(09-12-2021, 07:30 AM)CTcard Wrote: Still processing what we've seen so far this season, but in-progress thoughts ...
- Last night was as wide a gap between performance and expectation as I can remember for Stanford football.
In some ways more than the 2007 SC upset. In that game, while Stanford was big on pluckiness and grit, they were still clearly an inferior team overall but won on some key plays and a 5-1 TO advantage. This game, Stanford stomped SC. The late give-away scores will make it less impressive for those who didn't watch, but that was thorough.
- It seems we can put the KSU game into the category of a terrible performance rather than the performance of a terrible team. At this point, I simply expect a rotten egg for any game scheduled for 9:00 am pacific, with a sliding scale of terribleness up until about 1:00 pm pacific.
Yes, from time to time you see other teams manage the issue, but I don't recall ever seeing Stanford manage. In fact, in the post-KSU news conference where Shaw went into coach-speak about how the start time wasn't an issue, the example he chose to prove Stanford could handle such a start time was 2009 vs Wake Forest - a game we lost to an inferior team.
- I am still convinced SC is a much better team than KSU. That will be even more true with the KSU QB now out indefinitely with a knee injury. Fortunately for frustration if not overall, quality wins/bad losses is unlikely to be an issue this year.
- Biggest concerns after two games:
On offense the OL not consistently getting a push in the run game.
On defense, often no QB pressure at all without a blitz to the point where it occasionally seems the opposing QB could simply never throw the ball and would never get pressed (I am imagining something like the old, pre-shot clock basketball stall strategy).
- Still worried about Vanderbilt game, almost solely because of travel. Fortunately, it is a Tennessee night game.
- The toughest stretch of the season seems to be after the Vandy game, where we play UCLA, Oregon, ASU in a row. Fortunately, the first two are at home. Unfortunately, it comes after a tiring trip.
- Still worried about surviving the season. Between injuries and exhaustion I can imagine that over the final several games the team is held together by spit and baling wire.
- There is some subtlety here, but Shaw has now cemented his place in being bad at initially figuring out who is the best QB on his team. On the other hand, on the scale of football coaches overall, he seems fairly good at correcting the bad initial choice. So we had:
2012 Nunes --> Hogan
2016 Burns --> Chryst
2017 Chryst --> Costello
2019 Costello --> Mills*
2021 West --> McKee
*2019 may not really belong here. There was no question that Costello should have been the starter at first. Mills only took over because of injury. While at the end of 2019 he was better than injured Costello, it's not clear that during that year he was as good as 2018 Costello.
Pattern pretty obvious. More experienced guy gets first shot. I’ll always argue 2012. Question was when Hogan was ready. He came somewhat out of nowhere. The initial competition was Nunes- Nottingham. Then we began to hear a bit more about this Hogan guy. I’ll also question to a lesser extent ‘16. Burns actually may have been the better QB. As for ‘17, I think the prevailing wisdom coming in was that Chyst the potential to be very good. Although I do remember a lot of talk that he’d faced very poor opposition in ‘16. And while I think there was no way most coaches would bench a very highly recruited guy that had helped turn the prior season around, it should have been clear earlier that KJ was better.
I didn’t see KSU. But I understand he rotated. Which I never like. But at least that ended quickly.
Agree (as usual) with your overall points. One add, Peat needs to play much more. He’s the more explosive back. Maybe using both in the backfield. A la Wright and McCaffrey in the latter part of 2014.