Stanford favored by four against SC

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Stanford favored by four against SC - washingtonismoney - 09-03-2018

Seems...about right to me?

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - d4cohn - 09-03-2018

(09-03-2018, 06:24 AM)throwaway Wrote: Seems...about right to me?

It has since been bet down to USC +3.5. SC is 3-7 in covering the spread in its last 10, while Stanford is 6-4, including three straight covers for the Card.

Personally, I think Stanford is slightly better than SC on a neutral field, so if I was setting the line, I would go with Stanford between -5 and -7 (three points for home-field, 2 to 4 points for non-home field effects).

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - JPR36 - 09-03-2018

I would rate the game a toss-up. Wouldn't be particularly surprised if we won, wouldn't be particularly surprised if we didn't.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - SF_Cardinal_Fan - 09-03-2018

Once JT Daniels and Amon Ra St, Brown got going they played like a phenomenal QB-WR tandem.
Stanford has that as well with KJ-JJAW.
So, I guess whichever team is more effective at rushing the passer will win this Saturday's USC-Stanford game.
Or, USC will not be able to stop Bryce Love from collecting long TD runs and Stanford's ground game will lead the way to a win.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - AcesUp - 09-03-2018

I'd take the four easy. This is Daniels first road and big game, his favorite receiver is St. Brown's brother. Osiris is telling Adebo how to cover him and sharing his weaknesses. No big time running game for SC, they struggled home against UNLV.

Stanford O is too strong, go for the 2pt conversion all the time, including late in the game, "What's your deal?" Part 2.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - d4cohn - 09-03-2018

(09-03-2018, 09:24 AM)SF_Cardinal_Fan Wrote: Or, USC will not be able to stop Bryce Love from collecting long TD runs and Stanford's ground game will lead the way to a win.

USC gave up over 300 yards rushing, and 7.2 YPC, to UNLV. Bryce could be in for a big day, if USC doesn't adopt the SDSU Cover-0 approach.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - winflop - 09-03-2018

(09-03-2018, 09:24 AM)SF_Cardinal_Fan Wrote: USC gave up over 300 yards rushing, and 7.2 YPC, to UNLV. Bryce could be in for a big day, if USC doesn't adopt the SDSU Cover-0 approach.

And if they do, like SDSU they don't have DBs who can cover JJ. Not sure many teams do.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - Goose - 09-03-2018

The "power forward" approach at wide receiver depends heavily on the officials calling PI when it happens. Oftentimes, they won't, especially if the opponent is a "marquee" team like USC. It is also a matter of how bad and obvious the interference is. USC can play "physical" pass defense that SDSU probably couldn't. Grabbing somebody's arm isn't always obvious (just ask Richard Sherman), but can mess up the ability to go up and get the ball. Let's hope JJ can actually get open and not have to rely on an official to "do the right thing".

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - newguy - 09-03-2018

(09-03-2018, 08:49 AM)JPR36 Wrote: I would rate the game a toss-up. Wouldn't be particularly surprised if we won, wouldn't be particularly surprised if we didn't.

i'm with you on this one.
i think it will depend on whether or not we can stop the run.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - pcgoode - 09-04-2018

Seems low to me. USC had some real issues with a UNLV team that won five games last season, including rush defense. If you listen to this post-game breakdown after that game, USC has a lot of thing it needs to fix.

https://youtu.be/VwvIXCxT7sY

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - qwerty49 - 09-04-2018

(09-03-2018, 01:36 PM)newguy Wrote:
(09-03-2018, 08:49 AM)JPR36 Wrote: I would rate the game a toss-up. Wouldn't be particularly surprised if we won, wouldn't be particularly surprised if we didn't.

i'm with you on this one.
i think it will depend on whether or not we can stop the run.

+1

And contrary to some of the narrative here, stopping the run was something we did not do very well.

No way that $C is at the same level as SDSU. They will be bigger, faster, stronger on both sides of the ball. And SDSU’s OL was consistently getting 2 yards of surge on us before they wore down in the second half.

I think whoever has the ball last wins this game.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - BostonCard - 09-04-2018

I think whichever scores more points wins the game. ;)

BC

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - OutsiderFan - 09-04-2018

No team ever wants to give up 300 yards rushing. Any that does has major problems. I am willing to bet SDSU has a much better run defense than USC, and a better overall defense period. If UNLV can put up 21 on USC, Stanford can rack up points in the 30s on them.

My assumption is Love will go for at least 150 and Stanford will win by 10+ points.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - stupac2 - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 07:20 AM)qwerty49 Wrote: And contrary to some of the narrative here, stopping the run was something we did not do very well.

I admittedly wasn't watching the push that they got, but I think we actually did stop the run pretty well. I just went through the play-by-play and charted every run by a running back (so no scrables/sacks) and they got 4.97 yards/carry. That's not really what you want to see, bad news for us! Except that, as we all know, the vast majority of it came on one drive. Their median run was for 2 yards. They had more runs for 2 or fewer yards than 3+, and keep in mind that a 3-yard run is usually a bad play*. If you take out that one TD drive they averaged 2.9 ypc.

So, what to make of that? Clearly our defense can break down and give up some long runs, but it only happened on one drive and on the other 24 carries they actually performed quite well.

*The way you should actually do this is by charting if a play was successful or not, based on down/distance and how much it gained (ie a 3-yard run on 3rd and 2 is a good play, on 3rd and 5 not so much), but I don't have time for that.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - washingtonismoney - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 08:34 AM)OutsiderFan Wrote: No team ever wants to give up 300 yards rushing. Any that does has major problems. I am willing to bet SDSU has a much better run defense than USC, and a better overall defense period. If UNLV can put up 21 on USC, Stanford can rack up points in the 30s on them.

Agreed, it was not a great performance by SC. I've not yet seen the game but it seems the Vegas guys didn't have much of a QB. That's not a great sign. The SC offense also didn't do much before the fourth quarter, though they had (cumulatively) a strong game. So it was not a very good performance. Of course week one games are sometimes very poor indicators for the rest of the season, but overall I would say Stanford had the stronger performance even if SDSU and UNLV are equivalent teams. Since it's my bet SDSU is the better team than UNLV, I would give Stanford the edge on style points from week 1.

That said SC does present problems for Stanford. While, statistically, Stanford had a solid defensive effort against SDSU, by my eye there was quite a bit to improve -- tackling in particular, but the defensive line was also repelled on more occasions than I'm comfortable with. I'm betting on a fairly high scoring game with a more veteran Stanford unit having slightly more firepower.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - Goose - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 08:38 AM)stupac2 Wrote: So, what to make of that? Clearly our defense can break down and give up some long runs, but it only happened on one drive and on the other 24 carries they actually performed quite well.

True. Fortunately, it was clear what happened on that drive. We were being victimized by over pursuit. The fix was to keep backside contain so the back couldn't simply cut back against pursuit. In particular, I remember Alfieri stuffing a counter play on the next drive after the touchdown. Up to then, counter action, either in the called play or the back just doing it, was killing us. We had a problem and we fixed it. Hopefully, any future problems will also be that easy to fix!

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - CTcard - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 05:42 AM)pcgoode Wrote: Seems low to me. USC had some real issues with a UNLV team that won five games last season, including rush defense.

A year ago, in game one, U$C had some real issues with a Western Michigan team out of the MAC that ended up going 4-4 in conference and 6-6 overall. There were some real issues to fix. They didn't fix all of those by week two, but they did pretty much smush us.
Of course that does not mean that since they recovered once, they'll do so again - but $C will be ready to play us. Relative advantages this time around include a home game, not having to travel back from Australia, and (I hope) far better QB play.

d4cohn Wrote:Bryce could be in for a big day, if USC doesn't adopt the SDSU Cover-0 approach.

Bryce could have a big day for sure - I hope and expect him to have lots of big days. I strongly doubt that $C will adopt the SDSU cover-0 approach. It's not what they do under Pendergrast, they saw what that leaves open as we torched SDSU through the air (there's a reason nobody generally plays defense like that), and $C believes they are strong enough to play us straight up along the lines - something SDSU clearly did not feel they could do.

qwerty49 Wrote:And contrary to some of the narrative here, stopping the run was something we did not do very well.
… SDSU’s OL was consistently getting 2 yards of surge on us before they wore down in the second half.

stupac beat me to answering this one.

In the first half, SDSU averaged 2.5 yds/carry outside of the one big drive.
Of course generally taking out the good plays is no way to treat statistics, but in this case the topic at hand is how well the defense played outside of that drive. In fact, SDSU really had one successful run in the first half outside of that drive, a 9 yard run on third and 7. They had one other 9 yard run, but it was a throw-away run on third and 20.

I have watched the game a few times. The DL was far from perfect, but mostly were not getting blown off the ball. On the bad drive, there were a bunch of bad run fits: DL slanting away from the play, LBers filling the wrong gaps, along with some cases of guys being pushed back (see DWP on the TD run).
Now I don't think that means a lot for what the $C OL might be able to do, but it wasn't a negative data point either.

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - BostonCard - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 09:05 AM)CTcard Wrote: I have watched the game a few times. The DL was far from perfect, but mostly were not getting blown off the ball. On the bad drive, there were a bunch of bad run fits: DL slanting away from the play, LBers filling the wrong gaps, along with some cases of guys being pushed back (see DWP on the TD run).
Now I don't think that means a lot for what the $C OL might be able to do, but it wasn't a negative data point either.

Also, some missed tackles. There were a few cases where we had a player in position to make the play, and he just didn't. Some of that was the SDSU runner, who was shiftier than he looked. On one play he made a couple of guys miss him with some pretty slick spin moves.

BC

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - washingtonismoney - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 09:05 AM)CTcard Wrote: A year ago, in game one, U$C had some real issues with a Western Michigan team out of the MAC that ended up going 4-4 in conference and 6-6 overall. There were some real issues to fix. They didn't fix all of those by week two, but they did pretty much smush us.
Of course that does not mean that since they recovered once, they'll do so again - but $C will be ready to play us. Relative advantages this time around include a home game, not having to travel back from Australia, and (I hope) far better QB play.

The Western Michigan game does illustrate why opening-game matchups are imperfect indicators. USC managed 7.78 yards per play against the Broncos while surrendering 5 yards per play. Overall you would probably conclude based on that one game that SC had a pretty good offense and questionable defense; I think that, broadly, held against Stanford, as the Cardinal were able to move the ball and score a decent number of points* while getting absolutely hammered defensively. As always it's a question of degree: not "are you a bad defense, but how bad is your defense" being the important uncertainty.

Of course it could also be a total mirage. Stanford in 2015 had six consecutive quarters of fruitless offense before becoming a dominant unit for the remainder of the year. That's also possible.

I guess my bias here is that we know Stanford's offensive players are all pretty good, and while we suspect SC's offensive players are good, we also know they're young. And we know Stanford's at home. So I would give Stanford the edge, while allowing there's a lot we don't know about both teams.

*(with problems like "going for it on fourth down instead of kicking" perhaps making Stanford's performance look worse than it was in some respects)

RE: Stanford favored by four against SC - winflop - 09-04-2018

(09-04-2018, 08:23 AM)BostonCard Wrote: I think whichever scores more points wins the game. ;)

BC

Such an obstute asservation