Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - Printable Version
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Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - cardcrimson - 08-18-2022
Pretty much zero comments or commentary on the upcoming season. We have threads on the NCAA, Ukraine, a former player now doctor, the Niners, the Giants, volleyball, golf, cross country, fraternities at USC, investors, another former player, a now former broadcaster, and one on our assistants that's morphed into injuries.
Are things that dire. Is the fan base that disinterested in Stanford football? Our athletic department must be proud at the excitement they've generated. . ..
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - msqueri - 08-18-2022
If you want to discuss something on a message board be the change you want to see in the world. Message boards discuss what the posters post about. Give a thought, share some information, or ask a question if you would like more discussion. I promise I, for one, would engage. I've posted tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of words about the upcoming Stanford football season on the two other fan sites I frequent. What do you want to talk about?
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - Phogge - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 07:05 AM)msqueri Wrote: If you want to discuss something on a message board be the change you want to see in the world. Message boards discuss what the posters post about. Give a thought, share some information, or ask a question if you would like more discussion. I promise I, for one, would engage. I've posted tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of words about the upcoming Stanford football season on the two other fan sites I frequent. What do you want to talk about?
Time management.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - cardcrimson - 08-18-2022
Now that’s funny.
(08-18-2022, 07:08 AM)Phogge Wrote:(08-18-2022, 07:05 AM)msqueri Wrote: If you want to discuss something on a message board be the change you want to see in the world. Message boards discuss what the posters post about. Give a thought, share some information, or ask a question if you would like more discussion. I promise I, for one, would engage. I've posted tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of words about the upcoming Stanford football season on the two other fan sites I frequent. What do you want to talk about?
Time management.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - BobK - 08-18-2022
Open practice is tomorrow. Maybe some of us will post Maybe
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - PVTree - 08-18-2022
I was hoping to read about what took place at the STM dinner with the team last Sunday. When I tried to buy a ticket, they were sold out so I didn't get a chance to attend.
Obviously, coach Shaw gave a typical coachspeak talk, but was hoping to hear what some of the players mentioned.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - cardcrimson - 08-18-2022
I thought asked a question and offered an opinion. Perhaps I was too vague.
Anyway, if not here, where can someone get someone get brilliant insights into Cardinal football?
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - msqueri - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 07:08 AM)Phogge Wrote:(08-18-2022, 07:05 AM)msqueri Wrote: If you want to discuss something on a message board be the change you want to see in the world. Message boards discuss what the posters post about. Give a thought, share some information, or ask a question if you would like more discussion. I promise I, for one, would engage. I've posted tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of words about the upcoming Stanford football season on the two other fan sites I frequent. What do you want to talk about?
Time management.
Lest you think me humorless, I think this is indeed very funny. Good response, touche. I'm well aware that the time/effort I devote free of charge to Stanford football is way over-the-top. I'll let my professional/personal accomplishments speak for themselves but I'm comfortable with the way I manage time and what I fit into a day/week/month/year/life. But it definitely does/should open me up to tweaks and yours is a good one.
At the risk of being too earnest, this thread so far is a good example of why there isn't a lot of discussion about Stanford football. Our fans are, in the grand scheme of things, negligible in number and among those few who do exist overwhelmingly tend to be old curmudgeons who either don't care enough to post on message boards or come to the message boards for some snark and venting/vibes. There are probably 5-10 people on the planet who if they stopped posting about Stanford football there'd be no discussion of it at all.
To that point, yes, the health of Stanford football is dire, the fan base is that uninterested in Stanford football, and the athletic department should not be proud of the excitement they've generated.
Regarding the coming season, I am starting to let some optimism creep in. When I've looked at the fundamentals of the program every sign points to a 3-6 win season with 4-5 being the most likely range. As TJ says, that's our new sea level. But something I've been struck by in recent weeks following our preseason camp is that the theory of the case for the 2022 season checks out more than I've been thinking. The things we are hanging our hat on:
* McKee and the skill position players....it's objectively one of the best such groups in the nation, as validated time and time again by external pundits
* The highly veteran offensive line.....this is the position that most benefits from experience historically and there's lots of evidence that teams with four senior OL should be confident
* The incessant, highly annoying health/injuries trope.....actually, we did suffer a lot of injuries in 2019 and 2021 and average luck is empirically proven to produce at least some meaningful effect on win/loss records
* The defensive "tweaks".....data bear out that the biggest thing holding Stanford football back over the last half decade has been our miserable defense and everything the coaches and players are saying about simplicity, decisiveness, and aggression corresponds to the most obvious failings of the defense
All in all, I might be persuaded that we can expect an end to the bowl drought. None of this is enough for me to predict this will be a good team. It will be shocking to me if the defense is good given how far of a hole it has to dig out of and how much its hands will be tied behind its back due to the defensive line. Even my optimistic take above doesn't get me past 5-7 wins. I'll be shocked if this is a good team (top 25).
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - martyup - 08-18-2022
I understand the Christians were quiet before being herded into the Colesium. Just saying . . .
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - gailtate - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 07:55 AM)cardcrimson Wrote: I thought asked a question and offered an opinion. Perhaps I was too vague.
Anyway, if not here, where can someone get someone get brilliant insights into Cardinal football?
Climb into a time machine and check out the The Bootleg during the Friday Morning Fax Era and the Buddy'Wlat years when we published The Magazine. Some of most hilarious, incisive takes of all time, in contrast to today's bupkis.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - BobK - 08-18-2022
I used to post about practices on the bootleg. Usually about the Frosh. About 2007 I posted how walk on Frosh Ryan Whalen would play a lot for Stanford. Boy did posters laugh. Remember that Matt ?
Yes I was right
Yes I believe Stanford will be 8-4 and a bowl game
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - martyup - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 08:55 AM)BobK Wrote: Yes I believe Stanford will be 8-4 and a bowl game
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia1.tenor.com%2Fimag...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia1.tenor.com%2Fimages%2Fe220065e896c323020d523587df9da5f%2Ftenor.gif%3Fitemid%3D9311769&f=1&nofb=1)
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - Renaissance Man - 08-18-2022
Tanner McKee had a 20 minute interview this morning on the Bill Reiter show on CBS Sports Radio. I tried to find a link, but it does not seem to be available yet. Excellent interview. Quite a bit of information that has been covered previously, but new comments about this year's team and the workload at Stanford, among other things. The most interesting football-specific moment came when he was asked who the best player he had ever been on the field with was and he singled out the current Stanford secondary with Kelly and Fields. If you are looking to improve your view of the upcoming season, I came away more optimistic than I had been.
https://www.audacy.com/cbssportsradio/hosts/reiter-than-you
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - msqueri - 08-18-2022
Good call Bob. I certainly remember the many practices we watched alongside each other and you/other venerable railbirds chuckling at me skipping classes to swim/sunbathe at Avery and then come over to the rail dripping wet to watch the action with you. Ryan Whalen got to campus after I had graduated and moved cross-country so I didn't have railbird eyes on him, but I don't doubt your account of your foresight on that one.
The utility of walk-ons who shouldn't be walk-ons can be apparent quite early. Whalen saw the field in every game of his redshirt freshman year. Brock Jones immediately converted to a scholarship player once getting on campus (but then made a wise career choice pivot). David Parry was a key backup as a redshirt freshman. I am hoping Jason Thompson is our next in that line and sees the field in 2023/earns a scholarship.
Whether your past perspicacity lends credence to your predictions for 2022 is another matter, but I sure hope you're right. I'd love to get some El Paso machaca, LA street tacos, or Las Vegas nightlife in my system before the end of the year. Heck, the new ESPN-owned bowls puts on the table Dallas and St. Petersburg, which I'd be less excited about but would happily attend.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - Phogge - 08-18-2022
Matt... lest you think that I am being snarky (ok just a little), my time management at SI was pathetic. Too many nights at Sunset Gym followed by a touch of carousing. State was much easier but still during the season there was way too much hanging with the rest of the pitchers in various "establishments."
Something happened and I was quite good during my career but now am once again floundering in semi retirement trying to finish projects.
So while it was a small tweak I admire your work effort and your contribution to the Board (and apparently to the other boards). Whew!
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - BostonCard - 08-18-2022
Ok, I’ll bite.
What is the theory for the case for the defensive line? It was, to put it charitably, a nightmare last season, and that was with a senior fifth round NFL draft pick and experience throughout. It is hard to imagine things being worse on the DL this year, but that is probably a failure of my imagination; objectively you would look and predict that it should be worse than last year.
Thoughts?
BC
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - Spiny_Norman - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 08:20 AM)msqueri Wrote: * The defensive "tweaks".....data bear out that the biggest thing holding Stanford football back over the last half decade has been our miserable defense and everything the coaches and players are saying about simplicity, decisiveness, and aggression corresponds to the most obvious failings of the defense
Whatever success or lack of success Stanford has this season will likely be determined substantially by the defense. One of the comments from opposing coaches has stuck with me - Stanford is slow on defense. Once opponents recognized this weakness, they took advantage big time. Changing the scheme does not really affect that. I am really hoping that Cooper, Bailey and Fields show some speed that we have not seen on defense in quite a while. At least opponents cannot rely as much on past scouting given the change in scheme.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - msqueri - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 09:58 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Ok, I’ll bite.
What is the theory for the case for the defensive line? It was, to put it charitably, a nightmare last season, and that was with a senior fifth round NFL draft pick and experience throughout. It is hard to imagine things being worse on the DL this year, but that is probably a failure of my imagination; objectively you would look and predict that it should be worse than last year.
Thoughts?
BC
Great question. Here's my opinion:
This is not an area in which the coaches have offered a theory of the case, which is why I didn't cover it in the previous post. I think the reality is it's not part of their theory of the case or, to put it another way, mitigating the DL disaster is as far as the theory of the case goes. The defense is banking on decisiveness, aggression, and simplicity. This is mostly about unlocking performance in the edge and inside linebacker groups that can mitigate what we're going to see at DL. That's not to say we don't have theories about how DL itself can mitigate the issue. There are two components of the DL theory. First, having more four man fronts (read: edge players playing at the line) will spread the pain around for the DL. Having Phillips, Franklin, Armitage, and Keneley (notionally; I don't think that will be our most common configuration) is more mass (or at least more individuals) up front than just having Booker, Wade-Perry, and Reid. Second, we are rationalizing to ourselves that lighter DL will allow guys like Franklin and Buckey to utilize more "movement" and compensate for physical weaknesses somehow.
This theory does not hold water in my view, which is another reason I didn't mention it above, but it's complicated and a source of at least some mystery heading into the year. We actually transitioned to a 4-3 defense at the end of last season and all here know those last three games did not work well, but the picture was mixed. We tried the more four man front thing against Oregon State, Cal, and Notre Dame. Against Oregon State, the run defense was effective and the pass defense was a disaster, albeit without Kelly, McGill, and Manley. Against Cal, we had possibly the worst defensive game in Stanford history and, notably, possibly the worst run defense game in Stanford history. Against Notre Dame, the run defense was actually a relative triumph to end the season but pass defense was a disaster. Obviously this trio of games was pretty schizophrenic for the defense. An optimistic read, I guess, is that the scheme change was experimental and didn't benefit from an off-season of focus, plus a lot of the failures may have been symptomatic of team-wide morale/buy-in problems as we collapsed at the end of the year. A pessimistic read is that whenever Stanford tries to focus on one problematic aspect of defense it becomes whack-a-mole and even if we become stouter in run defense we may then become less stout in pass defense.
Moreover, we had Booker, Wade-Perry, Fisk, and Johnson last year and now have to redo the experiment with much less physically developed DL. You are absolutely right that objectively one would project the 2022 Stanford DL to be worse. My read of Shaw and Anderson's recent comments is that they're aware of this and not sugar-coating it. Anderson recently referred to the DL as young, inexperienced, and small. Is that all? Yikes. We know this is going to be a problem. Think about the two prongs of the DL theory I mentioned above. For the beefier fronts prong, is it actually going to be beefier than last year? The majority of the individuals comprising any three or four man fronts are going to less than 270 pounds. If one were to do the thought experiment of forecasting out the schematic alignments for the defense and the rough proportion at which we'd be running them and then mapped weights of the "fronts" against what Stanford has put out there in past years, I don't think we're going to be beefier up front in 2022 than previously, to put it mildly. For the trust in small DL movement prong, we'll see what that can compensate for but it's not clear to me agility is more important for DL than old man strength or that Franklin and Buckey even are more agile than Booker.
P.S. All good Phogge, I get you and appreciate you. I kind of shudder at what will happen to my time management when I don't have my day job as the raison d'etre of my life. Over the years people have asked me why I don't try to work in sports or journalism or write a book and the honest answer is that public service/national security/foreign policy animate me even more than sports and I'd much rather have public service/national security/foreign policy as a calling and sports as a hobby than the other way around.
(08-18-2022, 10:50 AM)Spiny_Norman Wrote:(08-18-2022, 08:20 AM)msqueri Wrote: * The defensive "tweaks".....data bear out that the biggest thing holding Stanford football back over the last half decade has been our miserable defense and everything the coaches and players are saying about simplicity, decisiveness, and aggression corresponds to the most obvious failings of the defense
Whatever success or lack of success Stanford has this season will likely be determined substantially by the defense. One of the comments from opposing coaches has stuck with me - Stanford is slow on defense. Once opponents recognized this weakness, they took advantage big time. Changing the scheme does not really affect that. I am really hoping that Cooper, Bailey and Fields show some speed that we have not seen on defense in quite a while. At least opponents cannot rely as much on past scouting given the change in scheme.
Theoretically changing the scheme could somewhat affect that in a few ways. First, if you have bigger fronts maybe you are relying on linebackers less for heft and thump and more for speed and explosiveness. Second, you can play a linebacker/safety hybrid. I will wait and see whether any of this comes to fruition but I don't rule out that our defensive tweaks make us faster.
There are a couple of data points that offer plausible hope we're getting faster on defense. One is that many of the second level players have dropped weight at least according to the official roster (Miezan down ten pounds, Mangum-Farrar down ten pounds, Damuni down five pounds, Herron down a pound, Keneley down a pound, Jorgensen down a pound). That could suggest an intentional effort to get faster at that level of the defense. Another is the oft-cited trope within the program that Santa Clara County COVID-19 protocols and other pandemic effects disrupted off-season strength and conditioning the last few years in a way that we've now been able to move past over the last year.
While I'm not a fan of the player, a healthy Bonner is a significant infusion of speed. Fields very well may add significant speed to the secondary. Cooper has been more noted for size than speed so far but who knows (and in any case I'd expect 2023 to be his coming out party, along with Tafiti). Regardless, I think the main theory for increased speed on defense rests with the pounds Miezan, Mangum-Farrar, and Damuni are no longer carrying.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - Goose - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 11:06 AM)msqueri Wrote: Regardless, I think the main theory for increased speed on defense rests with the pounds Miezan, Mangum-Farrar, and Damuni are no longer carrying.Sounds very reasonable. I guess the presently unknowable factor is what that weight drop did to their strength and endurance. Certainly if it wasn't "good" weight it could help both, so we can't just assume they are "weaker". If they aren't, it could be a big plus.
Of course, the counter-example could be Austin Jones who lost weight before last season to make himself quicker. That didn't work out so well.
RE: Two weeks before the 2022 season and. . . . - cctop - 08-18-2022
(08-18-2022, 07:05 AM)msqueri Wrote: I've posted tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of words about the upcoming Stanford football season on the two other fan sites I frequent.
Just curious, what are the other two fan sites you frequent?