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.
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