1. That was no fun at all. Just a thoroughly demoralizing and boring game from a Stanford fan's perspective. Playing a solid but not good team (Duke isn't top 40 in Sagarin, SP+, or FEI) coming off a bye and getting beaten in all phases (dominated in some) reinforces that we remain one of the worst teams in the country. All of the happy talk about building culture and connection and finally having age and experience seems empty so far in the Luck and Pritchard eras. We have not yet started showing tangible progress to justify belief in our rebuild, sad to say, and it feels worse knowing that the mix of seniority/retention outlook and our recent recruiting makes it seem exceedingly probable that major roster problems will persist for the foreseeable future. We need the best transfer classes in our history one after another for several years to have any hope of turning the corner. Knowing that no light will be peering out of the tunnel until after the season and quite possibly not even then is just so, yeah, demoralizing. Anything the football world thought negatively about us going into the year has not changed, with embarrassment in both conference games, and current Sagarin (#83 compared to #78 last year) and SP+ (#101 compared to #112 last year) that don't look like progress.
2. The hope for this season has to be that we've gotten the worst out of the way and a first-time head coach will advance on an unusually steep learning curve. My worry is that the problems torpedoing us don't seem to be about how smoothly a new head coach operates in-game mechanics or how we are doing in the things he takes most responsibility for, like offensive scheme and playcalling. Rather, we are outmanned in the trenches (especially on offense), don't have enough difference makers across the roster, and don't seem like a team that truly believes in itself, despite the perennial happy talk. In other words, what we've seen for six years continually and the better part of a decade. I am especially worried that our leaders remain too invested in doing things the Stanford way, both in terms of roster construction and attitudinally. I liked Pritchard's tone in the press conference more than after the Miami game but only marginally. In all cases when Luck and Pritchard talk or when one observes the body language of anybody in our program on game days, there is no indication of fire, extreme dissatisfaction, or being pissed off for greatness. The questions many of us had in the offseason whether these leaders have the edge and intensity to drive a program from worst in the nation status are still very much alive.
3. I don't usually do so many big picture thoughts before going granular on the game, but we have to talk about travel. The ACC era has been us getting blasted on the road. Zero road wins of any sort in two calendar years (today the two year anniversary of beating Syracuse). Leaving the Pacific time zone for road games in the ACC era has been 1-10, with a whopping eight of those being blowouts. Even Vegas with all its data and cynicism can't predict or ever be counted on to account for how much travel destroys Stanford. Those games are 2-9 against the spread and our opponents average covering (bear in mind this is always with us being significant underdogs already) by 6.86 points in those games. People who minimize how much being in the ACC destroys us from a travel perspective are sticking their heads in the sand. It's devastating. Not even a 20 year old can cheat the body and the body clock. This is a big deal for our remaining schedule (Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Louisville, Virginia Tech still to come) and for our foreseeable future in this conference.
4. The points per drive margin was multiple points per drive in our opponent's favor for the second time in as many games. We fell to that ignominious low three times last year. Bad sign for this year demonstrating progress. This whole game was ugly but the offense fell on its face most of all. We scored 0.77 points per non-garbage drive, meaning we did so little as to make Duke look like the best defense in the country and/or ourselves look like the worst offense. This is tied for our ninth lowests points per drive in 63 NWO games. We gave up 3.11 points per non-garbage drive, meaning we made Duke's offense look like top 15 and/or our defense to look that bad. We have had so many games in which we've had no answer for an offense that this is only the 27th worst defensive points per drive of this era. We gained 4.09 yards per play, our worst in the last seven games and the worst anybody has done against Duke in 20 games (yes, including Elon), our 14th worst of the NWO. We allowed 6.62 yards per play, our 27th worst of the NWO. This discrepancy between how bad the offense and defense look happened despite Duke being a better offensive team (SP+ #31 compared to #64 on defense). There are many explanations for why the offense was so terrible, with pass blocking whiffs and receiver drops leading the way (with pass blocking and receiving the team's most glaring weaknesses overall this season according to PFF). As a result, the offense was woeful on third and fourth downs and we were dominated in time of possession.
2. The hope for this season has to be that we've gotten the worst out of the way and a first-time head coach will advance on an unusually steep learning curve. My worry is that the problems torpedoing us don't seem to be about how smoothly a new head coach operates in-game mechanics or how we are doing in the things he takes most responsibility for, like offensive scheme and playcalling. Rather, we are outmanned in the trenches (especially on offense), don't have enough difference makers across the roster, and don't seem like a team that truly believes in itself, despite the perennial happy talk. In other words, what we've seen for six years continually and the better part of a decade. I am especially worried that our leaders remain too invested in doing things the Stanford way, both in terms of roster construction and attitudinally. I liked Pritchard's tone in the press conference more than after the Miami game but only marginally. In all cases when Luck and Pritchard talk or when one observes the body language of anybody in our program on game days, there is no indication of fire, extreme dissatisfaction, or being pissed off for greatness. The questions many of us had in the offseason whether these leaders have the edge and intensity to drive a program from worst in the nation status are still very much alive.
3. I don't usually do so many big picture thoughts before going granular on the game, but we have to talk about travel. The ACC era has been us getting blasted on the road. Zero road wins of any sort in two calendar years (today the two year anniversary of beating Syracuse). Leaving the Pacific time zone for road games in the ACC era has been 1-10, with a whopping eight of those being blowouts. Even Vegas with all its data and cynicism can't predict or ever be counted on to account for how much travel destroys Stanford. Those games are 2-9 against the spread and our opponents average covering (bear in mind this is always with us being significant underdogs already) by 6.86 points in those games. People who minimize how much being in the ACC destroys us from a travel perspective are sticking their heads in the sand. It's devastating. Not even a 20 year old can cheat the body and the body clock. This is a big deal for our remaining schedule (Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Louisville, Virginia Tech still to come) and for our foreseeable future in this conference.
4. The points per drive margin was multiple points per drive in our opponent's favor for the second time in as many games. We fell to that ignominious low three times last year. Bad sign for this year demonstrating progress. This whole game was ugly but the offense fell on its face most of all. We scored 0.77 points per non-garbage drive, meaning we did so little as to make Duke look like the best defense in the country and/or ourselves look like the worst offense. This is tied for our ninth lowests points per drive in 63 NWO games. We gave up 3.11 points per non-garbage drive, meaning we made Duke's offense look like top 15 and/or our defense to look that bad. We have had so many games in which we've had no answer for an offense that this is only the 27th worst defensive points per drive of this era. We gained 4.09 yards per play, our worst in the last seven games and the worst anybody has done against Duke in 20 games (yes, including Elon), our 14th worst of the NWO. We allowed 6.62 yards per play, our 27th worst of the NWO. This discrepancy between how bad the offense and defense look happened despite Duke being a better offensive team (SP+ #31 compared to #64 on defense). There are many explanations for why the offense was so terrible, with pass blocking whiffs and receiver drops leading the way (with pass blocking and receiving the team's most glaring weaknesses overall this season according to PFF). As a result, the offense was woeful on third and fourth downs and we were dominated in time of possession.