01-04-2014, 08:42 AM
First, can Stanford get to the college football playoffs? Obviously yes. Three of the past four seasons we've finished in the top 4 by some metric at the end of the regular season. And at that point there's a lot of random chance that will dictate if we can win a NCG.
That being said, there is still plenty of room for improvement to increase our chances of winning a NCG and I agree that the majority of it is on offense. I think the Orange Bowl offense demonstrated that we can have a dynamic offense that is powerful as well. I would like to see a return to the line shifts and variations out of a single set that we saw then, and I don't think the absence of Luck means that's impossible. Good pass catching tight ends are more critical, so hopefully we can develop them. One viewpoint is that Shaw was forced into a predictable offense because of his personnel. I think the jury is still out on that, but I suspect that plenty of offensive coordinators could figure out a way of getting Cajuste, Young, Sanders etc. the ball in space more often than we did.
That being said, there is still plenty of room for improvement to increase our chances of winning a NCG and I agree that the majority of it is on offense. I think the Orange Bowl offense demonstrated that we can have a dynamic offense that is powerful as well. I would like to see a return to the line shifts and variations out of a single set that we saw then, and I don't think the absence of Luck means that's impossible. Good pass catching tight ends are more critical, so hopefully we can develop them. One viewpoint is that Shaw was forced into a predictable offense because of his personnel. I think the jury is still out on that, but I suspect that plenty of offensive coordinators could figure out a way of getting Cajuste, Young, Sanders etc. the ball in space more often than we did.