[qwerty49]

Sorry but I think you are really grasping at straws to say Shaw deliberately kept the margin down. Our inability to move the ball on offense in the second half did that.

As much as I would love to have given USC a 31-3 beatdown, I also like the idea of Helton being their head coach.  I think Shaw might too.  And, if  playing the boring game against USC, running the same plays over and over, with no creativity helps win future games, I'm all for it.  

However, I'm skeptical.  Fans always say their teams are holding things back for future opponents when their offenses are not very inspiring. I don't buy this very much.  I rarely see good teams who demonstrate a cornucopia of offensive wizardry in games lose future games. What I usually see is dynamic offenses being dynamic all the time, and offenses that play without much dynamism ultimately losing to better teams because they aren't that good on offense, UNLESS they have great defenses.

Clearly Stanford's Defense is better than most of the pundits and fans expected it to be, but maybe Shaw expected it to be a strength and knows he really can win games by helping his Defense by keeping them off the field to rest.  Even though I believed the D would be better than most assumed, it still seemed Stanford would have to lean on its offense to win games this season.  The reality is the O, D and ST work as a team, all relying on each other to win. Running more dead end run plays does run down the clock, and if you're D is good, you don't fear giving it to the other team as much.

After taking in everything post-USC, I think Shaw purposely kept the margin down. He knows USC is his most important foe, and important on his schedule in terms of Stanford's perceived quality as a team.  Blowing them out does nothing to help Stanford's cause.

[qwerty49]

Sorry but I think you are really grasping at straws to say Shaw deliberately kept the margin down. Our inability to move the ball on offense in the second half did that.

As much as I would love to have given USC a 31-3 beatdown, I also like the idea of Helton being their head coach.  I think Shaw might too.  And, if  playing the boring game against USC, running the same plays over and over, with no creativity helps win future games, I'm all for it.  

However, I'm skeptical.  Fans always say their teams are holding things back for future opponents when their offenses are not very inspiring. I don't buy this very much.  I rarely see good teams who demonstrate a cornucopia of offensive wizardry in games lose future games. What I usually see is dynamic offenses being dynamic all the time, and offenses that play without much dynamism ultimately losing to better teams because they aren't that good on offense, UNLESS they have great defenses.

Clearly Stanford's Defense is better than most of the pundits and fans expected it to be, but maybe Shaw expected it to be a strength and knows he really can win games by helping his Defense by keeping them off the field to rest.  Even though I believed the D would be better than most assumed, it still seemed Stanford would have to lean on its offense to win games this season.  The reality is the O, D and ST work as a team, all relying on each other to win. Running more dead end run plays does run down the clock, and if you're D is good, you don't fear giving it to the other team as much.

After taking in everything post-USC, I think Shaw purposely kept the margin down. He knows USC is his most important foe, and important on his schedule in terms of Stanford's perceived quality as a team.  Blowing them out does nothing to help Stanford's cause.