09-26-2012, 08:17 PM
Not to say a Huskies win can't or won't happen, but the College Football Matrix's guy's reasoning is not terribly convincing.
His model is a perfectly reasonable one to use before the season begins--it uses talent and home field, I think--but it doesn't seem to adjust its results to what happens on the field when the season starts. And a cursory glance at those results gives little reason to stay confident in a Huskies pick. Talent-wise, the Huskies have lost a number of players to injury or academics; on the other hand, Stanford is remarkably healthy at this time.
That's before considering that Stanford has, overall, performed above expectations and UW has, overall, performed below them. It's hard to respect a season that rejects the results of actual games--the things that actually count, you know?
Anyway, there are certainly more than a few reasons to be concerned about Stanford--if the offense doesn't improve, the margin for error is low--but this projection isn't one of them.
His model is a perfectly reasonable one to use before the season begins--it uses talent and home field, I think--but it doesn't seem to adjust its results to what happens on the field when the season starts. And a cursory glance at those results gives little reason to stay confident in a Huskies pick. Talent-wise, the Huskies have lost a number of players to injury or academics; on the other hand, Stanford is remarkably healthy at this time.
That's before considering that Stanford has, overall, performed above expectations and UW has, overall, performed below them. It's hard to respect a season that rejects the results of actual games--the things that actually count, you know?
Anyway, there are certainly more than a few reasons to be concerned about Stanford--if the offense doesn't improve, the margin for error is low--but this projection isn't one of them.