The CardBoard
Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State (/thread-25778.html)


Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - msqueri - 09-28-2025

1. 2-0 at home! This is the first time we've had multiple home wins in September since 2018. For a program that has won at home so seldomly in recent years, winning the first two home games means something. We are seeing few signs of progress on the field and likely have to wait at least another year until it feels like we're turning a corner but in the meantime winning feels better than losing and we can hope that we're taking small steps in the right direction. One of the things that has subjectively felt better this season (so I'm told by those in attendance/so I feel watching on tv from across the country) is a modest but perceptible uptick in fan enthusiasm and atmosphere in these first two home games. The only way to build on that into something meaningful is for home fans to have fun watching the team, and nothing is more crucial to that than winning. To me that is the positive takeaway here and the thing we can hope to build on. C-House chants in the locker room and fans leaving the parking lots in a decent mood.

2. The game itself was not much of a feather in our cap for showing that the team is improving so we will have to be content with the win and a few good individual performances. For the second year in a row we looked like an even match for San Jose State and, like last year, the game could have gone either way. Last time we shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers and penalties and lost. This time San Jose State was a bit better than us on a yards per play basis and, alarmingly, at the line of scrimmage, but their two missed chip shot field goals and having a kicker they don't trust (likely impacting the 4th and 7 call that ended up a turnover on downs and maybe the two point conversion call that resulted in no additional points) ended up hurting them significantly more than our brobdingnagian amount of penalties. [Stanford has committed 210 yards of penalties across the last two San Jose State games....] It's pretty depressing that we are so comparable to San Jose State as a program right now. Sagarin says Stanford is #90 and San Jose State #99 after last year San Jose State was #100 and Stanford was #102. [Our scoreboard results this season have been befitting #86, #115, #50, #146, and #123, though in the last case the home field advantage is almost certainly inaccurate. If yesterday were viewed as a neutral site yesterday would have been #94.]

3. The offense was better than the defense for the second time in as many weeks. We scored 2.5 points per drive, making the #78 points per drive defense look like #87, and the offense at least scored more and had more yards and yards per play than Central Michigan and Idaho did against the Spartans. That's not a great performance but it's a heck of a lot better than the defense, which gave up 2.42 points per non-garbage drive (excluding the end of the first half), making the #133 points per drive offense look like the #58 offense, and gave up more than double the points Central Michigan did and only two points less than Idaho while having worse yards per play than Central Michigan. The offense had its highest total yardage and yards per play yet this season, the most yards per play in a win against an FBS opponent since the 2021 games against USC and Vanderbilt. The defense had its second game in a row giving up more than 500 yards and more than 7 yards per play, the first time that has happened since the miserable UCLA-Washington State-Utah stretch in 2022 that cemented Shaw's fate. The offense has been up and the defense down the last two weeks.

4. Fundamentally, though, on both sides of the ball we are seeing struggles in the trenches/at the line of scrimmage that seem to make this team destined to be a bad team. On offense, we gave up four sacks and are 118th in sacks allowed and again could not get the run game going. On defense, we had no sacks of our own and only three tackles for loss (124th on the season in tackles for loss) and again gave a QB enough of a clean pocket to pick us apart for massive damage. Until Stanford can figure out the trenches I don't see how we graduate from being a bad team. In this game the struggles of our run game and pass defense seemed indicative of what happens when you don't get push on either side of the ball. It was the third time in four games we have been held under 40 yards rushing and under a yard and a half per carry. That's pretty sorry to do that against San Jose State, which against a schedule that has included Central Michigan and Idaho as two of the three other games is giving up 4.55 yards per carry and 170 rushing yards per game. We are now 129th in yards per carry and appear to have little shot running the ball against decent defenses. On pass defense, 473 yards is a lot to give up in the air but this was actually right in our season average ballpark both in yards per attempt allowed and defensive passer rating. That's not meant as a compliment. We are 115th in defensive passer rating and yesterday was a lot worse than Central Michigan and Texas pass defenses did. The last two games are throwing some cold water on early season notions the pass defense might be improved. San Jose State basically gave up on the run, only rushing 14 times, but that may unfortunately say as much about the Spartans as it does about us. Central Michigan and Texas both stifled their run better than we did on a yards per carry basis.

5. While we muddle through with the limitations we have in blocking, we are becoming fairly dependent on the big plays, especially in the passing game. We are 105th in the nation in yards per play yet 8th in the nation in 40+ yard passing plays. In other words, we suck but have an offense that, at least so far, can take the top of a defense. I think a lot of credit goes to both Reich, for identifying things in blitzes/coverages like what we exploited on the play of the game on the 4th and 10 connection to High, and to Gulbranson, for his many beautiful deep balls already this season. What I most liked about yesterday, though, was that Gulbranson succeeded not only via the long ball but otherwise too. There were a number of depths and routes that we moved the chains on, and the ball got spread around nicely, with four 60+ yard receivers, including Ford out of the backfield with a brobdingnagian catch and run. It all added up to the historic 444 yards passing stat line, the third most in our history. Gulbranson had half a yard per attempt better than Arch Manning did against San Jose State, though Manning's Total QBR and passer rating were both better than Gulbranson. As can often happen, Total QBR and PFF had different verdicts, with Total QBR pegging Gulbranson as a competent 49th of 102 quarterbacks nationally this week and PFF thinking he was an excellent 15th of 107 nationally (these discrepancies often happen because the former adjusts for competition and the latter does not). By Total QBR's lights, Gulbranson is playing extremely consistently, with the Virginia, San Jose State, and Boston College games the 10th, 11th, and 12th best Total QBR marks of his 20 career QB1 games. It seems we've been seeing the real Gulbranson the last three games. Obviously he is firmly entrenched as QB1. With the offensive line playing how it is, Gulbranson's contributions seem all the more impressive and valuable.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - msqueri - 09-28-2025

6. The offensive line, in PFF's view, had a solid performance from Prongos and not by anyone else. That's a sobering result against a Group of Five team and presumably there are some really ugly games ahead. The pass blocking grade has gotten worse every week of the season. It's just an ugly situation to have two true freshmen starting and I continue to be apoplectic that year after year we get in this situation of playing cubs up front when real college football programs stock up with full-grown bears. On the season, fourth year guys Anderson and Prongos have been serviceable and the rest from the younger guys has been pretty ugly. Not much matters going into 2026 if we don't retain the older guys and beef up in the transfer portal. I have given Gulbranson a lot of leeway given this state of affairs with the supporting cast. One part of my narrative is looking somewhat misplaced: these wide receivers aren't nothing. We still haven't really seen JonAnthony Hall (10 unhealthy snaps) but we have seen Farrell, Williams, and High contributing, hence the long ball numbers. As @TexCard in CA noted, most of the room will be shattering their prior career production, which can be viewed both as an indication of how little they've accomplished previously but also the breakouts. I don't want to overdraw the point as somebody needs to get production and it's bound to happen when you become pass-heavy, plus we've seen both good and bad receiver games this year. But guys are making plays (second week in a row with two hundred yard receivers) and it's great to see. I was especially floored yesterday to see Williams move the chains eight times, our most by a receiver since Mosley against Louisville. [Moving the chains (first down) leaderboard: Williams (8), High (4, also drew a pass interference), Ford (3), Tabb (3), Roush (2), Farrell, Libman, Irvin, Onovughe] One can make a solid case the WR room is a contender for the best room on the roster right now, with Williams, Farrell, and High all boasting 68+ PFF grades on the season. That is shocking to me.

7. The defense did not have much to write home about but there were bright spots. Only six guys showed up multiple times positively in the box score (Green, Johnson, Tafiti, Edwards, Eckhardt, Morris). The one who really stood out to me was Green, who had double the big plays of anybody else. He had a really good sequence where he made a third down tackle before the sticks and then a pass breakup on fourth down to get the turnover on downs, had a red zone tackle for loss, and of course had the game-saving pass breakup. Three pass breakups in one game is a very loud stat. Will take a two tackle for loss game from Tafiti anytime. If we're not going to get pass rush at least making some plays is something. There were several players who I did not think had the best game but had individual plays here or there that were instrumental to us hanging on - Rowell getting a red zone third down tackle to force a field goal that ended up missing, Edwards also getting a red zone third down stop to force a field goal (that one made it through the uprights, but maybe that stop saved us four points), Morris had a pass breakup and QB hurry (to go with the two pass interference penalties on the negative side of the ledger), Johnson had a quiet game but stepped up after Rose was ejected and gave us a fourth quarter red zone run stuff and a crunch time hurry to force a punt, Nicholson had a red zone pass breakup to force a field goal, Eckhardt had a pass breakup and QB hurry. To a man, I thought those guys had bad moments and were generally part of the problem yesterday, but a whole bunch of individual plays helped us eke out the one point victory. One curious thing from PFF is that they had Patterson as the top performer in the game for either team on either side of the ball, yet he only showed up in the box score with one hurry. I think it's possible he was getting disruption that is hard for the casual eye to catch but I also think it's possible the grader saw one of the highest graded guys in the country heading into the game and succumbed to some confirmation bias in grading charitably.

8. Special teams were one of the big reasons we won, not because of anything we did but because San Jose State's kicking game has been a disaster this year and was again yesterday. It's a reminder that sometimes competence gets the job done and can give you an edge when your opponent is incompetent. We were competent yesterday. Flintoft had net punts of 43 to the 34 (solid), 31 to the 30 (really bad), 43 to the 37 before the penalty but illegal formation put it at the 42 (inclusive of the penalty definitely not ideal, especially considering the end of half situation), 21 to the 20 after a touchback (never love touchbacks but situationally that's a great result to ensure it's not worth the opponent's while to try any plays to steal pre-half points), and 40 to the 39 (ok thanks to Neely's coverage tackle). Kenney made a 36 yard field goal. Thorpe called fair catch on a punt at the 20. Kick returns, as usual, gave up yards compared to a fair catch (six yards on one High return and two yards on another) but also had one with good field position due to Hampton getting us 9 extra yards on a 17 yard return on a short kick. Darrius Davis' tackle in kick coverage cost the Spartans 9 yards of field position compared to a fair catch. I don't recall doing this before but, rather than giving Flintoft the game ball when he could get it almost any week even with mediocre performance just due to the volume of his usage and small sample size to judge other guys, I will take PFF's word that Mattingly played well in relatively heavy usage despite not showing up in the stat sheet.

9. Game balls: Ben Gulbranson, Jay Green, Sam Mattingly, Tyler Osborne

10. It feels nice to win heading into a bye. We had that with the Cal Poly win last year but this means more to beat an FBS team, even one as bad as San Jose State. We haven't done that before a bye since 2019. Hopefully this goes better than that season when we lost the last four games to end the year. In the immediate term, hopefully we can put the bye to good use in terms of healing up, preparing for a tough road game against SMU, putting in good recruiting work, and all of the truly important behind-the-scenes fundraising and coach search stuff Luck is doing. The Mustangs seem beatable to me, especially coming off a bye, but I am also clear-eyed that we have been bad in every game this season except the Boston College game. It is a realistic expectation any given week that we will be bad. Fingers crossed the bye sends us into Dallas ready to be better.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - gailtate - 09-28-2025

I've seen more than my share of Spartan games vs. the Cardinal/Cardinals/Indians in Palo Alto and 408.  Including some of the weakest teams ever fielded by the Sparts (see '68 and '69).  Still, it was absolutely alien having to go down to the wire to pull out last night's squeaker. And I know I'm not the only one. Sigh.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - BigJohn043 - 09-28-2025

Winning is certainly better than losing.  Maybe we find a way to win a couple of more games this year and get a bit of momentum.  But hard to really get excited...

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - fullmetal - 09-28-2025

Happy for the team.  There was substantial improvement from Gulbranson in many aspects, and he will deserve much less criticism if he plays this way the rest of the season.  His performance through the first four games of the season still warranted a benching, imo, regardless of "however this season turns out."  Accountability is an important team dynamic.

Agreed that the line work on both sides needs improvement.  Why don't we run a tunnel screen every once in a while?  It certainly looks like we're about to sometimes.  And boy would opposing defenses bite.  Our secondary needs to get a bit faster to catch up with opposing receivers...especially when two of them rack up 100+ yds in a game.

The win seemed to hinge on as many intangibles and unforeseeables as the Greatest Upset Ever, which SJSU was not.  The rest of the schedule doesn't look comparable to SJSU, so I hope the team is ready to step up their efforts accordingly.  Good things do come to those who train hard and give full effort throughout the whole game though.

The KZSU announcers noted that Rose's targeting call was probably warranted, so that's a self-inflicted blow vs. SMU.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - Jamesy - 09-28-2025

(09-28-2025, 06:31 PM)fullmetal Wrote:  His performance through the first four games of the season still warranted a benching, imo, regardless of "however this season turns out."  

How did his performance vs BC and UVA warrant a benching? I can see the argument for doing it post BYU, but not after that based on his performance.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - 76lsjumb - 09-28-2025

(09-28-2025, 05:14 PM)gailtate Wrote:  I've seen more than my share of Spartan games vs. the Cardinal/Cardinals/Indians in Palo Alto and 408.  Including some of the weakest teams ever fielded by the Sparts (see '68 and '69).  Still, it was absolutely alien having to go down to the wire to pull out last night's squeaker. And I know I'm not the only one. Sigh.

"absolutely alien..."?   So ... you were out of town in 1971?  And in 1982?

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - JJJ - 09-29-2025

Class of ‘85 here. I had to look it up, but we lost the first 3 to SJSU before we won our senior year. I’m not complaining.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - Mick - 09-29-2025

I remember the 1975 game. I was 12 years old, really getting into football. I remember hundreds of Stanford players over the years, but just a handful of SJSU players...all from this time period. Kim Bokamper (LB/DE), and Wilson Faumina (DE/NT) were both first round picks. They had Rick Kane, a really good running back, 3rd round. DeBerg at QB, of course, and two OLs who were drafted. Good receiver Jim LeJay. Darryl Rogers, in his third and final year before he moved on to coach the Lions.

Stanford was ranked #18 going into that game. SJSU was 3-0, finished 9-2 that season, ranked #20 at one point. Very close game, 36-34, SJSU won.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - San Jose State - Embo - 09-29-2025

(09-29-2025, 05:59 AM)Mick Wrote:  I remember the 1975 game. I was 12 years old, really getting into football. I remember hundreds of Stanford players over the years, but just a handful of SJSU players...all from this time period. Kim Bokamper (LB/DE), and Wilson Faumina (DE/NT) were both first round picks. They had Rick Kane, a really good running back, 3rd round. DeBerg at QB, of course, and two OLs who were drafted. Good receiver Jim LeJay. Darryl Rogers, in his third and final year before he moved on to coach the Lions.

Stanford was ranked #18 going into that game. SJSU was 3-0, finished 9-2 that season, ranked #20 at one point. Very close game, 36-34, SJSU won.

Ok, please forgive me for this indulgent post. The 1975 game was my first as a freshman, happening during freshman orientation.  Yes, Stanford had a record of 0-1-1 but was ranked #18 (back then, the list only extended to the top 20).  The ranking was due to a 19-19 tie vs Michigan in the Big House the week prior.  

The game vs. SJSU was on ABC (back in those days, a school could be on TV for only two regular season games.)  Mike Cordova started, SJSU pulled way ahead, and by the second half Guy Benjamin came in.  He valiantly brought the score close but ran out of time.  The next home game, the Stanford Band pregame show made the formation "27-3" explaining that was the second half scoring and played Carol King's song "It's too late", mocking Jack Christiansen's insistence on going with Cordova. 

Speaking of bad decisions, and Michigan:  Stanford usually would not schedule the first two games at home, as school was not in session.  In September 1976, Michigan was to play in Palo Alto as part of the home and home.  But Michigan offered to switch the game back to the Big House, offering then AD Joe Ruetz a sellout crowd and more $$.  Ruetz took the bait, even though this meant only 4 home games at Stanford.  The result?  A 0-49 shellacking, which, along with Christiansen's starting Cordova, led to his firing at the end.  The silver lining to all this was the hiring of Bill Walsh.