I know my grandpa is looking down from heaven smiling. Despite an inexperienced freshman quarterback, a new offensive coordinator and a hated head coach, his USC Trojans crushed a Stanford team with the better coach and the more experienced, highly-regarded quarterback.
Kedon Slovis was a three-star quarterback out of high school and the 26th ranked quarterback overall. He picked the Stanford secondary apart for 377 yards and found the end zone three times through the air.
In classic USC fashion, my friends who go to school there have already called me to not only brag about the game but to brag about how Slovis will save their season and give them a shot at the title. To them I say this, check the stats; Stanford is bad, too.
The Stanford defense only forced five incompletions, which is an indication of our weak secondary. At times, they were no where to be seen, and even our superstar Paulson Adebo made his share of mistakes by being too aggressive at times. However, you could also point fingers at the Stanford defensive line, who only sacked the quarterback once and recorded no quarterback hurries. The secondary can only defend the Trojans receivers for so long.
Then my friends will brag about their defense and how they held the Stanford offense to zero points in the second half. Well, USC fans should realize how depleted the Stanford offense was last week. Stanford was missing arguably their two best players on offense, KJ Costello and Walker Little. Stanford had to start a true freshman at left tackle, which is a recipe for disaster. After only scoring 10 points last week, Stanford’s offense put up 20 (yes, with good field position early).
Who is to blame on Stanford? Injuries happen. Can’t do much about that, but you can point fingers at coaching and how you adjust after injuries. David Shaw was out-coached. He had no answer for USC’s new air raid offense. But he was out-coached mainly because he lacked the player personnel to play the physical, time-controlling style that made Stanford not long ago. The Cardinal program doesn’t have that “next man up” mentality that they used to have. Their replacements are young and didn’t seem ready for action at all.
The issue isn’t player development. It’s recruiting. Stanford, according to 247 Sports, only has 78 scholarship players, despite 85 being the max number allowed. Some of those scholarship players are former walk-ons too, so the number is deceiving. The 2017 recruiting class only had 14 players. Yes, it was a star-studded class, but in football, depth makes a bigger difference. Remember when USC only had 75 scholarships available after being penalized by the NCAA? They struggled for years despite having high-regarded recruits on their team.
If Stanford wants to return to dominance anytime soon, they’ll need to start by getting larger recruiting classes. Now with many injuries already, Stanford is being forced to start young, inexperienced players. Will they even be able to field an offensive line? Get ready for a long season.
Comments
Stanford air raid coming?
We were very close last game; in fact we passed MORE than USC. If Mills could have been accurate on his longer throws (he sucked) the game would have been rather closer. Our O line does pretty well on passing plays; less well on runs. So, I think we’ll be pass first run second from here on out, hopefully with rather better accuracy. It matters little how much time a team can take off the clock when the Air Raid opponent can score in 2 minutes flat. The only place AR falters is in snow (WSU’s downfall last couple of years). We don’t have that problem. If we can start scoring there isn’t a team outside of ND that really worries me. Coach has to go with what works, and not wait until we have 3 or 4 losses.
I read somewhere that USC has the 4th best personnel in college football (behind Clemson, ’Bama, etc.). Their O line completely stymied our D, and their skill players were simply too good. especially with a pinpoint passer running the show. So I doubt Stanford wins that game under any circumstances. SC is good, outside chance at CFP.
By jafco99 on 09.10.19 6:07pm
The ceiling vs the floor
The pure air raid (mike leach style) has a high floor but low ceiling. It can matchup against more talented opposition but can equally get into tossups against lesser teams. The pro-style (ours being a west coast + power run) teams when they have the right personnel can really blunt any similar talent opposition and usually a highly safe bet against inferior opposition by leaning on them for 4 quarters. But it requires a good to great defense because the margin for error is very thin.
With the current personnel stanford has, i.e. gunslinger QB, plethora of nimble receivers and a shaky OL, the shotgun spread makes the most sense to me. They can even mix in some of the power concepts with the spread like Bama or Oklahoma (Rams or Ravens in the NFL) to keep that balance to protect leads and rest the defense. This eases the burden of the defensive personnel to play a perfect game and turn to a more turnover friendly approach. While this will make us a big12 team, even the traditional powers and the NFL have shown the new wave.
By layman on 09.11.19 3:59am
We Lost To A Good USC Team
As pointed out above, and elsewhere, the talent level of USC is top 10 for sure. Coaching has not turned this into results. The new OC is for real, and the team is built to profit from it. Not so much pure air raid in my view. More like the Ducks from several years ago. They pass the ball well. But the backs gash you as well.
More importantly, what does the game say about Stanford? Hard to say. My eyes tell me that we are able to run the ball well. We had some great 3rd down conversions against Northwestern and some nice long runs against USC. But the stats say we average less than 4 yards per carry…even taking out QB stuff. I think Rouse has been fine for a true Freshman. But I agree with the assessment above that, like last year, we may be a better pass blocking team than a run blocking team. Not sure that Costello wins the game against USC anyway. We might score some more points, but our defense did not do its job.
I honestly think that our offense is ok. The kicking game is a mess (snappers, holders?) but I have no doubt that Costello and company can put up enough points (25+) to win college football games if we can get stops. We did against Northwestern, plus turnovers. But completely failed against USC. Their QB lit us up, and the backs killed us. USC may genuinely be at top 10 team this year. Who knows. Northwestern is certainly going to be a top 35 team at least, so the sample size here is definitely a tough one.
I don’t know what happened on defense this last game but I have a lot of faith in Lance Anderson. Let’s see what this week brings. Several times at 3rd and 2 or 4th and 2 we lined our cornerbacks up 5 yards off the ball?! Quick slant. FIRST DOWN! Really?
Anecdotally, I thought it was terribly funny that the game announcers trashed last years OL and said that Shaw has brought in a new OL coach to fix it. THAT LINE WAS THE OL COACH’S LINE, THOUGH NOT ALL HIS RECRUITS. But yeah, stronger and tougher. Not just big. And maybe a different approach?
My gut told me that Stanford was looking at a 6 – 6 season this year (I know, get with the program etc.). I am slightly more optimistic at this point. UCF is a very tough out for us on the East Coast – particularly if they sit Wimbush who might otherwise give the game to us (as he has in the past).
In response to the above point, Air Raid needs QUICK passes! To backs, to receivers, etc. Not the long fades……………We did this pretty well against Northwestern (bubble screens, etc) but seemed to forget this against USC. Is David Shaw ready for this? Forget the labels……he is clearly prepared to pass the ball more than run it. Whether this translates to a coordinated offensive threat remains to be seen
By hoyaparanoia on 09.10.19 9:22pm
USC is good but they ain't that good! We are an average P5 team with gaping holes in the roster
The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. USC’s true freshman QB looked spectacular but he was facing zero pass rush and going against a green secondary with an arsenal of playmakers that would all play on sundays. On offense, we had some good balance early with straight ahead runs, screens, TEs in the seam, playaction. But Mills just didn’t deliver those killer shots early and on the whole looked like the freshman QB locking on his first reads and being inaccurate when throwing to those reads.
On their best days, USC will always trump Stanford because of the talent differential. Jon wilner tweeted out saying that this was the biggest mismatch of talent he has seen this decade. But just last year that SC team which had nearly the same set of players scored just 3. So clearly it’s a scheme mismatch. Even the best Stanford defenses had no answers to marquise lee and robert woods but would usually win the trench battle by sacking them enough and keeping those playmakers off the field. When they turned to the air raid, SC’s 3rd option was going to run roughshod (heck WSU’s 3rd option has been gashing us the last 3 years).
Regarding where stanford should turn to after the shellacking, knowing shaw he will continue to just trust the guys he has and bashing his head against a wall repeatedly in the hopes of a different result. In reality, shaw must revamp the offensive staff and get a fresh face to look at things. On defense, I will definitely start from the DL coach and maybe even the ILB coach to bring in better recruiters and more old school coaches who teach lineman about the use of the hands, disengaging from blocks, LBs to read the flow of the play and run fits.
Finally, shaw’s recruiting philosophy has to get a strong look. We will never be able to give kids their early offer (esp the QB position) and then they will never be able to entice them with early enrollment. This eliminates so much early playing time for true freshman. The attrition of 4th yr and 5th yr to graduation and the NFL just creates even more gaping holes in the roster. The transfer portal on top of that is simply just a mess (one that stanford doesn’t get any benefit out of). Unfortunately the net needs to be wider than what it is currently to compete with the big guns.
It will be truly the end of a golden decade if stanford misses the bowl game this year (I still predict a 7-5 finish). But everything that goes up must come down. But the hope is when it crumbles, we lay a stronger foundation next time.
By layman on 09.11.19 3:41am
Agree
The roster lacks depth. We have some really talented players, obviously, but we have very poor depth, and we don’t have consistent talent across class years — we have a good amount of gaps on the roster and this really impedes our ability to compete.
I really do think that for us, with our constraints in terms of recruiting (not just standards, but what we can offer in terms of early offers and so on), it’s just very, very hard to compete at the high level we were doing from 2010-2015 consistently. We can do so from time to time, depending on how lucky we get in terms of recruiting.
To take an example of that — we actually recruited a team (and these guys were not all 4 and 5 stars) that had Coby Fleener, Zach Ertz, David DeCastro and Andrew Luck on it at the same time, as well as a solid defensive core consisting of Shane Skov, Chase Thomas, Ben Gardner, Anderson etc etc. Again this wasn’t because we were recruiting a slew of top recruits like Bama and Oklahoma do — it’s because we really got quite lucky to have all that talent on our team at the same time, given our recruiting limitations. We really did catch lightning in a bottle, and that helped us to attract other players for a few years that kept the success going, attracting very highly rated players like McCaffrey and Thomas, among others. But, it’s simply not reasonable or realistic to expect that we can consistently be so lucky with the bulk of the players we recruit. We have been, in recent years, experiencing what it looks like when our recruiting situation works like it normally will — we have good to very good players, and a few standouts among them, but not enough to be a 10+ win team.
The good news is that I do think we can consistently recruit to be a 7-8 win team, with some years at 9 or even more depending, again, on how lucky we get with recruiting, and how the talent aligns over class years. As long as we have David Shaw, I think that is kind of our baseline, perhaps with a bad season here and there of 6 or even 5 wins. But I think the years where we win 10+ are going to be few and far between given our recruiting limitations. We really did have an amazing run there a few years ago — it was not realistic to expect it to be permanently replicable.
SC has a good team this year all around, as we saw last week. Our defense was exposed, and our offensive line lack of depth without Little was also exposed. QB situation will improve dramatically with Costello returning (sorry slotman…), but overall we look like our defense is suspect, an in particular our secondary is very green outside of Adebo, and our OL is now weaker than it would have been at full strength. Our team has several very talented players, and also quite a few players who look like they are more or less baseline for the conference.
Our schedule is tough. UCF is going to be a tough out. Oregon as well. Washington as well (we have nothing like the defense that Cal does). Notre Dame as well. When you start looking around the schedule, together with what we have seen so far in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of the team, it certainly seems daunting this season in particular, because we have a particularly challenging schedule this year with UCF and NU both there (even though we dodged Utah). I don’t think every season will be as challenging as this one, however, so this season’s result isn’t really a great barometer of the health of the program — it’s a very challenging schedule, full stop, for any program to run through.
By Brendan Ross on 09.11.19 6:57am
Recruiting and Depth Issues Have Always Been There
But, as noted above, they have been mitigated by having just enough of the right type of guys playing together and a relatively favorable injury profile – historically. So much was written about Stanford’s conditioning program etc. that kept players on the field. The last two years have been very different from an injury standpoint, and our depth issues came to the forefront. We also had a bunch of players this year elect not to play their final year of eligibility – including likely starters, further impacting depth.
So the question naturally arises……………if you are competing with a lower and shallower pool of talent, what is the best strategy to win? Or put another way, how much difference can effective and tailored coaching create? I think Lance Anderson generally does a very good job with a team defense approach that gets the most out of what we have. It tends to work better if we can mount a successful pass rush, and gets exposed when QBs have all day long to pick us apart. This year also features a lot of new players, with some obvious adjustment time needed. It is what it is. On the other side of the ball, we simply do not have an offensive coordinator. And David Shaw, try as he may, is having difficulty adjusting to a world where we do not have a dominant offensive line. His playcalling this year has been more pass friendly, featuring bubble screens and backs that we have not seen in the past. Also some creative reverses and misdirection plays. And his willingness to actually try to score with less than a minute left in the half and on the wrong side of the 50 yard line probably won the Northwestern game (final minute fumbles aside), and he tried to similarly move the ball against USC. But we have also seen punts from the 34 yard line (hello……Toner can make that field goal!), an over-reliance on the long fade (particularly when it is used on first down and fails, setting the team up for 2nd and long), and some reversion to norm in run game playcalling. He is definitely in transition, but sort of caught in the middle and not entirely comfortable with it.
We will learn more about this team as the season unfolds. I think the defense will get better, but I have no expectations for offensive line improvement. So Shaw needs to figure out something on offense. As I noted above, my expectations were 6 – 6 this year and now I do think we will get to 7 – 5. But there are zero easy games for us on our schedule, and a much feared East Coast road trip coming up against a team HUNGRY for a win against an "elite Power 5 team" (whether we are that team is open for debate, but it would be a feather in UCF’s hat).
By hoyaparanoia on 09.11.19 11:37am
At least no one's overconfident after the loss to USC...
By worldblee on 09.11.19 1:41pm