1. Perspective – This Is Better Than Losing to Northwestern

The field in the afternoon light. The ball in the air. Christian McCaffrey. Man it was fun to see him take the opening kickoff. He got a slither, a slide, and for a split second gave us the first adrenaline rush of the season when he found a gap before being dragged down on the 37. Exhale. Smile. High fives. Feel the gratitude. The entertainment has returned after the longest 9 months of the year.

Stanford hasn’t played a regular season game against a team that was actively in the Big12 since it played Texas 16 years ago. Great scheduling move by the athletic director. And the nonconference schedule looks fantastic for the foreseeable future. In 2021, for example, Stanford plays only Power 5 conference teams and Notre Dame.

If you would have offered me this 26-13 victory before the game started, I would have taken it—begrudgingly. It wasn’t an epic night for McCaffrey, but a lot worse things could have happened. Burns could have struggled; we could have committed a few turnovers; Stanford could have lost. All in all, we’ll take the win and move on with a nicely placed bar for Ryan Burns to work on maintaining.

2. Offense – Life of Ryan

Burns looked tall, athletic, and patient. And he just kept completing passes. He Nunesed a few balls into the turf in the second half, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that. But a good start nonetheless.

Chryst also looked great. He threw one good ball to McCaffrey, then handed the ball off to him as McCaffrey led Chryst’s only drive for a touchdown. McCaffrey was quick to thank Chryst for a key block downfield on his touchdown run. Got to love seeing the guys bond like that.

The last 38 minutes of offense were completely lackluster. But I’m not sure we were really running a full offense, and Kansas State usually has a good defense, so we’ll wait and see. I’m not going to read too much into the 2^nd half just yet.

3. Defense – The Meaning of Life

It has been the defense that as kept us in so many games over the years, and the defense set the tone of the game again in this one. Of course, it is hard to tell if Kansas State really brought anything to the table. KSU quarterback Jesse Ertz was throwing feathers in a windstorm. It was clear that the best plays for the Wildcats were going to come from quarterback scrambles or broken plays that went on for a second too long.

The Stanford secondary established itself with four interceptions. Except one was lost in the sun, and one was a safety instead. So the unit had to settle for two picks. Still that places them 13^th in the country in interceptions per game, far better than any time in the past five seasons. Statistically significant? Not yet, but I expect us to stay inside the top-20 in interceptions per game for the entire season.

It certainly helped the secondary that the defensive line was able to get to the quarterback. I knew we had a few sacks, but I was shocked to see the box score later. Stanford recorded 8 sacks, and currently leads the nation in sacks per game. While the interceptions are novel, the sacks are not. Stanford was 2^nd, 5^th, and 4^th in the nation in sacks per game in 2012 through 2014. Peter Kalambayi recorded 2.5 sacks—also good enough to be the current national leader. When Kansas State was driving to make it a one-score game, Kalambayi recorded a huge sack that knocked the Wildcats out of field goal range.

4. Coaching

A few plays into the first series on offense, we saw what can happen when Stanford gets too predictable. Stanford lined up on 1^st and 10 with only one wide out and McCaffrey took the pitch to the left. Fully 10 Kansas State defenders were within a few yards of the line of scrimmage with all eyes on McCaffrey. Pretty tough to find a gap when 10 guys are meeting you at the line. The play lost five yards.

Kansas State safety Dante Barnett was poaching the line of scrimmage all game. The play-action pass could have done some serious damage, but Shaw kept the playbook close the vest. Stanford only led 3-0 after the 1^st quarter, and Shaw had some time during the quarter break to draw up the next play. Play-action fake to McCaffrey, Dante Barnett rushing in to make a tackle, and Rector was wide open downfield for a 40 yard touchdown pass.

Shaw is still punting from the opponent’s territory. But Jake Bailey, Stanford’s punter, pinned KSU inside the 5 a couple of times. It paid off… with four minutes left in the game, Stanford recorded a safety.

Kansas State lined up to kickoff after the safety and recovered an onside kick. I didn’t even know you could try an onside kick after a safety, or at least I’d never considered it since it is such a rare situation. Stanford wasn’t anticipating it either, and I don’t blame them. It was a weird game. There were only two Stanford guys up on the line on the side where the ball was kicked and they weren’t the hands team.

So give the staff a break on the onside kick. But when McCaffrey broke through for the late 4^th quarter TD scamper, Stanford vaulted to a 12 point lead. The game was so weird at that point that I didn’t blink when we sent in Ukropina to kick the extra point. But man—this is an unacceptable mistake for the coaching staff. It still means that Stanford has no system for playing the numbers properly at the end of the game. Seems to me if the budget of the coaching staff is well into the millions of dollars, we could allocated one guy to specifically tell Shaw whether or not to go for one or two in the 4^th quarter.

5. Coming Up – USC… and a decent blog post.

I got lost in time and this post was similar to Stanford’s 3^rd quarter offense vs KSU. Next week, I’ll have much more on USC-Stanford, the Playoff Picture, the top-25 rankings, and the Pac-12. Go Card.