09-19-2026, 04:57 PM
First, the lack of traffic on this thread demonstrates that the interest in this game was pretty low. This surprises me a bit, because many on this board expressed the belief that the Duke game was at least possibly winnable. It wasn't, but that is hindsight.
The long and short of the situation is IMO Stanford's defense couldn't stop the run and Stanford's offense couldn't run. Given that, we are pretty much always going to lose. It doesn't matter what the gameplan is under these circumstances. We know our receivers aren't exactly world class. We also know our OL lacks tackles that can reliably pass block. It is really hard to move the pocket or roll out if the opposing DL can just go straight up the field against your tackles. You will run right into them.
Can Stanford play better than they did today? IMO yes, they can. Can they play "lots" better than they did today? I doubt it. We can probably steal a game in the rest of the year and make 3-8 a reality. We still lack both the OL and the DL we need to rise much above that. Are we improving year-over-year? That remains to be seen. IMO the team seems to have a better understanding of what they are trying to do and where they need to be in order to do it than we had in the previous two years. However, we still lack the talent on the lines to reliably execute what we are trying to do. The line play probably has improved assignment-wise. However, we still lose the physicality battle far too often. That is the area where we need to see improvement. So far, IMO we have not.
The long and short of the situation is IMO Stanford's defense couldn't stop the run and Stanford's offense couldn't run. Given that, we are pretty much always going to lose. It doesn't matter what the gameplan is under these circumstances. We know our receivers aren't exactly world class. We also know our OL lacks tackles that can reliably pass block. It is really hard to move the pocket or roll out if the opposing DL can just go straight up the field against your tackles. You will run right into them.
Can Stanford play better than they did today? IMO yes, they can. Can they play "lots" better than they did today? I doubt it. We can probably steal a game in the rest of the year and make 3-8 a reality. We still lack both the OL and the DL we need to rise much above that. Are we improving year-over-year? That remains to be seen. IMO the team seems to have a better understanding of what they are trying to do and where they need to be in order to do it than we had in the previous two years. However, we still lack the talent on the lines to reliably execute what we are trying to do. The line play probably has improved assignment-wise. However, we still lose the physicality battle far too often. That is the area where we need to see improvement. So far, IMO we have not.