Well That Was a Bummer

With our injury situation, even if Stanford had played a nearly perfect game, they would have been hard pressed to beat Oregon. We just match up poorly. If our offense had been in sync in the beginning of the game, before our defense wore out, we could have traded blows. But by the time we finally got some consistent offensive mojo towards the end of the third quarter, we were in too deep of a hole, and our defense was gassed.

My main concern is that the ugly mistakes and margin of defeat will cost us at-large BCS consideration and/or Luck’s Heisman. If he loses it to LMJ, I would understand. But I’ll be damned if Trent Richardson or another QB grabs the trophy.

But of all things, our offense cost us the game. Our defense held its ground well and they really didn’t let that many touchdowns when Oregon actually started down field. However, the fumbles, interceptions, missed catches cost us dearly. I wonder what happened, did we not handle the pressure well? I don’t really feel like this is the team we have been seeing all year, and it is certainly not what we are capable of. That said, oh well. Best of luck to Oregon in the rest of the season, they have some very talented runners.

… not to mention a very good opponent, injuries that restricted the way we could play, and playing in sneakers instead of cleats.

1. Turnovers. They got 22 points of our turnovers. We got 3 off theirs.
2. Mediocre coaching.
…Contrast two TDs off fourth downs v a missed 48 yard field goal the one time we had a decision to make. A second and 5 at their 48 and we don’t figure we have two downs to et the yards and batter our way through.
…Oregon adjusted well to Stanford’s defensive aggression after the first quarter . Without the turnover and TD we hold them to 0 in the first quarter. But Oregon worked out how to keep us uncertain, schemed to get Chase Thomas out of certain plays and executed their adjustments better than us. We didn’t adjust as well to them - if the gameplan was to batter them on the ground we were doing that pretty well but it was pretty obvious when we were looking to pass and they did a good job of pressuring 12.
… Oregon’s speed of execution wasn’t a surprise, but it seemed that way. The fourth and short should have attracted a time out from the sidelines to make Oregon at least think about a field goal but the staff just stood there. It might have made no difference. It might have saved four points. But leaving a confused D on the field on the goal line just as they’ve made a key stop seems pretty dumb to me.
3. Poor execution on key plays. Luck wasn’t throwing well - too many high throws that gave receivers limited opportunities, but there were enough catchable balls that needed to be caught especially by our tight ends. It came down to a few key drops, not many, but they seemed to come at bad times.
4. Very good opponent. They just were. We had to be at our best and we weren’t.
5. Injuries. Owusu’s absence made the field smaller. Skov would have made the defensive adjustments harder. Ertz would have made it harder to key on Fleener, maybe.
6. On reflection playing in the untested magic cleatless shoes was probably a mistake. They’re not quite ready yet. Maybe Phil Knight gave Oregon the best stuff - financially he appears to be a bit more committed to Oregon than us, if you can call $105 million low committment. But it still has to be explained why we found the surface harder to cope with than them. Can’t explain it.

The Ducks exceeded my highest hopes.
But I know exactly how painful this is for you guys.
Hang in there.

You could argue that Stanford lost that game almost as much as the Oregon won it, but still the Ducks stomped them in almost ever facet of the game. Good on ya…

Once… just once in my lifetime I would like to see a Stanford football team perform well when the national spotlight is on them and they are favored. We’re much better at being the plucky underdogs.