[qwerty49]

[quote author=Boston Card link=topic=16635.msg190473#msg190473 date=1490299468]
Maybe UW beat us by getting 8 sacks against Burns in 30 dropbacks, a ridiculous sack rate of 27%, and burying us in such a big hole that we only ran McCaffrey 12 times.

But it goes to the main point, which is that the offensive line was dreadful in pass protection, but was ok in run blocking.

Actually, I think this game demonstrated that they were NOT OK in run blocking. We got down big early, which did influence the play calling. But a "normal" Stanford approach to having two important defensive backs hurt would be to keep the ball away from Washington, dominate the time of possession, run, run, and run some more. We wouldn't even attempt to get into a shoot-out with them, because we aren't built for it. We would try and keep it close so we could win it in the end. I have seen us do that against Oregon for years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the Washington game, we couldn't get first downs, so we couldn't keep the ball. Burns was passing in the first quarter not because we were so far behind (yet), but because it was third and 8. If CMAC was making 4 yards per carry reliably, we wouldn't have been passing. We would have also scored more than 6 points in the game. No way was that an acceptable OL performance on either pass blocking OR run blocking. Washington controlled the tempo, not us.
Perhaps it is a relative thing, that the run blocking was better than the pass blocking. However, even that would be damning with faint praise. I hate to quote a now-departed ןɐɔ coach, but sometimes you do need to be able to run the ball when everyone in the building knows you are going to run the ball. For Stanford, that has been on most downs. Normally, we can, at least most of the time, and even against "good" teams. This year, we couldn't. I don't think anybody would suggest we didn't have talented backs. What does that leave?
[/quote]

I pretty much agree with you all the way down the line (oops no pun intended!)

There's always the feeling that Gerhart's last year and Taylor's year were high water marks, outliers as it were.  I mean, Toby's senior year it seemed like we routinely ran on 3rd and 7, and converted a very high percentage of the time.  Taylor ran tough, basically a smaller version of Toby, but definitely a tackle-breaker and probably overall a bit underappreciated.  Of course there was always that guy, what's-his-name at QB who made the running game even more effective.

And all of this was before the bumper crop of Peat-Murphy-Garnett really matured.

But it was Gaffney's year that I think defenses started being a lot more prepared for us, and for Power/Ogre specifically.  Gaffney was never the quickest guy into the line, and he got hit a lot by the weakside rusher behind the LOS, but he was such a load to bring down that he almost always got positive yardage even when he was hit 2 yards behind the line.  Friends of mine who were former OL were crying out in the stands for wider line splits to force the weakside defenders further away, but I think Bloom/Pritchard/Shaw didn't see the need, and I think that carried over to the CMac era.  IMHO CMac got stuffed a lot at the LOS, but he also broke some incredible runs to create impressive YPC stats.  (I'd love to see the distribution of YPC for CMac each year -- I wonder how much it may have differed from other backs.)

I'm in the camp that cringed watching our OL last year -- but I'm not sure how much of the dropoff I saw in performance was due to 1) talent  2) scheme or 3) some combination of the two.  The only observation I can offer on #1 is that Caspers was probably considered the 5th best OL in our big recruiting class, and that he was the most experienced of the 5-6 starters we had last year.  Yes, the season was spoken for by Mid-October, and Colorado was an ugly, ugly loss, but it just might be true that staff got the most they could out of what they had to work with last year.

.

 

[qwerty49]

[quote author=Boston Card link=topic=16635.msg190473#msg190473 date=1490299468]
Maybe UW beat us by getting 8 sacks against Burns in 30 dropbacks, a ridiculous sack rate of 27%, and burying us in such a big hole that we only ran McCaffrey 12 times.

But it goes to the main point, which is that the offensive line was dreadful in pass protection, but was ok in run blocking.

Actually, I think this game demonstrated that they were NOT OK in run blocking. We got down big early, which did influence the play calling. But a "normal" Stanford approach to having two important defensive backs hurt would be to keep the ball away from Washington, dominate the time of possession, run, run, and run some more. We wouldn't even attempt to get into a shoot-out with them, because we aren't built for it. We would try and keep it close so we could win it in the end. I have seen us do that against Oregon for years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the Washington game, we couldn't get first downs, so we couldn't keep the ball. Burns was passing in the first quarter not because we were so far behind (yet), but because it was third and 8. If CMAC was making 4 yards per carry reliably, we wouldn't have been passing. We would have also scored more than 6 points in the game. No way was that an acceptable OL performance on either pass blocking OR run blocking. Washington controlled the tempo, not us.
Perhaps it is a relative thing, that the run blocking was better than the pass blocking. However, even that would be damning with faint praise. I hate to quote a now-departed ןɐɔ coach, but sometimes you do need to be able to run the ball when everyone in the building knows you are going to run the ball. For Stanford, that has been on most downs. Normally, we can, at least most of the time, and even against "good" teams. This year, we couldn't. I don't think anybody would suggest we didn't have talented backs. What does that leave?
[/quote]

I pretty much agree with you all the way down the line (oops no pun intended!)

There's always the feeling that Gerhart's last year and Taylor's year were high water marks, outliers as it were.  I mean, Toby's senior year it seemed like we routinely ran on 3rd and 7, and converted a very high percentage of the time.  Taylor ran tough, basically a smaller version of Toby, but definitely a tackle-breaker and probably overall a bit underappreciated.  Of course there was always that guy, what's-his-name at QB who made the running game even more effective.

And all of this was before the bumper crop of Peat-Murphy-Garnett really matured.

But it was Gaffney's year that I think defenses started being a lot more prepared for us, and for Power/Ogre specifically.  Gaffney was never the quickest guy into the line, and he got hit a lot by the weakside rusher behind the LOS, but he was such a load to bring down that he almost always got positive yardage even when he was hit 2 yards behind the line.  Friends of mine who were former OL were crying out in the stands for wider line splits to force the weakside defenders further away, but I think Bloom/Pritchard/Shaw didn't see the need, and I think that carried over to the CMac era.  IMHO CMac got stuffed a lot at the LOS, but he also broke some incredible runs to create impressive YPC stats.  (I'd love to see the distribution of YPC for CMac each year -- I wonder how much it may have differed from other backs.)

I'm in the camp that cringed watching our OL last year -- but I'm not sure how much of the dropoff I saw in performance was due to 1) talent  2) scheme or 3) some combination of the two.  The only observation I can offer on #1 is that Caspers was probably considered the 5th best OL in our big recruiting class, and that he was the most experienced of the 5-6 starters we had last year.  Yes, the season was spoken for by Mid-October, and Colorado was an ugly, ugly loss, but it just might be true that staff got the most they could out of what they had to work with last year.

.