You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Of course, David Shaw has always been a villain to Notre Dame fans but as he’s wrapping up his 11th season at Stanford the tide has inevitably turned on the coach as the struggles of the program have become more commonplace for the better part of 3-plus seasons. Rumblings of discontent were beginning back in 2019 when a reported $8.9 million salary (full of back pay and bonuses) was delivered to Shaw and since then the Cardinal have continued to look largely uncompetitive on a national level.

They come into this weekend’s season finale with a record of 3-8 while coming off an embarrassing 30-point home loss in the Big Game against California this past Saturday.

Notre Dame (-20) at Stanford

Stanford Stadium
Palo Alto, California
Date: Saturday, November 27, 2021
Time: 8:00 PM ET
TV: FOX

Whether Shaw is able to turn this ship around next year remains to be seen. It’s too late for anything in 2021 as his team comes in battered and bruised with nearly zero momentum. From 2011 through 2016, Shaw was 64-17 (.790) and since has fallen to 29-27 (.517) in a pretty sharp fall from grace. Of course, the Cardinal would love nothing more this weekend than to spoil Notre Dame’s season and potential bid for the playoffs.

Stanford’s Offense

The big off-season challenge for Stanford was replacing the moderately successful Davis Mills at quarterback after being chosen in the 3rd round of the NFL Draft and having the pleasure of starting for the Houston Texans this year. The Cardinal turned to redshirt junior Jack West (2 prior career starts) for the 2021 opener only to ditch that plan at halftime for redshirt freshman Tanner McKee.

McKee–a former top 50 recruit from the 2018 class–returned from a LDS mission in 2020 and initially looked like a savior for Stanford. Through his first 4.5 games McKee put together these stats: 89 of 138 (64.4%) for 1,093 yards, 11 touchdowns, and no interceptions.

Since then, it’s largely been a disaster for McKee and the Cardinal offense which included McKee missing their 9th and 10th games, although he did come back last week against UCLA. As such, Stanford has started 4 and played 5 different quarterbacks (including a walk-on plus a grad transfer from Air Force) this season.

They’ve been much better with McKee (5.49 yards per play) under center than when he’s not (3.96 yards per play) although the trend since early October during this 6-game losing streak has been downright atrocious. Throughout this string of defeats Stanford has averaged 14.3 points per game while McKee’s production has dipped to 97 of 152 (63.8%) for 1,062 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 7 interceptions.

One thing that jumps out is that Stanford is asking McKee to do a lot more. In his first 4 starts he averaged 30 passes per game and is up to 38 attempts per game over his last 4 starts. It’s not going very well because this offense has been awful at running the ball.

Their offensive line has been struggling all season and now junior guard Branson Bragg missed the Cal game and is out for the season. Junior tailbacks Austin Jones and Nathaniel Peat have some skill but just have not been given much room to run this season. As such, Stanford has only eclipsed 100 rushing yards in 4 games this season, and just once over their last 6 contests.

The loss of wideout Brycen Tremayne to a nasty broken ankle in the Oregon game was a big blow to the offense. Here was the prototypical big Stanford receiver (6’4″ 207 lbs.) who had caught 5 touchdowns in less than 5 games played and provided McKee a huge safety blanket.

Fumble hunting: McKee brings the ball back far and low on his delivery. 

They’ve welcomed some guys back to the lineup recently, especially receiver Michael Wilson who led the team in receiving back in 2019 and missed the first 8 games of this season. Yet, Wilson has only managed 133 yards in 3 games as Stanford’s offense remains stuck in neutral to be kind.

As per usual, the Cardinal will have a tight end targeted early and often. Redshirt freshman Benjamin Yurosek is 4th nationally among Power 5 tight ends with 571 receiving yards.

Stanford’s Defense

Lance Anderson took over from Derek Mason as defensive coordinator at Stanford back in 2014 and has experienced a very slow, but undeniable decline in Palo Alto. Once a bastion of low 20’s points per game defenses, the Cardinal have fallen to 29.8, 31.7, and currently 31.3 points per game allowed since 2019.

Their current scoring average ranks them 2nd worse in the Pac-12 only ahead of our dear friends without a permanent head coach in Los Angeles.

The decline has arguably been evident for much longer than 3 seasons as Stanford has average 6.18 yards per play allowed since 2017 although some very good players like Harrison Phillips, Bobby Okereke, Justin Reid, and Paulson Adebo were doing heavy lifting to keep the Cardinal defense relevant.

Simply put, Stanford’s recruiting has taken a sharp downturn and with the absence of accelerated player development they really lack talent and playmaking, especially within the front seven.

The Cardinal do like corner Kyu Blu Kelly (that is his real name) and they received a bonus as starting safety Jonathan McGill came back versus Cal for the first time all season after being out with an injury only to come up with an interception and pass break-up. They’ll form what could be considered a decent secondary.

I recently read an interview with a Stanford insider while doing some research and he mentioned how healthy the defensive line has been healthy all season and how damning it’s been that this group has been as poor as any unit on the team.

Former Irish recruiting target Thomas Booker has put together a nice career (157 tackles, 20.5 TFL, 9.5 sacks) at defensive end although he’s far from a big playmaker these days. I also think nose guard Dalyn Wade-Perry (6’4″ 340 lbs.) offers some much-needed size and decent burst from the nose guard position.

Tight End Tucker Fisk is lined up at DE on the boundary side.

To me, this looks an awful lot like a defense that’s similar to what we typically see against Navy. They are really thin up front and can’t play a standard 3-4 whenever Wade-Perry is off the field which has meant a lot of under-sized bodies rotating in leading to plenty of romping for the opposing offensive linemen.

It’s pretty dark for this defense. Their linebackers will be aggressive and make a play from time to time but their assignments have been blown up so consistently that only UMass, Akron, Kansas, and Arkansas State are giving up more yards per carry on the ground.

They’ve allowed 29 rushing touchdowns and the pass-happy USC Trojans and Washington State Cougars are the only teams to not gain at least 200 yards on the ground against Stanford.

Prediction

On October 2nd this year, Stanford upset Oregon and had just won 7 out of its last 9 games stretching back to the shortened 2020 season. Since then, it’s been all pain and frustration.

This is a weird Stanford program because on the surface they look a lot like the glory days of the Jim Harbaugh and early Shaw era. They still use a tall pro-style quarterback, big receivers, and lots of tight ends. They still run a multiple 3-4 with linebackers running all over the place hoping to get an offense off schedule on early downs.

They’re just not that talented anymore, and whatever secret sauce they used to have that made plenty of 3-stars turn into football monsters has largely disappeared.

Of the 46 players who have made at least 1 start this season for Stanford, 32 are players that were below 0.900 Composite scores in recruiting, including an incredible 18 out of the 23 players on defense. The top 6 most highly-touted players are on offense which also includes 8 out of the top 10 with the injured Bragg and benched West among that group.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to remove Navy or Stanford from the annual Notre Dame schedule. What’s your choice? https://t.co/NurRZ7iErj

— 18 Stripes (@18stripes) November 10, 2021

Earlier this week as I’m want to do I was trying to find ways (McKee will find his early season form! McGill is a game-changer at safety! Stanford will somehow play up to our level!) that Stanford could surprise this weekend. We haven’t faced the Cardinal in 2 calendar years (and since I haven’t exactly been paying close attention to them after their 6-game 2020 season) their lack of talent is a bit shocking.

There’s some hope offensively next year if they can figure some things out on the offense line, although the well of of blue-chip linemen has mostly dried up so it won’t be easy. Defensively, this does not resemble the Stanford of the early 2010’s at all and they should really look at replacing Lance Anderson this off-season, if even to take the heat off David Shaw.

With the massive upheaval across the coaching ranks right now it could save Shaw’s job for 2022 but the recent Utah and Cal losses especially have really shaken the foundations of his support in Palo Alto. To be out-scored 93-18 is one thing but the complete and total domination of these defeats is deeply troubling. Stanford was out-gained 1,217 yards to 449 yards for an incomprehensible 5.64 yards per play difference. No better, they gave up 793 rushing yards at 8.91 yards per carry while only rushing themselves for 116 yards at 2.03 per carry.

Very rarely do I lay things on the line so concretely…Notre Dame should cruise in this game and cover handily. I’m envisioning a 28-3 or 31-6 type of score at halftime with a quick touchdown in the 3rd quarter effectively putting this game to bed with a Tyler Buchner-led offense scoring some more in the 4th quarter for good measure.

Notre Dame 48

Stanford 13