Questions on the ‘Niners

Does latest game raise questions about the wisdom of signing Brock to anything approaching a max deal? I’ve heard some folks say that yesterday was what you get with Brock being Brock (i.e., without superior weapons around him). I’m not really buying that mainly because the Chiefs defense is that good. Still, he struggled. The question, in my mind, is what would another team pay him if he were a free agent? I don’t think it’s $50 or $60M/year, but whatever the number is, the ‘Niners should not exceed it.

The front office strikes me as uncertain/lacking vision when it both (i) drafted Pearsall in R1, and (ii) signed Aiyuk to big K extension. Not sure what “the plan” was (of course, whatever it was is now shelved with BA’s season-ending injury). Has anyone seen an explanation for that two-pronged appraoch? Was it just to field best team this year and we'll worry about out years later?

The ‘Niners are at real risk of not even making the playoffs, which is a depressing thought.

To be a good team, you have to be able to stop the run. SF is not a good team.

From The Athletic
Riley has not proven to be an adept recruiter. The Orange County Register recently ran an alarming story that USC’s coaches had not visited longtime Orange County powerhouses Mater Dei and St. John Bosco since last spring. “We must be the greatest coaches in America, is what they’re basically telling me because we’re doing it with a bunch of guys that aren’t qualified to play at USC,” said Bosco head coach Jason Negro.

Read that here.

Read that here.

I was on the homecoming website and shocked to see that all official class tailgates are from 11-1:30.

Has the university ever scheduled these during the actual football game?! I always thought that they ended 30 minutes before kickoff so people tailgating can actually attend the game as well.

This is some real bullshit.

Sagarin has us at #7.

The last 4 games have been brutal.

Guess who's #1?

UCLA.

How's that Big 10 thing working out so far?

Stanford needs to buy players this off-season. Lifetime Cardinal, donors, the university, and whomever else is necessary needs to support a one-time massive expenditure of money to buy at least 10 admittable, high-quality transfers.

This staff can't recruit high schoolers at the level necessary to reverse our fortunes. As much as I like Troy, the decisive moment was when we didn't get Jason Garrett or someone else of his national standing and chose the self-selector. We don't need a schematic wizard as head coach. We need someone who can get the Jesses and Joes. Garrett would have immediately helped with that much more effectively than Taylor.

Oh well, Stanford went cheap, and here we are. After four consecutive tramplings, the evidence is clear: We must pony up the cash to stay in the race.

There are some precedents for why I believe Stanford could get on board with a big money push for transfers. The athletic department and university (as it pertains to athletics) have a history of waiting until things go to shit before they make uncomfortable decisions or break from tradition.

Fans spent years frustrated when we lost a recruit who wanted to enroll early. Stanford kept saying, "That's not us. It's essential to keep freshmen classes together." Shaw and the coaches parrotted the company line. Some people on this forum were sympathetic about the reasoning and questioned whether changing more things that further separate athletes from everyone else was a good idea. Then, the wheels fell off the program, and suddenly, it was Okay to allow early enrollees.

Stanford won't change to help get football transfers. Remember that? Graduate schools are independent, and it's too damn bad their admission schedules don't work with athletics recruiting windows. That's just how Stanford is different; it stands for student-athletes, not athlete-students. Then, the wheels fell off the program, and suddenly, we created a baccalaureate program expressly to get grad transfers, and the university opened up more transfer slots.

NIL collectives all over the place worked closely with universities for several years while Stanford acted like theirs was a bastard child that they wouldn't stop but wouldn't endorse, either. The first collectives launched in the summer of 2021. Stanford released a statement publicly associating itself with its own almost three years later. It had become unavoidable if we wanted to compete in the NIL world. So, that's when Stanford made a move.

There are older examples involving long-gone administrators. Remember when we upped admissions standards to the point that it strangled the football program (and others)? Then, new leaders showed up and decided that such standards were unnecessary for Stanford to uphold its values as an elite university. Subsequently, the university lowered academic requirements for football recruits significantly below every other team on campus, let alone non-athletes. The university's academic reputation didn't implode, football graduation rates stayed high, and the move helped us become a powerhouse—helping boost applications.

We're not going to pay football coaches big money! Assistants can find an apartment somewhere. We're not a sports factory; we're a university that happens to excel in athletics. Fast-forward: Never mind. Let's build a bunch of on-campus housing for coaches and shatter the previous ceiling for the head coach's compensation because we must if we want to win in major college football.

Yes, I know I'm oversimplifying. However, I believe my argument still holds up.

I know what I'm proposing won't happen. Stanford will crawl ahead, not because it wants to kill football but because that's how it makes decisions. Taylor will be let go after four years without a winning season—which is always the best bet for a coach hired to rebuild a fixer-upper anyway. Assuming Stanford decides to stay in major college football, we'll hire someone slightly more qualified and try again.

Or ...

Maybe we can beat Wake Forest and San Jose State to set up a Big Game where it feels meaningful to win a fifth game. Perhaps we get a couple of impact transfers and enough guys stay to build a better team. Hopefully, after another off-season of strength-and-conditioning and the 24-year-old linemen are gone from other teams, we'll be significantly better at the line of scrimmage. Maybe.

What I know for certain is that I'm ready for basketball. Wake me up for the season openers.

Unlike the Pac12 (fewer than 12 in soccer), the ACC has a postseason soccer tournament. The more I think about it, the sillier that seems...and perhaps after this initial ACC season with expanded membership, the leaders will put their heads together and do away with the tournament. There is likely no incremental TV $ for the ACC tourney, and fans likely won't be flying around to follow their teams. The NCAA tournament is what matters. But here's where I find the ACC tourney bizarre:

For Men. It's my understanding the tournament includes all 15 teams. During the regular season, each team plays 8 conference games. What? So each team only plays 8 of 14 opponents in an abbreviated regular season, and then everyone enters the playoff? IMO, far better to play two more weeks of regular season, match up against 12 of the 14 other schools, and then enter the NCAA tourney. The ACC tournament games are scheduled for Nov 6, Nov 10, Nov 14, and Nov 17. How will that travel work? And not just for us...doubting ACC teams would be fired up about flying out here if we host.

For Women. The ACC tournament takes only the top 6 (of 17). During the regular season, teams play 10 of the 16 other schools. As it stands this season, the ACC will likely qualify more than 6 teams for the NCAA tournament (64 make the tournament)...so performance in the ACC tournament is virtually irrelevant. Dropping the tournament could get the regular season up to 14 games against the 16 schools...nearly a round-robin. But this ACC tourney women's scenario has added pitfalls/nuances. For a team that finishes 7th or lower and still qualifies for the NCAA tourney, that team is looking at 3 weeks off between their final regular season match and the 1st round of the NCAA. Stanford is currently 6th. But we've played more games than a few of the teams behind us, so there's a reasonable chance we finish out of the top 6. We'll surely qualify for NCAA, so, I guess we just sit around for 3 weeks. Now it's possible sitting around might be preferable to flying consecutive weekends to the East Coast if we won a 6 vs 3 matchup and then had to fly back for the ACC final 4 in Cary, NC the following weekend. Maybe ask Ratcliffe his thoughts in a private moment. Instead, why not just play 2 more home games (one weekend) and 2 more road games (one weekend), and then start the NCAAs?

Maybe I'm missing something, but this arrangement feels suboptimal.

PS - The latest rendition of Van Morrison at Frost Tuesday night!

Look, I'm aware this is somewhat of a farfetched comparison for a couple reasons. Nonetheless, hear me out:

If anyone on this board is an SF Giants fan -- I can't ignore that I am getting similar vibes from Troy Taylor that I did with Farhan Zaidi (former SF Giants GM)

Note: Farhan did not have as many fundamental headwinds as Taylor has had in rebuilding Stanford, but Taylors bar for success is WAY lower .. Farhan got ousted for going .500 year after year. We would give Taylor an extension for going .500

Here are the similarities:

-False Advertising: Zaidi was brought as a genius who could build up the SF Giants farm system like he did with the Dodgers. He did not remotely do that over his 6 seasons as the organization flailed in mediocrity. Taylor was brought on as an offensive wizard that will produce yards, touchdowns, etc. and implement an exciting brand of football that will be stark contrast to David Shaw's boring and lifeless scheme. Taylors offense has been an utter disaster, one that makes me question why I still watch Football.

-Lack of energy and charisma: Theres no two ways about it, energy and charisma matter in most everything in life, especially leadership positions. If you're naturally someone people like and exude positive energy that people naturally gravitate towards, you're going to have a much better chance at success, no matter what you are doing. Farhan Zaidi was more of a behind the scenes presence and awkward in interviews. Troy Taylor is the exact same way.

-Bottom line results: As we know, winning cures everything. Farhan did not win and he is gone. Its early for Taylor but Im concerned, I'd put the chances at him being HC in 2027 at 25% right now, and thats probably generous.

Again, not an apples to apples comparison. I figured you all might humor me on this one at the very least.

Read that here.

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.

I know there are people more savvy than me about tv scheduling/economics. Can anybody give me a read of timing and, ideally, medium-high confidence prediction in the announcement of the NC State kickoff time? I think I have gotten very close to getting my favorite football road trip compatriot out of retirement (in the face of the best efforts of our team to convince people they're not worth watching) but it may end up depending on the game not being at 12pm Eastern. Anybody have thoughts on timing for that kickoff/telecast?

Read that here.

Preview is here.

Does anyone have a sense for where he is in his development? I believe he was a 4-star recruit and someone who seemed to have some real potential based on supposed accuracy and arm strength. Of course, I have no idea if he knows the playbook and if he is able to get through his progressions.

Read that here.

I took a hard look at the depth chart they distributed at yesterday's Buck-Cardinal beer garten in the north exterior concourse... this for SMU

OFFENSIVE Starters
WR Keyshawn Smith Sr 6-1 186 xfer from Miami
or Moochie Dixon Sr 6-0 187 xfer from Texas
LT Savion Byrd R-Jr 6-5 304 xfer from Oklahoma
or Andrew Chamblee R-So 6-6 303 xfer from Arkansas
LG Logan Parr Gr 6-4 316 xfer from Texas
C Jakai Clark Gr 6-3 334 xfer from Miami
RG Justin Osborn Gr 6-5 305 xfer from Auburn
RT PJ Williams R-So 6-5 317 xfer from Texas A&M
WR Jake Bailey Gr 5-10 179 xfer from Rice
WR Jordan Hudson Jr 6-1 191 xfer from TCU
or Moochie Dixon Sr 6-0 187 xfer from Texas
TE RJ Maryland Jr 6-4 237 SMU, from HS
or Matt Hibner Gr 6-5 251 xfer from Michigan
RB Brashard Smith Sr 5-10 196 xfer from Miami
or LJ Johnson R-Jr 5-10 219 xfer from Texas A&M
QB Kevin Jennings R-So 6-0 185 SMU. from HS

DEFENSIVE Starters
DE Elijah Roberts Sr 6-4 295 xfer from Miami
NT Anthony Booker Gr 6-4 358 xfer from Maryland
DT Jared Harrison-Hunter Sr 6-4 294 xfer from Miami
or Kori Roberson Gr 6-3 304 xfer from Oklahoma
BANDIT Jahfari Harvey Sr 6-4 251 xfer from Miami
MLB Kobe Wilso Gr 6-0 225 xfer from Temple
WLB Ahmed Walker Sr 5-11 225 SMU, from HS
N/S Cale Sanders Sr 5-10 189 xfer from Fresno St
CB Brandon Crossley Gr 6-0 185 xfer from Oregon
CB Jaelyn Davis-Robinson R-So 6-1 190 xfer from LSU
FS Ahmed Moses Jr 5-10 200 SMU, from HS
or Jonathan McGill Gr 5-10 186 xfer from Stanford
RS Isaiah Nwokobia R-Jr 6-1 202 SMU, from HS

as to Depth: a total of 47 transfers at SMU

Please Compare & Comment

Read that here.

Read that here.

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.

Read and watch that here.

Head coach Troy Taylor, punter Aidan Flintoft, and defensive back Jshawn Frausto-Ramos will address the media today. I’ll drop a link in here once it’s live.

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Read that here.