[Snorlax94]

Langdude,
Great post and I agree with most of your sentiments.

The one difference I’d say is why they got those chunk plays and why we missed those tackles, and I think the disparities in prep time played a role.

Yes, USC’s receivers got open, caused penalties, and got an obscene amount of YAC due to missed tackles. I was thinking about it, and yes, especially late in the season, we should be making those tackles.

But we’re also supposed to get to prep for each team. With a full week before USC, I’d imagine we’d have more time to recognize and prepare for their routes and we could conduct more drills tackling big, fast receivers in space. On the flipside, USC has extra time to add new plays when we didn’t even have the normal prep time for their old plays.

We played a top ten Washington, then played a rivalry game against a team that had two weeks to prepare, then a top ten Notre Dame, then had a short week to prepare for a top 10 USC team that had two weeks to prepare.

It’s not intended as an excuse. You wanna be a champion, you gotta win regardless of the circumstances. But it’s context. I was frustrated USC receivers got so open, Stanford missed so many tackles, USC got so many YAC, and USC occasionally stuffed some bread-and-butter signature Stanford plays, but I recognize there was a ridiculous disparity in prep time.

Imagine if Stanford had two weeks to add new plays, and our opponent had just completed that gauntlet and had a short week to prepare for our power run and tall pass game combo. We’d probably make that defense look like paper.

[Snorlax94]

Langdude,
Great post and I agree with most of your sentiments.

The one difference I’d say is why they got those chunk plays and why we missed those tackles, and I think the disparities in prep time played a role.

Yes, USC’s receivers got open, caused penalties, and got an obscene amount of YAC due to missed tackles. I was thinking about it, and yes, especially late in the season, we should be making those tackles.

But we’re also supposed to get to prep for each team. With a full week before USC, I’d imagine we’d have more time to recognize and prepare for their routes and we could conduct more drills tackling big, fast receivers in space. On the flipside, USC has extra time to add new plays when we didn’t even have the normal prep time for their old plays.

We played a top ten Washington, then played a rivalry game against a team that had two weeks to prepare, then a top ten Notre Dame, then had a short week to prepare for a top 10 USC team that had two weeks to prepare.

It’s not intended as an excuse. You wanna be a champion, you gotta win regardless of the circumstances. But it’s context. I was frustrated USC receivers got so open, Stanford missed so many tackles, USC got so many YAC, and USC occasionally stuffed some bread-and-butter signature Stanford plays, but I recognize there was a ridiculous disparity in prep time.

Imagine if Stanford had two weeks to add new plays, and our opponent had just completed that gauntlet and had a short week to prepare for our power run and tall pass game combo. We’d probably make that defense look like paper.