With the first bye week behind us, it’s time to preview this Saturday’s clash between Notre Dame and the Cardinal of Stanford. Traditionally a spunky program capable of tremendous peaks and valleys, it has now been over half a decade of struggles for this once-proud team. They are currently #86 in the latest FEI rankings but the Irish have played 3 teams lower in the rankings (#90 NIU, #96 Miami OH, and #102 Purdue) so far this season without a perfect record.
Coming into this Saturday’s action, Stanford is 19-40 since the start of the 2019 season and 5-12 since David Shaw left town.
Stanford (+23) at Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, October 12, 2024
Time: 3:30 PM ET
TV: NBC/Peacock
Stanford hosted Virginia Tech this past weekend and was forced to play backup quarterback Justin Lamson after starter Ashton Daniels was injured in their previous Clemson game. The Cardinal lost 31-7 and only averaged 3.9 yards per play while dropping to 1-2 in their first year in ACC play.
Vegas Corner
Notre Dame opened as a 21.5 point favorite and the line shot up 2 points very quickly earlier this week. It briefly shot up more to 24 points but has settled back down to 23 as we approach the weekend.
Weather Report
We should be getting some decent fall weather this weekend with temperatures expected in the low 70’s and partly cloudy in the afternoon. Some showers may arrive earlier in the day for tailgating but disappear after lunch time. It should be pretty humid with a small breeze coming from the northeast corner of the stadium.
Series History
This will be the 38th meeting between the schools with Notre Dame leading the series a not-so-terribly convincing 23-14-0. The cross-over from Weis to Kelly and the mid-to-late Kelly eras both saw the Irish lose 3 straight in this series, although we’ve won 3 out of the last 4 meetings.
We’re fighting for the Legends Trophy:
Fill that bowl up with a sports drink and chug!
As mentioned in last week’s Five Wide Fullbacks, technically Stanford is not on any future schedules for Notre Dame. Outside of the Covid 2020 season, the Cardinal have featured on every Notre Dame schedule since 1997. Will the series continue annually? Or will it get rolled into the normal ACC rotation like everyone else? What will happen to the alternating previous season finale in California with USC?
Fun Fact
Stanford used to be called the “Cornell of the West” due to the original campus being modeled after the Cornell campus in New York State. Also, many of the early professors and faculty at Stanford came from Cornell all the way across the country.
Coaching Staff
This is year 2 of the Troy Taylor era at Stanford. The former California quarterback in the late 1980’s had a slow rise as a coach including becoming an assistant in Berkeley before heading back to the high school ranks for several years, then he became California’s color commentator on the radio, went back to high school coaching, and eventually became a head coach in college at Sacramento State.
Taylor is the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in addition to his head coaching duties.
He brought Bobby April III over from Wisconsin to run the Stanford defense ahead of 2023 and the Cardinal run a lot of 3-3-5 and 2-4-5 schemes with an emphasis on zone coverage.
Mascot
Technically, Stanford does not have an official school mascot. Back in 1930, head coach Pop Warner started using an Indian as a mascot and that lasted until 1972 when the university president banned the name and image for school use. Since 1975, Stanford has been using The Tree as its unofficial mascot.
Well, it’s a tree.
This past spring, Stanford student Ruby Carlson became the 46th Stanford Tree in school history. I’m sure it’s a heck of a story to tell your grandkids someday. It’s not quite the same as being one of the Notre Dame leprechauns, is it?
Portal
Here’s a list of the transfers out this off-season as Stanford continues to run a significant deficit in the college football portal world:
QB Ari Patu – Northern Iowa
RB EJ Smith – Texas A&M
TE Ben Yurosek – Georgia
OL James Pororelc – Duke
DL Jaxson Moi – Tennessee
DL Lance Keneley – Arizona
DL Zephron Lester – Maine
LB Aaron Armitage – Utah State
LB Kiersten Lee – Georgia State
LB Benjamin Hudson – TBD
CB Terian Williams – Bucknell
S Alaka’i Gilman – Utah
S Jimmy Wyrick – UTSA
On offense Patu played sparingly at quarterback, Smith was either the 2nd or 3rd stringer tailback, Yurosek was their top tight end for 3 years, and Pororelc was a career backup.
On defense, Moi was a starter, Keneley was a starter, Lester and Armitage were sparingly used backups, Lee never played, Hudson was a special teams player, Williams was a backup with few snaps, Gilman was a starter, and Wyrick didn’t play.
The Cardinal brought in depth defensive lineman Clay Patterson (he had a fun off-season leaving Yale, verbally committing to Illinois, enrolling at UNLV for the spring instead, then transferring to Stanford) and backup linebacker Jahsiah Galvin from Northern Iowa while cornerback Jay Green is starting after transferring from Washington.
Top Men
RB Chris Davis, Jr. – Stanford had been leaning on true freshman Micah Ford this season but he left last week’s game with an ankle injury on the last series. The Cardinal do use former Notre Dame verbal and current sophomore Sedrick Irvin in the backfield but will turn more to true freshman Chris Davis out of Mississippi with Ford hobbled.
WR Emmett Mosley V – The son of former Notre Dame wideout Emmett Mosley IV and who some considered the jewel of Stanford’s 2024 recruiting class. Mosley was banged up and missed Stanford’s first 3 games but has totaled a solid 11 receptions for 77 yards in the last 2 games.
WR Elic Ayomanor – Really the only proven and good offensive playmaker for the Cardinal, in football terms it’s shocking that Ayomanor didn’t leave the Farm this off-season. The redshirt sophomore has caught 86 passes for 1,330 yards and 9 touchdowns since 2023 began. Coming into the weekend, Ayomanor has caught 35.9% of all receiving yardage for Stanford over that timespan.
Gotta watch out for no. 13 this weekend.
LB Gaethan Bernadel – The 230-pound linebacker came to Stanford last off-season following 2 years at FIU. He’s not real flashy (6 tackles for loss, 1 PBU, 4 QBH, 0.5 sacks in 17 career games with the team) but he’s considered a steady presence on the interior of the defense.
CB Collin Wright – The junior from Texas left the Clemson game early with an injury but ended up dressing and playing last weekend against Virginia Tech. Wright is getting some NFL buzz and we should probably see him lined up often against Beaux Collins.
Bad Matchup
The Stanford Rat Poison
As I’ll detail more below, this is not a decent Stanford team and the biggest enemy for Notre Dame is Notre Dame in this game. That’s exactly what the Irish succumbed to a couple years ago as 17-point home favorites in a loss to the Cardinal. Arguably, Stanford is in a worse spot today (offensively I think there is no argument otherwise) than in 2022. I’m not saying a mega blowout is needed but this should not be a stressful game.
Good Matchup
Stanford’s Weak Offensive Line
Stanford really, really struggled at offensive line last year both protecting the quarterback (41 sacks allowed, 9th worst among Power teams) and creating running lanes (3.45 yards per rush, 13th worst among Power teams). Things haven’t really improved for 2024.
Fifth-year senior Levi Rogers returns at center (but left last week’s game in a boot with crutches) and right guard Simione Pale is back after making 7 starts last year as a true freshman. True sophomore Like Baklenko won the left tackle job and junior Jake Maikkula is the left guard after making a handful of starts last year. The big change for 2024 is true freshman Kahlil House winning the right tackle job while veteran lineman Trevor Mayberry (28 career starts) has effectively been benched this year.
Even with Notre Dame’s injuries, they should eat against this Stanford front.
Special Teams
Stanford brought back punter Aidan Flintoft who won the job in the middle of last season and returns as a true sophomore in 2024. They lost star kicker Josh Karty (6th round draft pick by the Rams) who finished his career nailing 41 out of his final 45 field goals in 2022-23. Redshirt junior kicker Emmet Kenney had been perfect on the season (8 for 8) until missing his lone 53-yard field goal last weekend against Virginia Tech.
Sophomore wideout Tiger Bachmeier (little brother to Boise State quarterback Hank Bachmeier and older brother to Stanford commit and possible Notre Dame re-target quarterback Bear Bachmeier) is the main kick returner–although they shy away from running it out with only 4 returns on the season. Bachmeier is also the punt return but did all of his damage this season against Cal-Poly.
Prediction
This really feels like the first year of the Troy Taylor era at Stanford.
The 2023 season was a complete transition year for the program and this season Taylor has been making a very determined move to ‘his guys’ playing a lot of freshmen in key positions. This would be even more pronounced if quarterback Elijah Brown didn’t get hurt during practice prior to the Syracuse game a few weeks ago. The former Mater Dei signal-caller went 7 of 7 for 97 yards in his lone appearance against Cal-Poly this season and is regarded as the future starter for Stanford. If he were healthy he might have started the Virginia Tech game last week and could’ve been facing Notre Dame on Saturday, as well.
FEI 2024 RANKINGS
| STAT | IRISH | CARDINAL |
|---|---|---|
| FEI Overall | 10 | 86 |
| FEI Offense | 28 | 104 |
| FEI Defense | 1 | 70 |
Troy Taylor met with the media this week and did say that 1st-string quarterback Ashton Daniels is starting against Notre Dame. He was “available” last week but didn’t practice all week so he didn’t play against Virginia Tech. Ah, a classic case of resting someone who could’ve played to increase their chances against non-league Notre Dame–it’s a story as old as time. That’ll be a boost for the Cardinal (if Daniels can stay healthy throughout the game, that is) because Justin Lamson is a really untalented and inaccurate passer.
By the way, did you notice Notre Dame rose to #1 in the defensive FEI rankings after the bye week?
I’ll predict a very thorough but ultimately unsatisfyingly dull win this weekend. Stanford plays a really laid back defensive scheme that emphasizes keeping the ball in front of them and making tackles. It’s something Notre Dame should be able to run on and get Riley Leonard going with some easy short passes. Ashton Daniels can run around a little bit and is a decent passer, I just don’t know how their offensive line is going to hold up enough to even attempt moving the ball consistently against this strong Irish secondary.
It’s irrational, but I would likely find a 37-13 win to be unsatisfying this weekend. I want either the defense to hold them to single digits or the offense to break 40 (or both). I don’t just want to see our starters dominate coming out of the bye; I want our 2nd team unit to beat them down in the 4th quarter too. If this is the last time we play them in South Bend for a while, let’s make it a miserable going away gift.
The funny thing is, during the last year and a half, when the starters dominate we tend to really roll teams. it’s not like the kelly era where the good wins are by 20ish. Nd piled on navy, tennessee tech or whatever, pitt, oregon state, wake forest, stanford, purdue. the close games (or even losses) tend to be because starters don’t dominate like central michigan last year or miami this year. I think if starters start off like gangbusters, nd wins going away.
Having said that I am not predicting the nd offense to play great. They’ll have to show me a couple times before I believe
It isn’t irrational. We all expect the team to be building toward being elite. Elite teams dominate lesser opponents. This defense is too good to not get any shutouts at all. The offense should be improving to the point that hanging 50 on lesser teams is expected.
This is… rational.
Same here, I want the Kylo Ren “MOOOOAAAAARRRRR” kind of win. We have so many young players we’re going to need to count on, I want them to get the entire second half like with Purdue.
If the offense again has a 3-4 possession streak of poor play I will be disappointed. They don’t need points every possession but back to back 3 and outs and such to me, means little improvement over the bye. I want to see better 1st down play meaning fewer 2nd and 9+ yds. Get in 2nd and 4-5 and Stanford’s D will crumble.
ND 41-7
I hated the roided out petulant Shaw era Stanford teams, and I think there is a real argument that Stanford was The Rivalry of the Kelly era, but man I just hate playing them at this point. I would hope we find a way to get another actual rival on the schedule as opposed to renewing this series beyond this year.
I would not be unhappy with an at-spread victory for the Irish. Just not like 2022, or NIU this year. Please.
I honestly just want to see us win no matter the margin of victory. Most importantly I don’t want them to use the game to see if Leonard can be a true QB and throw the football. He can’t, so run him 15 times and just win the effing game and stop getting cute and using games to “practice”.
“I want either the defense to hold them to single digits or the offense to break 40 (or both)”
Hey, good for you and good for all of us.