Since my primary window into college football is this board and Stanford games, I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts or quick hits what to look for today? Seen a lot of talk about how good Washington is, and I know they have a good quarterback inPenix, possibly a good defense. Any Matchups or keys that might make the game more interesting for me to watch? Since it’s likely to be a big loss, I’m hoping to find some nuance to make the game interesting.

Stanford has emerged as one of the big frontrunners for him especially after Notre Dame took Deuce Knight:

Going live. Watch that here.

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I wasn’t sure if I should add this to the thread that @MITGrad started or not, but figured I would make this a separate thread just to get more eyeballs on it. Open practice for women’s hoops at Maples on Saturday at 9:30 AM. Free admission. I’ll be there, hoping to get a couple more interviews in.

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

Daniels, Gilman and Raines

Read that here.

Note: I initially had a typo of "PPF grades" but I fixed it. For some reason, in the version linked below it might still read "PPF" but on the front page and in the article it says "PFF".

Read that here.

6-7pm was watching scrimmage in Maples + moderator Q&A with projected starters
7-8pm was heavy hors d'Oeuvres/wine, etc, reception next door in Arrillaga Hall of Fame with moderated Q&A with Tara

During 5 on 5 scrimmages Cam was off to the side on bike, taking free throws & 3 pointers, later learned she had mild ankle tweak and held out. No discernable limp or hobble and Tara noted expected to be back soon in full action.

Scrimmages were intense with the 2 male practice players and McCall rotating in. Lots of emphasis on setting up 3 pt shooters... and we now have a solid bunch to complement Hannah Jump.

Tara was asked question about effect of the Portal (which she obviously does not really like), noted that given Stanford's academic standards extremely difficult to get acceptable transfers in, and she remains intent on the HS recruiting process to build her team. Maybe one once in a while with a great fit ok.

Also asked about only 12 on scholarship... answer was in today's environment it's hard to keep a greater number of scholarship players happy, find 12 a happy medium, that's why she now has 2 male practice players on staff and along with a still very much WNBA-fit assistant coach Erica McCall rotating in as players on the practices on staff. NCAA rule change allowed Tara to hire 2 additional assistant coaches, Erica being one! Nice to see Erica and she's excited to be back.

Note of interest for the Squire: Unlike Football's, Tara's roster listing handed out to us yesterday notes eligibility status by indicating them as redshirts in status instead of purely academic year.

Stanford Men picked 4th just won the Pac 12 XC title. Robinson won by about 80 yards

ARROW UP

0 Bernadel - Led the team with 12 tackles - zero missed.
3 Farrell - Clearly becoming TT's favorite weapon. Interestingly he is never sent deep - well, one time vs Sac St and he was 5 yards clear but Lamson missed him by 5 yards.
4 Manley - As usual, played every snap. I wouldn't be opposed to changing that trend.
6 Wright - He and Manley are basically the same player in coverage. But Wright is a very good and willing tackler. Unfortunately that is like saying your LT is better at run blocking.
8 Sinclair - Best game I have ever seen him play. Got after the QB and didn't miss any tackles.
9 Armitage - Just made the list. About 10 snaps spread throughout the game. Better than being forgotten per the beginning of the year.
10 Jorgensen - Pretty solid as were ALL the ILB. Much better suited for the run game which Chip's teams are usually great at.
11 Tafiti - Led the OLB group in snaps 2 weeks straight. Turning into OLB1 before our eyes. Starting to see some talent here to go along with the motor. Going to be interesting when the brace comes off and another year of S/C.
13 Ayomanor - Backed up last week with 8 for 86 highlited by a fabulous catch in front of the UCLA bench.
14 Daniels - And that was a helluva throw! QB1 does some nice things. Still a big work in progress.
14 Aybar - Snaps up and finally flashed a little in this game, including the first time he has hit the QB.

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17 Frausto-Ramos - Starter at NB and played pretty much the whole way. I dunno. Very young player we shall see. I'm starting to be a little concerned about our cover guys moving forward into next year.
21 Edwards - On the flip, starting to think this guy has a chance.
24 Bachmeier - One of the top 3 WR to separate themselves on the roster with Ayomanor and Farrell. Another guy starting to grow on me. Feels like a winning player and culture changer.
26 Irvin - Got about 2/3 of the snaps with Filkins out.
32 Leigber - Hanging on this list. Gets about 15-20 snaps/game
33 Gilman - 10 tackles - a couple left out there. I like the player but I also don't think we would miss much next year if not back.
35 Rose- Highest snap count by a bunch this season - most coming in the 2H.
40 Phillips - Snap count back up vs a more run heavy team.
51 Moi - Led the DL in snaps, along with Franklin, and now looks to have passed Phillips. 2 assisted tackles in 50 snaps.
55 Pale - Has been a little better since missing a game 3 weeks ago.
57 Rogers - Both he and Pale did not allow a hit on Daniels 50 drops.
61 Mayberry - The LG really struggles to be consistent in pass pro and doesn't make up for it as a dominant run blocker.
67 Anderson - Holy moly was he under attack all night on the edge. Not good.
71 McLaughlin - The RT still has not allowed a sack this season but this was not his best game.
86 Roush - 3 awful penalties and a tough diving drop. BUT.. I was actually encouraged by what I saw. The guy definitely looks the part in the passing game. BTW, that throw from Daniels on the run that Roush dropped was unbelievable.
92 Keneley - See 33 Gilman
94 Franklin - Worst game by far this season just did not hold his ground very well.
97 Rowell - A new name to the list! 2nd yr player did not look out of place in his first career action and 20 snaps. ALL These guys on the DL have motors and play hard. Arrow up to Coach K.

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ARROW DOWN

0 Reuben - Days of starting and playing big snaps have faded.
8 Lamson - QB2 only had 2 snaps
20 Slocum - Continues to run as NB2
22 Smith - RB2 with no Filkins got about 1/3 of the position snaps.
23 Bailey - Running a distant 2nd in snap count at the Field OLB. I wonder why he doesn't work out with the rest of the position group before the game?
44 Cooper - Nada. Not even a bone in garbage time.
46 Holt - Oh well, there goes hoping.
82 Raines - Saw double digit snaps last 2 games but only on the field for 1 snap in this one. It's definitely a run if he is in the huddle.
85 Taylor and 89 Ungar - Stanford went with 1 TE
98 Buckey - Lowest snap count in the last month. I don't think stopping the run is his strength.

Read that here.

Out of curiosity and perhaps further indictment of our Administration (and in particular Muir), what was the actual attendance knowing this was Homecoming Weekend with a California school?

Read that here. Courtesy of Adam Gorney.

Read that here. Courtesy of Adam Gorney. Just on Bear Bachmeier visiting, which I already posted earlier this week in the recruiting notes thread.

I know Cal and UCLA have eyes on playing each other. It makes sense for them. It would make more sense for Stanford and USC to play each other than Stanford and UCLA moving forward, but seems less than likely.

Has the (useless) Muir commented from his ivory tower about what former Pac-12 opponents might be scheduled in football?

Read that here.

Read that here.

which I'm posting without having read anything here on the game (so apologies if this is covered terrain).
Actually, it's two related thoughts:

1A. I thought Daniels played pretty darn well, given that he was under constant duress.

1B. I can't help but wonder how different this season would have looked had just the 3 transferee OL stayed at Stanford.

Stanford has a long way to go be be competitive, as UCLA was obviously the superior team (and UCLA isn't even THAT good this year).

Fremont High kid.

Pac-12 hoops media days are this week. Women’s hoops on Tuesday and men’s hoops on Wednesday. It’s in Las Vegas this year, so I didn’t make the trip. But I’ll add notes, thoughts, etc. in here. I’ll double check on the times, but both Stanford teams are going right after noon I think.

I’ve set my DVR for both teams, so I’m all set there.

1. Well that wasn’t any fun. Each time we take a step forward we take a step back, and that may be charitable. We’ve now been atrocious in a majority of the games in the Taylor era, with four of the seven games having results not even befitting a top 150 team. Every time we’ve tasted any competitiveness the next week we’ve been horrible and totally uncompetitive. That’s pretty disappointing. I really want to believe in the process but at some point we need to see something more than Yurosek (now not even playing) or Ayomanor (a legitimate bright spot) taking the team on his back. We can squint all we want to find silver linings but fundamentally this is a contender for worst Stanford team ever and we are left hoping, without much evidence to date to be honest, that the process will eventually work. Given the depth of the rebuild I’m resigned to waiting for another off-season and some more roster turnover before judging the staff at all, but it would be nicer to get some evidence this team can compete.

2. While I will always want to do these Sunday posts using the same process and rigor I always do, I think this game may confound trying to glean insight from comparative stats. For one, we were so uncompetitive that there was a ton of garbage time. I will observe some defensible things below that it’s pretty easy to imagine looking worse if both sides of the ball didn’t get to play good chunks with UCLA’s foot off the pedal. Additionally, there were so many penalties on us that it wasn’t a normal game. I’m never much interested in blaming officials and I do think the bulk of what we experienced owed to our own indiscipline and incompetence, but even for me it seemed like an arbitrary disadvantage against Stanford. Some of those penalties came in pivotal situations and five first downs by penalty is a lot. Regardless of these various circumstances, the combination of circumstance and the fundamental differences between the teams produced a situation in which we were uncompetitive with UCLA in a way only NC Central had been. That is really disappointing.

3. UCLA is the best or second best defense we’ve faced this season (best by conventional stats but arguably Oregon is better) and predictably stymied us. As in the Oregon game we had pretty much nothing, especially when the game was still in doubt. Bearing in mind the caveats I mentioned above, UCLA’s defense has been so stifling this season that statistically we actually look ok, the most yards per play anybody but the great Oregon State offense has managed against UCLA. I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, just watching the game it was clear we weren’t getting anything done so we shouldn’t take much solace in garbage time inflated stats. On the other, there’s some evidence of the kind of thing Shaw used to talk about ad nauseam, being tantalizingly close to things clicking better. It does seem that with some better luck on penalties and some better calls/execution on third and fourth down this game looks pretty different. [I generally feel pretty good about Taylor being an improvement in offensive design compared to the old regime, but 1 for 12 on third down and 0 for 4 on fourth downs are exceptionally ugly statistics.] On defense, we did worse than all Pac-12 opponents have against UCLA and better than the weak non-conference slate in terms of the yards per play UCLA gained, about half a yard per play better than UCLA’s average. This may have been modest progress as UCLA is the fourth best yards per play offense we’ve played and did the fifth best in this regard of our opponents to date. All in all the stats are indicative of a far inferior team at least battling on both sides of the ball. At least we have that going for us.

4. If we have to pick out a bright spot I am going to go with run defense. UCLA has a good run game yet this was above average by our standards in yards per carry allowed and the best run defense game of our season by PFF grade, stingier than anybody against UCLA other than Utah and Washington State. We shouldn’t get carried away as 221 rushing yards and four touchdowns is a healthy chunk and clearly UCLA could do what they needed to do, but to the extent we are looking for silver linings this is one. The passing defense did right around our average and definitively worse than any Pac-12 opponent to date but hey, we did better than Coastal Carolina, San Diego State, and NC Central. I will take that as modest progress as we are 130th in passer rating defense and 121st in yards per pass allowed. The defense is bad but they battled.

5. On offense, we are continuing to see a fundamentally limited operation hamstrung by pass protection and essentially giving up on the run. We saw pass blocking regression but we expected that against this front and it could have been worse in sacks. I’m reasonably impressed with Daniels in the pocket. Our passing game was smack dab middle of the road average compared to how teams usually do against UCLA and a bit below average compared to how we usually do. Not terrible. On the ground, on the other hand, we had the second least rushing success of any team against UCLA. Run game has totally collapsed and we shouldn’t expect that to change if we aren’t giving Smith and Lamson significant carries. There were half as many carries in this game as our next least run-heavy game. I hope to see a Stanford football team next year that uses running backs.

I was sitting next to JohnnyO53 last night. Near the end of the first quarter, he said he was leaving to go to some "Cougar Bar" in Danville.

"I have a better chance of scoring than the Stanford offense."

Read that here.