Time is a Flat Circle for Stanford football in 2014

If you have become familiar with HBO's latest hit series ‘True Detective', you've undoubtedly come to terms with the eternal struggle between light and dark in the universe.

True Detective explores the fundamental struggle between inner demons and external pressures in a complex web of lies, horrifying truth, and an existential protagonist that is convinced his existence has happened before and it will happen again.

The parallels that can be drawn between a strung-out Rust Cohle and this Stanford Cardinal team are downright scary.

When Cohle proclaimed that everything that has happened before will happen again has never rang so true. Time is a flat circle. Stanford beats Oregon. Oregon beats Stanford. Here we are, where we've been before.

What makes light? What makes dark? I think that it's safe to say that right now these are dark times for this Stanford offense, struggling to move the ball and form cohesive drives.

The Cardinal offense has fallen short of expectations, including the monumental disconnect that appears in the lack of 2^nd half adjustments.  Stanford has scored 51 points in the second half of the last 6 games. That is a paltry 8.5 points per 2^nd half.

While Matthew McConaughey's character may or may not have lived his life before, we have certainly seen this offensive effort before from the Cardinal before. But it was in 2005 and Walt Harris was the head coach.

It's becoming a depressingly real scenario for the Cardinal to drop two out of the next three games to finish .500 and end up in some sort of Cactus Bowl.

Right now, the Cardinal have to beat Cal, Utah, or UCLA to get there first; something that looked relatively easy at the beginning of the season now looks a lot tougher.  Utah has become a legitimate force with key wins over UCLA and USC while the Bruins handled Arizona in the Rose Bowl on Saturday night.

But the season's not over yet. Cohle also said, "The world needs Bad Men. We keep the other bad men from the door."

And there's still time for this team to channel their inner George Thorogood and get that "Bad To The Bone" feeling - but they need to get it quick. the Utes are not a pushover, just like they weren't last year.

Time will go on and things will heal. But for now, let the bye week be your Lone Star Brew while the newfound Bad Men recover (and start to run block).