Memes, Chaos, and Trees: Stanford Game Preview
Memes, Chaos, and Trees: Stanford Game Preview
Fun Fact: Everyone thinks Stanford is in Palo Alto, but the campus is actually located in its own census-designated place called Stanford, California.
Oregon plays at Stanford tomorrow at 12:30 on ABC in their first road Pac-12 game, and their first game against an opponent from the North. Let’s just dive right into it.
If I were to lean into the Numbers™ and the Stats™ like I did last week, I might spew some rushing stats like this:
Or I might dive into potential game plans and Blueprint Games like I mentioned in my Arizona Game Review, I might mention some historic David-Shaw-hold-the-ball strategy stats like these:
But stats lied to us last week, and so I’m going back to my roots and I’m going to look at this Stanford game with my eyes and my gut.
My instincts immediately tell me to panic, right?
It’s Stanford. It’s down on The Farm. It’s the first conference road game coming off of what some fans might call “disappointing” wins over much lesser teams at home—although I would describe those games more accurately as The Super Double Fake Ohio State Hangover/Non-Hangover In Which The Ducks Still Won By Lots of Points.
But to each our own.
I think Stanford still lives in all our collective brains as “Pure Physicality” and as the ultimate kryptonite to those faster, smaller Chip Kelly teams. And it makes sense. They were our boogeyman back then. They really stepped up and became our true Pac-12 North rival when nobody else was brave enough to do it.
But even with their big USC win (which looks worse every week) and their ability to keep it competitive with UCLA, I’m not sure if it’s fair to see Stanford as that same kind of team.
The Cardinal are maybe close to the top half of the conference, and they’ll give the Ducks their best shot, but there are few keys things that I think make this game less and less scary for Oregon.
It’s no secret that depth has been saving the Ducks from a load of injuries up to this point, but the personnel has been seriously hurting along the linebacking corps and the rest of the front seven. We can only rely on Bennett Williams to keep crashing down like a bat out of hell for so long.
But it’s safe to say that if Kayvon Thibodeaux—whose name I can finally spell without double checking—is as ready to go as reports have indicated, then I think our panic meters for this game should decrease by a factor of a zillion.
The pass rush has been BEGGING for just that extra bit of umph to put them over the top. Something to turn those hurries and pressures into full-on sacks and chaos. As we all know, KT is precisely that something.
And getting into the face of 6-6 sophomore QB #18 Tanner McKee is going to be the thing that shifts this game from a possibly borderline two-score game, to a three-score game and beyond.
McKee can sling the ball for sure, but he is also sitting behind the worst Stanford offensive line of the last five years, and so many of his highlight throws seem to come with a defender breathing down on him and just barely avoiding disaster.
Kayvon can be that disaster.
After adding an all-world guy to the pass rush, it’s all gravy from there for Tim DeRuyter. Especially as he faces a first-year starter in McKee who hasn’t thrown a pick yet this year.
Verone & Co. are salivating.
The Ducks have been challenging opponents to complete long passes over and over, and from a zoomed out view it can look like he’s just playing a “soft zone” but it’s all about baiting quarterbacks into throwing into danger zones that they don’t even know are danger zones.
We are daring teams to throw interceptions, and it is working.
DeRuyter has a long-held theory that turnovers can be coached. And many throughout the football world have laughed at this idea.
Whether it’s through teaching new tackling techniques to strip the ball, or drawing up schemes that intend to create turnovers, DeRuyter is the only person at any level of football that I’ve ever heard tout this idea. But the Ducks’ have the number one turnover margin in the nation with plus-12—a seventeen-point improvement from their first four games of 2020—and that kind of number is pretty damn to argue with.
Plus, they thought Galileo was crazy, too.
As for the offense, I think we’ll see a continuation of what we’ve been seeing. The biggest problem with the offense last week was that we didn’t get to see it play more.
With a near twenty minute disparity in time of possession, the Ducks had just eight meaningful offensive drives last week—they scored touchdowns on four of those possessions, scored two field goals, punted once, and then suffered the safety on one of the poorest five-man rush pick-ups at the two yard line in Oregon history.
That being said, there are three main things that could be improved with that group: 1) CJ should get 20 carries, 2) the offensive line needs to be the same ~seven guys who showed up to Columbus, and 3) Kris Hutson should spin the ball again after his next catch because that spin was FLAWLESS, and I think we should give Rod Gilmore a chance to make Duck fans mad again for another week.
It sure distracted people from at least 35% of the weekly “bench AB” bs.
There have been past years to panic about a trip to Stanford, and there will be future years to panic, too. But we know that Mario gets these guys ready to go on a business trip like this.
KT wins this one going away. 44-23.
Go Ducks.