[Langdude]

But one thing still nags at me regarding the "stacked box" argument. I still wonder - last year, with more question surrounding the passing game and Bryce Love on a Bridesman run, I'm guessing that teams stacked the box, too, and yet we were able to solve it (except against WSU, IIRC). What's the difference?

Well, I think it depends on what you mean by "solved." Bill Connelly has some interesting stats here: https://www.footballstudyhall.com/pages/...al-profile

Relevantly, Stanford had a rushing success rate of 38.9% in 2017: that is, Stanford running backs gained less than 50% of needed yardage on first down, 70% on second down, and 100% on third and fourth downs just less than 4 in 10 times. That was 101st last year. So stacking the box was indeed quite successful from the perspective of making Stanford's rushing offense inefficient. On the other hand, when Stanford was successful, it was extremely explosive. It was the latter part that makes fans think things were great. 

Have things changed this year? Obviously the Stanford rushing offense is still inefficient in the sense of setting up favorable downs and distances. But it's not getting as many explosive runs, at least so far this year. (Only 3 runs at 20 yards or more, or about 1 explosive run every 30 carries. That compares to a 7% explosive run rate in 2017.) 

On the other hand, passing is (so far) much more effective. Sacks are slightly down (3.15% of dropbacks end in a sack this year, versus 4.47% in 2017). And yards per attempt are up by a healthy margin -- Costello has 8.3 YPA versus 7.2 for last year's motley crew. The big flaw with the passing game is, again, efficiency: Costello's completion percentage is modestly up (61.4% versus 58.8%), but it's still much lower than you'd like. 

Basically, Stanford needs to improve efficiency and get in more favorable down and distances more frequently. I suspect some of that will come naturally: for whatever reason the team had a very poor pass-blocking day against Davis. Given it held up against probably-solid college defenses SC and SDSU I'm guessing it'll hold up in the future. I dunno if that'll be "enough" but it sure as heck will help.

Thanks for this, WIM. Super helpful.

-m.

[Langdude]

But one thing still nags at me regarding the "stacked box" argument. I still wonder - last year, with more question surrounding the passing game and Bryce Love on a Bridesman run, I'm guessing that teams stacked the box, too, and yet we were able to solve it (except against WSU, IIRC). What's the difference?

Well, I think it depends on what you mean by "solved." Bill Connelly has some interesting stats here: https://www.footballstudyhall.com/pages/...al-profile

Relevantly, Stanford had a rushing success rate of 38.9% in 2017: that is, Stanford running backs gained less than 50% of needed yardage on first down, 70% on second down, and 100% on third and fourth downs just less than 4 in 10 times. That was 101st last year. So stacking the box was indeed quite successful from the perspective of making Stanford's rushing offense inefficient. On the other hand, when Stanford was successful, it was extremely explosive. It was the latter part that makes fans think things were great. 

Have things changed this year? Obviously the Stanford rushing offense is still inefficient in the sense of setting up favorable downs and distances. But it's not getting as many explosive runs, at least so far this year. (Only 3 runs at 20 yards or more, or about 1 explosive run every 30 carries. That compares to a 7% explosive run rate in 2017.) 

On the other hand, passing is (so far) much more effective. Sacks are slightly down (3.15% of dropbacks end in a sack this year, versus 4.47% in 2017). And yards per attempt are up by a healthy margin -- Costello has 8.3 YPA versus 7.2 for last year's motley crew. The big flaw with the passing game is, again, efficiency: Costello's completion percentage is modestly up (61.4% versus 58.8%), but it's still much lower than you'd like. 

Basically, Stanford needs to improve efficiency and get in more favorable down and distances more frequently. I suspect some of that will come naturally: for whatever reason the team had a very poor pass-blocking day against Davis. Given it held up against probably-solid college defenses SC and SDSU I'm guessing it'll hold up in the future. I dunno if that'll be "enough" but it sure as heck will help.

Thanks for this, WIM. Super helpful.

-m.