(09-12-2021, 08:18 AM)teejers1 Wrote:(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.
I haven't read or posted anything on the USC game so will just drop my thoughts here, in your "morning after" post - most of which I agree with (still don't buy the 9:00 a.m. excuse). Apologies if others have made these same points in other threads:
First, that was a great win for the program. Congratulations to Shaw and the entire staff – the team looked very well prepared for the matchup.
Second, congratulations to the players, who executed the plan incredibly well. And there wasn’t a whole lot of margin for error (at least from what I saw – i.e., the second half).
Third, what Andy Dufresne said is the best of things: hope. This game gave the team, but particularly the fans, hope for the rest of the season. Look, this team’s ultimate record this season could be anything from poor to great, still, but the latter is now in play. And that hope is the best of things.
Fourth, McKee was unbelievably good. I lost count of the number of great (not good, but great) balls he threw last night, including on third downs. He was putting the ball right where it had to be, often while under duress. And the receivers caught a lot of one-on-one balls where they just beat the defender for possession and/or made difficult catches (2 TD passes come immediately to mind). And there were a couple times where the receives could have made the catch (or maybe even should have made the catch) when a ball was delivered into good coverage. Just an incredible performance by McKee (and the receivers) – it’s hard to overstate how well they played. [And Peat, of course, showed well in the game, and it looks like Filkins has some wiggle to him, too].
Fifth, and this is one of two cautionary/negative things I’ll say about the game – because who else will raise negative points in these parts if not I? – because there was such a small margin for error, I caution against fans expecting this kind of play week after week. It’s hard to be that precise in your throws; it’s hard to catch the ball when always contested; and if just a few of those third down plays had gone the other way, then this game would have had a completely different feel to it. But last night, it was all clicking for Stanford, so congrats to all for that. We should all enjoy that quality game on a pretty big (if not, late-night) stage.
Sixth, offensive game management was WAY better last night. Again, from what I saw, ZERO complaints about getting plays in and off, using clock before snapping, etc. Good job coach! (or coaches).
P.S. Didn’t see the 1H so couldn’t get sense of “feel” or “flow” of the game. But I was surprised to read – or my daughter to relay Gamecast to me, to be precise – that Stanford went for it on fourth and goal from the 5 yard line in 1H in a close game. That strikes me as an erroneous decision, even if it worked. And the highlight actually bolstered that opinion (incredible throw under duress by McKee and great catch by the WR). I don’t know what the rationale was for going for it there – I’ll only say that I hope Shaw wasn’t motivated by outside pressures to “be bold” on offense or what have you. Still need to make the sound decisions. That one worked out for Stanford, but did any of you think that was the “correct” call real time? [Maybe there was something in flow of game that would support that call, so . . .].
P.P.S. Take care of things at Vandy, and the first home game against UCLA shapes up to be a rather important game.
P.P.P.S. Must finish how I started - congrats all around, to coaches and players, for an incredible W at SC. Impressive!
I suspect that your “who else” comment was sarcasm. As for going for it on 4th and 5, there is more. They had made a FG. He took the points off the board. Was it correct decision? I don’t know. Maybe he was sending his team and his QB a message. That he trusts them. And that he’s gonna be more aggressive. And that he trusts them. I’m relatively confident he didn’t say, “hmmm, what would the Cardboard do….” But I find your comment to be perplexing. You’ve complained about him not being bold enough forever. So now that he does something bold, it’s the wrong move and you hope he didn’t bow under pressure. But he’s stubborn - another complaint. Never listens, never changes. And yet, when he does something allegedly out of character it’s the wrong move for the wrong reason. Well. “A lot of poor boys got the Cumberland blues, they can’t win for losing..”
BTW no sign of a turtle last night. Far from it. He kept the pedal down all night. More indication that he was sending a message. Or perhaps bowing to pressure…..
So, maybe this signals some change. Or maybe it was a one off. Time will tell.