[Rando]

He has seven interceptions (though admittedly, a 3 percent interception is pretty good.) And the idea that a passing offense cannot be effective without tight ends is silly. Prior to the Harbaugh era, tight ends were an ancillary component of the Stanford passing game. While you can certainly find some excellent receiving tight ends in our record books (Bob Moore, Greg Baty, Greg Clark), the passing-first regimes of Jim Plunkett, Mike Boryla, Guy Benjamin, John Elway, John Paye, Steve Stenstrom and the rest were built on throws to wide receivers, not tight ends.

Hard to compare our offense now to our offense in the 70's & 80's. We are tight end U without any TE's who can catch. That's an issue. Our gameplan for the past 5 years has been all about fullbacks and tight ends and we have gotten away with that this season. I think it's a big factor. If we did have Ertz this thread would have never been made. Hogan has improved most of his passing stats this season without his two tight ends last year. That's impressive.

Now if we were USC without a good tight end, it's not as big a deal. Stanford's playbook puts major emphasis on the tight end. We've adjusted our passing this year to our WR's instead of TE's and I think that's a big factor...much bigger than if USC chose to abandon throwing to their TE's. (for the record, I have no knowledge about SC's tight end situation)

[Rando]

He has seven interceptions (though admittedly, a 3 percent interception is pretty good.) And the idea that a passing offense cannot be effective without tight ends is silly. Prior to the Harbaugh era, tight ends were an ancillary component of the Stanford passing game. While you can certainly find some excellent receiving tight ends in our record books (Bob Moore, Greg Baty, Greg Clark), the passing-first regimes of Jim Plunkett, Mike Boryla, Guy Benjamin, John Elway, John Paye, Steve Stenstrom and the rest were built on throws to wide receivers, not tight ends.

Hard to compare our offense now to our offense in the 70's & 80's. We are tight end U without any TE's who can catch. That's an issue. Our gameplan for the past 5 years has been all about fullbacks and tight ends and we have gotten away with that this season. I think it's a big factor. If we did have Ertz this thread would have never been made. Hogan has improved most of his passing stats this season without his two tight ends last year. That's impressive.

Now if we were USC without a good tight end, it's not as big a deal. Stanford's playbook puts major emphasis on the tight end. We've adjusted our passing this year to our WR's instead of TE's and I think that's a big factor...much bigger than if USC chose to abandon throwing to their TE's. (for the record, I have no knowledge about SC's tight end situation)