Following their incredible 31-24 overtime win over #3 Oregon back on Saturday, October 2, Stanford football has headed in the wrong direction, losing three straight games to #22/25 Arizona State (10-28), Washington State (31-34), and Washington (13-20). The games against Arizona State and Washington State were both on the road while the loss to Washington was at home.
At 3-5 overall and 2-4 in the Pac-12, a Pac-12 North title for Stanford can be kissed goodbye and even a trip to a bowl game might be a pipe dream. For Stanford, the biggest thing they have at stake at this point is simply pride. Pride in showing that they’re better than what they’ve been these last three games, pride in finishing the season strong and building positive momentum for next season, and pride in making sure The Stanford Axe stays on The Farm.
“We're looking at the season. We're trying to finish off as strong as possible, right?” Stanford sophomore tight end Benjamin Yurosek said after Saturday’s loss to Washington. “We're not looking back at these last three weeks. Obviously it's been very frustrating. Obviously the locker room has been very quiet after. That's not the feelings we want to have.”
Yurosek is right that Stanford cannot dwell too much on these losses and that they have to look forward, seeking to correct as much of their problems as possible. At the same time, they do need to learn what they can from these losses so as to play better down the stretch of the season and not commit the same mistakes again.
“We definitely have to take it one game at a time,” Stanford junior linebacker Levani Damuni said. “It's so frustrating because we know how talented we are, how talented our quarterback is, guys on our D-line, defense, whatever. We have the talent.
“It's not that they're just better than us. We just need to reach our potential. How we do that, you know, it definitely starts in practice. But, yeah, it's everyone, though.
“Everyone's just got to dig deep and be the best version of theirself come game day. That all starts with the preparation all throughout the week in practice. Definitely got to have better practices.”
Aside from getting healthy, which one could argue has been the biggest issue for Stanford this year, there are three things that Stanford can improve on in order to better their chances of finishing the season strong. If they are able to improve in these three areas that I’m about to outline, they could finish the season on a high note and get themselves into a bowl.
The first thing Stanford has to improve on is special teams play. Ryan Sanborn on Saturday averaged 35.5 yards per punt. Outside of having a 50 yard punt that was fair caught at the Washington 5 yard line, Sanborn’s punting was pretty putrid. David Shaw loves to pin teams back and play a more conservative, old school approach which is fine so long as the punting game is on point. If it’s not, there’s trouble. Also, Stanford did have a kickoff go out of bounds and then on top of that, they haven’t had any real explosive returns, either. While punting has been the biggest issue on special teams, there are other areas of special teams that need to be improved as well.
The second thing Stanford needs to improve on is executing when the game is on the line. They did a wonderful job of this against Oregon, but since then, this has been a real struggle on both offense and defense. Against Washington State, the offense did their job by taking the lead in the 4th quarter only for the defense to quickly get scored on and give away the lead. Against Washington, it was the opposite. It was the defense that got the clutch stop only for the offense to fail to move the chains and run out the clock.
Stanford needs to have both offense and defense doing their part in the closing minutes. It can’t just be one or the other. Part of this rests on the shoulders of the coaching staff for not calling the right plays, but part of this also rests on the players for not doing a better job of executing. Collectively, the team needs to figure it out.
Finally, Stanford needs to be the team that has more momentum turning plays. Such plays include 40+ yard touchdowns or 40+ yard plays that get in the redzone, interceptions or fumble recoveries by the defense, sacks or major tackles for loss, safeties, blocked punts and kicks, and also 40+ yard returns whether they be off kickoffs or punts. In this three game losing skid, it’s been Stanford’s opponents that have done a better job of getting these types of plays while Stanford hasn’t had very many of their own.
Stanford almost had one against Washington when Jimmy Wyrick nearly recovered a fumble, but it ended up being no cigar upon review. If Stanford can find a way to be the team that has more momentum changing plays in these final four games, that’ll go a long way towards getting some wins and finishing the season on a strong note.
At the end of the day, it’s truly gut check time for Stanford football. It’s easy to get up for games when you’re riding a winning streak and are chasing a league championship. It’s much harder to do so when you’ve lost three games in a row and a lot of your preseason goals have become out of reach. It would be easy for Stanford to pack it in the rest of the season and feel like it just wasn’t their year due to the injuries and the particularly unkind schedule. These next four games will tell us a lot about the resolve of this program and how well they are able to band together during times of adversity.
