10-24-2026, 02:06 PM
1. That was fun for the few who bothered to watch. This is the kind of competent plucking of low-hanging fruit that if we start doing enough of maybe we can bring a bushel to market someday. With NC State not good, heavily injured, traveling cross-country to play at a bad time of day, and deprived of an important touchdown by a questionable penalty, we had a lot working in our favor. We capitalized. In many senses this was similar to the Georgia Tech game. The bottom line is we won both of them. Many have rightly pointed out the duality of being .500 tied for the most wins we've had in a season this era while also being an objectively bad team with no fans. The main thought I have coming out of last night is the reason it seems like a complex duality is that we've actually managed to win some games. That sure beats the alternative. All teams have to face headwinds and tailwinds and it's ultimately the results that matter. We won and played better yesterday. We now have four wins with legitimate prospects for more. Happy days by our standards.
2. My last thought last week was challenging the team to look like an FBS team two games in a row for the first time under Pritchard. They surpassed that by looking like a Power Four team for only the second time this season. This was the second best scoreboard outcome of the Pritchard era, a score befitting a top 70 team (Georgia Tech was befitting a top 60 team). Most encouraging to me is not only have we won half our games this year, we've done better than the opponent in yards per play in each of those wins. We only did that twice last year, once in 2024, twice in 2023, once in 2022, and three times in 2021. As a result, even as bad as the blowout losses have been, this is by far our best year of the era in overall yards per play margin, -0.94 compared to last year's -1.23, which itself was better than the prior four years. While I lament that Pritchard has yet to have what I would call a good game (a scoreboard outcome befitting a top 25 team at least for one day....at the bare minimum teams should occasionally be able to look top 40), we are seeing some underlying signs of progress.
3. One area not progressing is attendance. Others have beaten this horse but I have to get some licks in too. It's just too existential of a question of why bother to field a major team if nobody cares. Throughout last year I had a thesis that winning at home would build habits of community and gradually build back enthusiasm as fans got used to leaving Stanford stadium happy. On top of that, our administrators have focused on game experience with theme nights, concessions, cabanas, concerts, new stadium lighting, and other bells and whistles. What we've seen so far is Stanford winning nine of our last 12 home games (!!!!), owning the C-House, and yet despite the winning and the investment, nobody comes to the games. Elon and NC State were as bad as it's ever been. Attendance can lag results by years - and our overall results still feed a narrative of the worst team in Power Four - but I admit that what we've seen with attendance is disheartening. I am not sure Stanford will ever have enthusiasm around the program (again, have won nine of the last 12 home games!). All there is to do is keep plugging away and hope winning and attendant improvements to the program somehow revive the corpse. Because this isn't The Library, it's The Mausoleum (hat tip @anurag41).
4. While the defense made enough stops not to screw it up, this game was clearly won by the offense. We scored 3.44 points per drive (excluding the victory formation), scoring like the #11 points per drive offense whereas our season level is the #123 offense. There's a big enemy gets a vote element here, as NC State came in a terrible #115 in points per drive defense and will now fall further after we made them look like #128. Still, it's nice to score and we scored more than their norm allowed. The defense gave up 3.11 points per drive (excluding the last play of the first half), defending like the #120 defense (on the season we're #133) and making NC State's offense look like the #23 points per drive offense whereas they came in #53. We had the most yards per play of the Pritchard era against an FBS opponent, slightly shy of the Elon mark, and the fewest yards per play allowed in ACC play this season. Here too the offense was the impressive part, getting more than half a yard per play more than NC State's average allowed (notably, better than Wake Forest and Virginia did). The defense held NC State just slightly under its norm but that's misleading because it's entirely a function of the Richmond blowout. No FBS team has defended NC State as poorly as we did. I don't want to overdraw this point as we were within 0.3 yards per play allowed of Vanderbilt, Appalachian State, and Louisville, but those are bad defenses so that's kind of cold comfort. The bottom line is the offense came to play and the defense did just enough to hang on. There remains nothing good to say about the job Kris Richard has done.
5. The offense's success was balanced and very fun to watch. It was the second or third best passing performance of the season across metrics. While it was only middle-of-the-road compared to what NC State's atrocious pass defense typically allows, that's good enough for a lot of yards and touchdowns because, again, atrocious pass D. The run game built on its Elon confidence boost and is coming alive, pivotal for the second straight game. NC State has a bad run defense but even still we had almost a yard per carry more than their average allowed, better than all but Louisville and Vanderbilt, the latter of which we weren't far behind. I won't crow too much because Vandy has a terrible run game and still outgained us per carry and NC State is not much resistance to run games. Nonetheless, the salient comparison in my view is how we ran against the bad Georgia Tech defense in an extremely similar game (poorly) versus how we did in this game (well, well over double as effective). The run game is improving. If we keep it up, the Cal and SMU games will both be winnable.
6. Defense didn't thrive. Louisville is the only FBS team to give up a worse yard per attempt to the Wolfpack, though Louisville, App State, and Vandy all gave up slightly worse passer rating. We were basically in the ballpark of subpar pass defenses. The run defense was almost identical in every stat to how we did against Miami, better than all but Hawaii (Miami, by the way, is one of the top rushing teams in America, so it remains an oddity that we bottled them up on the ground....of course they didn't need it). This is one area I am going to just come out and say we got super lucky on the timing of this game (on the schedule and on the kickoff time) to play backups at running back and across the offensive line, including a third (or fourth?) center. NC State's run game has quite understandably imploded in the face of injury. Compared to their last two opponents, we gave up six times as many yards per carry as Wake Forest and over a yard more per carry than Louisville. Vandy is the only power team to do worse in run defense. This was just luck.
2. My last thought last week was challenging the team to look like an FBS team two games in a row for the first time under Pritchard. They surpassed that by looking like a Power Four team for only the second time this season. This was the second best scoreboard outcome of the Pritchard era, a score befitting a top 70 team (Georgia Tech was befitting a top 60 team). Most encouraging to me is not only have we won half our games this year, we've done better than the opponent in yards per play in each of those wins. We only did that twice last year, once in 2024, twice in 2023, once in 2022, and three times in 2021. As a result, even as bad as the blowout losses have been, this is by far our best year of the era in overall yards per play margin, -0.94 compared to last year's -1.23, which itself was better than the prior four years. While I lament that Pritchard has yet to have what I would call a good game (a scoreboard outcome befitting a top 25 team at least for one day....at the bare minimum teams should occasionally be able to look top 40), we are seeing some underlying signs of progress.
3. One area not progressing is attendance. Others have beaten this horse but I have to get some licks in too. It's just too existential of a question of why bother to field a major team if nobody cares. Throughout last year I had a thesis that winning at home would build habits of community and gradually build back enthusiasm as fans got used to leaving Stanford stadium happy. On top of that, our administrators have focused on game experience with theme nights, concessions, cabanas, concerts, new stadium lighting, and other bells and whistles. What we've seen so far is Stanford winning nine of our last 12 home games (!!!!), owning the C-House, and yet despite the winning and the investment, nobody comes to the games. Elon and NC State were as bad as it's ever been. Attendance can lag results by years - and our overall results still feed a narrative of the worst team in Power Four - but I admit that what we've seen with attendance is disheartening. I am not sure Stanford will ever have enthusiasm around the program (again, have won nine of the last 12 home games!). All there is to do is keep plugging away and hope winning and attendant improvements to the program somehow revive the corpse. Because this isn't The Library, it's The Mausoleum (hat tip @anurag41).
4. While the defense made enough stops not to screw it up, this game was clearly won by the offense. We scored 3.44 points per drive (excluding the victory formation), scoring like the #11 points per drive offense whereas our season level is the #123 offense. There's a big enemy gets a vote element here, as NC State came in a terrible #115 in points per drive defense and will now fall further after we made them look like #128. Still, it's nice to score and we scored more than their norm allowed. The defense gave up 3.11 points per drive (excluding the last play of the first half), defending like the #120 defense (on the season we're #133) and making NC State's offense look like the #23 points per drive offense whereas they came in #53. We had the most yards per play of the Pritchard era against an FBS opponent, slightly shy of the Elon mark, and the fewest yards per play allowed in ACC play this season. Here too the offense was the impressive part, getting more than half a yard per play more than NC State's average allowed (notably, better than Wake Forest and Virginia did). The defense held NC State just slightly under its norm but that's misleading because it's entirely a function of the Richmond blowout. No FBS team has defended NC State as poorly as we did. I don't want to overdraw this point as we were within 0.3 yards per play allowed of Vanderbilt, Appalachian State, and Louisville, but those are bad defenses so that's kind of cold comfort. The bottom line is the offense came to play and the defense did just enough to hang on. There remains nothing good to say about the job Kris Richard has done.
5. The offense's success was balanced and very fun to watch. It was the second or third best passing performance of the season across metrics. While it was only middle-of-the-road compared to what NC State's atrocious pass defense typically allows, that's good enough for a lot of yards and touchdowns because, again, atrocious pass D. The run game built on its Elon confidence boost and is coming alive, pivotal for the second straight game. NC State has a bad run defense but even still we had almost a yard per carry more than their average allowed, better than all but Louisville and Vanderbilt, the latter of which we weren't far behind. I won't crow too much because Vandy has a terrible run game and still outgained us per carry and NC State is not much resistance to run games. Nonetheless, the salient comparison in my view is how we ran against the bad Georgia Tech defense in an extremely similar game (poorly) versus how we did in this game (well, well over double as effective). The run game is improving. If we keep it up, the Cal and SMU games will both be winnable.
6. Defense didn't thrive. Louisville is the only FBS team to give up a worse yard per attempt to the Wolfpack, though Louisville, App State, and Vandy all gave up slightly worse passer rating. We were basically in the ballpark of subpar pass defenses. The run defense was almost identical in every stat to how we did against Miami, better than all but Hawaii (Miami, by the way, is one of the top rushing teams in America, so it remains an oddity that we bottled them up on the ground....of course they didn't need it). This is one area I am going to just come out and say we got super lucky on the timing of this game (on the schedule and on the kickoff time) to play backups at running back and across the offensive line, including a third (or fourth?) center. NC State's run game has quite understandably imploded in the face of injury. Compared to their last two opponents, we gave up six times as many yards per carry as Wake Forest and over a yard more per carry than Louisville. Vandy is the only power team to do worse in run defense. This was just luck.
