Curious this boards opinion on our current yearly scheduling of Notre Dame

I've always loved the game from a tradition and exposure standpoint, but now that we get trounced by them every year I'm wondering if its worth it anymore

Why do we need a stark reminder every year at how far we've fallen?

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.

The September thread is here. I’ll add a breakdown when I can.

Army is ranked #23 and Navy is ranked #25.
When was the last time these service academies were both ranked in the top 25? (Matt probably knows)

In this era of NIL, how is Stanford so far behind Army and Navy?

1. This season is a disaster, folks. The one thing that could save it is that we may get to see a new quarterback in the latter part of the season at a time when the schedule gets Charmin soft, which could produce the reality or maybe just the illusion of progress. We can assess in seven weeks whether that happens and if so if it's credible evidence things are moving in the right direction. Where we stand now things are most definitely not moving in the right direction. We didn't lose to Notre Dame quite as badly on the scoreboard as Purdue did but that's not saying much and, based on the totality of the season, are in a pitched battle with the pathetic Boilermakers for the worst Power Four team in America. Halfway into the season, we are in the 86-99 range according to the most credible models, meaning we are almost as bad as last year and worse than any team David Shaw ever coached. We have the Sagarin #99 team, which makes this one of the five worst teams in the history of our program (battling with #109 1960, #104 1983, #104 2006, and #101 2023). It is beyond sobering to think of how much we returned and how debatable it is whether this year's team is better than last year's. Today's team would be favored by one or one and a half points over Walt Harris' infamous one win team. Our games this year have been befitting the #96, #67, #28, #104, #162, and #166 teams in the country. We've had three games in a row playing like just about the worst team in Stanford history. The only game in which we have even really played like a Power Four team was coming off a bye. There is no sugarcoating this. Anybody saying that there are signs of progress or that this is better than last year or better than the worst of Shaw needs to stop. It is not. Taylor needs to show something to be immune from these scathing statements and, frankly, to not be fired.

2. This was our least competitive game of the season, though that itself is not a big surprise since Notre Dame is a legitimate playoff contender and the best team on our schedule. Based on the calculation of garbage time (eight times the number of the losing team's remaining possessions plus one being less than the losing team's scoring deficit at the start of the possession), a whopping 21 minutes and 49 seconds of clock time (and demoralizingly a lot of actual time too given the weather stoppage) happened after the game was decided. In terms of yards per play, total yards, and points, it was the most strugglefest of a game this season for both the offense and the defense, and special teams got outplayed too. One pseudo interesting note is that this ended the streak of the defense playing better than the offense. The offense clearly showed up to play more than the defense did. At least the offense's one point per non-garbage drive made the #8 points per drive defense look somewhat like itself, like the #6 points per drive defense. Notre Dame's five points per non-garbage drive made the #44 points per drive offense look not only like the #1 points per drive offense but the best offense in college football history (2020 Alabama at 4.41 points per drive is the most I've ever seen, though Army and Ohio State are having amazing offensive seasons, though still far less than five freaking points per drive). Analysis of this game has to consider that Notre Dame has the #1 FEI, #6 SP+, #8 scoring defense, and #4 yards per play defense in the country. They're incredible. The Stanford offense can be forgiven this one and actually did better as an offense than Purdue did and similarly to Miami of Ohio and, amazingly, Texas A&M. The defense, on the other hand, doesn't have such an excuse as Notre Dame is merely good on offense. After some signs of tentative progress for our defense, we just gave up seven yards per play against an offense that is not elite. Ugly.

3. The main thing that was ugly was, plainly, the pass defense. That was, needless to say, the best Notre Dame has passed against anybody this year. According to Total QBR, Riley Leonard has been in the top 21 percent of quarterbacks this season and yesterday we made him look top five percent. Stanford's pass defense is sprinting in the wrong direction, with the last two games our worst of the year despite Virginia Tech and Notre Dame being the two worst passing attacks we've played (Leonard is mostly known as a rushing QB, hence the much better Total QBR). Read that again. Think about it. Extremely troubling trajectory. Things are getting very bleak for the pass defense since Green went out and now Manley didn't play either. The run defense also got gashed but that's not nearly as disturbing when accounting for the opponent. Believe it or not, our streak of the run defense doing better on a yard per carry basis than the opponent norm continued this week. Notre Dame has one of the best run games in America and our 5.87 yards per carry allowed was better than their 6.13 average. We did better than Miami of Ohio and Purdue and almost identical to Texas A&M. Fully halfway through the season, we are #55 in yards per carry allowed and #35 in rushing yards per game allowed, which is super impressive considering we've played two of the top eight rushing offenses. We still have reason to believe in our run defense.

4. It's harder to find things to believe in on the offense. However, the lack of a QB looms higher than Hoover Tower and this game was without Ford, Rogers, and Wright, so if you couple that with facing a much tougher counterpart than April's side of the ball, it's clear the offense had much more to excuse their performance yesterday. Clearly they struggled and were not really close to scoring all game after the first drive (which made the horrendous end of half clock management by Taylor and Daniels even more damaging....after all the years of criticism of Shaw's in-game decisions, some here should acknowledge Taylor may be even stupider in-game). As a reflection of how little hope Taylor has in the offense right now, we ran 59 plays yesterday. We are not quite slowing it down like Shaw's valleys but we are getting there. This was tied with Big Game last year for the fewest plays Taylor has bothered running in a game at Stanford. Based on rate stats, this was a middle of the road game for our passing game, about identical to the Syracuse effort, and it was middle of the road based on what Notre Dame normally allows. We were actually passing more effectively than Texas A&M, Purdue, and Miami of Ohio had. The Domer pass defense is just that extraordinary. But those stats mislead and the bigger story is how little we passed, only 18 attempts including all that garbage time. That is our lowest since we had 17 in the 2018 Sun Bowl against Pitt. My guess is that reflects an intentional game plan considering Notre Dame has among the most dominant passing defenses in the nation, our passing game is a season-long disaster, and Daniels was coming off injury. I think Taylor didn't see any percentage in leaning on Daniels' passing or decision-making and as the game played out our previously encouraging pass blocking totally breaking down reinforced that instinct. At first I entertained a thought that we should have passed more considering we weren't doing worse than teams normally do against Notre Dame, but then I considered that more passing would have meant even more sacks and, I am almost positive, interceptions. This game plan wisely protected Daniels in a no-hoper (and yet he still came out worse for the wear....simply not a fair fight). On the run game side, Notre Dame has a good run defense but not that good that it should have kept us under three yards per carry for the first time this season. We did about a yard per carry worse than anybody other than Purdue has done against Notre Dame this year. I am going to chalk this up as a throwaway game considering that Ford, Rogers, and Irvin were out and we were facing a defense we had no prayer against.

5. With so little to be encouraged by this season, the main narrative is going to be about how you can't do anything without a QB. That's certainly the biggest story and deserves its reflection. After last night I also wonder whether some will push an injury narrative. I would be exceedingly cautious about any such narrative used to explain why this team is so disappointing. Halfway through the season I don't think we've had an inordinate number of key players miss time. At the moment, I am calculating 1.67 key player absences per game. The last three seasons we've ended up in the 3+ range. I bet our injury absences will go up as the season goes on - we have some walking wounded who will miss upcoming games, plus football gets dangerous when you're as overmatched as we are - but I don't view it as at all an excuse for our last six games. We have actually been pretty healthy among our most key players. That being said, the defensive secondary is going through it right now and that is impacting the team. But that's a position notorious for injury prevalence in football in general and we have so little quality there that it's hard to say the injuries are taking out our defense's most key players (especially since Wright has been healthy). I think one can say the roster lacks talent and thus injuries sting more than they would for other teams but that's different than saying we are experiencing a lot of injuries. To the extent this team is one of the worst in Stanford history it has much more to do with QB play on offense and general lack of quality across the roster.

Read that here.

September thread is here. I’ll add a breakdown in here when I can, but I at least wanted to get the thread created.

Read that here.

It's still a few weeks to early to have a good picture of the college football season, but since we have a bye and very little to talk about here's a snapshot of where things stand:

AP Poll

8. Miami
17. Notre Dame
19. Louisville
21. Clemson
27. Syracuse
30. Boston College
35. Cal
39. North Carolina
43. Pitt

Sagarin

7. Notre Dame
10. Miami
20. Clemson
21. Louisville
27. Florida State
29. TCU
38. Virginia Tech
40. SMU
41. Cal
53. Georgia Tech
55. Boston College
57. North Carolina
59. Syracuse
62. Pitt
64. NC State
75. Duke
79. Virginia
83. Stanford
84. Wake Forest
97. San Jose State

Many of us have observed how weak the ACC is and how we've found the weakest power conference, but it really brings it home to see that the Sagarin central mean currently has the Pac-12 ahead of us. We are in a worse "conference" than Washington State and Oregon State! (Lots of season still left obviously, and this is also obviously an artifact of averages, but wow)

Reiterating the caveat that it is too early to much care what Sagarin thinks, the current win probabilities according to Sagarin:

TCU - 0 percent

Cal Poly - 100 percent

@ Syracuse - 23 percent

@ Clemson - 2 percent

Virginia Tech - 33 percent

@ Notre Dame - 0 percent

SMU - 34 percent

Wake Forest - 61 percent

@ NC State - 25 percent

Louisville - 18 percent

@ Cal - 17 percent

@ San Jose State - 50 percent

Total expected wins: 3.63

Bottom line is we are in the range people thought we would be and beating Syracuse would be one of those results that can change trajectories.

Sagarin says currently we have the 9th toughest schedule.

For you folks who think this is OK and is what all the big boys do, here are the rankings of the top 10 - 64,63,12,28,14,58, 67,52,59,37. Median - 52/58. The two hardest are AL and GA, based more on in conference games, including against each other, than the OOCs.

So, I hate the term "Disinformation" but can we stop with the excess testosterone chest beating? Find your feminine side. Will make you more of a sensitive Bay Area dude.

Always fun to visit this venue with friends who attended there. First, it was the fewest Stanford fans I have ever seen at an away game. We stuck out like unicorns and were nearly as rare.
Cool to see Condie Rice involved in the flag raising ceremony prior to the game. Nice touch by the Irish.
Nothing much new on the football front but man there are some glaring deficiencies:
1) Need a QB who can see the field. It was very hard to watch the level of play at the position.
2) The lack of athletes/speed in the secondary is palpable. Glaring at safety and obvious with some of the others.
3) Bailey gets pressure often. He needs to be on the field more.
4) There are some good things going on with the team just not enough to win yet. Need another 10 good to really good players. Hoping the DB recruiting can mimic the running back recruiting.

Read that here.

Read that here.

Is it time to wonder if maybe HCTT has too much on his plate being Head Coach, Offensive Coordinator, and QB Coach?

There can't be much precedent for this across Power 5 CFB

It's similar to the Shanahan model, though even he hires a QB Coach

Starting this thread. Wake Forrest tied with Clemson 7-7, 2nd quarter. Hank Bachmeier just has reached the 10,000 yard mark passing.

On my way to Maples. Firing up the match thread now. You can read a bit about Boston College here.

Read that here.

Ashton Daniels & Justin Lamson. It’s the only logical explanation.

_

Read that here.

Read and watch that here.

Read that here.

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

The 2024 high school football season has begun So I will post the first highlight of the season. CB Chris Garland's first interception of the season. Buford takes the loss against Milton, 13-10.

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