(07-25-2019, 12:11 PM)CowboyIndian Wrote: Not terribly well-informed but somewhat interesting. Completely ignoring Cameron Scarlett in the run game sections takes away from their credibility, I'd say.
Yeah, that was not exactly a deep look at Stanford. They did, however, have a roughly correct description of what to expect from the Stanford offense and there were some amusing items.
- Their summary of Stanford's receiving corps seems to match the average Stanford fan's view, even if the details given don't seem to lead to this conclusion.
"Though Stanford lost its two most prized weapons to the NFL, Costello will have plenty of able targets. But his options don’t have quite as much experience as one would like."
- They not only missed Scarlett but also Speights in describing our RBs. The Scarlett omission may be due to looking at a roster from last year and not understanding that Stanford lists players by their actual class and not their football eligibility (they described several others by the academic class). That's not the case for Speights however, as he was only a junior last year.
- Despite basing this comment upon a misunderstanding of our RB depth chart, I would say this statement is completely true: "it’s hard to have a lot of confidence in the Cardinal’s running game heading into the year." Blind rodents, nuts, and all that.
- Hidden in that article is the fact that Stanford allowed more yardage than they gained last year. The same thing happened in both 2017 and 2016. Yet during that three year span, Stanford went 28-12 with a Pac 12 North championship. I think that sort of discrepancy is rather rare.
So, what does it indicate?
1. David Shaw is a brilliant coach because he gets his team to at least 9 wins even when opponents are better able to move the football - and thus maybe overall better personnel.
2. David Shaw is a disaster as coach, both offense and defense are crumbling, and the good years of Stanford football are coming crashing down.
3. Nothing at all, it's just a weird anomaly. Consider, for example, that these are the only three seasons in Shaw's tenure where the team was overall outgained (even in the rough 2014 season, Stanford outgained its opponents by over 100 yds/game).
- Turnovers is another spot they had trouble reading the stat sheet. On fumbles the writer apparently read what the Stanford offense coughed up rather than what the defense forced. So, Stanford recovered 7 opposition fumbles (not 4) and officially forced 16 (not 11, though another site says 9 and I don't think that is a reliable stat). More importantly, their interpretation of those numbers is odd.
"The Cardinal was also effective in producing turnovers"
Well, Stanford's actual gain of 18 turnovers was in a many way tie for 79th in the country, their claim of 15 turnovers for Stanford would have been tied for 100th, neither of which seems particularly impressive.