What does the Oregon win tell us about our team?

What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - Printable Version

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What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - 81alum - 09-22-2018

An honest question. I'll try:

+ Our team has the maturity to persevere in a hostile environment.
+ Costello is the real deal (QBR 95.3 vs Herbert 86.4)
+ Our pass blocking was adequate
+ A very talented receiving core with many positives
+ Adebo continues to be very impressive although he needs experience. He was critical in overtime.

- Our run blocking remains terrible--even when Oregon did NOT overload the box.
- Our defensive line was mediocre, generating little pressure and permitting too many positive runs
- Akina may be a genius, but we played with very big cushions that allowed a lot of completions with runs after the catches.
- Oregon could have won except for a coaching blunder; can we learn from this win as much as if we lost?

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - stupac2 - 09-22-2018

(09-22-2018, 09:33 PM)81alum Wrote: - Oregon could have won except for a coaching blunder; can we learn from this win as much as if we lost?

I hope so, because it's not like things get easier next week.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - ChicagoCard - 09-22-2018

What's cool is I see chatter this evening about people perceiving Stanford as having a kind of mystique in staying cool and letting others inevitably screw up.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - Spiny_Norman - 09-22-2018

What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? They are one game closer to bowl eligibility. And in first place in the P12 North (for at least 2 weeks). :-)

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - cardcrimson - 09-22-2018

We gave their receivers way too much cushion.

We are very stubborn in the first half running between the tackles looking to impose our will.

Our conditioning appears to be superb.

Our guys don't quit.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - BostonCard - 09-22-2018

It tells us how much we miss Bloomgren.

BC

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - PVTree - 09-22-2018

It tells me that we weren't good enough to win tonight without some self-inflicted mistakes by the Quackers. I'd like for us to get to the point that we don't need the other team to make mistakes in order for us to win. I'd love to be able to say that the Water Fowl played as best as they could, and we still beat them.

We have a lot of work to do...mainly on both the OL and DL. The coaches need to consider implementing some play action, misdirection, and not being so predictable.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - cardcrimson - 09-22-2018

(09-22-2018, 10:01 PM)BostonCard Wrote: It tells us how much we miss Bloomgren.

BC

On the O-line or play calling?

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - BostonCard - 09-22-2018

(09-22-2018, 10:12 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(09-22-2018, 10:01 PM)BostonCard Wrote: It tells us how much we miss Bloomgren.

BC

On the O-line or play calling?

Well, it was a package deal, but mostly on the offensive line. Grant it we've had injuries, but even our left tackle struggled tonight.

BC

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - CardinalSagehen - 09-22-2018

This win tells us many things, but above all, it tells us that we have to rest our fortunes with KJ and our tall, athletic receiving corps.

This may offend Shaw's sense of football identity, but so be it.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - muiron - 09-22-2018

Actually, I think they DO get easier next week. We match up better with ND than with the speed of Oregon - and ND doesn't have a Herbert.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - Goose - 09-22-2018

(09-22-2018, 10:26 PM)muiron Wrote: Actually, I think they DO get easier next week. We match up better with ND than with the speed of Oregon - and ND doesn't have a Herbert.

Unfortunately, the "new" QB may be close enough. I suspect the coaches will be scratching their heads about what to expect next Saturday.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - fullmetal - 09-22-2018

ND's had mobile QBs before. We need to shore up the offensive line and defensive lines.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - 81alum - 09-23-2018

(09-22-2018, 10:01 PM)BostonCard Wrote: It tells us how much we miss Bloomgren.

BC

I was wondering this too, all season so far but especially so last night.

When we have largely the same personnel and yet 1) the offensive line is run blocking much worse and 2) the passing game seems much better the logical conclusion is that this is due to changes of emphasis in coaching.

The offensive coordinator is a former quarterback, the outgoing one was the offensive line coach.

Another possibility is to rest this on Carberry, who is the new offensive line coach and running game coordinator. Those are obvious weaknesses of our offense at this point, and it is not as if Carberry has had less talent to work with than Bloomgren did.

The good news is that Love has such an enormous reputation that having him on the field keeps the defense honest, whether or not he is running particularly well. This gives us plenty of passing opportunities. I'm inclined to think that Love will be able to run better once we establish the pass and start forcing defenses to drop more into coverage--this is the Walsh philosophy and the opposite of Shaw, but I wonder if even he will be forced into this conclusion given the great success of our passing and limited success of our running.

Much has been said about play action, and after watching a couple of classic Gerhardt games with lots of play action I was reminded of how very different our old running plays looked compared with the new pitch-back plays. But Shaw knows this, and while he may be stubborn, we also know he is perfectly willing to run power and play action since he has before. I conclude that it is something to do with our personnel. He thinks Costello is a more effective quarterback if he is always facing the defense since he is young and doesn't scan the field as quickly as Luck learned to do. Or he is worried that Costello's mobility is limited and so he needs to see the blitzes coming a little earlier. OR (and this is my best guess) Love runs best when he is patient and sees the holes developing, and thus the deep pitch play to him. The defenses know this and so play-action just doesn't work since Love almost never gets the ball on a conventional handoff. We would have to start regularly handing off to Love to make the play-action work, and hand-offs don't maximize Love's abilities.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - stupac2 - 09-23-2018

(09-23-2018, 06:29 AM)81alum Wrote: Another possibility is to rest this on Carberry, who is the new offensive line coach and running game coordinator. Those are obvious weaknesses of our offense at this point, and it is not as if Carberry has had less talent to work with than Bloomgren did.

This is kind of interesting to me because we had a lot of OL issues early last year as well. Part of the reason we were optimistic about the offense this year was that things were basically settled, we returned 4/5 guys and had excellent candidates to fill in the remaining spot.

...And then everyone got hurt. So we're basically in the same situation as last year, except we haven't even had the most talented players available. I can see that causing a lot of issues, especially combined with your later point of defenses keying hard on Love.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - JPR36 - 09-23-2018

(09-22-2018, 09:45 PM)ChicagoCard Wrote: What's cool is I see chatter this evening about people perceiving Stanford as having a kind of mystique in staying cool and letting others inevitably screw up.

Yep, Oregon may have given us the game, but I can remember other times when teams tried to give us the game and we didn't seem to want to take it. Last night we definitely wanted to, and did.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - Hulk01 - 09-23-2018

I don't miss Bloomgren at all.

These are Bloomgren's recruits applying the technique they learned from him.

We had one of the less productive running games in college football last year, ranking in the bottom 10% for runs stopped for no gain or a loss.

Bloomgren recruited two offensive linemen in the last two years. This is inexcusable.

Bloomgren's 2014 offensive line performed exactly like this in the first half of that season--false starts, holds, illegal chip blocks, and a hideous number of sacks. His 2017 offensive line, again, didn't run block worth a damn.

And we all must have noticed there was no tribute to him, of any kind, when he left. Silence. I think that meant something.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - Velodoc - 09-23-2018

Same old, same old.

Last year, it was obvious that a young QB named Costello had brobdingnagian upside and we all wondered why Shaw continued to play Chryst, respectfully assuming there was something we didn't know tipping his hand. Even a casual football fan could clearly see the difference in energy, body language, athleticism, much less more subtle things like picking up secondary receivers and throwing accuracy. Shaw's stubbornness, at the very least, slowed KJ's maturity and almost derailed our season (wins were unnecessarily close--ie Utah).

This year, even a casual fan can see that running on first and second downs EVERY series early in a game just doesn't work--for whatever reason (the reason doesn't matter, and there are many). And coming in with a jumbo package on 4th and short and running up the gut EVERY time may not work with this particular offensive line. Again, Shaw's stubbornness almost derailed our season last night.

We cannot run down the throats of teams this year (even UCD proved this). At least not early in games. We have a future Sunday QB, at least four, possibly five, Sunday receivers. Why not use there talents EARLY, make the D adjust and then allow our running game (featuring a very capable guy named Love) to thrive.

I just don't get it. And I don't see any possible subtle, nuanced explanation for our predictable, repeatedly failing approach to offense. This is a good, talented, mature team that can go far...but Shaw's play-calling, strategy and game-day adjustments make no sense. I'd like to see what happens (wouldn't we all) if we open up our passing game early and then, and only then, start running down their throats.

We should have won by 2 to 3 TD's. It shouldn't have been a heroic, OT win dependent on Oregon's miscues and great individual D plays. Hopefully, Shaw will wake up entlightened (rather than interpret last night's victory as a validation of his tired approach).

I'm heading to Indiana next w/e and hope we can ride this victory to a truly dominant game performance. I bleed Stanford football and have deep personal ties--but I am quite frustrated.

Last night was a great victory. Legendary really. But it should have been routine.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - donkey687 - 09-23-2018

(09-22-2018, 09:59 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: We gave their receivers way too much cushion.

We are very stubborn in the first half running between the tackles looking to impose our will.

Our conditioning appears to be superb.

Our guys don't quit.

Murphy playing nickel gave a lot of cushion and the wide open plays tended to be with Murphy. Adebo and Holder are guys that the staff lets them play tight. You didn't see Holder much in the action because his guy was always well covered as usual for Holder. Adebo got picked on and his guy had a lot of receptions but that took near perfect execution from Herbert, and Adebo came through in OT with the PBUs.

RE: What does the Oregon win tell us about our team? - qwerty49 - 09-23-2018

To his credit, Shaw did not blame injuries, even though the patchwork OL in the first half with Herbig at RT and Dalman at RG was totally ineffective.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the couple of years and I think the element of stubbornness is more an element of blindness in that he thinks the scheme is fundamentally sound and only needs perfect execution. His standard retort to failed plays is “we didn’t execute.”

But even the casual observer can see the difference between Nate Herbig and David DeCastro, or Regan Williams and Owen Marecic, or Kyle Murphy and AT Hall. Not meaning to slam our current guys, but some guys execute better because they just are better. I think Shaw’s expectations on offense are blind to the limitations of his personnel.

OTOH Shaw pretty much lets Anderson run the D and this year it looks like we are running a “swarming” approach to D which did not seem to be present when we had individual stars like Solly and Philips around. I think Lance has adjusted but Shaw has not, at least when it comes to the running game.

To his credit, we’ve refined the old end-zone fade to a box out for JJAW and a jump ball for Parkinson. And it’s good to see the TE over the middle on medium deep routes.

I just wish Shaw would dictate a few changes to the running game that don’t ask the current OL to do more than they can. This is more bridge than poker, ie get the most out of the cards you hold, rather than go all-in on cards that may not be the best on the table.

And hey, a pun.

(09-23-2018, 07:45 AM)Velodoc Wrote: Same old, same old.

Last year, it was obvious that a young QB named Costello had of immense proportions upside and we all wondered why Shaw continued to play Chryst, respectfully assuming there was something we didn't know tipping his hand. Even a casual football fan could clearly see the difference in energy, body language, athleticism, much less more subtle things like picking up secondary receivers and throwing accuracy. Shaw's stubbornness, at the very least, slowed KJ's maturity and almost derailed our season (wins were unnecessarily close--ie Utah).

This year, even a casual fan can see that running on first and second downs EVERY series early in a game just doesn't work--for whatever reason (the reason doesn't matter, and there are many). And coming in with a jumbo package on 4th and short and running up the gut EVERY time may not work with this particular offensive line. Again, Shaw's stubbornness almost derailed our season last night.

We cannot run down the throats of teams this year (even UCD proved this). At least not early in games. We have a future Sunday QB, at least four, possibly five, Sunday receivers. Why not use there talents EARLY, make the D adjust and then allow our running game (featuring a very capable guy named Love) to thrive.

I just don't get it. And I don't see any possible subtle, nuanced explanation for our predictable, repeatedly failing approach to offense. This is a good, talented, mature team that can go far...but Shaw's play-calling, strategy and game-day adjustments make no sense. I'd like to see what happens (wouldn't we all) if we open up our passing game early and then, and only then, start running down their throats.

We should have won by 2 to 3 TD's. It shouldn't have been a heroic, OT win dependent on Oregon's miscues and great individual D plays. Hopefully, Shaw will wake up entlightened (rather than interpret last night's victory as a validation of his tired approach).

I'm heading to Indiana next w/e and hope we can ride this victory to a truly dominant game performance. I bleed Stanford football and have deep personal ties--but I am quite frustrated.

Last night was a great victory. Legendary really. But it should have been routine.