[BostonCard]

I usually scour the betting lines on all the college football games to see if anything seems out of whack to me. Stanford and Cal spreads have not yet once stood out to me, until this week.

A couple weeks ago, Stanford was -2.5, but that was likely gonna be with a much more banged up Stanford team, with both JJAW and Kaden Smith projected to be out.  That made a modicum of sense.

The notion the line is once again Stanford -2.5 with JJAW back healthy, Kaden Smith much more likely to play, and Stanford lighting up score boards with one of the most dominant passing attacks in college football over the last few weeks, while Cal can barely get out of its own way and gave up 21 to a Colorado team that has scored just 7 at home in each of its last two games, is frankly stunning to me.

Stanford should beat Cal by at least 2 TDs.  No part of me can see why this line is so low.  Sure Cal has a good pass D, but they can't score. Stanford even put up 24 at UW. Cal could only muster 12 at home, and 6 of those were a pick 6.  Speaking of, if you take defensive TDs out of Cal's scoring average, they are only scoring 18.1 PPG to Stanford's 29.3 PPG. Without defensive scores, they lose to Colorado 21-19.

I'm not a Stanford or Cal homer or hater.  Rooting for both teams, I see things pretty darn objectively in this game. I just can't see any real case for why this game should be very close and anything other than a comfortable Stanford win.

I'm not sure that we are any less banged up than we were two weeks ago.  We'll see tomorrow during Shaw's press conference, but I have a feeling that on net the last two weeks have been a wash; we've had some guys (particularly JJAW) get better with the extra two weeks, but we've had injuries at other spots, notably at linebacker.

Also, UCLA was challenging Berkeley for the weakness of offense, and you saw what they did to our defense.  While Berkeley's offense has been very weak, if prior form holds, Chase Garbers will have a career day against us.

BC

[BostonCard]

I usually scour the betting lines on all the college football games to see if anything seems out of whack to me. Stanford and Cal spreads have not yet once stood out to me, until this week.

A couple weeks ago, Stanford was -2.5, but that was likely gonna be with a much more banged up Stanford team, with both JJAW and Kaden Smith projected to be out.  That made a modicum of sense.

The notion the line is once again Stanford -2.5 with JJAW back healthy, Kaden Smith much more likely to play, and Stanford lighting up score boards with one of the most dominant passing attacks in college football over the last few weeks, while Cal can barely get out of its own way and gave up 21 to a Colorado team that has scored just 7 at home in each of its last two games, is frankly stunning to me.

Stanford should beat Cal by at least 2 TDs.  No part of me can see why this line is so low.  Sure Cal has a good pass D, but they can't score. Stanford even put up 24 at UW. Cal could only muster 12 at home, and 6 of those were a pick 6.  Speaking of, if you take defensive TDs out of Cal's scoring average, they are only scoring 18.1 PPG to Stanford's 29.3 PPG. Without defensive scores, they lose to Colorado 21-19.

I'm not a Stanford or Cal homer or hater.  Rooting for both teams, I see things pretty darn objectively in this game. I just can't see any real case for why this game should be very close and anything other than a comfortable Stanford win.

I'm not sure that we are any less banged up than we were two weeks ago.  We'll see tomorrow during Shaw's press conference, but I have a feeling that on net the last two weeks have been a wash; we've had some guys (particularly JJAW) get better with the extra two weeks, but we've had injuries at other spots, notably at linebacker.

Also, UCLA was challenging Berkeley for the weakness of offense, and you saw what they did to our defense.  While Berkeley's offense has been very weak, if prior form holds, Chase Garbers will have a career day against us.

BC