09-24-2015, 04:38 PM
Good stuff. The narrative I've seen from USC fans (including in the schadenfreude thread) was that a) Wilcox blew it by not blitzing enough and b) Sarkisian blew it by not running enough in the second half. (also, I think it was OutsiderFan who suggested that especially in the second half, USC was hurting itself).
The reality of the situation looks a little bit more favorable to Stanford. First, we made apparently made an adjustment to slow down the run, cutting down on the ypc for SC running backs from 9.6 ypc to 4 ypc. Nice job defensive brain trust and front 7. This suggests that USC may have been running it less in reaction to our defensive adjustments (also, probably, because they were playing from behind).
Second, there may be something to the idea that USC should have blitzed more. Hogan got 12.6 yards per attempt and only had 2 incompletions and 1 sack when USC rushed 4 (on 16 dropbacks), but he had 5 ypa lower, gave up 2 sacks, and had 3 incompletions when SC blitzed (10 times, by my count). USC blitzed almost 40% of the time, so it is hard to argue that they should have blitzed more, but maybe they should have. [By comparison, we only blitzed on 5 Kessler dropbacks, got no sacks out of it and Kessler's ypa were higher when we blitzed than when we didn't; though we only blitzed 15% of the time].
Third, it really does look like the Stanford defense buckled down once USC had gotten a lead. 159 yards over 18 plays is an 8.8 ypp average to start the game, and 14 points for 18 plays is 0.78 points per play. After that, (and presumably this excludes penalties), USC got 268 yards in 42 plays, under 6.4 yards per play. That's still not great, but it was enough. And 17 points in 42 plays is 0.4 points per play.
A couple other things that stand out from the stats.
We ran at least 11 different formations, though the most common were the 1 back/3 wide receiver, 1 back/4 wr, 2 backs/1 wr, and to a lesser extent 2 backs/2wr, 2 backs/3 wr. The most successful in terms of ypp was 1 back/4 WR.
We ran about 10% of our plays out of the no huddle (7 plays out of 73). I believe those were the 7 plays where we scored to end the first half (excluding Hogan's spike to kill the clock). Obviously for much of the second half, we were trying to consume clock, so huddling was a deliberate strategy, but we did gain 10.7 yards per play on no huddle plays. There is anecdotal evidence that our offense has worked better without a huddle, so it is something we might want to consider doing more of.
By the way, there is nothing that says no huddle must equate with not killing the clock. We can go up to the line of scrimmage without a huddle, do a bunch of motions, and still run the play with a mere couple seconds on the play clock.
BC
The reality of the situation looks a little bit more favorable to Stanford. First, we made apparently made an adjustment to slow down the run, cutting down on the ypc for SC running backs from 9.6 ypc to 4 ypc. Nice job defensive brain trust and front 7. This suggests that USC may have been running it less in reaction to our defensive adjustments (also, probably, because they were playing from behind).
Second, there may be something to the idea that USC should have blitzed more. Hogan got 12.6 yards per attempt and only had 2 incompletions and 1 sack when USC rushed 4 (on 16 dropbacks), but he had 5 ypa lower, gave up 2 sacks, and had 3 incompletions when SC blitzed (10 times, by my count). USC blitzed almost 40% of the time, so it is hard to argue that they should have blitzed more, but maybe they should have. [By comparison, we only blitzed on 5 Kessler dropbacks, got no sacks out of it and Kessler's ypa were higher when we blitzed than when we didn't; though we only blitzed 15% of the time].
Third, it really does look like the Stanford defense buckled down once USC had gotten a lead. 159 yards over 18 plays is an 8.8 ypp average to start the game, and 14 points for 18 plays is 0.78 points per play. After that, (and presumably this excludes penalties), USC got 268 yards in 42 plays, under 6.4 yards per play. That's still not great, but it was enough. And 17 points in 42 plays is 0.4 points per play.
A couple other things that stand out from the stats.
We ran at least 11 different formations, though the most common were the 1 back/3 wide receiver, 1 back/4 wr, 2 backs/1 wr, and to a lesser extent 2 backs/2wr, 2 backs/3 wr. The most successful in terms of ypp was 1 back/4 WR.
We ran about 10% of our plays out of the no huddle (7 plays out of 73). I believe those were the 7 plays where we scored to end the first half (excluding Hogan's spike to kill the clock). Obviously for much of the second half, we were trying to consume clock, so huddling was a deliberate strategy, but we did gain 10.7 yards per play on no huddle plays. There is anecdotal evidence that our offense has worked better without a huddle, so it is something we might want to consider doing more of.
By the way, there is nothing that says no huddle must equate with not killing the clock. We can go up to the line of scrimmage without a huddle, do a bunch of motions, and still run the play with a mere couple seconds on the play clock.
BC