Oof.
It’s March 31 and already the 2020 football season is disappointing Cardinal fans. FOX Bet released their odds for the 2020 Pac-12 Championship and it saw Stanford check in with the 10th-best odds, or the third-worst odds.
Entering this season in uncharted territory in more ways than one, this year will see the first August game in the David Shaw era that the Cardinal entered on the heels of a losing record the previous season. Combine that with no spring ball, and growing fear of even losing the season thanks to coronavirus and the news just keeps hitting harder.
Sure there is an incredible amount of optimism entering the 2020 football season with Davis Mills, mainly, but also because of Paulson Adebo, Malik Antoine and a talented tackle duo of Walker Little and Foster Sarell all returning to The Farm this year.
But after that and a few other players returning, it is an interesting group of players that will have to improve from a year prior that saw them finish at 4-8 overall and 3-6 in the conference. One good thing, however, is the fact that 247Sports ranked the 2020 recruiting class in the top 25 nationally and as the third-best class in the Pac-12 so some young guns could step up to play integral roles.
We’ll see how it all goes, obviously as only time will tell, but with the growing number of players transferring out this past offseason, these odds should unfortunately scare Cardinal fans.
It’s just a matter of whether it’s rightfully so, or not.
Do you agree with 10th-best odds to win the conference crown this season? Or do you think they should enter the year higher than that?
Comments
These odds are a better predictor of whether there will be a season at all, than Stanford's chances
Hard to be objective about the Cards, but here are some reasons these odds are just wrong.
1. The best passing quarterback in the conference: Mills (if he stays healthy)
2. The best offensive line in the conference: Stanford. Yep, two NFL early round tackles, the most experienced center, experienced backups at every position.
3. The deepest wide receiver corps: Stanford. Sure, USC has two studs at wide receiver and other teams have one, but Fehoko could be as good as anyone, and that means other teams have to cover Wilson, Weddington, St. Brown, and all the new guys with their second DB or a linebacker.
4. The best tandem DB’s: Stanford. Adebo is as good as anyone in the conference and Kyu Blu Kelly looks to be as good as any other team’s #2.
5. Players who would start anywhere else in the conference: Little, Sarell, Dalman, Adebo, Mills, Booker, Robinson, Bragg, Toner, Miezan. That’s almost half the team.
And, the one silver lining to this virus shutdown: no one is likely to get hurt this Spring.
If there is a football season this year, Stanford has no worse than the third best chance to win the Pac 12.
By SU74 on 04.01.20 8:47am
I think we're overlooking the biggest factor: coaching
I really don’t know where Shaw’s head is at after last year. The UCLA game plan is something that ought to have gotten someone fired. Part of me felt like it was all unraveling last year. Like Shaw was losing his grip on reality. I am anxious about next year and it all stems from not knowing whether Shaw can get back to smashmouth football and Lance Anderson can coach the defense up.
By Blackjoy on 04.02.20 6:53pm
So True
As someone who saw how last year was going to play out before the season started, the enigma known as Shaw continued to baffle me. Watching the federal coronavirus briefings remind me of a David Shaw postgame press conference, "we have all the tools, great players, play hard, just need to execute better". Yeah….sure.
Last year was not a blip, but a place a little further down the continuum of the past several seasons. Sure, the record looked a little worse due to some injuries, but the record of the previous couple of years looked better than we were. The stats on both sides of the ball demonstrate this amply. All of this despite pretty solid recruiting – that somehow continues.
I agree 100% with the post above that we have some clear strengths with experienced players coming back. And the opportunity to plug some holes with new players – though it might have been nice to retain a few more 5th year players who were starters or near starters. The other silver lining here is that many Freshmen played last year. They come back as Sophomores much more equipped than normal for Stanford.
I am not sold on the offensive line. Big names, sure. But we have failed to execute this part of the game for several years now. I also believe that Mills will miss a number of games due to injury. Shaw needs to PLAN for this everntuality, and have a QB ready to play (like get Tanner McKee ready on some basis). Don’t worry about his redshirt. No one is staying around for their 5th year anyway.
By hoyaparanoia on 04.04.20 10:30am