1. The season remains an unmitigated disaster even with a new QB. If anything the offense looked the worst it has yet. Just imagine a game in which SMU hadn't coughed the ball up to us three times, committed a whopping 10 penalties for 100 yards, missed a field goal, dropped an interception that hit the linebacker in the hands, and benched their star running back the entire first half for discipline. As it stood, SMU played a thoroughly mediocre (maybe even bad) game by their standards and it was still the uncompetitive rout that it was, the fourth game in a row in which we've lost by 24 points or more. It's the most an FBS opponent has lost to SMU by this season and we again played so poorly that there were ages of garbage time, in this case fourteen minutes and five seconds after Brown sealed the game for SMU with his second interception. We are now a miserable contender-for-worst-team-in-Stanford-history, #103 in Sagarin and #92 in SP+, after being #101 and #108 last year. Stringing together Taylor's first 19 games, his first year had games befitting the #59, #205, #182, #19, #126, #37, #200, #34, #23, #203, #120, and #138 teams in the nation and his second year has so far had games befitting the #88, #59, #28, #104, #153, #167, and #163 teams in the nation. I defy anybody to look at that and tell me how we are building, much less improving. We ended on a bad skid last year but even that wasn't as bad as these last 3-4 games, nor was the pitiful end of Shaw's tenure (games befitting #135, #212, #138, #88, and #111). You have to go all the way back to Harris' one win 2006 season for the best comparison to what we're seeing: Harris got fired after just his second season after turning in performances befitting #187, #58, #172, #155, #156, #90, #107, #179, #144, #6, #121, and #22. If Taylor doesn't dramatically turn this around soon he should suffer the same fate. Show us something, coach.
2. That was one of the worst offensive performances you will ever see. Stanford had 0.77 points per non-garbage drive, making the #51 points per drive defense look like the #2 points per drive defense. Amazingly, that stat is super unfair to the SMU defense because the final score vastly overstates the Brown-led offense's effectiveness thanks to the gifts of field position provided by the turnovers and aforementioned SMU penalties. Our scoring drives gained a total of 19 yards. 19 yards. On all the scoring drives combined. The only thing that got us on the board at all were SMU miscues giving us gifts. Even Houston Christian (a worse team than Cal Poly, for context) edged us out in terms of yards per play against this year's SMU team. Databases only go back so far and I had to manually look at a lot of box scores to unearth this horrifying tidbit: I believe last night is the first time in the 18 years of Harbaugh-Shaw-Taylor football that we have been held under three yards per play. The last game this incompetent on offense was Walt Harris against Arizona State. I believe that is 223 games of Stanford football since an offense moved the ball that ineptly. That is especially discouraging because it comes as we give the reins to the ballyhooed QB people were hoping would change everything and because we weren't facing the 1985 Chicago Bears out there. SMU is now Defensive SP+ #30, a good defense but not great, much less hold a Power Four team to three yards per play great. This was an abomination by the offense.
3. The defense did more to pull its weight, as has usually been the case this season. They gave up 2.82 points per non-garbage drive, which made the #23 points per drive offense look like the #31 points per drive offense - hey, not bad at all! Yards per play looked much worse for the defense, almost identical to what Houston Christian gave up, but it wasn't as historically bad as the offense was - four games last year gave up more yards per play and we basically get sliced and diced like this annually in the last six year dark ages stretch, plus SMU's last game against Louisville also featured super potent offense. Our defense did better than our offense and had much more of an excuse against the SP+ #13 offense. Moreover, the defense had numerous gut checks in which it made life stressful for the SMU offense or even forced failures, and the numbers would have looked a lot better without the eventual touchdown drive-extending phantom roughing the passer penalty.
4. As you can guess (or as your eyes saw) from a game with such miserable offensive stats, it was a comprehensive disaster on that side of the ball. We converted on two of 15 third downs. We had less than a yard per carry rushing, the first time that has happened since the Utah atrocity near the end of Shaw's tenure and the first time this season we have been held under 113 yards rushing (much under, 33 yards, the second lowest of Taylor's tenure). SMU had a lot to say about that as they have a phenomenal run defense (now third in the nation in yards per carry allowed) but not as much as we made it look like. We had the lowest yards and yards per carry of anybody they've played, including, yes, Houston Christian. This was awful run blocking and run game. The offense loses a ton in the running dimension going from Daniels to Brown, so Brown needs to compensate for that with his passing, which didn't happen yesterday. In fact, the commonality for the offense regardless of which of our three QBs is playing is that we've been insanely consistent (in a very bad way) as a passing offense, in the 4.6-4.9 yards per attempt range every single game against an FBS opponent. This game at 4.7 yards per attempt fit right in that range, while the passer rating was the lowest we've had all season. SMU has a pretty good pass defense but a lot worse than Notre Dame. This was clearly yet another failure for the passing game, worse even than the much-maligned Florida State passing game did against SMU.
5. These are of course very sobering things to observe when we are talking about the game in which the QB reins got handed over to Brown. Can't really sugarcoat this performance. The offense was as bad as it's been in 18 years and if we're going to keep it real QB play remains the most glaring weak link. Sometimes Total QBR and PFF disagree but this time they were in depressing unity. Brown was 110th of 121 quarterbacks nationally this week in Total QBR (a worse rating than Daniels has had in any game this season other than TCU) and PFF also thought he had our worst game yesterday. Here's to hoping that the hand is still on the mend and he was knocking a lot of rust off (both reasonable hopes). What I'm not here for is people to say eye test showed something good in his play. That was not a good game. The best that can be said for it is that execution errors by others (especially Mosley) made it look worse than it was, but even then Brown had major errors he was bailed out on by opponent miscues or officiating, so on balance the ugly metrics and grades accurately reflect his play unfortunately. One of the worst parts about the game was that we let a team that does not sack the QB much normally (1.67 sacks per game prior to us, ten on the season in the other six games combined) get six sacks. Louisville, which gave up three, is the only other FBS team to give up more than one. Sacks are partly a QB sack so this is an ignominious way for Brown to start his career.
6. The big question in folks' minds (asked but understandably not answered in the post-game press conference) is whether Brown is the new QB1. I am not positive that would help the team based on what we saw yesterday, but given Daniels' play this season I wouldn't miss seeing it. I agree with Taylor that Brown can play better than he did yesterday (and we all can see that Mosley did Brown no favors at all). I am basically agnostic whether the Wake Forest start goes to Daniels or Brown or is a game plan to play both. My guess is it's Brown, but Taylor has surprised me before. Regardless, I kept thinking last night that facing a College Football Playoff aspirant with a super balanced team that was coming off a bye, with our upcoming opponents being scrubs by comparison, was a rough place to give Brown, coming off a hand injury and on the aggressive end of the recovery timeline, his first major college football action. I'm not sure that set Brown up for success. I think maybe Taylor was so desperate for a change at QB given what we've seen that he was over-eager to see what Brown could do once we fell down 21-0, not to mention that making the change at that point makes it easier to answer QB controversy questions as a 21-0 deficit is an easy-to-defend place to make a change. On the other hand, maybe getting this rust off materially improves Brown's chances to play at a level that delivers a win next week. Ultimately I put the QB management in this game squarely in judgment call territory. As with so much else, Taylor needs to be judged by results. So far so disastrous, but let's see what QB play looks like against the weak part of the schedule.
