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From what I saw in watching -- and Chryst only played three or four possessions in one half of play that was televised -- he might've gotten in his own way too much. The 7 on 7 format is set up so that you have to get 20 yards for a first down, which obviously encourages quarterbacks to throw downfield while demanding that defenses defend against the deep pass more than they would otherwise. (And, obviously, they don't have to honor the run at all.) So it's a skewed version of football.
My interpretation of what went wrong is colored by my hope that Chryst develops into a stud, but it looked like he was simply executing his reads. The deep stuff was taken away, so he checked down often and settled for five- to seven-yard gains. With only three downs, that doesn't move the chains or produce points. If that's the case, there probably isn't any cause for concern. He was just taking what the defense was giving him, which is always a positive trait in a quarterback, especially one in the Stanford system.
Watching it all, and then watching every other quarterback fearlessly rifling the ball downfield, I wondered why he simply didn't adjust. Then I remembered something that Wade Boggs once said about umpires with bad strike zones. He was asked why he didn't just swing at pitches an inch or two off the plate when he knew that a particular umpire had a strike zone that went an inch or two off the plate. He responded that he simply refused to alter the strike zone or the approach that he had burned into his mind. It obviously worked for him. So perhaps Chryst, the son of a quarterbacks coach, simply refused to adapt to this bastardized brand of football.
It should also be noted that Trent Dilfer and Tom Luginbill had glowing things to say about him while he was playing. They emphasized his size, strength, arm strength, and accuracy, and also talked about the brobdingnagian advantage that his father's connection to the 49ers gives him, and not for reasons you might think. I always thought his edge would come from listening to coaches and watching film, but they mentioned that being able to throw to NFL receivers would help adapt to the speed increase going from high school to the Pac-12.
One other thing of note from the telecast. The announcers talked over and over about the trend in college football towards slimming down the playbook, a trend which hasn't yet hit Stanford. I think this just gives Stanford another recruiting advantage. David Shaw has talked about how easy it was for Andrew Luck to learn the Colts' offense, thanks mainly to his experience with the Stanford offense. If Shaw can sit down with these elite quarterbacks and tell them that they could choose to go somewhere and throw 40 times a game and put up ungodly numbers, or they could come to Stanford and learn to be an NFL quarterback, I think we'll get the ones who truly want to be great. (Actually, I have no doubt that this already happens.)
Please clear the field! The game is not over!
![[Image: 1927_Stanford_Rose_Bowl.jpg]](http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/150878/1927_Stanford_Rose_Bowl.jpg)
