7. Speaking of Ford, I love that guy and am so sad/irritated he got potentially seriously hurt at the end of garbage time yesterday. Taylor addressed this head-on in the press conference and made a case that we are at the stage of the rebuild where we have to fight whistle to whistle. I can buy that but it's frustrating and Taylor owns the results. I don't blame Taylor for Ford's injury but Taylor is rightfully fair game for criticism and in any case is going to have to live with the usage decisions he makes, like he has had to with the QB injuries. I fully get the point about sending a message to the team of battling to the finish but I think it is certainly a missed opportunity to have seven minutes and 28 seconds of garbage time, two full offensive drives, and not get any action for Myles Jackson, Ryan Butler (hurt?), or Jackson Harris (what is going on?). I would not pull the starting line or indeed most of the starters for garbage time, but odd to not at least pull Lamson. As some of us said before the game, not playing Jackson in such a situation likely indicates Jackson is dead to Taylor and will never be a factor. In terms of offensive player performance, it again sucks that our offensive MVP got hurt, potentially very seriously. Still waiting on the advent of the Mosley era to unlock the passing game and it is hard to overstate how disappointing Ayomanor has been, with this probably his most disappointing game yet in terms of drops and body language. I hope he turns it around to leave a much better taste in his/our mouths for his probable. last season of college football (I don't buy transfer speculation since as a Canadian he's mostly screwed out of NIL money and I don't buy that the NFL will be fooled by this season such that they shy away from drafting him in the first several rounds) [Moving the chains (first down) leader board: Ford (5), Lamson (5), Ayomanor (2), Mosley (2), Roush (2), Cisse, Davis] On the offensive line, props to House for getting better every week (I am starting to join our coaches in great excitement for what the future holds), Pale for being probably our best lineman in general with Rogers out and McLaughlin benched, and Leyrer for playing ok when Rogers got hurt and Maikkula had to slide inside. Still not buying McLaughlin being benched for Baklenko is good for the team but the more the season goes on at this level of play the more rationale there is for a developmental approach playing for the future. But the big story is the possibility Rogers' career is over. Really hope not. If so, we have transitioned fully to a super young line playing for the future.
8. The defense didn't have as many players step up as we've seen in other games this year. I count seven players with multiple successful box score plays (Sinclair, Tafiti, Bernadel, Wright, Edwards, Leigber, Rowell), and a chunk of those were in garbage time. Defense-wide, only one sack and four tackles for loss is disappointing against an offense that gives up over two sacks and 6.5 tackles for loss per game, not to mention that it's never ideal when you don't get a turnover. There were a few who stepped up big time though. I'd be remiss not to start in recognizing easily a career game for Tafiti. He filled up the stat sheet like crazy with tackles for loss, a sack, and a forced fumble, plus the sack forced a punt (though it looked like Staples - emerging as a very helpful situational pass rusher - was the key on that play. We have never seen anything like this in Tafiti's career and if this is a sign of things to come it's big. And yet he arguably was outshined (or at least equally shined) by linebacker play, where I view Sinclair and Bernadel as they key to the run defense and competing with Wright for this season's team MVP. Sinclair's sheer number of successful plays was brobdingnagian (wonder how many Stanford players have had more in the last half decade), nine that I count (albeit three in garbage time). Sinclair almost had a spectacular pass breakup on the biggest play of the game, the 55 yard touchdown that made it 21-0 instead of Stanford having the ball down two scores with almost the entire second half remaining, but alas Sinclair's finger tips were just out of reach and we were burned by the misfortune of having Edwards and Leigber as our safeties. Bernadel's game was better than the box score thought as it should have credited him rather than Bryce Farrell with a half tackle for loss, to go with several run defenses. Wright tackled well and had a big pass breakup but did not have his best game, definitely some plays that hurt (first touchdown was his man plus he cost us four points in garbage time on the running into the kicker. Bailey's snaps have declined every game this season and his seven snaps yesterday and is effectively not playing, his lowest total outside of the one snap Washington game. It makes me sad but also frustrated to see how much worse Edwards is playing than last year. Safeties are a liability and I didn't feel going into the season that they necessarily had to be.
9. Not my favorite Flintoft game to be honest, with net punts of 32 yards to the 12 (shows up as inside the 20 but slightly disappointing), 41 yards to the 18 (shows up inside the 20 but I'd call this straight up bad, especially as 10 yards there could have stung if it made the difference on a half-end field goal), 48 to the 22 when accounting for the block in the back penalty (can't complain about the net and it was a weird play with the big return called back for penalty, kind of hard to judge), and 40 to the 40 (big meh). He's an asset but I'm hoping in future years for more booming punts and hang time. Feel like we have a very competent punter rather than a weapon. Kenney missed his only attempt, a 53 yarder, which is not a gimme but we can probably cool it with the Karty comparisons now. What stuck in my craw from that miss was less the miss itself and more the play before of Lamson taking the sack on the first drive when it was already a substantial field goal. Can't do that, bad moment that probably cost us three points to start the game. Bachmeier's 28 yard kick return, which turned out even better with the personal foul on Virginia Tech, and 29 yard kick return were only his second and third of the season and were helpful. If he can do that consistently it would be an asset. He also had a good punt return called back for a block in the back, though of course the block in the back may have been why it was a good punt return. Given how putrid Bachmeier has been as a receiver, including in this game, it feels weird to award a game ball, but my process is my process and he stood out on special teams.
10. Game balls: Micah Ford, Tristan Sinclair, Tiger Bachmeier, Mark D'Onofrio
11. I never had any hope we would win at Notre Dame next week so am not necessarily more pessimistic heading into that game than I would have otherwise been, but these two weeks feel a bit like using up our mulligans. I am going to really be questioning the state of the rebuild if we continue to scuffle, which in terms of the scoreboard would be losing by 3+ scores. Optimism we know what we're doing should take another hit if this is as uncompetitive as Clemson and Virginia Tech were. That being said, Notre Dame and SMU back-to-back is by far the hardest two week stretch of our season, among the hardest any team in the nation faces outside of the SEC this year, so if we can get a bit more healthy without being competitive the next two weeks I will still be curious to see what we can do in any easier stretch run, especially as we may have a new more hopeful QB by then.
8. The defense didn't have as many players step up as we've seen in other games this year. I count seven players with multiple successful box score plays (Sinclair, Tafiti, Bernadel, Wright, Edwards, Leigber, Rowell), and a chunk of those were in garbage time. Defense-wide, only one sack and four tackles for loss is disappointing against an offense that gives up over two sacks and 6.5 tackles for loss per game, not to mention that it's never ideal when you don't get a turnover. There were a few who stepped up big time though. I'd be remiss not to start in recognizing easily a career game for Tafiti. He filled up the stat sheet like crazy with tackles for loss, a sack, and a forced fumble, plus the sack forced a punt (though it looked like Staples - emerging as a very helpful situational pass rusher - was the key on that play. We have never seen anything like this in Tafiti's career and if this is a sign of things to come it's big. And yet he arguably was outshined (or at least equally shined) by linebacker play, where I view Sinclair and Bernadel as they key to the run defense and competing with Wright for this season's team MVP. Sinclair's sheer number of successful plays was brobdingnagian (wonder how many Stanford players have had more in the last half decade), nine that I count (albeit three in garbage time). Sinclair almost had a spectacular pass breakup on the biggest play of the game, the 55 yard touchdown that made it 21-0 instead of Stanford having the ball down two scores with almost the entire second half remaining, but alas Sinclair's finger tips were just out of reach and we were burned by the misfortune of having Edwards and Leigber as our safeties. Bernadel's game was better than the box score thought as it should have credited him rather than Bryce Farrell with a half tackle for loss, to go with several run defenses. Wright tackled well and had a big pass breakup but did not have his best game, definitely some plays that hurt (first touchdown was his man plus he cost us four points in garbage time on the running into the kicker. Bailey's snaps have declined every game this season and his seven snaps yesterday and is effectively not playing, his lowest total outside of the one snap Washington game. It makes me sad but also frustrated to see how much worse Edwards is playing than last year. Safeties are a liability and I didn't feel going into the season that they necessarily had to be.
9. Not my favorite Flintoft game to be honest, with net punts of 32 yards to the 12 (shows up as inside the 20 but slightly disappointing), 41 yards to the 18 (shows up inside the 20 but I'd call this straight up bad, especially as 10 yards there could have stung if it made the difference on a half-end field goal), 48 to the 22 when accounting for the block in the back penalty (can't complain about the net and it was a weird play with the big return called back for penalty, kind of hard to judge), and 40 to the 40 (big meh). He's an asset but I'm hoping in future years for more booming punts and hang time. Feel like we have a very competent punter rather than a weapon. Kenney missed his only attempt, a 53 yarder, which is not a gimme but we can probably cool it with the Karty comparisons now. What stuck in my craw from that miss was less the miss itself and more the play before of Lamson taking the sack on the first drive when it was already a substantial field goal. Can't do that, bad moment that probably cost us three points to start the game. Bachmeier's 28 yard kick return, which turned out even better with the personal foul on Virginia Tech, and 29 yard kick return were only his second and third of the season and were helpful. If he can do that consistently it would be an asset. He also had a good punt return called back for a block in the back, though of course the block in the back may have been why it was a good punt return. Given how putrid Bachmeier has been as a receiver, including in this game, it feels weird to award a game ball, but my process is my process and he stood out on special teams.
10. Game balls: Micah Ford, Tristan Sinclair, Tiger Bachmeier, Mark D'Onofrio
11. I never had any hope we would win at Notre Dame next week so am not necessarily more pessimistic heading into that game than I would have otherwise been, but these two weeks feel a bit like using up our mulligans. I am going to really be questioning the state of the rebuild if we continue to scuffle, which in terms of the scoreboard would be losing by 3+ scores. Optimism we know what we're doing should take another hit if this is as uncompetitive as Clemson and Virginia Tech were. That being said, Notre Dame and SMU back-to-back is by far the hardest two week stretch of our season, among the hardest any team in the nation faces outside of the SEC this year, so if we can get a bit more healthy without being competitive the next two weeks I will still be curious to see what we can do in any easier stretch run, especially as we may have a new more hopeful QB by then.