1. We are who we thought we were: a try-hard, resilient team that is competing despite talent deficiencies in many areas, showing encouraging but still somewhat tentative signs of progress, and being a competent quarterback away from mediocre. This game encapsulated all of that. I would have loved if any number of things could have gone differently to make it a potentially thrilling competitive effort on the road in the wake of a hurricane against one of the conference's best teams. There are no shortage of contenders of pivotal what-could-have-beens - Lamson not fumbling, Bailey's near shoestring tackle and/or Green's catastrophic non-contact injury going differently to force a Clemson opening series field goal, pass interference/holding being called when Ayomanor was harassed on the end zone interception, the initial call on Bailey's pass breakup standing as a sack and forced fumble, to say nothing of QB1's abysmal decision-making and throwing execution or Taylor's debatable fourth down aggressiveness. But close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear war, plus all teams in all games have some things that break their way and some that don't. The truth is that this game was fairly representative of our 2024 team. Still, I think we played better than the final score indicates. [For what it's worth, using Sagarin numbers heading into this weekend, the TCU margin was befitting the #97 team, Cal Poly was befitting #63, Syracuse was befitting #32, and Clemson was befitting #113.....while I don't think last night built on our impressively linear progress, I do think the final score does not do justice to our competitiveness.]
2. The 26 point margin of loss compares to other Death Valley results of Appalachian State losing by 44 and NC State losing by 24. Our negative 1.56 net yards per play compares to positive 3.83 for Georgia (at a neutral site), negative 4.56 for Appalachian State, and negative 1.49 for NC State. Allowing Clemson to get 2.36 net points per non-garbage drive made the #11 net points per drive team look like the #10 net points per drive team. In other words, even with Daniels' terribly costly decision-making we played Clemson extremely straight up compared to their norm this season and basically equivalent to NC State, which in computer models is considered a slightly better team than us. Based on the Appalachian State and NC State results, it seems like a pretty fair result. Nonetheless, Taylor's fourth down decisions made the score wider than it could have been.
3. Reasonable minds can differ, I think, on whether Taylor made the right calls but it is so striking how incredibly aggressive he is being. I appreciate that Taylor views his fourth down aggressiveness as playing to win the game - and I can only hope it is being internalized/embraced as such by the players and contributing to a competitive culture - but I'm not sure his level of aggressiveness actually increases our chances. He is coaching like the head of a program with nothing to lose, which may be fair enough given the crater we've been in the last half decade, but I am not sure we actually are so bad to just throw all caution to the wind. Taylor coaches like he's assuming we need to be desperate on fourth downs, yet we are top 90 in the country in both offense and defense according to SP+; if that held, it would be the first time Stanford has been that balanced since 2019. I think it might be better from a short-term win optimization standpoint if Taylor started coaching like the subpar team we are rather than the hopeless team he inherited. He and April have done well to give us a puncher's chance and we arguably squander that with things like going for it from our own 34 on the fourth play of the game and going for it on 4th and 5 from the 10 when our lack of red zone competence (113th in both red zone scoring percentage and red zone touchdown percentage) makes that a very low percentage play and three points would have meant a lot in terms of momentum to make the game 20-10 deep in the third quarter in a game in which we had weathered a lot of adversity against a national power on the road. [No beef whatsoever on the last fourth down attempt even though it was from our own 34, as a first down was the only thing that could have prevented the game from entering garbage time at that stage. What I take exception to is having QB1 do the sneak rather than our dedicated, pretty good at it short yardage QB. I think Taylor may have gotten Daniels hurt and we also would have had a better chance converting if Lamson took that snap.] All that said, if the theory of the case is that this fourth down abandon inculcates a winning mentality (playing to win rather than to keep it close) that very well could pay longer-term dividends that justify it. Totally in the realm of the plausible/debatable I think.
4. If my morning after thoughts posts tallied up a winner between our offense and defense each week, this season it would be 3-0 for the defense in the FBS contests. We gave up 3.00 points per non-garbage drive, which is better than Clemson's average of 3.93, making the #9 points per drive offense look like the #28 points per drive offense, and that understates how impressively the defense did since the non-garbage touchdowns were all on drives starting in tremendous field position (our 34, Clemson 46, our 43, our 34). While we gave up our highest yards per play yet this season, that kind of thing will happen when you play a great offense. We actually held Clemson under their season average in yards per play and did better than their non-Georgia opponents did by well over a yard per play compared to NC State and over three yards per play compared to Appalachian State. The biggest story is the run defense. We really might be on to something there. 150 yards on 5 yards per carry is a nice performance against the #11 yards per carry rushing offense in the country. This was a massively tougher assignment than our previous three games and we passed the test, in fact having a whopping 3.15 fewer yards per carry allowed than NC State. Now, NC State has a bad run defense but to me the bottom line is that we have held every single opponent this season under their average in yards per carry and were three yards away against TCU for the same being true on total rushing yards. This really might be a very good run defense.
5. Perhaps a spicy take, but I think some people are being way too harsh about Stanford's pass defense in this game, including the much-maligned Manley. We held Clemson slightly below their season averages in passer rating, yards per attempt, and total yards and massively below the average in completion percentage. Klubnik is #4 in the nation in Total QBR, truly one of the best players in the country, and we made life about exactly as hard on him as did NC State, which has a thoroughly mediocre pass defense. I will happily take a mediocre performance by the Stanford pass defense at this point given the limitations of everybody but Wright. This was a pretty good result for a pass defense that has to put guys like Leigber and Morris out there and hope for the best. At this stage of the season, our three FBS games have been against three of the four best passer rating teams we play this season. I would expect Louisville and SMU to be challenges for our pass defense but we have a number of games left that are much easier sledding in this phase. The contrast may seem immediate next week when we go up against the #103 passer rating team in the nation in Virginia Tech.
6. The offense was much less encouraging. We score 0.64 points per non-garbage drive, much worse than Clemson's average allowed of 1.97, making the #56 points per drive defense look like the #3 points per drive defense. While we got yards, that overstates our effectiveness relative to opponent since Clemson does not have a very good defense (we are #98 in yards per play defense this season and they are #99). The harsh reality is that we had fewer yards per play than anybody they've played this season, even Appalachian State. The main culprit is obvious. Our passing sucked, the worst game for us statistically in every respect even though Clemson has a slightly worse pass defense than TCU and Syracuse. Clemson dominated Daniels and the passing game similar to how they did against App State, also a bad passing team. We were a lot better running the ball - including very notably Daniels himself - and that's the silver lining on this side of the ball. We were right around 5.4 yards per carry for the second game in a row, which feels like major progress, but optimism needs to be tempered somewhat by recognition of the defenses we have been playing. Syracuse stinks at run defense and Clemson is even worse statistically (#120, third worst Power Four run defense), though garbage time has significantly distorted their stats. All in all I call yesterday a triumph of the Stanford run game - hard not to with the yards total we had, the most Cardinal rushing yards since 2018 and the fifth most rushing yards Clemson has given up in the last 8+ seasons - but one that is nonetheless less impressive than it seemed to the naked eye. Clemson has some issues in run defense.
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