Monday roundtable: Grading Week 1

Goodbye, bye week. With Stanford’s highly anticipated Pac-12 opener against USC less than a week away, football analysts Vihan Lakshman, Alexa Philippou and Andrew Mather answer a question a day about the Cardinal’s Week 1 performance against Kansas State and the impending battle with the Trojans.

Today’s question: What overall grade would you give the Cardinal’s performance against Kansas State and where does Stanford need to see the most improvement ahead of Saturday’s clash with USC?

Vihan Lakshman: As I said on last week’s podcast (shameless plug for the podcast!), I give the Cardinal a B+ in their first test of the season against K-State. Many of my colleagues seem to think I’m being too generous here, but there is one mitigating factor in play that demand we grade a bit more leniently. This was the first game of the season and, since college football doesn’t subscribe to the whole preseason thing, every team will invariably experience some miscues out of the gate and discover some kinks that need to be hit with the iron. Stanford, as we all know from last year, is no exception to that trend. It’s a similar situation to an in-class essay versus a paper you’ve had months to polish — you can’t expect the same sort of quality.

As for areas of improvement, I look at the offensive line. The Tunnel Workers Union was absolutely stellar in the first half, but failed to execute at the same level in the latter 30 minutes, particularly along the interior. In the words of left tackle Casey Tucker, the group experienced a small case of the “first game pitfalls” where technique sometimes breaks down under the bright lights. With that opening game now under their belts and a week off to hone in on the details, look for the Tunnel Workers to come out with a more complete performance against USC — the Cardinal will need it.

Andrew Mather: In some ways, Stanford impressed me against Kansas State in that every position group played at least adequately, including the ones that featured personnel who lacked significant game experience. The problem for me, however, is that it didn’t seem like any position group stood out as exceptional, even against a foe that’s clearly in a transitional year. I’m a harsh grader, so for me that averages to a B-.

The defense did come together quite a bit better than I thought it would, but it’s hard to determine whether that’s attributable to a strong Stanford performance or just a poor Kansas State offensive showing. Quality defense hasn’t permeated the lands of the Big 12 in the last couple years, yet even their unimpressive units looked like geniuses against Joe Hubener last season. The Cardinal deserve some credit for preventing Jesse Ertz, who has now twice beat out Hubener for the starting job, from establishing a rhythm, but I can only give so many marks for making a 2-star recruit who had yet to play an entire collegiate drive look like he might not be up for the occasion. Stanford obviously didn’t put together a bad performance defensively, but I think it’d be projecting too much to call it a good one.

Surprisingly, I think the area where the Cardinal will need to make the most improvement is the running game. McCaffrey was solid as always, but Stanford’s total of 105 rush yards just isn’t that impressive for a team that, on paper, feature a slew of elite backfield talent and a supposed dual-threat quarterback (especially when you consider a muffed handoff gave the Wildcats nearly half that total back in the other direction). Fortunately, I think this unit is in for astronomical improvement upon the return of Bryce Love, but if it continues to post similar numbers it could begin to become an obstacle for the Cardinal going forward.

Alexa Philippou: It might look like giving Stanford a B while Vihan and Andrew voted B+ and B- is the ultimate cop out, but I honestly do think this is a fair grade.  Stanford played fairly close to script in that, to me, it was reasonable to expect to see a solid start from Ryan Burns, some inconsistency along the offensive line and a mostly rock-solid outing for the defense. Sure, Stanford didn’t score 30-plus points and Christian McCaffrey had a *relatively* quiet game (though he still had over 100 rush yards), but the Cardinal were also facing a very good front seven and the likes of preseason All-Big 12 Jordan Willis. Sure, Stanford’s defense wasn’t as sharp in the second half against a pretty shaky offense, but that’s also at least partly because Shaw sat the defensive line starters for a good bit of it. Even then, Stanford only surrendered 10 points the entire second half. Helping boost Stanford’s grade is the fantastic performance of punter Jake Bailey, who placed three punts inside Kansas State’s 10 to help eliminate the Wildcats’ return attack.

I agree with Vihan and would say I’m most worried about Stanford’s offensive line moving forward, especially against teams with dominant front sevens. If the O-line can get going, then that’ll really open up the run game for some McLovin’ (pending Bryce Love’s imminent return).

Contact Vihan Lakshman at vihan ‘at’ stanford.edu, Andrew Mather at amather ‘at’ stanford.edu, and Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.