1. What is there to say at this point? I'm compulsive in my Stanford mania (there can only be clinical terms for those of us who subject ourselves to this) so I'll find some words. But those who've asked me "what's the point" and "why dissect numbers when the only thing that matters is____" (some cite culture, some cite institutional apathy) are not wrong. My diving into the minutiae should not be taken as me losing sight of the forest for the trees. Our forest is a hellscape of felled and rotted husks. There is no one thing where this program is presentable, much less serious. We need to be stripped to the studs and built up just as much if not more than all the times we said that when the team was coached by Shaw, Taylor, or Reich. Tens of millions of dollars thrown at the problem with this culture and coaching would be wasteful. An army of transfers will hopefully make us look better but best case scenario absent fundamental rethink of leadership may be rising to a Colorado/Boston College/Rutgers kind of laughingstock. I don't envy Andrew Luck or Tavita Pritchard right now. All they know to do is "the next right thing," and what else could one do in this situation? The powers-that-be at Stanford and the donors who wield some influence need to unsentimentally asseess whether our leadership is fit for purpose. The things we've tried the last year and the last two years and the last five years plainly aren't.
2. We're halfway through the season so there's time to fundamentally change the current snapshot. We can debate where this season ranks in the rogues' gallery of worst ever seasons once the clock hits zero in the SMU game. To the extent we're talking now, those who mock musing this might be the worst ever, merely due to there having been zero and one win seasons, may want to consider things like strength of conference and margin of defeat. This team is building a resume. We now have the worst back-to-back humiliations for us going back a hundred years. Before this month started less than two weeks ago, Stanford had lost by 50 points only four times since World War II. We've now done it in consecutive weeks. We've had games in consecutive weeks worse than any single game in the 1960, 1983, and 2006 seasons that combined for two wins. The 2026 team is now SP+ #124, entering the chat with 2021 Kansas and 2022 Colorado as the worst power teams in the modern college football era. Closest thing to exculpatory: Sagarin actually moved us up on the basis of yesterday's results across the nation, now #98, which would still be among our worst teams but not front of the desultory pack.
3. Stats and eye test unify in a game like this, as in too many games recently, to roundly reject Stanford as even belonging on the field. This game had the maximum amount of garbage time calculable by the BCF Toys definition, as the entire second half fell beyond eight times the remaining loser possessions plus one being less than the deficit. If BCF Toys allowed garbage time to start in the first half, our mathematical elimination came with 1:06 remaining in the first half when we punted on 4th and 2 from our 32. That ugly picture means Stanford scored zero points per non-garbage drive and gave up 4.625 based on the strict criteria and 5.29 in essence. This was the first time since the first game of the New World Order, 2021 Kansas State, where we got shut out in meaningful play. This is now four times in seven games we've been rocked by a pick the score kind of margin, and a fifth was a 28 point loss to a fairly middling Duke team. The negative 3.49 yards per play margin means that the three least competitive games of our last 23 have all been in the last five games. Pritchard's level of failure is almost impossible to overstate.
4. The defense put up more of a fight from a scoreboard perspective than it did last week against Wake Forest, earlier this year against Miami, or last year against Notre Dame. That is really a damning by faint praise stat. We gave up more than eight yards per play, the ninth most in this 66 game era and second time plumbing those depths this season. For those who need a silver lining in every cloud, Notre Dame thrashes opponents through the air so, believe it or not, we were under their averages in yards, yards per attempt, and passer rating and at the median in passing touchdowns. We defended their passing game comparably to pretty good pass defense North Carolina. I was going to say that it's seemed at times this year that we are relatively less awful in pass defense than other phases, though upon checking the midpoint national rankings in pass efficiency defense I see that we are 130th (our best major category is pass efficiency offense....#112!). Regardless of what level of ineptitude one assigns to the pass defense, it's swamped by the joke we saw in run run defense, the worst game for us in all major statistical run defense respects since the 2023 Notre Dame game (Notre Dame has had two games in that interval romping like this). This is where I want to see pride and effort from the defense going forward. Aside from #1 in America in yards per carry Louisville, we play a lot of craptastic run games going forward. A team has to be able to stop the run against Elon, Cal, SMU, and Virginia Tech. Show some pride. You're getting paid professional salaries for god's sake.
5. The offense has now had 4.6 yards per play or less in four of the last five games. Notre Dame is one of the top defenses in the country and we actually gained half a yard per play more than the Irish norm allowed. A hopeless optimist could argue that's a bright spot - it's the most competitive we've been this year relative to a defense's quality aside from the Georgia Tech game. But it came with Notre Dame not playing its two best defensive players. Can't put much lipstick on a pig that can't score a point in meaningful play against a team with its two most luminary superstars in street clothes. The real bottom line for the offense is how typical ineptitude is for us - this is the 23rd fewest yards per play we've had in this 66 game era. That's a read it again stat: for five and a half years, a third of the time we've done worse on a per play basis than a game we couldn't score a single non-garbage point. The passing game was smack dab on Notre Dame's season-long yards per attempt allowed average, kind of grouped in a feckless bunch with Rice, Michigan State, and Purdue, a middling performance for our passing game relative to opponent on the year. It seems to me Notre Dame has played bad passing offenses and, especially with Leonard Moore out, is not a stellar pass defense. Plus we only had five passing first downs. Not a passing game to write home about for us. Our run game is hapless against everybody (dead last 138th in yards per carry). That said, Notre Dame is spectacular in run defense and we actually did better than everybody they've faced other than North Carolina. That is an area of progress compared to our norm that was not visually apparent in a game we only rushed for two first downs. What I want to see is the guys up front play with some pride and really open up holes against Elon, which is far from assured in a game pitting the dead last FBS run game against a top four FCS run defense.
2. We're halfway through the season so there's time to fundamentally change the current snapshot. We can debate where this season ranks in the rogues' gallery of worst ever seasons once the clock hits zero in the SMU game. To the extent we're talking now, those who mock musing this might be the worst ever, merely due to there having been zero and one win seasons, may want to consider things like strength of conference and margin of defeat. This team is building a resume. We now have the worst back-to-back humiliations for us going back a hundred years. Before this month started less than two weeks ago, Stanford had lost by 50 points only four times since World War II. We've now done it in consecutive weeks. We've had games in consecutive weeks worse than any single game in the 1960, 1983, and 2006 seasons that combined for two wins. The 2026 team is now SP+ #124, entering the chat with 2021 Kansas and 2022 Colorado as the worst power teams in the modern college football era. Closest thing to exculpatory: Sagarin actually moved us up on the basis of yesterday's results across the nation, now #98, which would still be among our worst teams but not front of the desultory pack.
3. Stats and eye test unify in a game like this, as in too many games recently, to roundly reject Stanford as even belonging on the field. This game had the maximum amount of garbage time calculable by the BCF Toys definition, as the entire second half fell beyond eight times the remaining loser possessions plus one being less than the deficit. If BCF Toys allowed garbage time to start in the first half, our mathematical elimination came with 1:06 remaining in the first half when we punted on 4th and 2 from our 32. That ugly picture means Stanford scored zero points per non-garbage drive and gave up 4.625 based on the strict criteria and 5.29 in essence. This was the first time since the first game of the New World Order, 2021 Kansas State, where we got shut out in meaningful play. This is now four times in seven games we've been rocked by a pick the score kind of margin, and a fifth was a 28 point loss to a fairly middling Duke team. The negative 3.49 yards per play margin means that the three least competitive games of our last 23 have all been in the last five games. Pritchard's level of failure is almost impossible to overstate.
4. The defense put up more of a fight from a scoreboard perspective than it did last week against Wake Forest, earlier this year against Miami, or last year against Notre Dame. That is really a damning by faint praise stat. We gave up more than eight yards per play, the ninth most in this 66 game era and second time plumbing those depths this season. For those who need a silver lining in every cloud, Notre Dame thrashes opponents through the air so, believe it or not, we were under their averages in yards, yards per attempt, and passer rating and at the median in passing touchdowns. We defended their passing game comparably to pretty good pass defense North Carolina. I was going to say that it's seemed at times this year that we are relatively less awful in pass defense than other phases, though upon checking the midpoint national rankings in pass efficiency defense I see that we are 130th (our best major category is pass efficiency offense....#112!). Regardless of what level of ineptitude one assigns to the pass defense, it's swamped by the joke we saw in run run defense, the worst game for us in all major statistical run defense respects since the 2023 Notre Dame game (Notre Dame has had two games in that interval romping like this). This is where I want to see pride and effort from the defense going forward. Aside from #1 in America in yards per carry Louisville, we play a lot of craptastic run games going forward. A team has to be able to stop the run against Elon, Cal, SMU, and Virginia Tech. Show some pride. You're getting paid professional salaries for god's sake.
5. The offense has now had 4.6 yards per play or less in four of the last five games. Notre Dame is one of the top defenses in the country and we actually gained half a yard per play more than the Irish norm allowed. A hopeless optimist could argue that's a bright spot - it's the most competitive we've been this year relative to a defense's quality aside from the Georgia Tech game. But it came with Notre Dame not playing its two best defensive players. Can't put much lipstick on a pig that can't score a point in meaningful play against a team with its two most luminary superstars in street clothes. The real bottom line for the offense is how typical ineptitude is for us - this is the 23rd fewest yards per play we've had in this 66 game era. That's a read it again stat: for five and a half years, a third of the time we've done worse on a per play basis than a game we couldn't score a single non-garbage point. The passing game was smack dab on Notre Dame's season-long yards per attempt allowed average, kind of grouped in a feckless bunch with Rice, Michigan State, and Purdue, a middling performance for our passing game relative to opponent on the year. It seems to me Notre Dame has played bad passing offenses and, especially with Leonard Moore out, is not a stellar pass defense. Plus we only had five passing first downs. Not a passing game to write home about for us. Our run game is hapless against everybody (dead last 138th in yards per carry). That said, Notre Dame is spectacular in run defense and we actually did better than everybody they've faced other than North Carolina. That is an area of progress compared to our norm that was not visually apparent in a game we only rushed for two first downs. What I want to see is the guys up front play with some pride and really open up holes against Elon, which is far from assured in a game pitting the dead last FBS run game against a top four FCS run defense.