[BostonCard]

The notion the OL is dealing with injuries as a rationale to explain its lousy performance, is a bridge too far for me.  Stanford has a pretty clear track record of being what I would call overly cautious with injured players.  It seems highly unlikely anyone would be playing if they were battered and bruised any more than anyone else playing football.  IOW, "the OL is banged up" is just an excuse for poor performance, IMO.

+1. It can't be that they are all so injured that we can't win the battle at the LOS somewhere. We basically never so.

I too am skeptical about injuries being the only problem, though I am not sure it can't be helping.

The one thing I wanted to push back on is the idea that you only have to win one battle on the LOS to be successful.  In pass plays, one breakdown by the line is all it takes to generate a sack or QB pressure; thus, you have to "win" all the battles to be successful.  For running plays it is more complicated, but you at least need to win all the battles at the point of attack to be successful.  While way too often we have seen a complete line failure (where three guys are in the backfield before the play gets off), in truth the majority of failed plays have a single point of failure.  One guy whiffing on his block is all it takes for a hole to close and an otherwise promising running play to go be stopped for 2 yards.

BC

[BostonCard]

The notion the OL is dealing with injuries as a rationale to explain its lousy performance, is a bridge too far for me.  Stanford has a pretty clear track record of being what I would call overly cautious with injured players.  It seems highly unlikely anyone would be playing if they were battered and bruised any more than anyone else playing football.  IOW, "the OL is banged up" is just an excuse for poor performance, IMO.

+1. It can't be that they are all so injured that we can't win the battle at the LOS somewhere. We basically never so.

I too am skeptical about injuries being the only problem, though I am not sure it can't be helping.

The one thing I wanted to push back on is the idea that you only have to win one battle on the LOS to be successful.  In pass plays, one breakdown by the line is all it takes to generate a sack or QB pressure; thus, you have to "win" all the battles to be successful.  For running plays it is more complicated, but you at least need to win all the battles at the point of attack to be successful.  While way too often we have seen a complete line failure (where three guys are in the backfield before the play gets off), in truth the majority of failed plays have a single point of failure.  One guy whiffing on his block is all it takes for a hole to close and an otherwise promising running play to go be stopped for 2 yards.

BC