I think all of us watching have an intuitive sense that QB is what is most holding this team back and that with competent QB play things would look a lot different. I think it's pretty much impossible to quantify this or to have too developed of a sense of what we're missing and what the team's ceiling could be with good QB play, and your guesses are as good as mine. But because it's the topic du mois, I thought it might be interesting to ruminate on it a bit.
I don't know how to isolate non-QB play from QB play in assessing teams and establishing salient comparisons. For now I'll just look at PFF and see if I can observe anything interesting based on teams that grade somewhat similarly to us aside from the problems with QB. I will start with the 20 Power Four teams with PFF grades most similar to ours on defense: BYU, Iowa State, Rutgers, Colorado, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Pitt, UCF, Georgia, Utah, Cal, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, NC State, Clemson, Wisconsin, TCU, Cincinnati, USC, Arizona State. [Funny who our two twins in defensive PFF grading are.....Cal and Virginia Tech] Then the next most important cut for the field I can think of is to try to find reasonably comparable teams in terms of offensive line play. I will remove Wisconsin, Georgia, BYU, Clemson, Arizona State, and Clemson on the grounds they are far too good at pass blocking to be comparable to us, and then remove Rutgers, Iowa State, Cal, Kentucky, and USC on the converse grounds that they are so much worse than us at pass blocking as to not be comparable. This is where the comparison breaks down, as among the remaining teams none grade as poorly as we do in run blocking. But there are four that grade poorly in run blocking so I will view as our most comparable teams: Pitt, Virginia Tech, Colorado, and TCU. How interesting that among the dozens of power teams the four most comparable to us include two teams we've played in our first four power conference games of the season and that in both of those games the difference between our QB and theirs was an obvious differentiator.
For what it's worth, in the grades I did not use to winnow the field, we rank near the bottom among this cohort (Stanford, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Colorado, and TCU) in both receiving and running grades, so it's probably too facile to say that any difference between these teams is solely due to the QB play. Nonetheless, I'd make the case these might be as close as we can get to five comparables for us to compare/isolate the QB variable. [If ignoring receiving and running grades undermines my analysis at all, one factor that cuts in the opposite direction is we have the top special teams grade among this cohort.....I think it's fair to focus on QB as a major differentiator between these teams.]
So, without further ado, here is how Stanford and our most comparable peers rank in Sagarin with the Total QBR ranking of QB1 listed parenthetically:
29) Colorado (44)
35) Virginia Tech (55)
36) Pitt (56)
57) TCU (20)
94) Stanford (120)
TCU kind of having a weird season and got nuked in algorithms, understandably, after the massive egg they laid Friday night. But by and large this tells a story - get a thoroughly mediocre QB like Kyron Drones or Eli Holstein and Stanford could maybe be a top 40 team. Considering the caveats I mentioned above about receiving and running grades and that our run blocking grade is lower than these other four, perhaps something like a top 65-70 team is the right expectation/adjustment for a hypothetical 2024 Stanford With a QB.
How hard is it to have a Drones/Holstein-like QB? The four Stanford QBs in this most mediocre of ranges historically have been 2005 Trent Edwards, 2008 Tavita Pritchard, 2012 Josh Nunes, and 2021 Tanner McKee. Just think, put Pritchard or Nunes on this team and it's respectable. I guess that's encouraging. It really should not be hard for Taylor to get Brown or Bachmeier to be that level of QB. If they're better, maybe one day we can actually be good. So much depends on being able to break through our QB crap of 2022 McKee, 2023 Daniels, and 2024 Daniels/Lamson. Our kingdom for a mediocre QB.
