Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - Printable Version
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Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - msqueri - 10-27-2024
1. This season has gone from a disaster to such a catastrophe that I think supporters of Stanford football need to seriously reckon with the question of whether Taylor even deserves a third year and whether Stanford football can afford another year of hoping a rebuild takes off without there having been any on-field or recruiting trail evidence we are actually building anything. The one thing fans and recruits (and let's be honest, players and coaches too) had to hold out hope was that things would look fundamentally different with a touted QB getting to face a laughably easy stretch of schedule starting with one of the worst pass defenses in America. With that QB even worse than the pitiful level of QB play we've had all season, it's hard (and, I think if one is sober, approaching impossible) to see where the hope is going to come from. That's a bleak assessment I take no joy in contemplating. I just want what is best for Stanford football and I think we have to face head on whether this particular stab at a rebuild is worth continuing to roll the boulder up the hill or we need to try to find somebody stronger to give it a try. I haven't thrown in the towel fully on Taylor only because a third of the season remains to surprise us, plus I am realistic about the low likelihood powers-that-be change course absent a player revolt. I also understand that the beginning of the revenue sharing era next year creates a fundamental inflection point that complicates other decisions and may create financial pressures we don't want to add to. But I do think we need to have this conversation and be honest about the abject lack of progress or program building.
2. I know there will be some who consider that too bleak (and others who have an even darker outlook I consider basically nihilistic and defeatist that we can't compete in this environment, which I reject) but I take my analysis where the facts on the ground point me. After yesterday, we are now #104 in Sagarin, the worst we've been since also being #104 in Walt Harris' one win 2006 atrocity. This is genuinely a contender for the worst Stanford team in history. I grant all the arguments about how much Shaw gutted the program and how many advantages transfer-happy opponents have, but we have declined far worse than can be explained by those factors. Nobody within our program or fan base or national media or computer algorithms contemplated that we would be two years into a rebuild with all the culture building, strength and conditioning, instruction, and momentum that ostensibly comes with that and also return the second most production of any team in the nation.....and somehow be worse than the first year under this staff. Yes, Shaw screwed us comprehensively and the transfer portal does us no favors, but is that enough that a team with several NFL players and numerous bona fide ACC players shouldn't crack the top 100?
3. As for yesterday's game specifically, the charitable spin is that we played a Power Four team (albeit one of the three or four worst, and playing them having to go cross-country to our home) close and the game could have gone our way with any number of single plays going differently (Kenney not missing a field goal, Staples not roughing the passer to extend an eventual field goal drive, Davis not fumbling to set up a short field touchdown, anybody covering on the fourth quarter punt return, Daniels not gifting an interception in the last minute of the game when we were close to game-tying field goal range, etc.). On the scoreboard we played Wake Forest about as close as NC State and Connecticut did. That is lowly company but we already knew we kept lowly company and this game was a better showing for us than other games this past month. [Our games this year have been befitting the #90, #60, #36, #102, #148, #155, #175, and #115 teams in the nation.] Sadly, Wake Forest is too bad of a team for moral victories to mean much. You have to be and play pretty bad to lose to them at home.
4. One of the things that I find striking about the way in which we are so bad is how consistent we are in doing it. It's week after week of, relative to opponent, the offense being abysmal, the defense taking some shots to the mouth but generally being much more competitive than the offense and in particular defending the run nicely, and special teams generally showing competence but not always and about as likely to be a factor in the other team's favor as ours. Rinse and repeat. Kind of suggests this is who we are. In this one, the offense had 1.55 points per non-garbage drive (excluding the scoop n' score as that was not offensive scoring), making the #120 points per drive defense look like the #15 points per drive defense. We had more yards per play than we have against other FBS opponents but that was a given against such a horrendous opposing defense and we did almost a yard per play worse than their average allowed and worse than anybody but North Carolina A&T or Connecticut (so the worst of any Power Four opponent). The defense was considerably better, 2.45 points allowed per non-garbage drive (excluding the kneels at the end of each half), making the #64 points per drive offense look like the #54 points per drive offense. I would argue the defense actually out-played Wake Forest from a scoreboard impact perspective as there was also a defensive touchdown. I excluded the scoop n' score from points per drive calculations but if one assesses that as negative seven points for the Wake Forest offense we made them look like the #94 offense. The defense had its best yards per play against an FBS opponent this season and in a fashion much more impressive than the offense doing the same, as the defense's performance was stingier than Wake's average output and we did better than a few Deac-opposing defenses did (not only NC A&T but also Virginia and Louisiana-Lafayette). Our 2024 team cannot hold the jock strap of the mid-2000s Teevens teams but the offense being a dumpster fire and the defense battling and doing some good stuff gives me some of those vibes (not to say the 2024 defense is comparable to the mid-2000s).
5. By this point we know the strength of the team is its run defense and that continued yesterday, yet again holding an opponent under their yards per carry average. But even this was an underwhelming performance relative to Power Four opponents, as Virginia, Ole Miss, Clemson, and Connecticut all bottled up the Wake Forest run game more than we did. Nonetheless, run defense remains the relative strength. Pass defense, in contrast, gave up a higher passer rating and more touchdowns than any FBS team has against Wake this season and only Virginia gave up more yards per attempt. The run phase was also relatively more successful for us on the other side of the field too. The offense had an above-average yards per carry game by our standards, though largely because we were facing the weakest FBS run defense on our schedule. We did almost a half yard per carry worse than the norm against Wake Forest, though we did best Virginia, NC State, and Connecticut in this dimension, making this one one of the brighter spots of the game for us. Daniels and Butler both added value with their legs. Nonetheless, like so many games the last two years, we couldn't trust straight-up run blocking plays for running backs and were unable to have a balanced offense, relying much more on the passing game. In that phase, even with the three interceptions it was statistically our best passing game of the year against an FBS opponent but that was a given against one of the worst pass defenses in America. Adjusting for opponent it was terrible, worse in passer rating, yards per attempt, total yards, touchdowns, and interceptions than any of Wake's six other FBS opponents. (That's the read that stat again stat of the week) It's especially sobering to reflect on the performance being worse in each respect even independent of the interceptions, which were deflating but by no means the extent of our relative failures as a passing attack. I suspect when Taylor goes over film with the QBs he will focus on the interceptions as bad decisions and execution and juxtapose them with the good decisions/passes (which in fairness Daniels had several, most of all the phenomenal fourth down conversion to Ayomanor), suggesting that if we clean up the worst plays we'd be cooking. Unfortunately I don't think that's right. Six yards per attempt against a defense that gives up 7.5 on average is putrid. Daniels played better than he has in many other games and as he often does helped us move the chains with his feet, but in sheer passing terms we still did an extremely poor job in this game. QB remains one of the two things most glaringly holding this team back.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - msqueri - 10-27-2024
6. That fact, hardly in need of more evidence, came into stark relief here with the 1-2 punch of Brown flailing in his opportunity and Daniels being just Daniels enough for us to lose. Brown has simply been atrocious in both (that is, all) of his action against FBS opponents. Across his three games (so including stats padded by the Cal Poly outing), if he had enough action to qualify his Total QBR would be 128th of 130 quarterbacks nationally. Complete disaster, not even close to worthy of being on a major college football field. We have to hope that being a true freshman and coming back from injury/wearing a glove make this an unrepresentative sample, but I think anybody still harboring major expectations should temper those and wait for any evidence of competence before jumping back on that bandwagon. The truth is that Brown was a very good but not great recruit by reputation and college coaches, Elite 11 evaluators, and recruiting services were all united that he wasn't elite, putting him in a category that can succeed spectacularly but empirically ends up with about a Ryan Burns type as the median result. Then when Brown got on campus Taylor kept Daniels as QB1 until Daniels' performance made that untenable and now Brown has had back-to-back outings showing Daniels gives us a much better chance right now. If that weren't depressing enough, Daniels just had one of his better games but it wasn't enough to beat a horrible team. Even with the interceptions, Daniels was a respectable 60th of 117 quarterbacks nationally in Total QBR this week (edging out Hank Bachmeier yesterday, actually), but it wasn't good enough. As I had predicted, Daniels appears to be positively reverting toward his mean a bit after a nightmare September. He is now no longer dead last among Power Four QBs in Total QBR on the season, instead fifth to last (106th of 129 overall). Based on what we have seen the last several weeks, if Taylor handles playing time decisions meritocratically and with the team's interest in winning at the forefront, he probably should go back to Daniels as QB1. My tentative prediction is we again see both QBs next week.
7. The other thing holding us back the most is the offensive line play. Brutal to see a team like Wake Forest (the 88th best team in the nation, patently failing program in the transfer portal era) make life difficult for us up front. Giving up only two sacks felt like a reprieve, but no other FBS opponent has given up more than one to Wake. Only giving Ford, Davis, and Butler four carries each gives a clue on how much Taylor trusted the run blocking. In PFF's view, McLaughlin finally making his return to the starting lineup graded the best of the OL (surprise surprise!), in the solid range, followed by Leyrer in that same range. Pale, Maikkula, and House all struggled. Leyrer is a limited player but is generally playing better following a few rough outings in September. Pale is an up and down player within a generally sub-par band at this point of his young career. Maikkula had his worst game of his career. House has had a rough three weeks after showing a lot of promise relative to his age. On the season, our OL now rank like so among 850 OL nationally: 399) Rogers (out indefinitely), 417) McLaughlin, 657) Pale, 726) Maikkula, 763) Baklenko, 771) Leyrer, 811) House. This picture looks really catastrophic when you compare just to the ACC: among 110 ACC OL, every healthy OL we have other than McLaughlin is 96th or worse. Ok, I spoke too soon above. THAT is the read that again stat of the week. [With an OL that plays like this it is pretty freaking stupid that eight games in McLaughlin has only played more than 15 snaps twice.] This does not seem like good player development. We are going to continue to hear ad nauseum about how young the group is. Young only means something if you are expecting to get older. We should be watching closely whether Rogers and McLaughlin come back for sixth years next year. Seems like a lot to ask but right now that plus holding out hope for year-to-year development for the others and/or transfer ex machina are the only things I think could give us even mediocre OL play next year. That may be optimistic. In the meantime, it's awfully hard for skill position players to excel in this offense with QB and OL in such dire straits simultaneously. Shout out to Ayomanor and Roush for very good games willing the team to competitiveness in the face of so many problems around them. Ayomanor is clearly the best player on the offense and Roush's touchdown was the offensive play of the game and one of the plays of the year for us. I really like the strides Roush is taking. He has been an adequate player three of the last four games. I think he could finally graduate to being a good player next year. I'm glad Mosley did good work moving the chains too, but I wouldn't call it a good game and I think he bears some responsibility for Daniels' first interception. [Moving the chains (first down) leader board: Ayomanor (6), Daniels (5), Roush (3), Mosley (3), Butler (2), Ford, Lamson, Bachmeier, Cisse]
8. Don't have to think very hard to identify the defensive play of the game! A sack, forced fumble, recovered fumble, touchdown (on a nearly half field return to boot) is as big as an individual play gets in football. For Tafiti, that was one of seven positive plays he gave us in the box score, giving us another sack, run stops, and two of our bigger defensive plays in fourth quarter crunch time. He has had a mediocre year but with good games in three of his last four we may be turning that corner so many of us have been waiting for. After so many years expecting it, OLB may now genuinely be a shining strength of the team. [Bailey had a quieter game but did set the edge nicely on Rose's run stuff and in the big picture Bailey has been our best player this year.] Along with Tafiti, we had 7-8 players who showed up with multiple positive box score contributions (Tafiti, Sinclair, Morris, Phillips, Bernadel, Nicholson, Edwards, and arguably Galvan depending on if you give credit for a stop on 3rd and forever....I probably wouldn't and would say seven defensive players with multiple helpful plays). Tafiti impacting the scoreboard like he did shuts the book on my game ball, but that is a shame for two other big efforts that were great to see. Morris came back from injury with a vengeance and played in a way I frankly did not even know he was capable of, with two pass breakups and multiple run stops, including goal line contributions in crunch time. PFF assessed Morris' game the best of any player on our team yesterday and by far the best game of his life. Man possessed. Really didn't know he had that in him. Interesting. The other performance to enthusiastically shout out is Phillips, who one takes for granted for quiet contributions to our good run defense but can be forgiven for forgetting about since he basically never makes plays. Not last night. Multiple sacks! Fourth down goal line stop! Way to go, Big Tobe! I also liked seeing Nicholson's interception, which was a massive gift to us that it wasn't called a catch but nonetheless showed the ball skills that made me salivate over Nicholson as a recruit. It seems like defenses are staying away from Wright, giving him less opportunity to show us his overall football player acumen. Pretty quiet few weeks and not always showing up in the rare opportunities (e.g., the missed tackle yesterday). Staples' roughing the passer penalty was devastating. Feel bad for all the players (as I said above, there are many) for whom film review will show single plays that made the difference yesterday (although there being so many proves that it wasn't any one play).
9. We can pretty definitively say special teams was part of the mix yesterday where individual errors lost the game. Kenney missing the 46 yard field goal try (he made a 40 yarder) and the punt coverage breakdown stand out in particular. Kenney is now 35th in field goal percentage and 43rd in field goals made per game. Karty he is not but that was never a fair expectation. Flintoft had net punts of 53 to the 14 (very nice), 56 to the 18 (very nice) and 5 to midfield (back-breaking breakdown in coverage). The life of a specialist where everything could be going pretty well and then one play ruins your week. Without re-watching multiple times (or having All 22 film) I don't know which individual(s) to blame most for that return, I just know the return really hurt (although I probably don't put it quite with some of the other single play goats as one can easily imagine an alternate reality in which Wake simply takes longer to go down the field on the ensuing drive and still beats us with a field goal). If particularly bad hang time was to blame I will feel silly about my game ball, but I have to give to somebody and there's no obvious pick this week. In the return game, Bachmeier had a solid 22 yard return to the 31 and Galvan had a good kick coverage tackle (Nicholson and Sumlin also getting tackles in coverage).
10. Game balls: Ayomanor, Tafiti, Flintoft, Williams
11. As long as there are games left on the schedule, we soldier on. I hope the players will too. Opinions may vary on how much fight we are seeing from the players but if past is prologue there is always a risk of catastrophic levels of failure leading to demoralization. It's kind of hard to imagine things getting much worse than October has been though. More fun is to think about rays of hope during a weaker part of the schedule. We blew the best opportunity we had but there are still opportunities to show we're worthy of fielding a team. NC State is another very weak opponent. Once again, show us something, coach!
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - martyup - 10-27-2024
Reverend!
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia1.tenor.com%2Fm%2F...ipo=images]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia1.tenor.com%2Fm%2F7Rtp1_KhNqUAAAAC%2Ffrontier-gibberish.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=19141638c73ba84135ceebb82483351e7b418b6de930bd87c357b23cf3ccc733&ipo=images)
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - JohnR34231 - 10-27-2024
NC State is about on the same level as Wake Forest, and I suspect we will find a way to lose to them also.
Hope I'm wrong.
Anyway, all the people that have been bad mouthing Rouse should have been impressed by his touchdown catch when he broke (how many) tackles.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - 82lsju - 10-27-2024
(10-27-2024, 12:57 PM)JohnR34231 Wrote: NC State is about on the same level as Wake Forest, and I suspect we will find a way to lose to them also.
Hope I'm wrong.
Anyway, all the people that have been bad mouthing Rouse should have been impressed by his touchdown catch when he broke (how many) tackles.
they will be coming off a bye week and kickoff is 9am PT so we've got those going for us....
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - needle - 10-27-2024
Quote: I grant all the arguments about how much Shaw gutted the program and how many advantages transfer-happy opponents have, but we have declined far worse than can be explained by those factors. Nobody within our program or fan base or national media or computer algorithms contemplated that we would be two years into a rebuild with all the culture building, strength and conditioning, instruction, and momentum that ostensibly comes with that and also return the second most production of any team in the nation.....and somehow be worse than the first year under this staff.
2023 points per game - Stanford ranked No. 108 (20.4) out of 133 FBS teams
2024 points per game - Stanford ranks No. 123 (16.4) out of 134 FBS teams
It really, really shouldn't be too much to ask that Stanford have a better offense than last year. Hopefully it happens.
2023 opponent points per game - Stanford ranked No. 131 (38.4)
2024 opponent points per game - Stanford ranks No. 116 (35)
Definitely a better season so far. As a fan, I'm optimistic that the ranking will improve by the end of the season. But I also feel that most of the teams ahead are not great match-ups for this side of the ball (they have mobile QBs and a commitment to the run). So, we just have to wait and see where the final ranking ends up.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - cctop - 10-27-2024
As dismal and soul-crushing as this season is, it's still more entertaining to watch than the last two years of ShawBall.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - Mick - 10-27-2024
(10-27-2024, 08:20 PM)cctop Wrote: As dismal and soul-crushing as this season is, it's still more entertaining to watch than the last two years of ShawBall.
+1!
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - SkiBum80 - 10-27-2024
(10-27-2024, 08:20 PM)cctop Wrote: As dismal and soul-crushing as this season is, it's still more entertaining to watch than the last two years of ShawBall.To me it’s like would I like to be strapped into a chair and be forced to listen to finger nails on a chalkboard or Mariah Carey’s All I Want for a Christmas on an endless loop.
A tough call.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - JohnR34231 - 10-28-2024
(10-27-2024, 08:36 PM)SkiBum80 Wrote:(10-27-2024, 08:20 PM)cctop Wrote: As dismal and soul-crushing as this season is, it's still more entertaining to watch than the last two years of ShawBall.To me it’s like would I like to be strapped into a chair and be forced to listen to finger nails on a chalkboard or Mariah Carey’s All I Want for a Christmas on an endless loop.
A tough call.
IMO, it's about a tossup. There was certainly nothing entertaining this year about watching us get our butts kicked four games in a row,
I suppose you could consider the other four entertaining with us emerging with a 2-2 record and the two losses being close to fairly close.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - French Rage - 10-28-2024
Yeah maybe if all of our losses were 64-63 shootouts that would be more fun but 40-10 losses are not.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - Row80Critic - 10-28-2024
You had me at hello. First sentence says it all. Yes, he could turn it around. No, there is no reason to think that's likely.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - needle - 10-28-2024
(10-27-2024, 12:57 PM)JohnR34231 Wrote: NC State is about on the same level as Wake Forest, and I suspect we will find a way to lose to them also.
Hope I'm wrong.
FWIW, Bill Connelly's SP+ model expected Wake to beat Stanford by 4.6 points.
The same model projects that NC State will beat Stanford by 15.8 points. (The betting line favors NC State by 10.)
I think we fans were right to view Wake as an eminently winnable game, but, make no mistake, Stanford winning on Saturday would be a true upset.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - CardinalSagehen - 10-28-2024
For what little it's worth, I responded to the Athletic Department's survey about my experience at the game, marking a score of "1" (extremely unlikely) for whether I would recommend Stanford Football to a friend. I said that only a small handful of masochists like me would continue to attend after 6 years of terrible football.
As others here have suggested:
1. Relieve the AD of his duties.
2. Commit to football institutionally and financially. (admissions, transfers, etc.)
3. Try another coach.
Or just don't bother and drop to G5 or FCS.
There is no acceptable middle ground and no point in navel-gazing for another few years. We should not wait indefinitely (without making the changes above) for the chips to fall in conference realignment, as some have suggested - that's crazy because it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy for relegation to the lower leagues. If you want to drop down a level, find a way and do it rather than death by a thousand cuts.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - fullmetal - 10-28-2024
(10-28-2024, 10:24 AM)needle Wrote: The same model projects that NC State will beat Stanford by 15.8 points. (The betting line favors NC State by 10.)
Is that even after NCST's QB issues are factored in?
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - needle - 10-28-2024
(10-28-2024, 01:39 PM)fullmetal Wrote:(10-28-2024, 10:24 AM)needle Wrote: The same model projects that NC State will beat Stanford by 15.8 points. (The betting line favors NC State by 10.)
Is that even after NCST's QB issues are factored in?
Injuries aren't factored in, but NC State is probably quite happy with their true frosh starter. He threw for over 300 yards against Kal in their last game.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Wake Forest - SkiBum80 - 10-28-2024
From the post game press conference, quote from Tafiti, when asked how to characterize the mindset of the team after a loss like this:
We're almost there, I think people can feel it, we just gotta come next week and ball out.