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.
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.
