It is incredibly hard to win consistently

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It is incredibly hard to win consistently - lex24 - 10-26-2017

JimboÂ Fisher is 2-4. McElwain is 3-3 (and getting death threats). Jim Harbaugh now has the same record after 30 some odd games at Michigan as Brady Hoke. Clay Helton, hailed just a short time ago as the guy that brought SC back to prominence is getting slammed - even by his QB. Oregon has gone from the Penthouse to the Outhouse. MSU has struggled the last couple years.Â Etc. Very very few win consistently.

4 games left. And they still have a shot. Ill take that. Especially after a 1-2 start

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - PAsportsfan - 10-26-2017

Lex,

You lose a lot of credibility when you try to defend what happened tonight.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - lex24 - 10-27-2017

PA - look at what Ive posted. In no way have I tried to defended what happened tonight.Â Far from it.Â Im just not ready to have it define the season.

(10-26-2017, 11:39 PM)PAsportsfan link Wrote:Lex,

You lose a lot of credibility when you try to defend what happened tonight.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - BostonCard - 10-27-2017

https://twitter.com/flemmingdave/status/923780543656771584
https://twitter.com/flemmingdave/status/923780805955952640

Thats about right.

BC

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - gocard14 - 10-27-2017

Bad games and losses happen to everyone, especially on the road. This felt particularly bad because:

1. The Beavers arent bad. Theyre horrible with one narrow win over Portland St.

2. There was an obvious intervention (putting in Costello) which could have dramatically altered the course of the game and kept us from requiring some big breaks to win

3. Ive never seen a game with more dumb, key drive extending penalties on defense.

4. All this was after a bye week, when we should be the most prepared.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - winflop - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 01:09 AM)Boston Card link Wrote:https://twitter.com/flemmingdave/status/923780543656771584
https://twitter.com/flemmingdave/status/923780805955952640

Thats about right.

BC

This is not an indictment of Shaw overall. But last night was on the coaches for lack of mental preparation and not changing QBs.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - washingtonismoney - 10-27-2017

Yeah, I think it's perfectly consistent to say:
1) the game last night was disturbingly bad
2) it was indicative of some bad trends in Stanford football that need to be reversed if the program wants to endure or progress beyond its current level
3) Shaw's a great coach

You can find some pretty bad embarrassments for literally any coach if you want to dig hard enough. So I don't think this invalidates Shaw at all. But I do think it should provide him and the staff with a kick in the pants to do better. Because ultimately the poor performance last night wasn't on bad luck or the players, it was on the strategy and tactics that got the team there -- i.e. the coaching.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - RedShift - 10-27-2017

Has anyone quantified how Shaw's teams do after byes (or at the beginning of the season) vs. season average on metrics of offensive and defensive efficiencies?

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - washingtonismoney - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 08:20 AM)RedShift link Wrote:Has anyone quantified how Shaw's teams do after byes (or at the beginning of the season) vs. season average on metrics of offensive and defensive efficiencies?

Not a complete answer to your question but, per TeamRankings.net:

Since 2011, Stanford is 9-3 (.750) after a bye versus 70-19 (.789) overall. Against the spread during the same time frame, Stanford is 7-5 (.583) versus 54-34 overall (.614). Note that Stanford is the second-best team against the spread overall since 2011 versus somewhere in the 30s against the spread after the bye. Small sample size on the data-slicing, of course, but perhaps an indicator of underperformance.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - ColoradoTree - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 05:34 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Yeah, I think it's perfectly consistent to say:
1) the game last night was disturbingly bad
2) it was indicative of some bad trends in Stanford football that need to be reversed if the program wants to endure or progress beyond its current level
3) Shaw's a great coach

You can find some pretty bad embarrassments for literally any coach if you want to dig hard enough. So I don't think this invalidates Shaw at all. But I do think it should provide him and the staff with a kick in the pants to do better. Because ultimately the poor performance last night wasn't on bad luck or the players, it was on the strategy and tactics that got the team there -- i.e. the coaching.

I'm on board with this, with a few caveats: it's somewhat on the players.Â As the announcers noted, after as many games as Chryst has started, he ought to be able to go through progressions instead of fixating on his primary read.Â Our defense should have been better at avoiding idiotic drive-extending penalties.Â Our running backs should have been better at identifying the holes that were there and attacking them.

If the players had executed somewhat better, then maybe those field goal drives end up as touchdowns and we're up 21-14 in the fourth quarter and we're conservatively running the clock down.Â It would still be disappointing, but the win would have come more easily.Â But that's a minor quibble, as the coaching bears the lion's share of the blame here.

A quick point on bad luck: I don't think we had any bad luck last night, but incredibly good luck.Â Keller threw several (like 7-10) balls that were eminently interceptable, and only one was actually intercepted.Â If the Oregon State DBs had slightly better hands, we could have been down multiple touchdowns at half, since many of those near-miss interceptions were on corners jumping in front of a receiver on an out pattern near the sidelines, which is a recipe for pick-sixes.Â

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - washingtonismoney - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 08:35 AM)ColoradoTree link Wrote:I'm on board with this, with a few caveats: it's somewhat on the players.Â As the announcers noted, after as many games as Chryst has started, he ought to be able to go through progressions instead of fixating on his primary read.Â Our defense should have been better at avoiding idiotic drive-extending penalties.Â Our running backs should have been better at identifying the holes that were there and attacking them.

Well, yes and no. For example we know special teams has been consistently good since Alamar came to town, so I blame Reid more than Alamar on the silly penalty. (Which probably shouldn't've been a penalty, to be fair.)

On the other hand, if the coaches consistently trot out a player who's incapable of performing, it's on them on some level:
1) They can either replace him with a better player (which it appears Costello likely is)
2) or change the gameplan to accommodate his skills, inconsistent as they might be.

It's time to revive the CTCard theory: that everything that goes wrong in the offense tends to be throwing too much. Note that Chryst averaged 4.3 YPA -- but that doesn't include sacks. Throw those in and the average Chryst dropback performed worse than the average Scarlett carry. If the coaches were stuck on Chryst, they should've let Scarlett shoulder the load. But Chryst threw 33 passes to Scarlett's 17 carries -- odd, considering the purported power-run emphasis of the Stanford coaches.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - stupac2 - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 05:34 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Because ultimately the poor performance last night wasn't on bad luck or the players, it was on the strategy and tactics that got the team there -- i.e. the coaching.

I don't think this is quite right, unless you mean it in the "the buck stops here" way where everything is ultimately the coaches' faults. Keeping Chryst out there was definitely a mistake, but it's not like Shaw told him "hey you should play like garbage tonight" or "just lock onto Irwin every play". Chryst is out there--presumably, anyway--because he has the best command of our offensive system, which also gives him more rope to hang himself. In another thread someone said that Shaw pointed out that the 4th and 10 conversion throw had been open all night but Chryst wasn't throwing it. I'm not sure what Shaw can do about that.

Similarly, ORST was crashing down to the middle on every run play and the backs were refusing to bounce them outside in the first half. I highly, highly doubt the coaches told them to do that. They trusted them to make the right reads during the play, which is generally what you'd want to do! But for some reason they stopped do it, the coaches saw what we saw, and started calling plays to the edge that got brobdingnagian gains. But, of course, if your QB can't complete a throw to save his life that only gets you so much...

I'm also quite confident that the coaches tell the players to keep calm and not retaliate, how much are they responsible for Edwards's penalty? Or Reid's? Or Alfieri's? Again, in the grand scheme they're responsible for everything, and we've seen an alarming number of boneheaded plays this year which indicates it could be a coaching problem, but at some point it's the guys on the field making these decisions.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm more concerned about the offense or the defense. This is the third year in a row where we've had a mediocre-to-bad defense. Our offenses in that time have been inconsistent (although in 2015 it rounded into form), but the defenses have been consistent, just consistently bad. In some ways it's hard to know which is more troublesome, we're clearly capable of fielding good offenses, but we've only had one good defense since Mason left. When was the last time a coordinator of ours, on either side of the ball, drew hiring interest?

It seems like FSU is going through a lot of the same problems we are, where the head coach is clearly quite successful but maybe a little too comfortable, a little too loyal. You don't want to be like Wittingham going through coordinators like kleenex, but at some point you need to take a survey of the state of the program and say "why aren't we getting it done?" I'm not going to pretend to know the answer (I think that's the biggest sin of most fans, being overly certain in a highly uncertain environment), but I'm going to be awfully worried if we don't use this offseason to make some major changes on the coaching staff. We have the excuse of getting an extra position, we should use it.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - Beeg_Dawg - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 05:34 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Yeah, I think it's perfectly consistent to say:
1) the game last night was disturbingly bad
2) it was indicative of some bad trends in Stanford football that need to be reversed if the program wants to endure or progress beyond its current level
3) Shaw's a great coach

You can find some pretty bad embarrassments for literally any coach if you want to dig hard enough. So I don't think this invalidates Shaw at all. But I do think it should provide him and the staff with a kick in the pants to do better. Because ultimately the poor performance last night wasn't on bad luck or the players, it was on the strategy and tactics that got the team there -- i.e. the coaching.

I thought Chryst got worse as the game progressed.Â He certainly returned to his old form of alternating between throwing behind receivers and throwing lawn darts. This was the team that lost to San Diego State, not the team the rolled UCLA and Oregon.Â OL play was in the C- range.Â Running backs ran into blockers.Â Dumb penalties.Â Defense kept giving up long first downs.Â Questionable clock management.Â And did we have to run the same play 3 times in row when going for two at the end?

This was a total team clusterfk.Â This was like a return to the Wlat Era.Â

For the record, I am happy we won, but damn, I feel sorry for the Beavs.Â

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - gocard14 - 10-27-2017

Not sure why people thought the call on Reid was unjustified. I couldn't see clearly if he got pushed but he clearly took down the kicker without touching the ball. They'll call the same penalty for much, much less like grazing the kicker's leg followed by a flop. Whether it should be a 5 or 15 yard version is up for debate, but IMO if you touch the kicker you have to assume the worst will happen.

Now there was a lot of other horrid officiating, including the defensive holding call that extended the OSU drive, several blatantly obvious missed holds by their O-line (including two in a row), and while the announcers disagreed, I thought the holding call on Scarlett that negated the touchdown was BS. What I saw was he had his hands inside the rushers shoulders and drove him back and into the ground. That's called a great block, not a "takedown" or holding.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - cardcrimson - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 01:09 AM)Boston Card link Wrote:https://twitter.com/flemmingdave/status/923780543656771584
https://twitter.com/flemmingdave/status/923780805955952640

Thats about right.

BC

The irony is that both Fleming and Huard sounded like most of this board last night. Completely befuddled by what they were seeing on offense. Backs not seeing the holes, unimaginative playcalling, QB staring down receivers, then badly missing them, should have been 5 ints, and no Costello. Oh, and uncharacteristic, dumb penalties, including delay of games

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - RedShift - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 08:32 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:[quote author=RedShift link=topic=17801.msg208634#msg208634 date=1509117602]
Has anyone quantified how Shaw's teams do after byes (or at the beginning of the season) vs. season average on metrics of offensive and defensive efficiencies?

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - ChicagoCard - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 09:12 AM)cardcrimson link Wrote:The irony is that both Fleming and Huard sounded like most of this board last night. Completely befuddled by what they were seeing on offense. Backs not seeing the holes, unimaginative playcalling, QB staring down receivers, then badly missing them, should have been 5 ints, and no Costello. Oh, and uncharacteristic, dumb penalties, including delay of games

Maybe I was in a frazzled mood even before the game but I ended up just turning off the volume I was so, well, frazzled. Fleming seems good at what he does but seems to have a generic broadcaster quality that grates on me. Maybe with experience his own style will distinguish itself. Huard I find hard to take. I think he's a quality play-by-play guy, but has a kind of carping style. I thought Laura Rutledge seemed like one of the better sideline reporters. I would have preferred listening to her announce the game solo.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - teejers1 - 10-27-2017

Is it hard to avoid absolutely pathetic displays on offense (whether you win or lose)?Â [Sea Hang, where art thou?]

Is it hard to recognize horrific (not just bad, but horrific) QB play and make a change?

Coach Shaw may be the luckiest head coach in college football - he certainly was last night (I mean, the fourth down completion on Stanford's last drive was so lucky, it's ridiculous) - and that has allowed the defenders to point to W/L record, which is certainly important.Â But just as you can have Ls where coaches do well and you just lose to a superior team (which I suspect we'll see against at least UW), you can also have Ws where the coaches do poorly and you beat an inferior team.Â Is there any doubt where last night's game fell on the spectrum?

And this isn't about Shaw as head man - he has done well, especially on defensive side, and he "gets" Stanford and "represents" better than any coach I've seen.Â It's about Shaw as OC.

P.S.Â Of all the optimistic posts we've seen on Stanford boards this season, the most silly ones were those implying that Chryst has QB skills comparable to Andrew Luck.Â The 2 amazing balls Chryst dropped into a covered JJAW against Oregon were so clearly the outliers - as made painfully clear last night.Â

Invoking Andrew Luck when talking about Chryst . . . talk about fan overreaction.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - Goose - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 08:42 AM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:It's time to revive the CTCard theory: that everything that goes wrong in the offense tends to be throwing too much. Note that Chryst averaged 4.3 YPA -- but that doesn't include sacks. Throw those in and the average Chryst dropback performed worse than the average Scarlett carry. If the coaches were stuck on Chryst, they should've let Scarlett shoulder the load. But Chryst threw 33 passes to Scarlett's 17 carries -- odd, considering the purported power-run emphasis of the Stanford coaches.

Absolutely correct! How many times did we get 4 yards on first down, then pass on second down? Yes, OSU has an allegedly poor pass defense, but Stanford should be able to run the damn ball on them. If Shaw is going to be pilloried for being stubborn, let it be for stubbornly running the ball! Insisting on passing with Chryst having the night he was is hard to explain. If we can run a bit, Chryst might settle down and hit a big gainer. We had one that got called back, so it was possible.

Re: It is incredibly hard to win consistently - cardcrimson - 10-27-2017

(10-27-2017, 09:52 AM)teejers1 link Wrote:And this isn't about Shaw as head man - he has done well, especially on defensive side, and he "gets" Stanford and "represents" better than any coach I've seen.Â It's about Shaw as OC.

That one line probably sums it up as well as I've seen. As head coach, he's the perfect guy for Stanford. As OC, sometimes you have to wonder. Great coordinators make adjustments as the game progresses, we saw zero adjustments last night.