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Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - Virginia - Printable Version

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Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - Virginia - msqueri - 09-21-2025

1. A sadly unsurprising result (but not too sad because it's unsurprising). This was fairly typical of the 2020s Stanford football program and the kind of game that we can perhaps view as the base case for solid ACC opponents in their houses until we get better. It was very similar in many respects to last year's NC State game. Shout-out to my buddy Phil who I think pegged it pretty well as a "standard loss of a bad team losing to a good QB and a mediocre team" and a "legitimate football game, not a hopeless going through the motions game," though I also want to shout out @DocSavage87 for pegging Virginia as a potent squad. With the miserable schedule the Cavaliers have faced (#133) I don't think we can really know what their quality is but it strikes me as right on the cusp between good and mediocre (currently #38 in Sagarin and #42 in SP+) and I do think there is a legitimate possibility they are better than I think. So far ACC road games that aren't coming off a bye have been a bleak affair and I don't think we can be too surprised to see this one go this way. Prior views on Stanford's team shouldn't change much after this one and we're still waiting to see if this team is basically the same level as our last several or a slight improvement. For what it's worth, SP+ (#101) currently thinks the former and Sagarin (#84) the latter. [At this snapshot we have results this season befitting #93, #128, #35, and #155, though the non-garbage time score yesterday was 38-20 and a fair case can be made that we played better than the final score. I basically lump this with the BYU game.]

2. As others have commented, the offense was much better than the defense yesterday. We scored 2.22 points per non-garbage drive, just shy of last week's 2.3 against an arguably slightly tougher defense in an inarguably much more difficult travel atmosphere. We made a top 70 defense look a tad worse, like a top 75 defense. On the scoreboard it was a respectable game by the offense and essentially a continuation of last week's overall efficacy, with uncharacteristic red zone efficiency (scoring touchdowns on both of our opportunities) accounting for why this actually turned out solid by the offense. In contrast, we gave up 4.22 points per non-garbage drive, a really bad collapse making a top 25 offense look like a top 7 offense. The offense was almost a yard and a half short of what we did against Boston College (though, again, against a tougher competition and environment), but I think we need to give some credit for the fourth best road game we've had on offense post-Shaw, especially adjusting for quality of defense (2023 Hawaii and 2023 Colorado were absolute jokes on that side of the ball). This ranks with the 2024 NC State blowout as our best road offensive game in three years. I don't want to overstate it, as getting blown out by non-elite teams being relative high points for the offense is sobering in itself. I also need to point out the depressing stat that we fell just short of William & Mary's yards per play, which in this case I don't think means the Griffins were better on offense but does remind us our offense was hardly great shakes. We were also almost two yards under NC State's average. Offense was a relative bright spot but not good enough. The verdict on the defense is much harsher. Giving up 7.97 yards per play is worse than anything we gave up last year aside from the NC State game (though four games April's first year did worse). What's most discouraging is it's awful even compared to what Virginia's offense has done against that #133 schedule. Our defense barely did better than William & Mary and did far worse than Coastal Carolina and NC State. Doing over a yard worse per play than Virginia's offense came into the game is a complete disaster, considering the schedule the Cavs have faced. The defense just has to flush this like they did pretty effectively following last year's NC State game.

3. The shining light of our performance, making the anti-Gulbranson brigade's shouting into the void even weirder, was clearly the passing game. That was far and away Gulbranson's best passing performance of the season. In fact, it was the second best we've done in the post-Shaw era aside from last year's Louisville game. We also had the best passer rating, yards per attempt, yards, and touchdowns of any of Virginia's four opponents. It was a good passing game, especially considering Gulbranson got sacked five times and PFF graded it our worst protection and worst run blocking of the year. There were other things he didn't do well, particularly evading pressure on those five sacks, but even still he was one of the things that helped us yesterday when his offensive line and our defense did so much to hurt us. The offensive line's struggles showed up both in the pass protection and run game, where we had the worst rushing yards, yards per carry, and rushing touchdowns of any team Virginia has faced. Sacks nuked the rushing stats to a degree though 3.15 yards per carry even without sacks counted is not good. Virginia's one power opponent, NC State, romped for 200+ yards and 4 touchdowns and their best run game the Wolfpack has had against anybody, so our struggles are sobering. Our offensive line is bad enough that we can struggle to run even against a mediocre run defense.

4. The defense will want to flush that performance and prove that's not what they're about. In pass defense, it was even worse than the pass defense did against NC State last year. In fact, it's the worst any Stanford pass defense has done since the Shaw era 2022 USC game. It's the worst anybody has been victimized by Virginia through the air since Abilene Christian in 2020. In short, we got torched. In run defense, it was the worst performance this season by a wide margin and the first 200+ yard game we've been gashed for in the last seven games. This is a disturbing additional data point to add to my worries that our supposed Wisconsin run defense has regressed, however it's also the enemy gets a vote stat of the week: Virginia is currently rushing at a rate of greater than 250+ yards per game and 5.9 yards per carry. Obviously a lot of that is playing such a horrible schedule, but it piqued my interest that NC State got manhandled on the ground for 257 yards, 8+ yards per carry, and 3 rushing touchdowns. With both the running and passing game it's possible Virginia just has a really good offense. That can be our hope, that people don't understand how good Virginia is going to be this year. We'll see. For what it's worth, SP+ currently says Virginia is the #33 offense, which is good but not so good I would use it as much of an excuse considering we still have three better offenses to come and a couple of other solid ones.

5. Watching the game in real time I felt like the big differentiator was the trenches. Virginia was an old, veteran team and beat us up front, making it hard for Gulbranson to have protection or Ford to have holes and giving Morris time to pick apart our defense. That's the fundamental story of the game. As such, my first reaction was that this was a catastrophe by our offensive line on offense - five sacks allowed and the worst run game output Virginia has allowed - and by our front on defense - only two tackles for loss by the defense in the entire game. However, a minor silver lining could be that Virginia may be underrated up front. For the Stanford offensive line, PFF currently has us having crapped out a 51.7 pass blocking grade and 46.4 run blocking grade. For comparison, Coastal Carolina was 60.2 and 50.7, NC State was 44.1 and 56.0, and William & Mary was 43.3 and 51.7. Blocking roughly at the level NC State did perhaps let's us hold out some hope that our line is not as bad as it looked yesterday (which to be clear was quite bad). NC State has blocked better in both phases against East Carolina, Wake Forest, and Duke. For our defensive front, it may be the case that Virginia has a really good line. I did an analysis in the offseason pegging UVA as having the best OL in the ACC and, while injuries to Monroe Mills and Makilan Thomas dimmed the optimism greatly, maybe they're just good. The first sack they gave up all year was the play Buckey ran Morris out of bounds after evading pressure, one he easily could have thrown away. I think we need to see them against real competition before having a great bead on them, but maybe they're good.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - Virginia - msqueri - 09-21-2025

6. Gulbranson had a solid game, certainly compared to a lot of what surrounded him on both sides of the ball. He was 64th of 112 QBs nationally in Total QBR this week. That accounts for him having been terrible at avoiding pressure, as he was 101st of 112 in the sacks dimension. He also was poor in the running dimension (82nd). But he connected in the passing game, including multiple big shots. When the offensive line is caving in both phases and the defense is getting torched, a middle of the pack game by QB1 is a blessing, not the thing holding us back. His detractors need to realize that people who want to win and know a lot about QB play do not see our backups as giving us a better shot. We are trying to eke out as much win column and culture progress as we can this year and it's legitimate to think that grinding it out with our flawed but best we have QB is the optimal path in both respects. Going forward, I expect more riding with Gulbranson and more performances like this as well as some better games and definitely possibility for stinkers as we have seen. He now has 19 QB1 games and last week against Boston College was his median career game and yesterday against Virginia was his next most comparable to that. If this starts looking like a ceiling I would be open to calls to see what Brown and/or Rizk can do but, fundamentally, I think Luck and Reich are trying to win and Gulbranson gives the best shot. If that's the case this seems less a controversy and more some people placing too much magical hope on the QB position.

7. The shoutouts of the week have to go out to Bryce Farrell and CJ Williams, both of whom had 100 yard receiving games. That's the first time this year anybody has broken that mark, though you only have to go back one more game to the San Jose State game for the last time two broke it in the same game. Were it not for an 80 yard game against UCLA way back in 2021, Farrell would have the amazing feat of three consecutive career games - 68 yards against BYU, 72 yards against Boston College, 135 yards against Virginia. This has been an amazing breakout and the individual player story of our season, especially considering the circumstances of getting cut and then being asked to come back for a sixth year after the coach who cut him was fired off-cycle mid-offseason. It is probably a really short list of players in history who have been such zeroes for five years and then all of a sudden are among the most productive players in the conference. Certainly at wide receiver it is a shocking trajectory. Crazy stat for you: Farrell is within a yard per game of what Ayomanor contributed last year and ahead of Tremayne's outlandish 2020 yards per catch. I don't think either will last but just wanted to contextualize how great Farrell is playing. PFF has Patterson and Ford as the only better Cardinal players so far this year. All the hat tips and bows to Farrell. Williams is another guy I and others have been doubtful about who exploded yesterday. Williams had by far a career day, nine catches whereas he'd never had more than five in his two previous schools over four years and 103 yards whereas he'd never had more than 60. Very happy for Farrell and Williams to have career days together. Gulbranson deserves a lot more credit than some give for the balls that made those stunning breakouts happen. Elsewhere on the offense, there were bigger plays in the game than the Blackburn touchdown but that one has a special place in my heart as a red zone passing touchdown and Gulbranson finding the end zone without needing a brobdingnagian chunk/busted coverage, two things that have been rare this year. Roush continues to frustrate outside of the kind of fluky enormous touchdown. Ford runs hard and impressively considering how little blocking he gets. Trial by fire for our freshman Ugorji and Yamauchi. [Moving the chains (first down) leaderboard: Williams (5), Ford (5), Farrell (2), Tabb (2), Blackburn, High, Libman]

8. The box score and play-by-play reinforce the story of the eyeball and the overall stats that this one was really rough for the defense. We had nine players who showed up multiple times in driving positive results (Rose, Rowell, Nicholson, Aybar, Wright, Patterson, Buckey, Mattingly, Kaminski) but incredibly the latter five all needed garbage time to fill up the box score in such a way. Rose continues to be our johnny on the spot, this time with five solid run stops. Rowell making a few plays was nice as he hasn't been as active this year as I'd like. Wright got beat multiple times and showed up positively multiple times, a truly Kyu Blu Kelly-like game (or indeed a Wright like game from last year). Mattingly didn't have a good game but a third down tackle to force a field goal in the red zone is a high leverage play deserving of mention. That Kaminski got positive plays, even if one was in garbage time (but goal line stops are great whenever they are), is extremely noteworthy for a true freshman. I am about ready to predict he blows past/over-recruits Stephenson. Nicholson had ups and downs yesterday but having two consecutive plays, one a tackle and one a pass breakup, during an end of half two minute drill type situation, was a nice moment for him. At least Aybar did some good things in this one (in fact our best 20+ snap defender yesterday according to PFF's current grade), though I continue to wish we got so much more from him and Cooper. This game is as good a time as any to say that it would make a big difference for Stanford to get a dude or two on the defensive line rather than our cavalcade of guys.

9. I didn't feel like the special teams had a major place in the story of the game yesterday. Flintoft had net punts of 44 to the 35 (solid), 43 to the 28 (solid), 38 to the 12 (solid), 36 to the 34 pre-penalty but with penalty net of 56 (quite good result), 21 to the 39 (horrible), and 44 to the 39), which seems about as average as average gets but not sure we had anything else more deserving of a game ball. Certainly not Kenney missing a 42 yard field goal attempt and whatever else happened in the operation to make that happen, a sad capper on the game. Probably the single best special teams play of the game was Libman and Richardson combining for an excellent punt coverage tackle. Johnson and Mattingly combined on a kick coverage tackle after the unit had already given up a fairly significant return. In the return game, another week, another set of kick returns that got less yardage than we would have gotten on fair catches, nine yards in Tabb's case on the opening kickoff and one yard on High's more effective 19 yard return. Virginia missed a short field goal but it seemed like that and the subsequent ugly make were just crappy kicking.

10. Game balls: Bryce Farrell, Matt Rose, Aidan Flintoft, Tyler Osborne

11. The team has to flush this and try to show against San Jose State who they think they are and want the world to believe they are. The world won't be watching but we will. For the big picture of the season the Virginia road trip doesn't really change anything. We are still a team expected to win three-ish games that thinks it has more in it than that. The on-paper easiest game on our schedule looming on Saturday is one we can't mess up if we want to meet expectations and certainly not if we have any pretensions of exceeding them. My thing this whole season has been trying to show enough progress that this doesn't feel like a totally wasted year and in my mind that means playing well enough to be better than a solid handful of power teams, something like a top 80 team. Based on what San Jose State is showing I would like to see a win by more than a score. But wins and wins at home have been so rare for us that a win in any form would feel good next week. We haven't had multiple home wins in September since 2018, so let's just make that the goal and try to build from there.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - Virginia - qwerty49 - 09-21-2025

Nice analysis as usual, Matt.

I got lazy and only watched the condensed version of the game.  Hard to tell from that mash-up since everything pre-snap was edited out, but it looked like UVa was running a version of the old Oregon no-huddle offense, and that our DL was just getting gashed at the LOS, with the UVa RBs getting through some pretty big holes with hardly any initial contact.  I don't recall that happening against Hawaii or BYU or BC.

I wonder if that was lack of preparation on our part, or if we were just getting manhandled, or both.  I know you mentioned there was some good pre-season hype about the UVa OL.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - Virginia - JJJ - 09-21-2025

Thanks, as always, for the in-depth analysis. Here’s hoping the good team shows up vs SJSU.

RE: Sunday morning (err, afternoon) thoughts - Virginia - ADPinWDC - 09-21-2025

Basically, if we lose to SJST in PA, the season is over. 
No one will walk over to watch the games.  
At 1-4, we could lose the rest as cannon fodder.

I think we can beat Sparty against their weak defense, and shut down their leading receiver. 
One guy -- Scudero -- has a third of their total yardage.
Even though point spread opened today with SJST favored by 1.5.  

We have enough pieces with Farrell, CJ Williams, Micah Ford to pull together some offense against the State College in San Jose.   
If the Defense plays like second half vs BC, we win.