[washingtonismoney]

Calling the wide receivers subpar is one of those soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations things. They may be well into the bottom quartile of BCS AQ teams. They're certainly, if not the worst, then somewhat near the worst in the Pac-12:

S.C. has three wideouts better than our best wideout; kal, likewise, has three. Oregon has three. Oregon State's top two are better than our best (I don't really think they use their third wideout much). Washington State's best two is better than our best. UCLA's best two wideouts are better than our best. Arizona's best three. ASU's best two. Utah's best two. The only one there's a contest for is Colorado.

Nunes has been bad, but the wideouts have been worse. It's kind of baffling to me people have such high expectations for Nunes and such nonexistent expectations for the wideouts.

EDIT:

Additionally, while not having Luck may not hold as an explanation, certainly not having your best deep threat (Fleener), your most consistent wideout (Whalen), your best two linemen (Martin/DeCastro), your short-yardage specialist (Stewart) and your change-of-pace back (Gaffney) do help to explain it. Duh, but a lot of talent left last year.

Certainly we can come to whatever arbitrary comparisons we'd like; for example, I can just as easily cite the examples of Boise State and Michigan State, both of whom lost their schools' respective best QBs ever plus scads of other talent, as why Stanford's struggles do not look particularly unusual.

[washingtonismoney]

Calling the wide receivers subpar is one of those soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations things. They may be well into the bottom quartile of BCS AQ teams. They're certainly, if not the worst, then somewhat near the worst in the Pac-12:

S.C. has three wideouts better than our best wideout; kal, likewise, has three. Oregon has three. Oregon State's top two are better than our best (I don't really think they use their third wideout much). Washington State's best two is better than our best. UCLA's best two wideouts are better than our best. Arizona's best three. ASU's best two. Utah's best two. The only one there's a contest for is Colorado.

Nunes has been bad, but the wideouts have been worse. It's kind of baffling to me people have such high expectations for Nunes and such nonexistent expectations for the wideouts.

EDIT:

Additionally, while not having Luck may not hold as an explanation, certainly not having your best deep threat (Fleener), your most consistent wideout (Whalen), your best two linemen (Martin/DeCastro), your short-yardage specialist (Stewart) and your change-of-pace back (Gaffney) do help to explain it. Duh, but a lot of talent left last year.

Certainly we can come to whatever arbitrary comparisons we'd like; for example, I can just as easily cite the examples of Boise State and Michigan State, both of whom lost their schools' respective best QBs ever plus scads of other talent, as why Stanford's struggles do not look particularly unusual.