Head coach Troy Taylor, junior tight end Sam Roush, and freshman cornerback Brandon Nicholson will speak to the media. I’ll drop a link to the presser in here once it is live.

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Read that here.

Preview is here.

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

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Sam is obviously very invested in Stanford Football and wants to see us win. Its interesting that he backs Taylor so hard and is sure that he is the right guy

Still blaming COVID 4 years removed is a bit of a stretch for me, but Sam obviously knows way more about whats going on in the program than I do

Read and watch that here.

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1. This season has gone from a disaster to such a catastrophe that I think supporters of Stanford football need to seriously reckon with the question of whether Taylor even deserves a third year and whether Stanford football can afford another year of hoping a rebuild takes off without there having been any on-field or recruiting trail evidence we are actually building anything. The one thing fans and recruits (and let's be honest, players and coaches too) had to hold out hope was that things would look fundamentally different with a touted QB getting to face a laughably easy stretch of schedule starting with one of the worst pass defenses in America. With that QB even worse than the pitiful level of QB play we've had all season, it's hard (and, I think if one is sober, approaching impossible) to see where the hope is going to come from. That's a bleak assessment I take no joy in contemplating. I just want what is best for Stanford football and I think we have to face head on whether this particular stab at a rebuild is worth continuing to roll the boulder up the hill or we need to try to find somebody stronger to give it a try. I haven't thrown in the towel fully on Taylor only because a third of the season remains to surprise us, plus I am realistic about the low likelihood powers-that-be change course absent a player revolt. I also understand that the beginning of the revenue sharing era next year creates a fundamental inflection point that complicates other decisions and may create financial pressures we don't want to add to. But I do think we need to have this conversation and be honest about the abject lack of progress or program building.

2. I know there will be some who consider that too bleak (and others who have an even darker outlook I consider basically nihilistic and defeatist that we can't compete in this environment, which I reject) but I take my analysis where the facts on the ground point me. After yesterday, we are now #104 in Sagarin, the worst we've been since also being #104 in Walt Harris' one win 2006 atrocity. This is genuinely a contender for the worst Stanford team in history. I grant all the arguments about how much Shaw gutted the program and how many advantages transfer-happy opponents have, but we have declined far worse than can be explained by those factors. Nobody within our program or fan base or national media or computer algorithms contemplated that we would be two years into a rebuild with all the culture building, strength and conditioning, instruction, and momentum that ostensibly comes with that and also return the second most production of any team in the nation.....and somehow be worse than the first year under this staff. Yes, Shaw screwed us comprehensively and the transfer portal does us no favors, but is that enough that a team with several NFL players and numerous bona fide ACC players shouldn't crack the top 100?

3. As for yesterday's game specifically, the charitable spin is that we played a Power Four team (albeit one of the three or four worst, and playing them having to go cross-country to our home) close and the game could have gone our way with any number of single plays going differently (Kenney not missing a field goal, Staples not roughing the passer to extend an eventual field goal drive, Davis not fumbling to set up a short field touchdown, anybody covering on the fourth quarter punt return, Daniels not gifting an interception in the last minute of the game when we were close to game-tying field goal range, etc.). On the scoreboard we played Wake Forest about as close as NC State and Connecticut did. That is lowly company but we already knew we kept lowly company and this game was a better showing for us than other games this past month. [Our games this year have been befitting the #90, #60, #36, #102, #148, #155, #175, and #115 teams in the nation.] Sadly, Wake Forest is too bad of a team for moral victories to mean much. You have to be and play pretty bad to lose to them at home.

4. One of the things that I find striking about the way in which we are so bad is how consistent we are in doing it. It's week after week of, relative to opponent, the offense being abysmal, the defense taking some shots to the mouth but generally being much more competitive than the offense and in particular defending the run nicely, and special teams generally showing competence but not always and about as likely to be a factor in the other team's favor as ours. Rinse and repeat. Kind of suggests this is who we are. In this one, the offense had 1.55 points per non-garbage drive (excluding the scoop n' score as that was not offensive scoring), making the #120 points per drive defense look like the #15 points per drive defense. We had more yards per play than we have against other FBS opponents but that was a given against such a horrendous opposing defense and we did almost a yard per play worse than their average allowed and worse than anybody but North Carolina A&T or Connecticut (so the worst of any Power Four opponent). The defense was considerably better, 2.45 points allowed per non-garbage drive (excluding the kneels at the end of each half), making the #64 points per drive offense look like the #54 points per drive offense. I would argue the defense actually out-played Wake Forest from a scoreboard impact perspective as there was also a defensive touchdown. I excluded the scoop n' score from points per drive calculations but if one assesses that as negative seven points for the Wake Forest offense we made them look like the #94 offense. The defense had its best yards per play against an FBS opponent this season and in a fashion much more impressive than the offense doing the same, as the defense's performance was stingier than Wake's average output and we did better than a few Deac-opposing defenses did (not only NC A&T but also Virginia and Louisiana-Lafayette). Our 2024 team cannot hold the jock strap of the mid-2000s Teevens teams but the offense being a dumpster fire and the defense battling and doing some good stuff gives me some of those vibes (not to say the 2024 defense is comparable to the mid-2000s).

5. By this point we know the strength of the team is its run defense and that continued yesterday, yet again holding an opponent under their yards per carry average. But even this was an underwhelming performance relative to Power Four opponents, as Virginia, Ole Miss, Clemson, and Connecticut all bottled up the Wake Forest run game more than we did. Nonetheless, run defense remains the relative strength. Pass defense, in contrast, gave up a higher passer rating and more touchdowns than any FBS team has against Wake this season and only Virginia gave up more yards per attempt. The run phase was also relatively more successful for us on the other side of the field too. The offense had an above-average yards per carry game by our standards, though largely because we were facing the weakest FBS run defense on our schedule. We did almost a half yard per carry worse than the norm against Wake Forest, though we did best Virginia, NC State, and Connecticut in this dimension, making this one one of the brighter spots of the game for us. Daniels and Butler both added value with their legs. Nonetheless, like so many games the last two years, we couldn't trust straight-up run blocking plays for running backs and were unable to have a balanced offense, relying much more on the passing game. In that phase, even with the three interceptions it was statistically our best passing game of the year against an FBS opponent but that was a given against one of the worst pass defenses in America. Adjusting for opponent it was terrible, worse in passer rating, yards per attempt, total yards, touchdowns, and interceptions than any of Wake's six other FBS opponents. (That's the read that stat again stat of the week) It's especially sobering to reflect on the performance being worse in each respect even independent of the interceptions, which were deflating but by no means the extent of our relative failures as a passing attack. I suspect when Taylor goes over film with the QBs he will focus on the interceptions as bad decisions and execution and juxtapose them with the good decisions/passes (which in fairness Daniels had several, most of all the phenomenal fourth down conversion to Ayomanor), suggesting that if we clean up the worst plays we'd be cooking. Unfortunately I don't think that's right. Six yards per attempt against a defense that gives up 7.5 on average is putrid. Daniels played better than he has in many other games and as he often does helped us move the chains with his feet, but in sheer passing terms we still did an extremely poor job in this game. QB remains one of the two things most glaringly holding this team back.

Before looking on the secondary market I wanted to check and see if anyone had tickets available for tomorrows game.

Thanks!

Read that here.

Read that here.

Preview is here.

Unfortunately our season has been so catastrophic that now multiple threads discuss the pros and cons of retaining Taylor. Needless to say that is not where any of us thought or hoped we would be heading into this season. It's hard to envision Stanford moving on from Taylor after just two seasons so it says a lot that people are even discussing this. We've heard a few references to how rare or unfair such a move would be.

I will note that this century there have only been ten coaches who have been in the 90-110 range both of their first two seasons, as Taylor appears destined to be: Ron Zook at Illinois, Bobby Johnson at Vanderbilt, Randy Edsall at Maryland, Geoff Collins at Georgia Tech, Gerry DiNardo at Indiana, Ted Roof at Duke, Charlie Weis at Kansas, Gene Chizik at Iowa State, Chad Morris at Arkansas, and Jon Embree at Colorado. Among that group, three (Chizik, Morris, and Embree) were let go after just two years, so clearly it's not that unusual - thirty percent of the time when somebody fails as much as Taylor has. Among the rest, DiNardo and Weis were let go after the third year and the other five muddled through for more years yet. There were not a lot of good years in all the years these teams spun their wheels with these coaches. Vanderbilt in 2008 - Johnson's only winning season - and Zook a couple of times (Year 3 and Year 6 squeaked into being top 40 teams). Across Zook, Johnson, Edsall, Collins, DiNardo, Roof, and Weis, their post-Year 2 wheel spinning amounted to 20 seasons with, again, only three good ones. They were zombie coaches being kept on in the vain hope it would work out. The truth is that being a Power Four coach without being able to crack the top 90 in either of your first two seasons is profoundly damning. If you can't even belong on the field two years in it's really unlikely you are ever going to make it work. Ron Zook is the ceiling, at least this century.

Personally, I think that should be enough for us to be leaning pretty strongly to wanting to move on from Taylor. There have been other assertions about how rare it is to move on from a coach after just two years and how unlikely that is to work that I suppose I may interrogate this further in the coming weeks should things not start to look substantially up. For now, though, I will just make the point that the above history strongly reinforces the points made by @Alwayswithaudacity here and @Card Tricks here.

I have zero confidence that Muir would hire an adequate replacement. Bernie has to go first.

I gather the men's team had a scrimmage Friday. Would love to hear how guys looked!

Read that here.

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Alamar is interim. Can we hire early 2010s bloom back as OL coach?

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No chance Stanford wins another ACC game and San Jose State will beat them on CBS national TV.

Anyone disagree?