[Goose]

Maybe UW beat us by getting 8 sacks against Burns in 30 dropbacks, a ridiculous sack rate of 27%, and burying us in such a big hole that we only ran McCaffrey 12 times.

But it goes to the main point, which is that the offensive line was dreadful in pass protection, but was ok in run blocking.

Actually, I think this game demonstrated that they were NOT OK in run blocking. We got down big early, which did influence the play calling. But a "normal" Stanford approach to having two important defensive backs hurt would be to keep the ball away from Washington, dominate the time of possession, run, run, and run some more. We wouldn't even attempt to get into a shoot-out with them, because we aren't built for it. We would try and keep it close so we could win it in the end. I have seen us do that against Oregon for years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the Washington game, we couldn't get first downs, so we couldn't keep the ball. Burns was passing in the first quarter not because we were so far behind (yet), but because it was third and 8. If CMAC was making 4 yards per carry reliably, we wouldn't have been passing. We would have also scored more than 6 points in the game. No way was that an acceptable OL performance on either pass blocking OR run blocking. Washington controlled the tempo, not us.
Perhaps it is a relative thing, that the run blocking was better than the pass blocking. However, even that would be damning with faint praise. I hate to quote a now-departed Cal coach, but sometimes you do need to be able to run the ball when everyone in the building knows you are going to run the ball. For Stanford, that has been on most downs. Normally, we can, at least most of the time, and even against "good" teams. This year, we couldn't. I don't think anybody would suggest we didn't have talented backs. What does that leave?

[Goose]

Maybe UW beat us by getting 8 sacks against Burns in 30 dropbacks, a ridiculous sack rate of 27%, and burying us in such a big hole that we only ran McCaffrey 12 times.

But it goes to the main point, which is that the offensive line was dreadful in pass protection, but was ok in run blocking.

Actually, I think this game demonstrated that they were NOT OK in run blocking. We got down big early, which did influence the play calling. But a "normal" Stanford approach to having two important defensive backs hurt would be to keep the ball away from Washington, dominate the time of possession, run, run, and run some more. We wouldn't even attempt to get into a shoot-out with them, because we aren't built for it. We would try and keep it close so we could win it in the end. I have seen us do that against Oregon for years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the Washington game, we couldn't get first downs, so we couldn't keep the ball. Burns was passing in the first quarter not because we were so far behind (yet), but because it was third and 8. If CMAC was making 4 yards per carry reliably, we wouldn't have been passing. We would have also scored more than 6 points in the game. No way was that an acceptable OL performance on either pass blocking OR run blocking. Washington controlled the tempo, not us.
Perhaps it is a relative thing, that the run blocking was better than the pass blocking. However, even that would be damning with faint praise. I hate to quote a now-departed Cal coach, but sometimes you do need to be able to run the ball when everyone in the building knows you are going to run the ball. For Stanford, that has been on most downs. Normally, we can, at least most of the time, and even against "good" teams. This year, we couldn't. I don't think anybody would suggest we didn't have talented backs. What does that leave?