10-29-2023, 12:47 PM
9. With this kind of rebuild it's natural to be most excited about the youth movement but we should acknowledge that some old guys have been very important glue for the defense. Fifth year Manley had the key interception and has been a solid player this year but what really caught my eye yesterday was fourth year Gilman. He was central to our run defense and also broke up a pass to force a punt. I am starting to feel like if he does move on, as I would expect, it is a real loss for us. I never thought going into the year that Gilman could more or less replace McGill on the defense one for one but that's kind of been the case (McGill more of a playmaker, GIlman more of a run defender, but in terms of high effort glue guys I think the comparison is there). If Gilman is gone maybe Leigber can step into the role next year (not a big fan of the player but with the recovered fumble and a tackle for short gain in crunch time Leigber found a way to contribute in moments), but I will miss Gilman when he's gone. Speaking of one of our main DBs, while yesterday wasn't one of our best games in pass defense now that we've faced three of the top eight passing offenses in the nation (!) we should take a moment to acknowledge the gauntlet our pass defense has been through. The stats are ugly but we should expect that. Beyond the stats, PFF thinks Wright, Edwards, Gilman, and Manley are the four best players on the defense on the season. That makes secondary arguably the biggest strength on our roster, to which I think we should give a real tip of the cap to Williams and Gregory. In particular we should be grateful for the tackling we are getting out of the DBs, with Wright and Gilman two of the most important players for our run defense. They aren't perfect and it's killing me to see Wright so consistently give up chunk plays in coverage (though he lost out on an interception in this one due to an offsides) but there's some good stuff too.
10. Aside from Gilman, the other defender who notched five plays last night that I deemed as positive plays in the play-by-play was Tafiti. We are seeing the emergence of Tafiti as one of the best players on our roster, as Shaw/Anderson/April/anybody who talks about Tafiti has long foreshadowed. While I know we are all extremely disappointed in David Bailey's true sophomore season and Ernest Cooper's benchwarming, to have a good redshirt freshman OLB replacing Bailey as our primary field side OLB is a big development. Tafiti had the highly impactful distinction yesterday of getting multiple run stops, multiple hurries to force an incompletion, a turnover, and in the sum total of those plays two different Husky drives Tafiti was responsible for ending. brobdingnagian. Alas, it was an up and down night because he was the poster child of that indiscipline I talked about, drawing both a personal foul on special teams and a face mask penalty. Still, Tafiti is transforming before our eyes and like Ayomanor is a redshirt freshman blossoming post-injury and potentially poised for explosion with more confidence and range of motion. Exciting (though clearly far below Ayomanor in the ceiling demonstrated thus far). It was also nice to have another OLB make big contributions as Aybar had plays in both run defense and pass rush. I don't think he's great but at this point I am welcoming any and all impactful plays by OLBs given the disappointment of the season for that group to date. Aybar should be very proud of getting a sack against Washington, which was only fifth sack they've allowed all season. On the flip side of these items of praise, it was disappointing to see Sinclair follow up his career game with yesterday. 95 percent of the time he is so, so, so bad. Among younger players, I hope Kolodziej can get more out of Moi going forward. Moi hasn't been great this year and then really regressed yesterday. As a parting comment on the defense, the sample size is too small to comment meaningfully on takeaways but it is very nice that we've won the turnover margin two of the last three weeks. Hopefully we can build on that.
11. I swear the coaches are trolling us trotting Weselman out there. Please put him and us out of his misery. This time it was a catastrophic net punt of 14 yards to give one of the best offenses in the nation the ball at the 50 yard line for their first possession. Thankfully, it was Flintoft the rest of the way. I hope that's the case through the 2026 season. I think Flintoft can be great. However, in this one the punt unit did not shine. Flintoft had nets of 47 to the 18 (nice), 39 to the 25 (ok), 29 to the 48 (subpar), and 24 to the 48 (even more subpar). I don't know whether those multiple sub-30 net punts were more on Flintoft or the coverage team but they weren't helpful plays and, coupled with Weselman's whiff, led Taylor to make a point in the press conference to say special teams hurt us yesterday. In the return game Farrell gave us awful field position by taking a kick out to the 14. Karty didn't hurt us, making both of his field goals. He's fallen to sixth in the nation in field goals and I still am not fully over the many missed opportunities to score points and go for some highlights against UCLA. Let Karty eat! Finally, Morris had a fantastic special teams tackle, not the first time this season we've said that. Don't laugh: contributions like that are the kind of thing that can get somebody darkhorse consideration for the AP/ST slot on the all-conference team. I hope this portends abilities that translate at corner as Manley will soon leave solidly sized shoes to fill, though it's probably a meaningful sign of coach evaluation that Frausto-Ramos is getting those defensive opportunities (and struggling mightily).
12. Game balls: Ashton Daniels, Alaka'i Gilman, Aaron Morris, Troy Taylor
13. The pattern I've hinted at before of alternating between abysmal performances and respectable performances only got reinforced with this game. An optimist would point out we've tended to be more respectable lately and that our mode outcome is now one befitting a respectable team (a Washington State, say). A pessimist would say our median outcome is still quite bad, arguably the worst Stanford team in history. In the big picture of the rebuild it's probably not too consequential which of those two reads ends up having more support by the end of the year, as both are true and don't change the fundamentals of a program that needs more time to bring in the new staff's own players and culture. Nonetheless, it would be nice to break the pendulum we've seen so far and start stringing together a few respectable games in a row. Washington State and their four game losing streak should not be an intimidating team for us to try to start doing that. Go Card!
10. Aside from Gilman, the other defender who notched five plays last night that I deemed as positive plays in the play-by-play was Tafiti. We are seeing the emergence of Tafiti as one of the best players on our roster, as Shaw/Anderson/April/anybody who talks about Tafiti has long foreshadowed. While I know we are all extremely disappointed in David Bailey's true sophomore season and Ernest Cooper's benchwarming, to have a good redshirt freshman OLB replacing Bailey as our primary field side OLB is a big development. Tafiti had the highly impactful distinction yesterday of getting multiple run stops, multiple hurries to force an incompletion, a turnover, and in the sum total of those plays two different Husky drives Tafiti was responsible for ending. brobdingnagian. Alas, it was an up and down night because he was the poster child of that indiscipline I talked about, drawing both a personal foul on special teams and a face mask penalty. Still, Tafiti is transforming before our eyes and like Ayomanor is a redshirt freshman blossoming post-injury and potentially poised for explosion with more confidence and range of motion. Exciting (though clearly far below Ayomanor in the ceiling demonstrated thus far). It was also nice to have another OLB make big contributions as Aybar had plays in both run defense and pass rush. I don't think he's great but at this point I am welcoming any and all impactful plays by OLBs given the disappointment of the season for that group to date. Aybar should be very proud of getting a sack against Washington, which was only fifth sack they've allowed all season. On the flip side of these items of praise, it was disappointing to see Sinclair follow up his career game with yesterday. 95 percent of the time he is so, so, so bad. Among younger players, I hope Kolodziej can get more out of Moi going forward. Moi hasn't been great this year and then really regressed yesterday. As a parting comment on the defense, the sample size is too small to comment meaningfully on takeaways but it is very nice that we've won the turnover margin two of the last three weeks. Hopefully we can build on that.
11. I swear the coaches are trolling us trotting Weselman out there. Please put him and us out of his misery. This time it was a catastrophic net punt of 14 yards to give one of the best offenses in the nation the ball at the 50 yard line for their first possession. Thankfully, it was Flintoft the rest of the way. I hope that's the case through the 2026 season. I think Flintoft can be great. However, in this one the punt unit did not shine. Flintoft had nets of 47 to the 18 (nice), 39 to the 25 (ok), 29 to the 48 (subpar), and 24 to the 48 (even more subpar). I don't know whether those multiple sub-30 net punts were more on Flintoft or the coverage team but they weren't helpful plays and, coupled with Weselman's whiff, led Taylor to make a point in the press conference to say special teams hurt us yesterday. In the return game Farrell gave us awful field position by taking a kick out to the 14. Karty didn't hurt us, making both of his field goals. He's fallen to sixth in the nation in field goals and I still am not fully over the many missed opportunities to score points and go for some highlights against UCLA. Let Karty eat! Finally, Morris had a fantastic special teams tackle, not the first time this season we've said that. Don't laugh: contributions like that are the kind of thing that can get somebody darkhorse consideration for the AP/ST slot on the all-conference team. I hope this portends abilities that translate at corner as Manley will soon leave solidly sized shoes to fill, though it's probably a meaningful sign of coach evaluation that Frausto-Ramos is getting those defensive opportunities (and struggling mightily).
12. Game balls: Ashton Daniels, Alaka'i Gilman, Aaron Morris, Troy Taylor
13. The pattern I've hinted at before of alternating between abysmal performances and respectable performances only got reinforced with this game. An optimist would point out we've tended to be more respectable lately and that our mode outcome is now one befitting a respectable team (a Washington State, say). A pessimist would say our median outcome is still quite bad, arguably the worst Stanford team in history. In the big picture of the rebuild it's probably not too consequential which of those two reads ends up having more support by the end of the year, as both are true and don't change the fundamentals of a program that needs more time to bring in the new staff's own players and culture. Nonetheless, it would be nice to break the pendulum we've seen so far and start stringing together a few respectable games in a row. Washington State and their four game losing streak should not be an intimidating team for us to try to start doing that. Go Card!