Have you gotten enough football coverage from me yet? No? Good, because it’s not stopping anytime soon.
Look, all we have to look forward to right now, is the college football season. It’s the biggest sport, left relatively untouched by the coronavirus as of right now, and the first ‘big sport’ to start later this fall if all goes to plan.
So why wouldn’t we want to talk about it? And talk about it.
So, talk about it we shall.
ESPN updated their Football Power Index recently, and the Stanford Cardinal football team saw a nice little bump in their preseason ranking, jumping all the way up to No. 31 overall, fifth in the Pac-12 behind the ‘big guns’ from last year.
Before we jump into any more, though, how does ESPN get their FPI you ask?
The Football Power Index (FPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 20,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily. FPI data from seasons prior to 2019 may not be complete.
There you have it. That’s a lot of simulations, a lot of numbers and a lot of data. Right up my alley!
So specifically for Stanford, here’s how the data falls:
Projected wins: 7.0
Projected losses: 5.1
6-win %: 84.8%
Win Division %: 4.8%
Win Conference %: 1.7%
Make Playoffs/Win National Championship: (both) 0.0%
Stanford is projected to win 7 games, finishing 7-5. Okay, fine, I can see that, as I talked about previously this week. That’s not that far off. What it doesn’t do, though, is take into account that this is the Davis Mills show. He’s got this year to prove that he’s the top quarterback from his recruiting class, and this year to prove that this job is his.
This season will largely lie on his shoulder but how much should David Shaw be put to blame if this team finishes with a losing record again? The Cardinal haven’t sniffed a double-digit win season for what feels like longer than three years (sure, they were an Alamo Bowl win away from 10 wins in 2017, but c’mon).
Shaw is a long way away from any sort of hot seat talk, and so these projections of at least a 7-win season are a way of certainly preventing that. But, it begs the question, at what point are you not satisfied with Shaw as the head coach?
Did we all get so accustomed to Rose Bowl wins and 11- / 12- win seasons early in his career that he’d have a shorter leash than other coaches in the conference? Or are we lenient because he’s won all those games?
I’m curious as to your thoughts, because I have mine (that I’ll save for another day).
Comments
Silly to blame Shaw
Let’s not start that BS about blaming the best coach Stanford has had EVER. Pop Warner had 96 wines, Chuck Taylor 71, John Ralston 94, Bill Walsh 59, Tyrone Willingham 81 compared to Shaw’s 108 (a winning percentage of 76%, better than every coach at Stanford since Clark Shaughnessy who only coached two years, 1940-1941). He was Pac-12 Coach of the Year 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2017. While every other school in the Pac-12 except Utah has been changing coaches every few years, it is respectable and enviable that Stanford has had the same coach since 2011. He has dealt admirably with the high academic admission standards and the lack of transfers and JC players. He has run a very clean program. Let’s just be thankful for our lucky stars.
By gaffman on 05.07.20 10:35am
I'm with you there
That’s why I said long, long way — but in today’s society another 4-win season will certainly ramp up that conversation. It’s a win-now kind of world it seems, unfortunately.
The way he runs the program is so tremendously admirable, and I agree, we should be thanking the lucky stars for him!
Also, why I wanted to open it up here because I’m extremely pro-Shaw.
By Cam Mellor on 05.07.20 12:31pm
8-4 and pac-12 north contention is reasonable ask
On paper with the amount of talent especially on the offensive side, I expect a bounce back to respectability. How quickly the pieces gel and how quickly the TWU establishes the run game will determine the ceiling of the team.
However my expectation for our football team is a perennial pac-12 north contender, an occasional pac-12 championship and rose bowl win (like once in 6-7 yes). The current outlook though is negative.
While Shaw is a wonderful spokesperson for the university and a great gameplanner, he is a conservative playcaller. His refusal to overhaul the coaching staff (aka loyalty) has finally caught up to him. What he does if we have another losing season will determine future success. Just take ND as example, how they roared back to playoff contention after that 4-8 dip in 2016.
By layman on 05.08.20 2:26am
Hard To Reconcile 31st In The Country With A 7-5 Record
I will echo comments above that Shaw is the ideal head coach for Stanford and that we are fortunate to have him. At the same time, on a more granular level, there are a number of areas where we could improve with better assistant coaches. Starting with a real offensive coordinator who can help Shaw transition away from his overly conservative game planning (it was defensible when we could absolutely dominate the clock behind our run game, but that is no longer a world we live in) and bring in some fresh ideas. Tavita Pritchard is not defensible on any level. This will be the year where we will have to make a final decision on our offensive line coach and our running backs coach. Either deliver, or time for some new blood. We are also recruiting above our performance which says something about our recruiting and, unfortunately, something about what we are doing with that talent to win football games. And failing to keep solid 5th year talent around is really really hard on a team that will always have depth issues.
Notre Dame has done a great job bringing in assistant coaches to get them to a higher level. Brian Kelly does not run the offense or the defense. Maybe a model for Shaw to think about.
I am also happy with contending regularly in the North, with an occasional Pac-12 Championship and Rose Bowl win. 8-4 as a baseline, with 7-5 in down years and 9-3 and beyond in good years. No illusions about playoffs and National Championships. We had the team to get there (and the star for the networks to showcase), but dropped a stinker to Northwestern behind overly conservative playcalling and failed to execute against Oregon at the end of a game. A win in either of those gets us real consideration.
I am not greedy. But I do get frustrated about the inability of Shaw to take action on the assistant coaching front.
By hoyaparanoia on 05.08.20 11:05am
Coaching is and is not the problem
Shaw’s run first mentality hurts the team when it can’t run, but hurts everybody else when it works. It’s nerve wracking for fans as it means many games are closer than they need to be, but it keeps run and shoot teams off the field. And when you have a good passing QB and decent receivers, it makes it difficult to load the box all the time. So I, for one, am okay with Shaw being Shaw. The fact that Stanford lost several 5th years this off season is primarily a function of Stanford’s graduate programs, not Shaw. You have to get admitted to one to stay and it’s just not that easy. So if you want to cake walk through graduate school to concentrate on football, Stanford isn’t the place for you.
I agree with everyone else, though, that Stanford could benefit from a good offensive coordinator. And Pritchard ain’t it. In the years he’s been QB coach and/or offensive coordinator, can anyone think of one thing that he’s brought to the offense, compared to all the other teams that have blossomed with new offensive coordinators? I get it that Shaw doesn’t want to give up the game calling (his biggest fault, in my opinion), so why not bring in someone in whom he’ll have total confidence? Such as Kevin Hogan.
As for the linebacker and O line coaches, they had very rough starts. But this year (if it happens), the team is loaded with both linebackers and experienced O linemen. So produce or pack up and go.
I’m not as down on the running back coach. McCaffrey and Love are unique talents, but the current pool is certainly decent enough. Let’s see how they do with experienced linemen blocking for them.
Although last year was certainly painful to endure, it is somewhat of a miracle that it hasn’t happened before during Shaw’s tenure, in light of how difficult Stanford is to get into (even for football players). He’s become a littler over extended (NFL commentator, member of NCAA football committees), but he knows he and the team woefully underperformed last year. And all the coaches contributed to that. Time now to fix it.
By SU74 on 05.08.20 12:17pm