1. A home win! That has to be the headline for a program that gets fewer of those than anybody in the nation. Have to be happy for the players, coaches, and us fans. We need to relish these. I'm relieved Taylor could get that monkey off his back of never having won at Stanford Stadium. Hopefully we can build on it. The bad news is that what we saw on the field reinforces my sense that the program's rebuild is happening at a glacial pace and there's every reason to think it will remain a very uphill battle to get many wins at home or anywhere else. Through two games, I think the eye test, stats, and comparing against preseason models all indicate that we're still a bad team. We have to hope for some marked progress over the course of the season to give confidence this thing is moving in the right direction.
2. On paper, a 34 point win against this level of opponent is ok. A good team would be expected to win by 40+ and a 34 point margin is consistent with the result one would expect from a below-average but not abysmal team, more or less in the range of how we did against TCU. I think two games is too early to draw anything but tentative conclusions but there are glass half full and glass half empty ways to view this that are probably both right: we are showing signs of modest progress compared to the depths we plumbed last year, and it's happening so modestly that it's hard to have confidence in it (that it's actually progress and that it will have staying power). Disturbingly in the case of this game, last night was quite a bit less impressive than the performance of the last Stanford team to face a similar creampuff, the bad 2022 team that dispatched Colgate. While the margins were similar (in fact three points better for this year's squad), a more nuanced comparison is ugly. We gained 1.52 yards per play less against Cal Poly than Shaw's very bad team did against Colgate and we gave up 0.89 yards per play more than we had against Colgate. Just as in last week's game, the defense acquitted itself better than the offense but did not play well as far as major college football teams go. Alarmingly, our defense only did 0.24 yards per play better than non-scholarship University of San Diego did against Cal Poly last week. We gained a big advantage on special teams but with returns, a blocked kick, and a fake punt conversion that we might be hard pressed to replicate against a respectable opponent. In terms of the bread-and-butter of a football team - play up front in the trenches and overall physicality - we made a team that is not even top 200 look far too competitive. Turning it over on downs in the red zone and only having one sack - in garbage time by a bench-warming defensive backup - are especially concerning developments. PFF graded the team dramatically worse than the 2022 team did against Colgate, worse in every category except pass blocking. It's a bad sign to not dominate this level of opponent.
3. The bright spots were a defense that consistently made plays on third down to get off the field and was stifling in run defense, a passing game that showed some non-Ayomanor signs of life, some young and/or inexperienced players who achieved their first successes at the college level, and continued discipline (these last two games have been our least penalized two game stretch since the beginning of the 2022 season in terms of penalties and since mid-2021 in terms of penalty yards) and resilient play. In all cases, these are enabled by playing a pathetic opponent. Still, better to have successes than not. It was palpable in the post-game press conference how much Taylor wants the players to start having these successes so they can build confidence and a sense of momentum, and in the post-game locker room how much Taylor wants the same for April. At the moment it feels fragile and like we are squinting to discern progress in some areas. But there's no substitute for winning and this was a win.
4. The most interesting thing going on in Stanford football right now is the first game for Elijah Brown and what I expect to be a lot of talk about when he should supplant Daniels as QB1. Brown was always destined to be a big topic of conversation this year as the highest-regarded QB on the roster (both in recruiting rankings and evidently Taylor's judgment based on body language and statements from off-season interviews). That's going to go into over-drive now that Brown has had an essentially flawless debut. I am not going to give a game ball to somebody who only played 15 snaps, all in garbage time against mostly backups (including notably the guys he exploited on the big passes to Irvin and Cisse), but I don't want people to misinterpret my game ball: Brown clearly looked better at processing and being able to spearhead a passing-oriented offense than Daniels. Statistically, Daniels was #54 of 126 QBs nationally in Total QBR this week (a big improvement on last week but against miserable competition and still only good enough to get his season ranking to #122 of 139 QBs nationally) and if Brown had had enough snaps to qualify he would have been #4 in the nation in Total QBR this week. While I think the garbage time/Cal Poly/healthy number of backups on the Mustang fourth quarter defense caveats loom large in necessitating some humility in how much we make of Brown's debut, you can't do much better than he did in terms of efficiency. Fans - and probably some of his teammates - will want to see more. I am confident that will happen but it's a big source of intrigue how Taylor does it in the coming weeks. A bye coming off a great debut is tailor-made for being integrated into a bigger role - perhaps taking a first half series against Syracuse. On the other hand, road games against Syracuse and Clemson are dramatically more challenging scenarios than the training wheels Brown got to play with yesterday. At this point I think Brown may or may not play against Syracuse, depending on how Daniels does in the first few drives. It will be interesting to see how Taylor addresses this in press availabilities.
5. It's hard to imagine this offense turning a corner until it can figure something out in establishing the run game with something other than QB runs. We once again had more QB rushes than RB rushes (15 to 14 this time). None of the starting OL or Rogers graded well in run blocking. The nightmare start to Ford's career continued, adding a fumble to go with his 1.1 yards per carry through the first two games of his career (though at least he's getting some success in the passing game). Overall against Cal Poly we did massively worse in rushing than we did against Colgate (2.32 yards per carry worse) and significantly worse (0.46 yards per carry) than USD did against Cal Poly last week, and that's with our stats being padded by Davis' garbage time successes. (Davis was exciting to see after so little from running backs for so long but it was garbage time against largely backups for an already-bad FCS team, so we can't really know what we have there.) I hope that we can figure something out in the run game but we may be in for another year of jury rigging an offense built around QB runs and whatever passing game we can muster without a real running threat. Hope not, but this level of play up front by our OL against Cal Poly is sobering. It does not inspire confidence for me that we mix OL combinations so liberally and took the desperate move of benching our most established OL (though Rogers then played most of the game). Unclear to me what the plan is for building cohesion and confidence on the line. Best I can tell it's a somewhat wishful hope that Pale, Baklenko, Maikkula, and House have the goods to be long-term mainstays and we are getting them reps to progress along the learning curve. By the way, House had some struggles and I didn't love seeing him give up a sack against an FCS opponent but it was the only one we gave up in the game and Cal Poly had four last week against USD. Pass protection worked better in this one than run blocking. Elsewhere on the offense, it's surprising that through two games Ayomanor and Cisse are nearly even in targets. Cisse is doing more than I thought he would, which is encouraging and appears to indicate a bigger role in our offense than Bachmeier, which I am sure will surprise many, but I feel like we need to find the big dog more. [Moving the chains (first down) leaderboard: Cisse (4), Ayomanor (2, also drew a pass interference), Lamson (2), Daniels (2), Reuben (2), Ford (2), Roush (2), Irvin (2), Davis (2), Sinclair, Harris]
2. On paper, a 34 point win against this level of opponent is ok. A good team would be expected to win by 40+ and a 34 point margin is consistent with the result one would expect from a below-average but not abysmal team, more or less in the range of how we did against TCU. I think two games is too early to draw anything but tentative conclusions but there are glass half full and glass half empty ways to view this that are probably both right: we are showing signs of modest progress compared to the depths we plumbed last year, and it's happening so modestly that it's hard to have confidence in it (that it's actually progress and that it will have staying power). Disturbingly in the case of this game, last night was quite a bit less impressive than the performance of the last Stanford team to face a similar creampuff, the bad 2022 team that dispatched Colgate. While the margins were similar (in fact three points better for this year's squad), a more nuanced comparison is ugly. We gained 1.52 yards per play less against Cal Poly than Shaw's very bad team did against Colgate and we gave up 0.89 yards per play more than we had against Colgate. Just as in last week's game, the defense acquitted itself better than the offense but did not play well as far as major college football teams go. Alarmingly, our defense only did 0.24 yards per play better than non-scholarship University of San Diego did against Cal Poly last week. We gained a big advantage on special teams but with returns, a blocked kick, and a fake punt conversion that we might be hard pressed to replicate against a respectable opponent. In terms of the bread-and-butter of a football team - play up front in the trenches and overall physicality - we made a team that is not even top 200 look far too competitive. Turning it over on downs in the red zone and only having one sack - in garbage time by a bench-warming defensive backup - are especially concerning developments. PFF graded the team dramatically worse than the 2022 team did against Colgate, worse in every category except pass blocking. It's a bad sign to not dominate this level of opponent.
3. The bright spots were a defense that consistently made plays on third down to get off the field and was stifling in run defense, a passing game that showed some non-Ayomanor signs of life, some young and/or inexperienced players who achieved their first successes at the college level, and continued discipline (these last two games have been our least penalized two game stretch since the beginning of the 2022 season in terms of penalties and since mid-2021 in terms of penalty yards) and resilient play. In all cases, these are enabled by playing a pathetic opponent. Still, better to have successes than not. It was palpable in the post-game press conference how much Taylor wants the players to start having these successes so they can build confidence and a sense of momentum, and in the post-game locker room how much Taylor wants the same for April. At the moment it feels fragile and like we are squinting to discern progress in some areas. But there's no substitute for winning and this was a win.
4. The most interesting thing going on in Stanford football right now is the first game for Elijah Brown and what I expect to be a lot of talk about when he should supplant Daniels as QB1. Brown was always destined to be a big topic of conversation this year as the highest-regarded QB on the roster (both in recruiting rankings and evidently Taylor's judgment based on body language and statements from off-season interviews). That's going to go into over-drive now that Brown has had an essentially flawless debut. I am not going to give a game ball to somebody who only played 15 snaps, all in garbage time against mostly backups (including notably the guys he exploited on the big passes to Irvin and Cisse), but I don't want people to misinterpret my game ball: Brown clearly looked better at processing and being able to spearhead a passing-oriented offense than Daniels. Statistically, Daniels was #54 of 126 QBs nationally in Total QBR this week (a big improvement on last week but against miserable competition and still only good enough to get his season ranking to #122 of 139 QBs nationally) and if Brown had had enough snaps to qualify he would have been #4 in the nation in Total QBR this week. While I think the garbage time/Cal Poly/healthy number of backups on the Mustang fourth quarter defense caveats loom large in necessitating some humility in how much we make of Brown's debut, you can't do much better than he did in terms of efficiency. Fans - and probably some of his teammates - will want to see more. I am confident that will happen but it's a big source of intrigue how Taylor does it in the coming weeks. A bye coming off a great debut is tailor-made for being integrated into a bigger role - perhaps taking a first half series against Syracuse. On the other hand, road games against Syracuse and Clemson are dramatically more challenging scenarios than the training wheels Brown got to play with yesterday. At this point I think Brown may or may not play against Syracuse, depending on how Daniels does in the first few drives. It will be interesting to see how Taylor addresses this in press availabilities.
5. It's hard to imagine this offense turning a corner until it can figure something out in establishing the run game with something other than QB runs. We once again had more QB rushes than RB rushes (15 to 14 this time). None of the starting OL or Rogers graded well in run blocking. The nightmare start to Ford's career continued, adding a fumble to go with his 1.1 yards per carry through the first two games of his career (though at least he's getting some success in the passing game). Overall against Cal Poly we did massively worse in rushing than we did against Colgate (2.32 yards per carry worse) and significantly worse (0.46 yards per carry) than USD did against Cal Poly last week, and that's with our stats being padded by Davis' garbage time successes. (Davis was exciting to see after so little from running backs for so long but it was garbage time against largely backups for an already-bad FCS team, so we can't really know what we have there.) I hope that we can figure something out in the run game but we may be in for another year of jury rigging an offense built around QB runs and whatever passing game we can muster without a real running threat. Hope not, but this level of play up front by our OL against Cal Poly is sobering. It does not inspire confidence for me that we mix OL combinations so liberally and took the desperate move of benching our most established OL (though Rogers then played most of the game). Unclear to me what the plan is for building cohesion and confidence on the line. Best I can tell it's a somewhat wishful hope that Pale, Baklenko, Maikkula, and House have the goods to be long-term mainstays and we are getting them reps to progress along the learning curve. By the way, House had some struggles and I didn't love seeing him give up a sack against an FCS opponent but it was the only one we gave up in the game and Cal Poly had four last week against USD. Pass protection worked better in this one than run blocking. Elsewhere on the offense, it's surprising that through two games Ayomanor and Cisse are nearly even in targets. Cisse is doing more than I thought he would, which is encouraging and appears to indicate a bigger role in our offense than Bachmeier, which I am sure will surprise many, but I feel like we need to find the big dog more. [Moving the chains (first down) leaderboard: Cisse (4), Ayomanor (2, also drew a pass interference), Lamson (2), Daniels (2), Reuben (2), Ford (2), Roush (2), Irvin (2), Davis (2), Sinclair, Harris]
