished the Cardinal defense.

“We prepared all week for it,” Maynor said. “They didn’t come out and put us in any situations that we hadn’t seen in practice. It really wasn’t magic what they did.

“We knew the quarterback was going to keep it, we knew we had to stop both of them and we were put in situations [where] we knew what they were going to run,” he went on to say. “And we just couldn’t get off blocks. We were in one-on-one situations and we couldn’t make the play [because] we couldn’t get off blocks.”

Despite his team’s poor performance on the whole, Maynor’s personal stat-line was nevertheless impressive once again, as he notched 13 tackles — two for a loss — and one sack against the Huskies. And even with the crushing outing against UW, the Cardinal’s enthusiasm at Wednesday’s practice was never in doubt — a change in team demeanor the new coaching staff has brought with it.

“Last year I just saw kids who weren’t having fun playing,” Maynor said. “It wasn’t really football for us; it was like a job. We weren’t having fun; we weren’t confident in ourselves. This year we’re having fun, and I think we’re getting so prepared for these games and we have confidence in our technique.”

And as for this week, Maynor knows that the Cougars will pose a big challenge for Stanford in Pullman, Wash.

“We know we’re going in there and it’s going to be wet, it’s going to be cold, it’s going to be a hostile environment,” he said of the road environment in eastern Washington. “And they’re a good team. They just played Cal last week, and they played them real close. Being in the Pac-10 you can’t look ahead to any games because you’ll come out and get whooped.”

That focus is the present overriding theme of Maynor’s outlook. It seems that if there’s one thing Stanford’s most veteran linebacker has learned in his time on the Farm, it’s that it will never do good to look too far ahead.

Unless, of course, he’s knifing into the backfield to stop yet another play before it has the chance to get started.