Special thanks to Jibriel Taha of the Stanford Daily and Sports Director at KZSU Radio for joining me on the Quack 12 Podcast to discuss Stanford’s roster. LISTEN HERE
Nota bene: Because Stanford didn’t debut their new offense against their week 1 FCS opponent, had an early bye in week 3, and got blown out in both FBS games, I have an unusually small sample to work with for an opponent going into week 5 – only 170 meaningful snaps on both sides of the ball. For context, I got 127 such snaps from just the Arizona – Cal game last week. The dataset is also complicated by significant offensive injuries before and during their second FBS game. So this preview will include much more of my subjective impressions than my usual data-driven approach.
Remarkably, Stanford brought out a new offense in week 2 against USC, having cribbed Wake Forest’s slow mesh RPO scheme. This isn’t the first change for the Cardinal on this side of the ball, as they’ve gradually incorporated more and more spread-option concepts over the last five years and been increasingly unable to operate their iconic power-run offense from a decade ago.
The core idea is to delay making a decision on run or pass until after the linebackers and/or safeties have declared how they’re going to play it, and always get to make the last choice on a play. It puts a premium on a QB who reads defenses well, a RB who can navigate a messy box, and an offensive line that can protect for the almost three seconds it takes to complete the mesh. The problem for Stanford is that they only had the first two of those things against USC, and against Washington last week they were out their starting back and the OL situation got even worse.
Head coach Shaw has announced that #22 RB Smith will be out for the rest of the season with an injury, and after talking to Jibriel it seems likely that we’ll see the same depleted OL as finished the game last week. In my opinion, Smith’s backup #2 RB Filkins is a fine replacement – he doesn’t have Smith’s raw talent or speed but he moves as intelligently and patiently through traffic – but the backup situation behind Filkins is inexperienced and lacks talent on paper. As for Stanford’s offensive line, I’ve been writing articles for years decrying how poorly this unit has been developed, and while the injuries certainly don’t help, I was hardly seeing a dominant performance when healthy.
The change to the Cardinal’s pass route structure has also reduced the efficacy of their most lethal weapons, which is a set of four very talented and sometimes undefendable wide receivers plus a good pass-catching tight end, who are healthy and together for the first time in over a year. The RPO scheme puts several of these guys on short inside routes, hoping that underneath coverage has cleared out chasing the run, instead of sending them down the sideline or to the post in one-on-one matchups on which they can box out the defender.
Frequent pocket collapses and in my opinion a less bold passing structure have contributed to very weak passing success rate across the sample: 23 successful designed passing plays vs 32 failures, or 42% efficiency given the down & distance. That’s a badly below average number and several percentage points below last year’s performance. Some examples of failed passing plays:
(Reminder - after pressing play, you can use the left button to slow any video to ¼ or ½ speed)
Jibriel and I talked about this at length on the podcast; he’s concluded that the wideouts have just been less impressive this year than their promise last year indicated, and when I asked him what scenario would result in a winning offensive performance from the Cardinal, he didn’t think a big day in the passing game was a likely part of it. Although it’s mostly a gut feeling, I disagree with that take because I still see some evidence of the potential NFL star in #18 QB McKee and some very dangerous remnants of the old offense. Even with all their pass-protection issues, Stanford is still passing for 7.5 adjusted YPA which is a perfectly average number, and 23.5% of their passes gain 15+ yards which is an excellent explosiveness rate. Some examples of successful passes:
From a statistical perspective, Stanford’s rushing offense is their most potent quadrant of football and the only one in which their efficiency rate is above water: 21 successful designed runs vs 19 failed ones, or 52.5%. They’ve rushed for over an adjusted 5.7 YPC, and 17.5% go for 10+ yards, which are both modestly above-average numbers.
However (and longtime readers must appreciate my difficulty in writing this) I think these data are misleading. Half the sample was taken prior to several salient injuries to run-game personnel discussed above and was against a DC who fundamentally fails to understand outside run contain, and the other half was against a run defense which was terrible for most of the last decade and I’m not convinced has turned it around. In my opinion the Stanford rushing attack that Oregon will actually face isn’t much of a threat, and I suspect a successful defense would almost always back out to defend the pass, induce the QB to hand off, and trust the d-line and OLBs on their own to contain the run.
Here’s a representative sample of all rushes:
The Cardinal ranked 103rd in defensive F+ last year, and every trend I noted in this Summer’s preview which I thought would cause that slide to continue has come to pass. DC Anderson is employing what he calls a 4-3 defense, but in reality is a 2-4-5, as they only have three scholarship interior defensive linemen and their “EDGE” players are all just lighter weight OLBs with a new title.
I’ve yet to see Stanford put all three true linemen on the field at once, and I don’t think any qualify to be a nose tackle … this is really the issue; Anderson wants to use a 3-4 but he’s entirely run out of 0-techs and has just three modestly talented 4-techs. When opponents go to 12-personnel, their “heavy box” response is to put in a third ILB, not more defenders on the line of scrimmage. One wrinkle I didn’t foresee back in May is that on several downs they pull even that second lineman, put a third OLB on the line, and play what I’d describe as a 1-5-5. Neither Jibriel nor I could come up with a great theory for what prompts this switch — a hazard of the small dataset — but we both suspect it’s simply the only way to keep the few linemen reasonably fresh in long games.
Predictably, the lack of size in the box has resulted in some of the worst rush defense numbers I’ve ever encountered. I’ve seen the Cardinal defend just seven designed rushes successfully in two FBS games prior to garbage time, vs 24 failures for an absolutely miserable 22.5% rush defense success rate. They’re allowing 8.2 adjusted YPC and just under 26% of designed rushes against them gain 10+ yards, which is pretty bad. Here’s a representative sample:
I think that Stanford has some individual pieces in the secondary with real talent: #17 CB Kelly who came on strong last year, #24 DB Fields who transferred from Oklahoma and stood out as pretty bright in my film study of last year’s Sooners, and #21 DB Williamson who’s a longtime veteran and reliable tackler. And I also think that the front, despite the run game issues, has flashed from time to time at rushing the passer or at least confusing the offensive line with its lightweight approach. So I wasn’t surprised that their pass defense efficiency number is better (though still well below average) than against the run: 18 successful designed pass defenses vs 26 failures, or 41%. Some examples:
But I’m seeing frequent assignment breakdowns in coverage, particularly in the middle of the field against linebackers and safeties, and an awful lot of the pass defense is left on islands because the rush isn’t getting home. They’ve faced two of the most prolific passing offenses in the Pac-12 and so I think these numbers are somewhat inflated right now compared to where they’ll probably finish, but still they’re eye-popping: allowing an adjusted 11.2 YPA with 29.5% of passing plays gaining 15+ yards. Some examples of pass defense breakdowns:
