[CTcard]

Stanford managed to keep a team it dominated much closer than it had any right to be. This concerns me greatly.

On the scale of things, if Stanford is in a close game I'd much rather it be because they are making "finishing" errors than simply not being better than the opposing team - especially if it is game one of the season.

False starts, holding calls, dropped passes, mesh miscues - these are easier to fix than being slow, weak, having mismatched talents, no effective schemes on offense or defense, etc.

Look across the country. Most of the teams who blew out opponents were in games so mismatched they should not have been played. The dominant theme everywhere else was "what a mess". Florida-Miami was described by both sides as a slop-fest (5 TOs, 23 penalties), Oregon-Auburn was tough but a mess (how exactly did Oregon let that 21-6 lead evaporate to a team that had the #124th best pass completion percentage in the country over game 1), even Alabama fans were irate at the sloppiness in the first half versus Duke (with first half drives that ended in a fumble, missed FG, and two three and outs).

So, of course everyone would be happier had last week been the 20+ point win it appeared was within the grasp of the team. And if all the penalties/drops/fumbles are still happening after games 2,3,4 that will be a problem (it's the sort of thing that defined the 2014 season, Shaw's worst). Still, on balance I take Stanford's week one performance as a pretty strong positive, though that is dependent upon Northwestern being approximately as good a team as it was last year.

[CTcard]

Stanford managed to keep a team it dominated much closer than it had any right to be. This concerns me greatly.

On the scale of things, if Stanford is in a close game I'd much rather it be because they are making "finishing" errors than simply not being better than the opposing team - especially if it is game one of the season.

False starts, holding calls, dropped passes, mesh miscues - these are easier to fix than being slow, weak, having mismatched talents, no effective schemes on offense or defense, etc.

Look across the country. Most of the teams who blew out opponents were in games so mismatched they should not have been played. The dominant theme everywhere else was "what a mess". Florida-Miami was described by both sides as a slop-fest (5 TOs, 23 penalties), Oregon-Auburn was tough but a mess (how exactly did Oregon let that 21-6 lead evaporate to a team that had the #124th best pass completion percentage in the country over game 1), even Alabama fans were irate at the sloppiness in the first half versus Duke (with first half drives that ended in a fumble, missed FG, and two three and outs).

So, of course everyone would be happier had last week been the 20+ point win it appeared was within the grasp of the team. And if all the penalties/drops/fumbles are still happening after games 2,3,4 that will be a problem (it's the sort of thing that defined the 2014 season, Shaw's worst). Still, on balance I take Stanford's week one performance as a pretty strong positive, though that is dependent upon Northwestern being approximately as good a team as it was last year.