Opponent Preview: Stanford

At the beginning of the season, most people agreed with Bill Connelly’s preview of Notre Dame’s schedule.  His SP+ forecasts suggested that our three toughest games were, in order of difficulty:  Georgia, Michigan, and Stanford.  He called for losses in the first two and 6 point win against Stanford.  It sucks that he was correct on the first two – let’s hope he’s right on the third!

I started this post four weeks into the football season because I already felt strongly that we should beat Stanford.  As all Notre Dame fans do, I know the difference between “should” and “will”.  But the current situation is dire for the Cardinal.

Any Notre Dame fan should be nervous of Stanford after the last decade.  From 2009-2017 we beat them only in 2012 and 2014.  Brian Kelly has not won at Stanford in going on ten years as a coach.  The writers, including myself, felt that although Stanford was dropping off (also documented by Connelly), they were enough a threat to be worried about them.  Only Brendan bravely proclaimed – loudly and often – that this Stanford team was headed for a nasty fall.

I don’t think even Brendan expected to be this right.  Let’s go through the problems we see at Stanford.

Declining Recruiting Rankings

Stanford is seeing its recruiting fall off, though comparing the numbers to ND isn’t as comforting as you’d think.

ND/Stanford composite team talent rankings year by year:

This is a bad trend for both teams, but if you look at the incoming recruiting rankings, it becomes more clear what’s happening, and it will get worse for Stanford.  Here are year by year recruiting rankings for ND/Stanford

I’m reluctant to speculate on 2020.  ND currently sits at #10 and Stanford at #22 in the 247 composites; both teams have 17 commits.  However, ND is probably not going to get many (any?) more commitments, whereas given their scholarship issues, I expect Stanford is still in the market and their ranking could climb a bit.  Also, Stanford tends to get later academic admissions approval for kids, making this another apples to oranges comparison.

I would certainly argue that current trends favor ND in recruiting, but we’ve seen late swings hurt ND’s recruiting in other years and so it seems prudent to wait before making grand pronouncements that we’ve turned the tide in the talent department.

Lack of Scholarship Athletes

More than the overall recruiting rankings, however, is the number and the composition of players Stanford has. As Brendan noted in our writer’s Slack: “Side note on their recruiting: I would be very, very concerned if I was Stanford Fan. They usually have smaller classes because of their reliance on fifth-year seniors, so the fact that they signed just 15 kids last year isn’t a red flag in itself. What is a flag is the composition of that class. They signed just two defensive linemen and one offensive lineman; that’s after signing two defensive linemen and three offensive linemen in 2017. So their two-year take in the trenches is four offensive linemen and four defensive linemen. Two of those guys are 2017 five-star offensive tackles, but man, they need to hit on every single one of those four [OL] to avoid a serious hole.”

Stanford currently has 78 scholarship athletes; the NCAA limit is 85.  The problem is actually more severe than that because some of those scholarships were awarded to walk ons.  Stanford is playing catch up with it’s roster.

Lack of Experience on the Offensive Line

Remember 2007?  I hope you don’t, but I’ll refresh you: we played a bunch of young guys on the offensive line, we couldn’t run the ball, and our QBs got abused.

After a couple early departures to the NFL, Stanford only had seven scholarship offensive linemen in its spring game.  They have 12 currently, and only six have played any snaps.  They were ill positioned for injuries, and now they’ve had injuries to tackle Walker Little (best lineman, out for the year), tackle Henry Hattis (out for the year), G Dylan Powell (out for the year), and periodic injuries to other linemen such as Foster Sarrell.  As of the 9/21 game against Oregon, Stanford had 14 offensive lineman on its roster with one walk on.   [ND has 17 with three walk ons], 5 of them were injured, and four of the available nine were true freshman.

Stanford’s 1st and 2nd QBs – Costello and Mills – have both missed multiple games due to injury.  As much as Stanford has struggled even with them, it’s been downright ugly (hello, loss to UCLA) when they can’t play.

If there’s a positive, it’s that they should be much deeper next year from all the experienced gained this year, and Davis Mills got some valuable reps to fill in when Costello departs.  But there haven’t been a lot of positives.

Injuries

Injuries have not exactly been kind to ND, particularly on the lines.  But when you look at this chart, you can see it’s been a terrible year for Stanford.  According to Rule of Tree (hello, SBN!), Stanford was missing 25 players when they took on Cal.  Stanford is now experiencing what ND has gone through in past years – lack of depth exacerbated by bad luck.

The Fall of the House of Rusher:

All of the above issues have contributed to the most visible change at Stanford, which was until recently one of the last bastions of Manball (TM).  Stanford simply cannot run the ball like it used to.   Here are Stanford’s YPC by season:

2014 – 4.33

2015 – 5.13

2016 – 5.2

2017 – 5.9

2018 – 3.65

2019 (to date) – 3.61, for 112th out of 130 in the nation

These are counting statistics, so there will be natural variation in this due to strength of schedule and amount of the game spent in garbage time.  That said, I think it’s fair to say they provide a solid measure of the problem.

The eyeball test this season has been equally damning.  Stanford’s line is simply not opening holes.  They couldn’t do it last year for Bryce Love.  They can’t do it this year for Cameron Scarlett – who is actually a well rounded back with decent speed plus good ability to dodge and shed tackles.

As a microcosm of their difficulties, look at their last two games.

Stanford vs. WSU: 10 carries for 6 (six!) yards.

Stanford vs. Cal: 24 rushes for 61 yards (2.5 per carry).

Defensive Struggles

Stanford’s Offensive and Defensive SP+ rankings by year:

I guess now that I see this, the offense isn’t exactly helping things.  But I can name you some Cardinal playmakers on offense; see below.  On defense, only Paulson Adebo is consistently making plays for them.

Lack of Talent Development

Of all the “issues” with Stanford, this is the one that (a) seems totally true and (b) I can’t really find any solid data for.  I bring it up because Stanford fans are understandably questioning it, but I find it hard to measure.

When a team struggles, it’s fair to suspect a drop off in talent.  Cardinal fans complain that Stanford has just not developed guys in accord with their recruiting rankings.  However, this is harder to quantify (their recruiting rankings have dropped a bit) and looking at data from here, you wouldn’t think there’s too much wrong.  Here are Stanford’s total draft picks by year, with round of picks in parentheses:

2015 – 6 drafted.  Rounds: 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5

2016 – 5 drafted.  Rounds: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6

2017 – 2 drafted.  Rounds: 1, 1

2018 – 5 drafted.  Rounds: 3, 3, 4, 6, 6

2019 – 5 drafted.  Rounds: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Now, it’s true they haven’t had any first round picks the last two years but the overall output seems fine.  2020 might be a different story, though.  The feeling was that some of Stanford’s linemen left school early in 2019, and so those draft picks may have been pulled forward.  Stanford’s Paulson Adebo is the only Stanford player in the top 100 of this ranking (and others), though ND only has two (Claypool and Okwara).

The counterpoint is that Costello is the 9th ranked QB prospect by this, so he might be a late round pick up.  And Colby Parkinson seems like a fine tight end to me.

I don’t think many people see a ton of future NFL talent on Stanford’s roster right now, but I would withhold judgment.  Stanford’s recruiting has not fallen off that much and we’ve seen firsthand how “undertalented” units (defenses under Tenuta and BVG) actually contain NFL prospects with the right coaching.  By the NFL draft in 2021 we’ll be able to say more about this.  Until then, I think it’s too soon to complain about development.

Players to Watch Out For:

There are still reasons to fear Stanford.  Besides the voodoo wins they always manage to find (e.g. Oregon last year), they have some good players:

KJ Costello – I show his stats from last year to show you what he could do with a competent offensive line

It’s not known if he’ll start against ND on Saturday; as of Tuesday, Bruce Feldman reported he would not be playing against ND’ he’s had issues with his thumb.  But his backup Davis Mills can also move the ball, throwing for over 500 yards in the team’s loss to WSU two weeks ago.

Stanford also has good targets at TE and WR.  I’ve been incredibly impressed with their balance

ND would love to have the #3 and #4 targets that Stanford has.  Braden Lenzy is showing promise might turn into a solid #3 target, but right now, I honestly feel that as a position group I would take Stanford’s receivers over NDs, despite Claypool being the best overall WR.

On defense, there aren’t many bright spots.  Paulson Adebo is a consensus first or second round draft pick… and that’s as a junior. We should be grateful that (a) Bruce Feldman reports he will not play against ND and (b) he’s going to the NFL after this year.  Other than him, I think the name you’re most likely to hear called on Saturday is Casey Toohill – this OLB gets some sacks.

This is a team with the talent to play; they’ve been hindered by injuries to the OL which have contributed to bad OL play, which have contributed to QB injuries.

Gameplan

I am not a football expert, but it’s fun to stab in the dark as to what our coordinators should do.

For Chip Long, Stanford has a true freshman CB in Kyu Kelly who was simply abused against Colorado.  They should definitely look to attack him.  Even if Adebo is somehow miraculously able to play, he will be on Claypool.  That means we can still reasonably hope for Finke and/or Lenzy to have a nice game – to say nothing of Kmet.

I am also seeing weakness on the interior of the Stanford defense based on the Colorado game.  The Buffaloes wore them down and eventually rushed for five yards up the middle on seemingly every carry.  I don’t think ND has the RBs to do this, but if we try, I would try it with Tony Jones and Jahmir Smith who have a one-cut, north-south style.

For Clark Lea, I think Costello is a good QB (as is Davis Mills) and Stanford has very good receiving targets.  This would be a brutally tough game if Stanford had a better OL.  I genuinely don’t know if it’s better to rush four and keep two high safeties in this situation or bring pressure to exploit the youth on the line.  I guess we’ll find out.  But I will say that if we can’t get pressure with four we should start bringing five and risk single coverage; if given time, Costello or Mills are good enough to pick us apart and Stanford’s WRs are good enough to make some plays even against zone coverage.

Prediction

The current line is Notre Dame by 16.  On the one hand, that’s a great sign.  On the other hand, the last team to walk into Palo Alto as a 14+ point favorite was Washington this year and they got convincingly beaten by the Cardinal.  Notre Dame has had enough struggles on the road that they simply cannot take a team for granted.  In particular, Stanford’s tall, skilled receivers match up well against a secondary that – as Eric noted earlier this year – has good speed but poor physicality when it comes to battling for the ball.

Worse yet, the forecast at the moment calls for a game-time temperature of about 50 with a 90% chance of rain and moderate winds (15-25 mph).  These are definitely conditions that favor the less talented, team and let’s not forget that our last game in truly miserable conditions was Michigan.

ND has been more consistent, so I can’t pick against them.  But this game remains a bugbear in my mind. ND struggles on the road, and even with all the struggles this year, Stanford has had moments of brilliance.  They’ve made 40 yard pass plays and then have the drive collapse when their QB is sacked or they get multiple penalties.  What if all the good stuff came together at once?

It would be a nail-biter that would rely on last-second heroism by the defense:

ND 28  Stanford 24