A year ago, Stanford had no chance on paper against Notre Dame. The Irish were three-score favorites coming off two impressive wins away from home, set to face what would eventually be David Shaw’s final team, at the time 0-4 against FBS opponents and losing by an average of 12.5 points. And then the Cardinal handed Marcus Freeman the defining upset of his debut season.
Maybe that loss plays a part in No. 18 Notre Dame (8-3) finding revenge this weekend as now Stanford (3-8) finishes a head coach’s FBS debut season.
Should Irish fans instead worry? Let’s chat with Alex Simon, the sports editor at SFGate.com.
DF: Stanford has surprised me this season, which given a 3-8 record, really shows you how little I thought of this team entering the season. And the Cardinal lost to Sacramento State in September, something that fit my expectations precisely. So to win two games in Pac-12 play has been impressive compared to all reasonable predictions.
Then again, one of those victories was against Colorado, another moment I saw coming. So I suppose the more I look at it, Stanford beating Washington State, 10-7, was all that really surprised me. And that was an ugly football game. A total of 462 yards between the Cardinal and the Cougars, an interception thrown by each team, neither one averaged as many as four yards per play. I frame my surprise as such to underscore that even in playing better than anyone expected, Stanford has been terrible.
What were your preseason thoughts around Troy Taylor’s first year as Cardinal head coach?
AS: Taylor was going to be fighting an uphill battle no matter what in this specific season, particularly given Stanford’s trip through the doldrums at the end of the David Shaw era and the school’s relative inability to use the transfer portal. Still, Taylor’s offensive coaching style promised to bring some innovation to the Cardinal, if only for the sake of trying something new. I really thought the ceiling for this team was four wins.
Stanford’s greatest weakness has been its defense, and in the sense of being worse than the offense, that is saying something. SP+ ranks the defense No. 114 in the country. It is a bottom-five defense in terms of success rate. Giving up 36 points per game doesn’t really illustrate how bad it is.
Remove Hawaii, Sacramento State and Washington State as the worst opponents but also remove Oregon and Washington as the best, and in those other six games, the Cardinal gave up 41.8 points per game. How do you allow 62 points to Oreon State? 43 to Colorado? What have opponents been able to so eagerly exploit?
The passing game. One of the few brights spots even late into the Shaw era was their secondary, led by legendary defensive backs coach Duane Akina. But that ain’t happening this year. Through the air, Stanford has allowed the second-most passing yards — 3,436, with only South Florida allowing more — and passing touchdowns, with 30. (Of funny note: The only team that has allowed more passing TDs is USC, at 31, though the Trojans have already concluded their regular season. The Cardinal have allowed 30 passing touchdowns to date.)
"Many of the guys that were here last year understand how disappointing that (Stanford) loss was for them." - Marcus Freeman.
— Douglas Farmer (@D_Farmer) November 20, 2023
I'll never be able to explain that loss. Still not sure how that one happened.
Is there any reason to think Stanford’s defense will bow up against the Irish on Saturday?
Well, last year, I am pretty sure I said “no” and then they did. But this defense allows more than six yards per play, it doesn’t force turnovers (the Cardinal has six interceptions and has recovered 1-of-3 fumbles) and it doesn’t stop teams on third down (opponents are converting 49.32% of third downs) or in the red zone (37 touchdowns allowed on 48 trips). Notre Dame could likely set its score at whatever number it wants to get in this final game.
Offensively, Troy Taylor gets creative, and he is why I think the Cardinal future in the ACC could be intriguing, 2-3 years down the line. That hasn’t yielded wonderful results this year, the No. 100 SP+ offense, but it can catch opponents off guard. For Notre Dame fans who may not have spent the season watching Stanford — there’s a poignant Pac-12 Network joke to be made here — would you indulge us with a quick description of Taylor’s approach?
Taylor puts the entire system in the hands of the quarterbacks — and yes, I do mean plural. Ashton Daniels is his main guy with 300 pass attempts and 98 rush attempts, but Justin Lamson is the team’s leader in rushes at 110 and has thrown 82 passes himself. Taylor famously used a two-QB system at Sacramento State, and while Daniels is clearly the guy, Lamson is a part of the gameplan. The ground-and-pound nature of Stanford from the 2010s was leaving even last year under Shaw, but this is an entirely different emphasis on the quarterback — shoot, the top running back in terms of rush attempts (E.J. Smtih at 52) has less than half of the rushes as Lamson does. It’s not that much better than what they’ve done in the past few years, but it is certainly different, so expect to see a ton of Stanford out of the shotgun and the quarterback with the ball, either throwing or rushing.
Hearing Marcus Freeman talk about the needed halftime adjustments against Wake Forest -- claims Notre Dame didn't see the slow-mesh until well into the second half -- has me already thinking about a HT Stanford team total Under on Saturday night.
— Douglas Farmer (@D_Farmer) November 20, 2023
I shouldn’t bad mouth the Cardinal too much. It beat the Irish last season, a game I will never understand. Unless you can explain how that happened, let’s jump to one big-picture question before a prediction: What is the general feeling in northern California, at least among the college football fans in northern California, around Stanford’s and Cal’s looming move to the ACC?
Disbelief and disillusionment probably are the two strongest feelings. This past weekend, Stanford hosted the Big Game on campus on Saturday, with a sell-out crowd for two bad teams. The rivarly will remain and feel the same, if not more important going forward. But as a Bay Area native who went to college in North Carolina — not at an ACC school, but I visited plenty of them — I know better than most just how long the flights are and arduous the travel to some of the ACC schools can be even within the current ACC footprint. Adding these two Bay Area schools in, as well as SMU, is serving absolutely no one here, both in the ACC and in the Bay Area. Sure, some fans may get excited about a one-off trip to, say, Clemson or Miami. But I can’t imagine there will be many Stanford fans heading to Syracuse next year or Virginia the year after.
And now this weekend. Notre Dame is favored by 26 points — just for context, that spread was only -16.5 last year.
Stanford did hang around against Washington, covering that game’s spread. Perhaps that says more about the Huskies’ defense though, as USC, Oregon, UCLA and Oregon State have all just erased the Cardinal. I would think Notre Dame is in the same caliber as those teams, but if you want to play it safe for late-game touchdowns on such a big number, the smartest bet may be to take the Over and hammer the Notre Dame team total Over.
(With the weird luck of 2016 aside, Brian Kelly very much reached this level at Notre Dame. Competed for three titles in the 10 seasons between 2012 and 2021, was on the verge of two more in 2015 and 2021, otherwise won 8, 7, 9, 11 regular-season games.)
— Douglas Farmer (@D_Farmer) November 21, 2023
