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2022 Position Preview: Defensive Backs

If we're ranking the greatest Stanford football players of the past 50 years, three obvious names come to mind -- Bryce Love, Andrew Luck, and Christian McCaffrey. (Personally, I hedge a bit. I've got Luck as the best quarterback in program history and Love as the greatest pure running back, which allows me to choose McCaffrey as the best all-around player.)

But if we're talking about the most important players, there's a fourth name that has to be included with those three. In fact, I'd argue that along with Luck, Richard Sherman is one to the two most important players in program history.

2022 Position Preview: Offensive Line

If you've been reading this series, and if you've been paying attention to Stanford Football for the past decade, you know that nothing I wrote as I previewed the running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks really matters. Not a word. 

You could make a strong argument that the offensive line of any football team is the most significant variable in determining overall success, and it's no different for this year's Stanford squad. In fact, given the identity and brand defined by the program ten years ago in comparison to the product on the field recently, the performance of this year's offensive line will do more than just determine how long Tanner McKee has to throw or how wide the holes are for E.J. Smith. This group will decide whether or not we still talk about Intellectual Brutality. They will determine the future viability of the Tunnel Workers Union. It's that serious.

2022 Position Preview: Quarterbacks

A year ago at this time, the Stanford quarterback position was a mystery. The early departure of Davis Mills had left a question mark behind center, and most fans felt like Tanner McKee was the obvious answer. But McKee was still relatively new to the program, just over a year removed from his LDS mission, and senior Jack West waited in the wings, presumably with a thorough understanding of the notoriously complex Stanford playbook. (If you need a second, repeat after me: "God grant me the serenity to accept that I cannot change the Stanford playbook, the courage to turn away from the lure of other teams' watered down playbooks, and the wisdom to know the difference.")

2022 Position Preview: Tight Ends

Junior Ben Yurosek needs a new nickname. His Stanford teammates started calling him The Future a couple years ago, but that became passé in 2021 as Yurosek led the Cardinal in receiving yardage while catching 42 passes for 653 yards and three touchdowns.

It was an eye-opening debut for a player who hadn't caught a single pass the year before, but it was familiar at the same time. Yurosek is just the latest in a long line of legendary Stanford tight ends, many of whom earned all-conference and All-America honors. (One, Zach Ertz, even had the Mackey Award stolen from him, which for Stanford players is the same as winning it.) Ertz is on his way to the NFL Hall of Fame and still doing his thing on Sundays (74/763/5 for the Arizona Cardinals in 2021), and Dalton Schultz ranked third among NFL tight ends with 78 receptions for the Dallas Cowboys.

2022 Position Preview: Wide Receivers

Stanford held an early 10-7 lead over Oregon in the fifth game of the season when Tanner McKee completed a 15-yard pass to wide receiver Brycen Tremayne for a 1st down. Big plays like this were no longer a surprise to Stanford fans who were familiar with Tremayne's story at that point. The former walk-on had earned a scholarship, and in his senior campaign he had become one of the most dependable receivers on the roster, leading the team with 240 yards receiving and a touchdown in each of the season's first five games. He didn't scare defensive backs, he just beat them.

2022 Position Preview: Running Backs

At the very least, there is clarity. It is clear who the feature back in the Stanford offense will be, but more on him later. We cannot discuss the future of the Stanford running game without first looking to the past -- the recent past as well as memories which are rapidly fading away. 

Once upon a time there was no more feared rushing attack in the nation than what was happening in Palo Alto a decade ago. As hard as it might be to believe, Toby Gerhart was a Heisman finalist thirteen years ago, Christian McCaffrey had his trophy stolen seven years ago, and Bryce Love was the runner-up five years ago. This year's seniors were scouring their cafeterias for prom dates the last time the Cardinal had a substantial running attack. And that has changed everything.

The Dean of the Conference

David Shaw is comfortable. And why shouldn't he be? By any measurement his tenure as head football coach at Stanford has been the most impressive in school history. His teams have won three Pac-12 championships and two Rose Bowls, he's been named Pac-12 Coach of the Year a record four times, and no active coach in the conference can match his ninety wins, which is also a Stanford record.

Shaw's confidence, however, likely doesn't come only from those records and accolades, but from a life spent in the game. The son of a football coach who grew up to play wide receiver at Stanford, Shaw worked on various staffs in college and the NFL before taking the head coaching job at his alma mater just a little over ten years ago. His early success led to annual speculation about a future at the next level, and most observers assumed he would use the Stanford job as a stepping stone to greater glory at the next level. He certainly had opportunities to leave, but the rumors which were once rampant every time the NFL coaching carousel began to spin have slowed to a trickle. It seems that the football world has finally started believing Shaw's claim that the Stanford job is the only one he ever really wanted.

Pac-12 Media Day

Pac-12 Meda Day changes from year to year, probably a reflection of the fact that the conference is always in search of an identity. This is not the "football is god" SEC, not the blue collar Big Ten, not the fast and loose Big 12. Early editions of this event promoted the conference as glitzy and glamorous and were set at one movie studio or another in Los Angeles, but recently that's been a tricky sell with only a handful of A-list stars -- or sometimes none. (That being said, we were on Hollywood Boulevard this year; between the parking lot and the hotel I walked past dozens of stars embedded in the sidewalk.)

The 2021 version of the event was predictably scaled down, with a media room roughly half the size of what we've been used to in the past and slightly reduced contact with players and coaches, but everyone was pretty aware that we were all just lucky to be there.

2021 Stanford Football Schedule Review

As we teeter on the knife's edge of the Covid-19 pandemic, all of us wondering if things will get better or worse, I'm no different than the rest of you. I find myself constantly thinking about first and lasts. Last week I went to a movie theater for the first time in sixteen months; the last time I went to a college or pro sporting event was almost two years ago. Once upon a time we measured our lives with candles on birthday cakes or family weddings or high school graduations, but now it seems we count the opportunities lost rather than the celebrations enjoyed.

One of the things that I long for, as insignificant as it may be in the grand scheme of things, is a normal college football season this fall. I'd like to hear actual crowds when I'm watching on television, I'd like see fans in the stands -- I'd like to be in the stands at some point. I'd like to be able to track a Stanford football season without some more compassionate part of my brain wondering why we're having a season in the first place.

I want normal. We all do.

The surest sign that the college football world is returning to normal is that Stanford will be playing the most hellacious schedule in all of America. Many schools like to brag when they don't schedule any lower division teams (you don't hear those brags from the mighty SEC, however), but Stanford will be the only Power 5 school in the nation to play a schedule comprised exclusively of Power 5 opponents, a slate which looks even more daunting considering we don't yet know who the Cardinal quarterback will be. There are no trap games; there are only landmines waiting at every step. Let's take a look. (Odds of Victory percentages refer to the Cardinal's projected chances of winning according to two reputable sources -- ESPN's Matchup Predictor and me.)

Stanford Football 2020 Schedule Preview

As the summer months crept along and the Covid maps burned a dark red, there were no indications that we would see any college football this academic year, and certainly nothing in the fall. Though some aren't convinced that the public health environment has changed much over the past three months, a modified Pac-12 season is only two weeks away.

With seven scheduled games instead of twelve and almost no likelihood that any conference team will even be considered for the College Football Playoffs, things will be different. How different? No Pac-12 team will play any non-conference opponents, and for the first time since 1945, Stanford won't play either USC or UCLA. 

Given all this, it would be silly to make any prognostications at this point. Wiser people than I have sworn off making predictions about anything that might or might not happen during this crazy year, but since fortune favors the bold, I choose instead to go forth with one of my favorite posts of the year -- a game-by-game prediction of the Cardinal's 2020 football schedule.