Yays, Nays and OKs for 2-5 Stanford football

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Oct. 25, 2023

Saturday night’s loss to UCLA was about as hard a come-down as Stanford fans could have imagined. In Boulder, in the second half and overtime, everything seemed to go right for the Cardinal. Last weekend at Stanford Stadium, through 60 minutes, nothing seemed to work for head coach Troy Taylor’s club.

Yays

• Tiger Bachmeier, wide receiver. The freshman’s 20-yard receiving touchdown, his first in an ‪NCAA‬ game, represented the Cardinal’s only points against the Bruins. Bachmeier was tied for the game’s lead with eight receptions and had the second-most receiving yards of any player, with 75. The Lake Elsinore, Calif., resident has quietly become the Cardinal’s No. 2 target on the year, with 20 receptions, and his 220 receiving yards trail just two other teammates. Observers believe that Bachmeier could have a very bright future. With star receiving tight end Benjamin Yurosek temporarily sidelined with an injury, look for Bachmeier to play an increasingly large role in the aerial attack.

Bruins blow out error-prone Stanford, 42-7

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Oct. 24, 2023

At the break of Saturday night’s Pac-12 football game at Stanford Stadium, noted Cardinal football fan and GoMightyCard.com founder Hank Waddles tweeted the following:

UCLA 21, Stanford 0 at the half.
Feels like an eight-point lead for the Cardinal, TBH.

— Go Mighty Card (@GoMightyCard) October 22, 2023

UCLA 21, Stanford 0 at the half. Feels like an eight-point lead for the Cardinal, TBH.

Waddles was referring, of course, to Stanford’s epic double-overtime comeback victory just eight days previously in a game against Colorado, which had seen the visiting Cardinal trail 29-0 at intermission.

On Saturday night on the Farm, however, there was no magic to be had. Bruins head coach Chip Kelly made none of the dubious fourth-down calls or other questionable decisions that Colorado’s Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders had done. Indeed, Kelly had no need to do much that seemed risky. His Bruins club boasts a stellar defense and an overall talent level that is superior to the Buffaloes — and also to the Cardinal. The powder blue and light-gold bears of Southern California allowed only one touchdown the entire game and generally stifled Stanford’s offense while earning a 42-7 victory.

Yays, Nays and OKs for 2-4 Stanford football

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Oct. 21, 2023

The magnitude of Stanford’s 46-43 comeback win over Colorado on Friday, Oct. 13, did not begin to sink in until the morning after. The Cardinal trailed 29-0 at halftime and looked thoroughly inept.

But. They. Won.

When Jim Harbaugh took over as head football coach at Stanford in 2007 following a dismal 1-11 campaign, the team took its lumps in what turned out to be a 4-8 season. But Harbaugh had a signature game in an Oct. 6 road tilt at second-ranked USC, wherein Stanford mounted a legendary 24-23 upset win to give the coach his first conference victory. In the annals of college football history, one of the few outcomes to rival that 2007 Cardinal win was Stanford’s shocking 36-31 victory at No. 2 Notre Dame in 1990.

Troy Taylor is at the helm now, trying to repair a program reeling from consecutive 3-9 seasons. The Cardinal’s 46-43 come-from-behind double-overtime victory in Boulder is another momentous result. It was the biggest comeback win for Stanford, the biggest blown lead for the Buffaloes and the fourth-largest comeback win in Pac-12 history. Moreover, it was the biggest comeback from a halftime deficit in conference annals. And, in a nice parallel with Harbaugh’s initial Cardinal season, this triumph gave Taylor his first win over a league opponent.

Stanford has taken its lumps this year and faces the prospect of more pain ahead with UCLA, Washington and Notre Dame among the list of upcoming opponents. But come what may, this Cardinal team and its fans will forever treasure our memories of an epic Colorado comeback.

Yays

• Elic Ayomanor, wide receiver: Part 1. Ayomanor’s second catch came midway through the third quarter. He took a short pass, turned upfield and ran 97 yards for a touchdown. That made the score 29-12 in favor of the host Buffaloes after a failed two-point try. The only longer reception in Stanford’s 129 years of football was a 98-yard touchdown pass thrown by Joe Borchard to Troy Walters against UCLA in 1999.

Stanford bowls over the Buffaloes in Boulder with a record-setting 46-43 come-from-behind double-overtime victory

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Oct. 14, 2023

Stanford’s embattled football team used a record-setting performance by receiver Elic Ayomanor to mount the biggest comeback in team history with a 46-43 double-overtime road win over Colorado.

The Cardinal fell behind 29-0 at intermission after gaining just 114 total yards — a full 210 yards fewer than the hosts. Nearly the only thing that went wrong for Colorado was missing a 46-yard field-goal try late in the first half. Otherwise, the Buffaloes scored touchdowns on each of their first four possessions.

Everything seemed to change after the break, however. Stanford scored on all eight of its final drives. Ayomanor, a sophomore, was the biggest contributor with 15 catches for three touchdowns and a school-record 294 yards. The offensive explosion, which included three third-quarter touchdowns for 17 points, came after a moribund Cardinal offense had scored just three field goals over the seven quarters spanning the end of the Arizona game through halftime on Friday at Folsom Field.

Yays, Nays and OKs for 1-4 Stanford football

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Oct. 8, 2023

This 2023 Stanford football team is clearly not a good squad. Mediocrity could be out of its grasp. Indeed, a second win might be out of reach.

And yet, the club has shown flashes of promise throughout the campaign. There was the win against Hawaii… the surprisingly close loss to Arizona… and 20 or so minutes of lights-out football (on defense, at least) in what evolved into a 42-6 loss to Ducks. (Let’s not dwell on the blowout loss at USC or the home loss to Sacramento State of the FCS.)

Can head coach Troy Taylor’s club summon more of the magic that we saw early on against the Ducks? If so, a second and — dare to dream? — possibly a third win might be on the table. If not, well, I’m already on record as saying that this could be a long season.

Yays

• Joshua Karty, placekicker. After his two misses in a one-point decision against Arizona, Karty came out and hit field goals of 37 and 53 yards on the two opening drives against Oregon. (By contrast, his Oregon Ducks counterpart, Camden Lewis, missed a 38-yarder on his only attempt.) Karty, a Burlington, N.C., native, has made 39 of 46 attempts in his career (84.8 percent) and 19 of 31 since the start of 2022 (93.5 percent). Entering this weekend’s games, no one at the top level of football had kicked more than Karty’s 11 field goals. Of the four other players with that many made kicks, only Alabama’s Will Reichard (11 of 11, 100 percent) and UNLV’s Jose Pizano (11 of 12, 91.7 percent) had a higher conversion rate. Two other players have, like Karty, connected on 11 of 13 attempts from the field (84.6 percent).

Slow-starting Ducks roll to 42-6 victory over punchless Stanford

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Oct. 7, 2023

For around 20 minutes last Saturday, Stanford faithful began to wonder whether their new football head coach, Troy Taylor, had found the formula to turn around the Cardinal’s 1-3 season.

They started wondering whether a balanced ball-control offense could play keepaway from a potent Oregon scoring attack. They started wondering whether defensive coordinator Bobby April’s unit could continue to stifle the No. 9 Ducks on third down. Some may have even started wondering whether the Cardinal’s alternative uniforms — black pants, black helmets and black jerseys with red numbers — might help conjure up a major upset at Stanford Stadium.

The seeds of hope were planted on the team’s first drive, as an offense mainly led by sophomore quarterback Ashton Daniels converted three third downs and a fourth down for a 15-play, 46-yard possession that spanned seven minutes and 42 seconds — the Cardinal’s longest series this season by number of plays and by time. Sure, that drive only resulted in three points when senior placekicker Joshua Karty nailed a 37-yard field goal, but…

Hope, that fragile yet potent emotion, was nurtured when the Cardinal defense forced an Oregon three-and-out. The ensuing Stanford series went for 51 yards on 13 plays and lasted six minutes even. It resulted in another stellar Karty kick, this time from 53 yards out. Not only did the play give the hosts a 6-0 lead on the first snap of the second quarter, it helped erase the memory of a pair of missed 51-yard attempts from Karty in the previous game, a 21-20 loss to Arizona.