Yays, Nays and OKs for 1-1 Stanford football

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Sept. 15, 2022

The first half of Saturday’s Stanford–USC game was a nightmare. The Cardinal coughed up the ball on three of its first four possessions and fell behind 28-7 at the 9:02 mark in the second quarter. The Trojans scored on their fifth possession to go up 35-14. The advantage held up even though Stanford outscored the visitors 14-6 in the second half.

It was not an ideal result for a Cardinal team that has lost its last eight meetings with Football Bowl Subdivision opponents.

Yays

• Casey Filkins, running back. The junior ran for 77 yards on 16 carries, both career highs, and scored his second career touchdown on a two-yard run. The Lake Oswego, Ore., native also caught three passes for 28 yards and returned three kicks for 66 yards with a long runback of 32 yards. Going forward, Filkins seems likely to play a major role in both the air and ground attacks for Stanford as well as on special teams.

• Benjamin Yurosek, tight end. Stanford’s breakout receiver from 2021 was a nonfactor in the season opener, with a single catch for just one yard. The junior was much more prominent in game two, running an end-around for 50 yards and catching a team-high five balls for 45 yards. That rush represented the longest gain by the Cardinal on the night.

• Rushing offense. The Farm gridders ran 45 times for 221 yards and three touchdowns. That amounts to a respectable 4.9 yards per carry. This was the most ground yards for the Cardinal since the team had 244 yards and three scores on 30 carries against Oregon State in a 48-17 win in 2018. If the Cardinal O-line can sustain this kind of performance against Pac-12 defenses, the team has a solid chance to improve on the dreadful 2021 campaign. This will be no small task, however, especially because senior lineman Branson Bragg retired from the sport this week.

• Defensive adjustments. Stanford’s first-half defense was very unfortunate: The Cardinal got gashed for five touchdowns in the Trojans’ first five series. Over the next seven possessions, however, USC only scored six points. Credit is due to defensive coordinator Lance Anderson and his players for containing the Trojans and giving the team a chance to get back in the game.

Nays

• Turnovers. Yikes. In two games, the Cardinal has coughed up the football a total of seven — count ’em, seven! — times while picking the opponent’s pocket just once. I think that quarterback Tanner McKee’s two first-quarter picks against USC were both basically attributable to bad luck. It’s harder for me to be sure what happened with E.J. Smith’s two fumbles, but he now has three giveaways in 2022. A minus-six turnover margin is simply atrocious. (For comparison, the team was minus-10 in turnovers throughout all of last year.) If Stanford can’t get itself together in this category by the time it plays Washington, this could be a long season.

• Third-down offense. Stanford’s offense converted five of 13 third downs. That’s not a formula for winning football. Enough said.

• Pass defense. The secondary was considered by far the strongest part of Stanford’s beleaguered defense entering 2022, but Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams made the unit seem awfully vulnerable. The talented sophomore transfer threw 20 of 27 times for 341 yards with four scores and no picks. Williams may be the most talented slinger the Cardinal will face this season, but that is an unfortunate defensive performance.

OKs

• Tanner McKee, quarterback. McKee’s passing line in the box score pretty much says it all: 20 completions on 35 attempts with a touchdown and two picks. He averaged 6.3 yards per attempt and was sacked five times for minus-35 yards.

• E.J. Smith, running back. The Dallas native led Stanford with 19 rushes for 88 yards and a touchdown while catching three passes for 26 yards and another score. That made for Smith’s second career multi-touchdown game after tallying only one score in his first two seasons. Smith is undoubtedly talented, but his three lost fumbles in two games are troublesome. If he can stay healthy and improve his ball security, he has the tools to put together a thrilling 2022 campaign.

• Jonathan McGill and Patrick Fields, safeties. McGill and Fields, respectively a senior and a graduate transfer from Oklahoma, each recorded seven tackles against USC, which tied for the team lead. When a defensive back is a team’s leading tackler, that’s usually a bad sign, because it means that the opposing offense is penetrating the first two levels of the defense far too frequently. McGill had a backfield stop for a one-yard loss and Fields was credited with a sack for a six-yard loss.

• Third-down defense. USC converted only two of eight third downs. That would normally be a positive sign for Stanford’s defense. However, USC’s passing attack was so effective that the Men of Troy didn’t face a third down until the last minute of the second half. Ultimately, given everything else that happened in the game, this indicator was simply not very significant.

• Run defense. Stanford got absolutely gashed on the ground last season. On Saturday, the Trojans were simply average. Travis Dye ran 14 times for 105 yards and a score, but the rest of USC combined for 22 rushes for 59 yards. As a team, the Trojans carried 36 times for 164 yards, an average of 4.6 yards per carry. Is this mediocrity on the part of USC a sign that the Cardinal defensive front has improved or a sign that the Trojans didn’t need to do much on the ground because their passing game was so effective? We should know more by the time the Washington game ends.