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Blogging with the Enemy: Oregon State Beavers

Last year's comfortable 35-14 win for Oregon State over Stanford ended an eleven-game winning streak in the series for the Cardinal. Before that win, the Beavers had been the only team in the conference never to have beaten David Shaw. That would've been news, but coming as it did in the middle of a depressing seven-game losing streak to close the season -- or a ten-game streak if we include this fall and don't include the win over Colgate -- the end of that streak hardly made news.

Blogging with the Enemy: Oregon Ducks

Over the past twelve years of Stanford football, three of the programs biggest -- and most surprising -- wins have come at the expense of the Oregon Ducks. There was the epic game in 2012 when freshman quarterback Kevin Hogan led the Cardinal to an improbable overtime win in Autzen Stadium, the miracle comeback in 2018, and the lone highlight of last season, a 31-24 overtime win on the Farm.

On the other side of the coin, the Ducks have handed the Cardinal two of the more painful losses in program history. First a crushing 53-30 home loss in Andrew Luck's senior season of 2011, and then a shocking 38-36 upset in 2015, losses that left arguably the two best Stanford teams of all time on the outside of the national championship picture.

These two schools have produced plenty of dramatic games, they've crushed each other's championship dreams more than once, and for most of the past decade they were the two best teams in the conference, with one or the other usually representing the Pac-12 North in the conference championship game.

Entering into Saturday's game, however, things are... different.

Blogging with the Enemy: Washington Huskies

Once upon a time, if you were opening conference play against two teams who each were breaking in a new quarterback and also had brand new coaching staffs, you might feel like the schedule makers had smiled upon you. You'd assume those two early wins and begin thinking about bowl game destinations.

For the second consecutive game, Stanford will face an opponent with a brand new quarterback, a brand new system, and a brand new coaching staff. Unfortunately for the Cardinal, USC seemed to be in midseason form when they travelled to the Farm two weeks ago, and the Washington Huskies also look to be adjusting well to all the new faces in the building. 

Washington opened with two sacrificial lambs, Kent State and Portland State, beating them by a combined score of 97-26. It was easy to discount those two wins, but last week they beat #11 Michigan State 39-28 in a game that was essentially over at halftime. September rankings don't mean much, but this was still an impressive win over a name brand team, a statement win for a new staff and a new quarterback.

Blogging with the Enemy: USC Trojans

In the twelve years that I've been writing about Stanford football in this space, no series has been as consistently consequential as the yearly matchups with the USC Trojans. In fact, if we push back a few years and start with 2007, you can easily make the argument that four of the most important games in Stanford history have been victories over the Trojans. First there was the Greatest Upset Ever in 2007, then there was the "What's Your Deal?" game in 2009 that announced to the world that Stanford football was more than just a flash in the pan, next we had the epic triple overtime win in 2011, and finally the 2015 Pac-12 Championship game.

The Trojans have been a measuring stick for the Cardinal throughout the Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw eras, and just as the Stanford wins have been triumphant, the losses have been catastrophic. At no point in the last fifteen years has either fanbase ever left the stadium feeling good about a moral victory. One side's narrow win is the other's heartbreaking defeat; one's joyous romp is the other's embarrassment. This isn't an official rivalry so no trophy is exchanged, but the loser always leaves blood on the field.

For proof we only need turn the calendar back to last year at this time when a fragile Stanford team came into the Los Angeles Coliseum and stunned the Trojans -- and the rest of the college football world -- with a decisive 42-28 victory. And the Trojans bled. Head coach Clay Helton was fired just a few days later.

Big Game Preview

Back in the early days of this blog, when Stanford football was a fixture not only atop the conference standings but also in the national polls, Big Game was honestly an afterthought. All of the pageantry and tradition was nice, and I loved watching the players hoist the Axe in triumph following the game, but if I'm being honest, there were always several games on the schedule that meant more to me.

Blogging with the Enemy: Oregon State Beavers

When Stanford football travels north to Corvallis to play Oregon State, the games always seem to be close and dramatic, so I'm always surprised when I notice the long winning streak the Cardinal owns against the Beavers. It's grown to eleven games at this point, and Oregon State remains the only conference team that hasn't beaten David Shaw in his career as Stanford's head coach.

If those streaks are to continue, a lot of the current trends surrounding Stanford football are going to have to change. Oregon State's success this year has been built around its strong running game. They lead the Pac-12 in rushing with 229.9 yards per game (9th in the nation), and bruising tailback B.J. Baylor is averaging 6.1 yards per carry against conference opponents. Only three weeks ago, facing the same Utah defense that just erased the Stanford running game, Baylor rumbled for 152 yards on just 19 carries. How important is their reliance on the running game? Over their last seven games, when the Beavers throw the ball fewer than twenty times, they're undefeated; when they throw for more than twenty, they haven't won.

Blogging with the Enemy: Washington Huskies

With the Cardinal sitting at 3-4 coming out of a much needed bye week, it seems like as good a time as any to look at the season through a broader lens. Where is this team, and where is this program?

The success that David Shaw enjoyed in the early years of his tenure -- three conference championships in five years, and a couple of teams that were among the best in the country -- has led to something that would've been unimaginable twenty years ago. There is now a vocal part of the fanbase -- perhaps the most vocal part of the fanbase -- that is unsatisfied with anything less than what we saw from the Cardinal in the first half of the last decade.

I'm not here to say that Stanford Football should not always aspire to those heights, but my memories of the Dark Times, as well as a perspective that includes the wider landscape of college football beyond the Pac-12, allow me to remain calm while others around me are losing their heads. It's tempting to flip channels while sitting on the couch and bemoan the fact that every other program always seems to be performing at an elite level, but that simply isn't the case. Michigan fans, for example, might be thrilled with their team's 7-0 start, but it wasn't long ago that Jim Harbaugh's photo hung in every post office in Ann Arbor. The Clemson Tigers are clearly one of the sport's elite programs, but this morning they're lucky to be 4-3.

This 3-4 Stanford team could be 4-3 if they'd hung on against Washington State or even 5-2 if they'd also kept things together against UCLA, but that line of thinking ignores the improbability, almost impossibility, of the Oregon win. The Cardinal is a middle of the pack Pac-12 team, and like most average teams, the moments when they've teased us with brilliance have been counterbalanced with frustrating sequences of ineptitude. The absolute value of all that has been a season in which the team has never had more than a one-game separation from the .500 mark in one direction or the other.

Blogging with the Enemy: Oregon Ducks

The historical rivalry with Cal draws on a century of history, evokes memories of miracles and mayhem, and awards an Axe to the winner each year. The annual game against USC gives the Cardinal a chance to measure itself against one of college football's marquis brands in a contest that always seems to answer questions about the direction of that year's team.

But you could easily argue that no program in the Pac-12 has been more important to the fortunes of Stanford football over the past decade than the Oregon Ducks. The two teams have split their last dozen meetings, but it was the first two games of that twelve that truly ignited this rivalry. With the Stanford program rising to national prominence, they just couldn't beat Oregon. Consecutive decisive losses by strikingly similar scores ( 52-31 and 53-30) led most to conclude that Stanford had an Oregon problem, as even the best quarterback in the history of the school wasn't able to lead his team to a victory over the Ducks.

Stanford evolved on both sides of the ball in ways that were clear attempts to narrow the gap between the two programs. Several years later, during a conversation about Chip Kelly's arrival at UCLA, I asked David Shaw if he thought the former Oregon coach had been indirectly responsible for Stanford's improvement and eventual series of conference championships. He paused just a second for emphasis and then said, "One hundred percent."

Blogging with the Enemy: UCLA Bruins

It was, without question, the most preposterous game of the David Shaw Era. Playing UCLA in an empty Rose Bowl was strange enough, but the ebb and flow of that final game of the 2020 season defied all logic. After thoroughly dominating the first half, the Cardinal fell apart in the third quarter before regaining its footing in the fourth quarter to force an overtime in which they'd appear to have the game salted away before botching things enough that defeat once again seemed certain until a heroic finish saved the victory in the end. If that sentence made your head spin, it was nothing compared to the actual game.

Blogging with the Enemy: Vanderbilt Commodores

When defensive coordinator Derek Mason left Stanford following the 2013 season to take over the head job at 
Vanderbilt University, it seemed like a good decision. The team had reached its greatest heights in program history as James Franklin led them to consecutive nine-win seasons before leaping from his stepping stone to the Penn State head coaching position. Even though sustaining that level of success in the ultra-competitive SEC would surely be difficult, it seemed like Mason, with his experience recruiting players to another academically-minded program, would be a perfect fit.

It didn't work out that way. In his seven years at the helm, Mason took the Commodores to two bowl games, but never managed more than six wins in a season. He bottomed out in 2020, fired after losing the first eight games of the season (Vandy would finish 0-9), and ending his Vanderbilt career with an underwhelming 27-55 record, with only ten of those wins coming in conference. Mason is currently the defensive coordinator at Auburn, which somehow seems like a promotion, and Vanderbilt moved on.

The Clark Lea era began with a thud, a resounding 23-3 home loss to East Tennessee State, but the Commodores rebounded with a road win over Colorado State, 24-21. Lea has high aspirations for his program, but this certainly appears to be a long term restoration project, and the Cardinal might be arriving in Nashville at just the right time to grab the win.