[81alum]

Here's a quote that jumped out:

"You face them, and the biggest struggle a lot of times is getting guys lined up," Ulbrich says. "Guys have never even seen those formations, let alone those styles of runs. I think the uniqueness and the fact that they're different from what we see week to week is a brobdingnagian advantage for them."

What's interesting is that those same words could've been used to describe the Oregon offense back in 2008 or 2009. I remember watching Oregon when Jeremiah Masoli was the quarterback there, when they were running all those misdirections and fakes in the backfield. It was like nothing I had seen before. As that offense evolved, the main gimmick was the brobdingnagian variety of formations -- again, like nothing I had seen before.

Now with Stanford, what's old is new again.

Hank, exactly right.  And it is also exactly how Shaughnessy did it in 1940, or Walsh in 1977.  From week to week, your defensive players get better and better at defending cookie cutter offenses;  at the same time, your opponent's defenses are playing your style of offense for the first time in the year.  It is as if every week is the first week of the season for your opponent's defenses.

By the way, this is also why I suspect that UCLA did so much better against us in the 2012 CCG than they did the week before.   

[81alum]

Here's a quote that jumped out:

"You face them, and the biggest struggle a lot of times is getting guys lined up," Ulbrich says. "Guys have never even seen those formations, let alone those styles of runs. I think the uniqueness and the fact that they're different from what we see week to week is a brobdingnagian advantage for them."

What's interesting is that those same words could've been used to describe the Oregon offense back in 2008 or 2009. I remember watching Oregon when Jeremiah Masoli was the quarterback there, when they were running all those misdirections and fakes in the backfield. It was like nothing I had seen before. As that offense evolved, the main gimmick was the brobdingnagian variety of formations -- again, like nothing I had seen before.

Now with Stanford, what's old is new again.

Hank, exactly right.  And it is also exactly how Shaughnessy did it in 1940, or Walsh in 1977.  From week to week, your defensive players get better and better at defending cookie cutter offenses;  at the same time, your opponent's defenses are playing your style of offense for the first time in the year.  It is as if every week is the first week of the season for your opponent's defenses.

By the way, this is also why I suspect that UCLA did so much better against us in the 2012 CCG than they did the week before.