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.

• Elic Ayomanor, wide receiver: Part 2. That was just a taste of what was to come from the resident of Medicine Hat in the Canadian province of Alberta. Ayomanor, who was targeted twice in the first half (both times in the first quarter), went on to score two more receiving touchdowns, including a 60-yarder on Stanford’s very next drive. That reception made the sophomore the first Pac-12 competitor to have multiple touchdowns of at least 60 yards in a single game since 2016, when John Ross III did so for Washington.

• Elic Ayomanor, wide receiver: Part 3. The sophomore receiver, who wears no. 13, finished with 13 receptions in a game that kicked off on the evening of Friday, Oct. 13. Ayomanor now sits in a five-way tie for sixth place for the most receptions in a single game in school history.

• Elic Ayomanor, wide receiver: Part 4. Ayomanor’s final grab went for his third touchdown, making the Deerfield Academy (Mass.) graduate the first Cardinal to catch that many six-pointers since Simi Fehoko did so at UCLA in 2020. No. 13’s 13th catch was a jaw-dropping 30-yard reception that Ayomanor made by pressing the football to the back of cornerback Travis Hunter’s helmet and backpedaling past the goal line. This is one of the wildest catches in Stanford history, rivaled only by Francis Owusu’s similarly amazing reception against UCLA in 2015.

• Elic Ayomanor, wide receiver: Part 5. Not for nothing: Ayomanor’s 13 catches went for an astounding 294 yards, setting a new Stanford record. This ranks as the second most receiving yards in a game in Pac-12 history, eclipsed only by the 345 yards Marquise Lee had for USC with 16 catches against Arizona in 2012. Ayomanor is just the second Stanford player to break the century mark this season after tight end Benjamin Yurosek had nine grabs for 138 yards and a score at Hawaii.

• Ashton Daniels, quarterback. The sophomore from Buford, Ga., set career marks against the Buffaloes for completions (27), attempts (45), yards (396), touchdowns (four) and rushes (16). His passing yards vs. Colorado rank 19th in school history. Daniels had the most passing touchdowns by a Cardinal slinger since K.J. Costello threw for five at UCLA in 2018, and he had the most passing yards for Stanford since Davis Mills had 428 in a double-overtime win at UCLA in 2020. (Stanford’s sports information department incorrectly listed Davis Mills with four passing touchdowns at Oregon State in 2019; however, he threw for three scores and caught a TD pass from tight end Colby Parkinson on a fun gadget play.)

• Joshua Karty, placekicker. The Burlington, N.C., native missed a 37-yard attempt in the second-quarter by mere inches. However, when victory was at stake, Karty was at his best. His 46-yard try as time expired in regulation tied the score, 36-36, and sent the contest into the first of two overtime periods. The game ended with another Karty make as he sent a 31-yarder through the uprights to seal the 46-43 comeback win. “Ol’ Reliable” has the most field goals made (13) and tried (16) in the league this year and owns the fifth-best field-goal success rate at 81.25 percent. No other Pac-12 player has more than nine makes or 11 attempts.

• Gaethan Bernadel, inside linebacker. The junior led all Stanford defenders with nine tackles, seven unassisted. Bernadel also had a tackle for loss against the Buffs. He holds the team lead with 38 total stops and 25 solo stops on the year, making the Florida International transfer a key part of defensive coordinator Bobby April’s unit.

• Alaka’i Gilman, safety. The junior from Hawaii is second on the team with 34 tackles (22 solo). Against Colorado, he tied with sophomore Collin Wright with seven tackles (each player had six solo takedowns of ball-carriers). Perhaps most importantly, Gilman entered a three-way tie for the team lead by making his first interception of 2023 when he picked off Colorado slinger Shedeur Sanders in the end zone in the second overtime. That play, the game’s only turnover, helped set up Karty’s game-winning boot. This was the first takeaway by a Cardinal player since Scotty Edwards and Wright each picked off a pass against Sacramento State.

• Mitch Leigber, safety. The Laguna Hills, Calif., native was credited with his first career sack, a 21-yard takedown of Sanders, when he harassed the opposing passer into an intentional-grounding penalty late in the third quarter. That fourth-down play — an egregious mistake by both the Colorado quarterback and his father, Buffaloes head coach Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders — forced a turnover on downs at the Colorado 33. Stanford then mounted an eight-play touchdown drive to cut the visiting team’s deficit to 29-26 with 12:29 left in regulation.

Nays

• First-half Stanford. The Cardinal looked discombobulated in every phase of the game over the first 30 minutes, during which Colorado raced to a 29-0 lead. Someone on the X/Twitter social-media platform asked whether Stanford had practiced at all in the 13 days since its last game. (Stanford had a bye after the Oregon loss.) Coach Troy Taylor’s squad played dreadful football during the first two quarters, which saw the Buffaloes roll up 324 offensive yards on 34 plays to 115 on 41 by the Cardinal.

• Passing defense. Shedeur Sanders torched the Cardinal for 400 passing yards with 33 completions on 47 throws. The leading receivers were two-way player Travis Hunter (13 catches, 140 yards, two scores) and Xavier Weaver (seven catches, 124 yards, two scores). Stanford has the Pac-12’s worst passing defense in terms of yards per attempt (8.31) and yards per game (321.5). The only league defenses that have allowed as many passing scores as Stanford are USC, which is tied with the Cardinal at 17, and Colorado, which has let up 21 passing touchdowns. One shudders to imagine what star Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr., who has thrown for 300 yards or more three times in six games, might do to this secondary if the Cardinal defense can’t step up.

OKs

• Third-down offense. Stanford had 10 successful third-down attempts in 18 tries against the Buffaloes. For the year, the Cardinal have converted 41 of 93 third downs, good for fifth in the Pac-12 at 44.09 percent. That’s… just OK.

• Line play. For all the second-half and overtime passing and scoring prowess that the Cardinal flashed against Colorado, the team’s line play seemed lackluster. Stanford’s offense finished 60 minutes and two untimed overtime periods with a mediocre 124 rushing yards. The Cardinal offensive line also let up three sacks and three other tackles-for-loss. By contrast, Colorado ran for 132 yards and let up four sacks and one other stop behind the line of scrimmage. The Buffaloes are allowing a league-worst five sacks per game and have the Pac-12’s second-worst rushing attack (86.3 yards per game) and worst rushing defense (157.4 ypg). All told, this was an underwhelming performance by Stanford’s linemen on both sides of the ball.

• Rushing attack. Stanford’s ground game is barely respectable… and I do mean barely. The Cardinal is eighth in the conference with 144.7 rushing yards per game. However, the team’s 3.7 yards per rush rank ninth in the Pac-12, ahead of only Washington State, Arizona State and Colorado. League cellar dweller Arizona State, which has a 1-5 record (0-3 Pac-12) and a five-game losing streak, has just seven touchdowns on the ground. The Cardinal’s eight rushing scores put it alone in 11th place, behind Colorado and WSU with nine apiece. Stanford had two rushing touchdowns against the Buffaloes — a two-yard jet sweep by receiver Bryce Farrell and a one-yard run by quarterback Justin Lamson. On the season, Colorado has let up a league-high 13 rushing scores, tied with WSU and Arizona, so Stanford’s two running scores were sort of decent but not really remarkable. Stanford will need to improve its ground attack if it is to beat future opponents. Since the Cardinal triumphed over Colorado, I’ll categorize the ground game as OK, but just barely… and I do mean barely!