1. That was awful. Yesterday should have been a winnable game in which we at least belonged on the field but instead it was a hopeless and boring game, yet another in a string of Saturdays on the Farm being the least fun place to watch football in America. We all know the ample legitimate excuses for why this rebuild is on a glacial pace but that doesn't make it any less disappointing when we get run out of our own building by an ok team. Losing by 24 to Virginia Tech is the worst anybody, including Marshall and Old Dominion, have done against the Hokies. I had hoped we were beyond the worst results of last year (USC, Sacramento State, UCLA, Oregon State) but yesterday showed we still have a very low floor. We all want to believe in the rebuild but the last two weeks have not been encouraging. We are scuffling right now. Our games this season have been befitting the #97, #54, #28, #107, and #162 teams in the nation, and all of that amounts to Sagarin currently having us as the #94 team. Considering all that returned for Stanford from last year's team and that there is scant reason to think recruiting or transfers will transform the roster anytime soon, we need to see much more from this team the rest of the way to have confidence this staff is on the right track.
2. As Taylor said after the game, we got outplayed in all three phases and each part of our team had a role in this not being a good game. If we're keeping track, though, this kept the streak going of the defense doing better than the offense, which has been the case in each FBS game this season. On offense we had one point per non-garbage drive, making the #51 points per drive defense look like the #6 points per drive defense while on defense we gave up 3.5 points per non-garbage drive, making the #49 points per drive offense look like the #12 points per drive offense. Similarly, this was the worst any offense has done against the Hokies on a yards per play basis, almost a yard per play worse than Marshall and over 1.5 yards per play worse than Old Dominion, Vanderbilt, and Rutgers. The defense also struggled but at least did better on a yards per play basis than Vanderbilt and it was the second best yards per play defense we've had against an FBS opponent (though that shouldn't impress given Virginia Tech having the worst offense we've faced outside Cal Poly).
3. In the search for some silver lining, the defense appears to have a coherent theory of the case and positive year-to-year trajectory while it's obvious the offense is trying to scratch and claw in the daunting face of possibly the worst QB room in Power Four football. Despite all the frustrations, one can still see the faint outlines of Taylor's theory for how this eventually turns around. In the meantime, we remain a very lightly penalized team and there is still no reason to doubt the team's grit. In the vein of Taylor trying to make lemonade out of lemons, something I was not necessarily expecting is that we are 17th in the nation in time of possession. My hypothesis is Taylor knows we still suck and is shortening the game compared to what he normally tries to do on offense. We only had 66 plays yesterday and haven't had more than 73 in a game yet this season. Last season we averaged 69.83 plays per game and this year it is 68.4. As a reminder, those are both closer to Shaw's Stanford career median of 66 than to Taylor teams at Sacramento State, which averaged 73.9 plays per game and had a median of 76.5 (though clock rules play some role in this too). I think the bottom line is this is still not Taylor's offense. Hard to have Taylor's offense without a quarterback.
4. Want to know how pathetic our passing offense has been this season? Yesterday was our best passer rating and yards per attempt against an FBS opponent this season (though the volume was down because we don't trust Lamson to throw as much as Daniels). We did better than Old Dominion and Marshall chucking the pigskin, but that's a very low bar. And before we try to look at the run game as much of a silver lining, consider that we had the lowest yards per carry we've had this season and the worst anybody other than Rutgers has done against Virginia Tech. The sobering reality is that we have yet to face a top 80 yards per carry run defense (Hokies the best yet at #85) and are about to face massively tougher challenges for our run game. It would have been nice to continue to build confidence against the weak run defenses we've been facing but we came up short. If I had to spin a bad afternoon on The Farm, though, our run game might be one of the places to do it on the grounds it was a relatively tougher run defense challenge, we were doing it without Daniels, we were confident enough in backs to give them marginally more run than Lamson (21 carries to 19), and all backs had 4.3+ yards per carry. This wasn't a disaster, unlike a lot of other things yesterday. I think we can tell ourselves the run game is making progress. Next week will be a test and the following week against SMU will probably make our run game look hapless, but on a super crappy offense the run game is the less crappy part.
5. If run game vs. pass game on offense is Land of the Blind Where The One-Eyed Man Is King, run game vs. pass game on defense may genuinely be in the Land of Silver Linings. Bobby April's defense kept the streak going of doing well relative to opponent quality in run defense. We did over a yard per carry better than the Hokie average and the best anybody other than Vanderbilt has done, with Vandy being the only other opponent that also kept that good back with the name worthy of Star Wars or Dune from breaking 100 yards. Evidence continues to mount that we have a legit run defense, now 26th on a yards per carry basis. Unfortunately for our competitiveness in this game, the pass defense fell apart and had a very bad outing in a game that should have been an opportunity to build some confidence after a string of tough QBs. Yesterday was the worst we've done in passer rating rating or yards per attempt against any QB, and Drones is not the passer Hoover, McCord, and Klubnik are, as evidenced by that being far and away the best he's done this year in most respects (he had more total yardage against Vandy but last night was more efficient). Hey, at least it wasn't a career day for Drones.
6. The least original yet most true thing I can say is that we don't have a QB and that is killing the team. Yesterday threw cold water all over anybody (I'd include myself here) hoping that a good offseason made Lamson a different QB. He was 86th of 95 QBs nationally in Total QBR this week, a middling result by his career standards. He's had six games in which we've relied on him at QB (20+ action snaps) and this game, as horrible as it was (see 86th of 95), was the third best of his six (he was 56th of 132 against Arizona, 87th of 112 against Oregon, 125th of 132 against USC, 126th of 130 against Oregon State, and 120th of 124 against Sacramento State). We know who Lamson is and it's not FBS-level and not even close to Power Four level. Most alarming to me is that the two best games he's played were both in September of last year, so yesterday is unfortunately more evidence to add to Daniels' body of work that our QBs are not improving under Taylor's tutelage. This may be the biggest red flag about Taylor. There is no reason supposedly smart, hard-working QBs with a year and a half of coaching by this staff and among the most returning production of any offense in the nation and facing a decent but not fearsome schedule should not be improving. Maybe Brown comes back in a few weeks and things look totally different to reward Taylor's patience, but we have reasons for real concern this room is on the right track. By the way, a minor thing that has been haunting me every Sunday morning watching the post-game press conferences: it strikes me as cruel that Taylor is having Daniels and Lamson be the spokespeople for the team when their play is plainly the biggest thing holding the team back. The Daniels' press conferences have been tough but highly composed but the Lamson one yesterday was tough to watch, to no fault of him on the short list of most heartbreaking and pitiful Stanford athlete interviews of all time. Is Taylor trying to send a message that the QB leads the team through thick and thin? Cruelly holding them accountable for poor performance? Literally not having it occur to him that there are leaders on a team other than the QB? We have players playing well this season - specifically, Wright, Sinclair, Bernadel, and Ford (though obviously Ford couldn't/shouldn't have come out yesterday post-injury) - why not have them address the media?
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