A day or two late but never forgotten. The Stanford Cardinal beat the Colorado Buffaloes 48-7 on Saturday night to improve to 5-0 on the young season and 3-0 in the Pac-12.
The Cardinal ran the win streak to 13 games and continues to dominate opponents by 26 points or more. Here are a few thoughts from the game.
**We are at the point with Stanford football where we analyze individual plays and not the team as a whole. It was 48-7, how can you say any aspect of the team struggled? Yet, that is what Monday morning quarterbacking is all about. Stanford continues to crush their opponents. At times it does not look pretty, but by the end of the game the thrashing is over.
**Stanford has now allowed two onsides kicks this year. Both were perfectly executed by the opposition. This was a great kick with perfect placement by Colorado to open the game. Against good teams, Stanford can not allow for that to happen. They must address the onsides kick issue.
**Just like the UCLA game, this game was decided on the first drive. Last week, UCLA drove to the one yard line and got stopped. Stanford drove 99-yards for a touchdown and that was the ball game! This time it was Colorado getting the onside kick. The
**In the first half it appeared there might be a little bit of lack of concentration. Receivers had two big drops. Chris Owusu had a drop that turned into an interception. Ty Montgomery’s drop was a tougher catch but one he will make many times in his future. It had touchdown written all over it.
**It was great to see Griff Whalen step up. He had a huge game.
**Owusu’s participation in the offense is almost exclusively on the wide receiver screen or quick out in the flat. Where is the deep ball? Where is he crossing the field?
**Oh yeah, Stanford has some pretty good tight ends!
**Ryan Hewitt can not be stopped. The pass to him in the flat is good for five plus yards on every attempt. The fullback dive with him is 3 yards each time.
**It was nice to see Tyler Gaffney featured a little bit more. He really is a great runner and deserves a chance to show it.
**Colorado has had a great pass rush this year. Not Saturday night. Give Stanford’s offensive line huge props for the job they did. The unit is really starting to gel.
**Too many personal foul penalties. They may have been ticky-tack, they may have been bad calls, but it still shows a lack of discipline to put oneself in that position.
**Colorado had -1 yard rushing at halftime. (yes, sacks count against run totals in college). That pretty much says all that needs to be said about the run defense.
**There were a couple of busted defensive plays, namely the big screen pass. Shayne Skov makes that tackle 25 yards down field. Many defenders took bad angles on that play.
**Otherwise the team played very well. Delano Howell was great at safety. Michael Thomas had a very big day.
**Did anyone else feel the entire stadium clutch up a bit as the pass sailed through the air into Thomas’s hands for Stanford’s first interception of the year? We all saw the bad pass. We all knew the opportunity. It was a collective holding of the breath until the pick was secured followed by a release of emotion.
**I thought AJ Tarpley and Jarek Lancaster played very good games. Clearly they are not as flashy as Skov, but who is. But for the most part they were very secure in their tackling and seemed to fill their roles well.
**It is good to see if a kicker is going to struggle it is in a blowout. Not the best performance by Jordan Williamson. He missed a field goal and an extra point and had a couple of less than perfect kickoffs. That said, you knew a game like that would be coming from a redshirt freshman. Great he got it out of his system and can get back to the greatness he has displayed in the first four games of the season.
**Overall, it was a 48-7 win. It may not have been perfect, but it is hard to complain too much.
**Memo to the student section: Your support of Stanford football has been nothing short of outstanding! BUT, “The Wave” is fan participation designed to make noise. Save the noise for when Stanford is on defense. While the effort was less successful this week, it is two straight weeks “The Wave” was started while Stanford was on offense. Save the noise for the opposing team’s offense.
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