It was always going to be a challenge. When the dust settled after last season and fans began to look towards 2019, the opening four games of the schedule were daunting, to say the least. While most Power 5 teams spend September welcoming their local Directional States for a paycheck and an excuse for the alumni to tailgate, Stanford instead began with Northwestern, USC, UCF, and Oregon. Realistically, 3-1 would've been an excellent start, but there was a real danger that things could go bad -- and that's exactly what's happened. There was a promising win over Northwestern, but the Cardinal's 21-6 loss to Oregon on Saturday night was its third straight defeat. Stanford now sits at 1-3 for the first time since 2007. How in the world did this happen?
Believe it or not, things started out really well against the Ducks. With a rash of injuries impacting the most important units on the offense, quarterback and offensive line, the Cardinal had failed to show any type of consistency through the first three games of the season, but the expectation was that K.J. Costello would play better than he had the week before against UCF, and that the offense would begin to show some progress. Almost immediately, it did.
The first six plays of the game were all runs (the opening play was actually a pass to Connor Wedington, but it was judged to be a backwards pass, thus technically a run), and the team in cardinal and white looked like the groups we rooted for in days of yore. Cameron Scarlett was running hard, hitting the hole and breaking tackles, and freshman Austin Jones continued to look like the next great Stanford running back.
After five plays and 53 yards, the Cardinal was in Oregon territory, and after Costello completed a pass over the middle to Osiris St. Brown for a 1st down at the 17, it seemed like we had the old Stanford offense back again. If David Shaw had made a checklist on Friday night of things he wanted to see from his team in the early going, I imagined that he was mentally checking off all the boxes. The offensive line looked solid as they opened holes for the running game, both Scarlett and Jones had broken several tackles (a point of emphasis mentioned by Shaw in his weekly presser), and time was running off the clock, keeping the potent Oregon offense on the sidelines.
By that last measure, time of possession, the drive was a complete success. The Stanford offense would run 12 plays and consume the first 6:17 of the game, but Shaw has always been careful to correct those who say that time of possession is the most important thing in football. "Time of possession plus touchdowns," he reminds us. And by that measure, the drive was less successful.
When last year's offense was running at its best, Costello was able to deliver passes precisely to the one spot where only his receiver -- typically a large receiver with a considerable physical advantage over his defender -- could get the ball. At times it looked easy, but Shaw, Costello, and the receivers always reminded us of the hours of repetition that went into these seemingly simple plays, as the quarterback and the receivers had to learn each other's tendencies, preferences, and even body language to develop the trust necessary to run such plays. Last year Stanford receivers never really looked open; Costello just found them anyway.
Unfortunately, Costello hasn't yet developed that chemistry with this new batch of receivers. That seemed to doom this drive, and it might've been the source of the offensive struggles throughout the game. Tight end Colby Parkinson is just as big as Kaden Smith, one of Costello's favorite targets from last season, so it makes sense that he'd run the same routes in the red zone. On 1st down he broke left towards the front corner of the end zone, but Costello's pass was out of reach. They were able to connect two plays later, but Parkinson had allowed his defender to push him off his line, so even though he came down with the catch, he was well out of bounds. The Cardinal had racked up time of possession, but they settled for a field goal and a 3-0 lead.
While that was certainly a positive start of the offense, I think everyone in the Stadium believed that it was the battle between the Oregon offense and the Stanford defense that would determine the game. The Cardinal had struggled over the previous two weeks, yielding 90 points to two freshman quarterbacks, so there was understandable concern about about how they might fare against senior Justin Herbert, one of the top quarterbacks in the nation.
On the first Oregon possession, however, the defense would acquit itself well, yielding a 1st down but eventually forcing a punt. It was a win for the defense, but Oregon's punt pushed the Cardinal offense all the way back to the 12, starting a trend that would plague Stanford throughout the game. Oregon enjoyed a considerable advantage in field position all afternoon, with their average starting position on the 34, while Stanford's was just inside the 20, including one stretch of three straight drives starting at the 8, the 8, and the 10.
After that opening drive, the Stanford offense floundered for most of the game. The seven possessions after the field goal produced six punts and an interception and gained a total of 80 yards and just six 1st downs. There were any number of things going wrong, beginning with the quarterback. During the first drive of the game, Costello had hit his throwing hand on an opponent's helmet. He didn't miss a down, but he never looked right. He spent lots of time shaking his right hand and massaging it between plays, and he struggled with his accuracy for much of the game. He was under a fair amount of pressure from the Oregon pass rush, but even when his offensive line provided a clean pocket, Costello still didn't look comfortable.
As a result of all this, Stanford was never able to put together anything in the downfield passing game that could scare the Oregon defense or force them to make adjustments. Statistically speaking, it was the worst regular season game of Costello's career, as he completed just 16 of 30 passes for 120 yards. We can't put all the blame on Costello's shoulders, however, as there were numerous examples of young receivers getting pushed off their routes, making incorrect reads, and dropping passes. Quite simply, there's a lot for the offensive coaches to address this week.
Because the passing game was stagnant -- only five of Costello's sixteen completions went for ten yards or more, with three of those plays coming on the final two drives -- it naturally became more difficult to run the ball. Even so, Scarlett had an excellent game, producing 97 yards of hard running on 19 carries, and it's important to note that Stanford almost doubled Oregon's rushing output, 114 to 61.
Stanford obviously wasn't going to beat Oregon without scoring any touchdowns, but it must be noted that the Cardinal defense had its strongest game of the season and did its best to keep the team in the game. The box score shows that Herbert was incredibly efficient, completing 19 of 24 passes for 259 yards and three touchdowns, but there were long stretches when the Oregon offense struggled to move the ball, most notably in the second half when the Ducks opened with three straight punts.
As usual, though, the game came down to a handful of big plays. When Oregon was given a short field in the 1st quarter after a Stanford punt, Herbert hit Johnny Johnson on a crossing pattern for an easy 19 yards, and then he took advantage of a collective breakdown by the Stanford secondary on the next play. Three Oregon receivers started out to Herbert's left and when three Stanford defenders hedged towards the outside two, the slot receiver, Jaylon Redd, was unguarded as he broke across the middle of the field. Herbert hit him in stride, and when the safety took a bad angle, Redd was able to race untouched into the end zone for the score and a 7-3 lead. Shaw had stressed the need to play solid top-down defense, but the secondary wasn't able to execute that here.
Oregon's next touchdown didn't come on a big play, but at the end of long drive built on unfortunate mistakes by the Stanford defense. On 3rd and 9 from the Oregon 35, Bryan Addison gained ten yards for the 1st down after breaking a tackle that wouldn't gotten the defense off the field. On 3rd and 11 from the 44, Travis Dye gobbled up 24 yards on a screen pass that was almost blown up by Paulson Adebo, and two plays later the Ducks were in the end zone again, up 14-3.
To be honest, it felt like the Ducks might start to run away at this point, but they wouldn't score again until five minutes into the 4th quarter. My guess is that everyone connected with the program would've been happy on Friday night knowing that the Ducks would score only 21 points the next day, but I'm also sure that they'd have assumed the Stanford offense would produce more than just two field goals.
As David Shaw stood at the podium during his postgame press conference, he spoke openly about his team's failures that afternoon, and made it clear that it was his responsibility to make sure the team played better. I don't think I've ever seen him so frustrated and angry, and I think that's a good thing. For the first time in Shaw's tenure, his team has lost three games in a row, and the voices calling for systemic changes are getting louder. Some are eager to see changes in offensive philosophy and point towards a need for an offensive coordinator with full play calling responsibilities, but there is also a growing segment of the fanbase calling for the firing of Shaw and the entire staff.
When a program that measures itself by Rose Bowls and conference championships opens a season this way, this is what happens, but any talk of replacing Shaw is foolish. If you spent three hours watching the struggles of the offense on Saturday evening you might wonder if they'll ever be able to score a touchdown, let alone win a game, but things will get better. The team faces the most important week of practice yet this season, and on Saturday they'll travel to Corvallis to play Oregon State in what has become the most important game on their schedule. To look beyond that game would be just as foolish as looking for another coach.
We find ourselves deep in the breach. Instead of making plans for Pasadena, we're wondering about making a bowl game. We look down the schedule and we see that one of our annual punching bags scored 67 points on Saturday night, and the other is 4-0 and ranked comfortably in the top 25. Nothing, it seems, is certain anymore, except for this -- we'll all be watching and cheering on Saturday.
Go Mighty Card.
