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Spread is up to UW +8
HFNY
Member Posts: 5,221 
Is it Doogish to say that's now too high? I thought Stanford -6 or even Stanford -7 made sense but the spread is saying that on a neutral field, Stanford would be favored by 12 or 13 (when Husky Stadium is fired up, HS home-field advantage is worth 4 to 5 points IMHO).
Comments
Most right now are paying attention to the UW's results and not what Petersen is getting done underneath the results ...
I've seen just about every snap that we've taken this year (other than a few garbage time ones) and it's 100% obvious that Petersen is preparing his team to win this kind of game. And by winning this kind of game, I mean winning this kind of game without having to depend on lucky elements like Seven had to depend on to beat Stanford earlier this year. I'm talking about the kind of winning that is 100% driven by fundamentals, execution, and attention to detail in ALL THREE PHASES of the game.
The other elephant in the room is that Stanford is a great road team. Not necessarily the case once they lost Andrew Luck:
2013: 3-2 (won @ WSU, @ OSU (by 8), and @ ASU for conference title; lost @ Utah and @ USC)
2012: 4-1 (won @ Cal, @ Colorado, @ Oregon, @ UCLA; lost @ Washington); also lost @ ND
If you take the dreckfest out of those games (WSU, Colorado, and Cal still being rated too high), Stanford's point totals in those games are 13 (@ UW), 13 (@ ND), 17 (@ Oregon), 35 (@ UCLA), 21 (@ Utah), 20 (@ Oregon St), 17 (@ USC), and 38 (@ Arizona St). Bottom line is that Stanford is far from an offensive juggernaut on the road and in fact, 75% of the time in the last 2 years they've produced 20 or less points and have lost 50% of their games.
Like I said, I like the Dawgs 23-17.
Stanford also had a good amount of return yards against USC (no surprise since Sloppy Steve's unit gave up a return TD @ 'Furd last year).
I imagine Ross and Riva will be back. Riva's leg injury sounds more troubling but I can't imagine he won't go, especially with a bye after Stanford.
Decide to get some action going:
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STRAIGHT WAGER 09/23/14 16:20 EDT
Bet $ 460.00 to win $ 418.18 Result: Pending
Stanford vs Washington U 09/27/14 16:15 EDT Washington U +8 (-110)
Eastern: That was a game full of missed opportunities and learning lessons. If that game is 59-31, nobody is saying shit about that game.
This team has had to deal with substantial adversity in 3 out of the 4 games so far and has responded each time. That's a little bonus attribute that we've earned out of this preseason schedule.
What we know is that our DBs are young and generally inexperienced. Where we've been hurt so far in the season has been against teams that are going to go multiple in the WR game and as a result have an ability to choose which matchups to pick on. Stanford isn't that kind of team. They prefer to go bigger than smaller and while I'm sure that they'll spread the field some, they are just as likely to do that with their TEs as they are their WRs. The only game that you can really look at Stanford and get anything out of is SC. In that game, they threw the ball 30 times and ran it 38 times (even though they only averaged 3.4 yards per carry). Of Hogan's 22 completions, 13 were to WRs (Montgomery with 9 and Rector with 4), 8 to TEs, and 1 to a RB. We have an answer for Montgomery with Peters. Covering TEs will fall to our LBs (see Shaq) and Safeties. What I'm seeing is a situation where Stanford is going to have to beat us with their other WRs and TEs (which starts playing a bit into our strengths of our front 7).
At QB, yes, I do think we have questions about how much Miles can throw the ball down the field. However, I also think that we can do some things for him scheme wise to get him some relatively easy throws. What we're not asking him to do is to drop back and throw 40 times a game. If we do that, we're probably going to lose. But we're not going to do that anyway. I'm not going to say our offense is comparable year over year, but we are a team that is going to run some spread elements and focus as much on the run as the pass. Callier ran the ball successfully versus them last year and we will get more of a threat from the QB position than what we had with Price. My expectation is that we'll get enough attention in the running game to hit 2-3 explosive plays offensively (think a long pass to Ross, perhaps a sideline throw or two to Kasen) to stretch them enough vertically and to get some positive gains on the sideline throws to Mickens (who had 9 catches against them last year) to provide just enough sideline to sideline stretching to create opportunities from which to get enough explosive plays to help create the 20+ points needed to put yourself in position to win this game.
Personally, I don't see us as having really WR issues. What I see is that our identity is to run the football and get whatever we can out of the passing game. Ross stretches you vertically. Mickens stretches you horizontally. Kasen has yet to be defined. And you'll get a little bit here and there from Campbell + good blocking. I expect that this is a game where you'll get some nice influence from Darrell Daniels.
The Illinois game is the one game this year where I've felt that we were going to get the team's best effort from Play 1 and they dominated that game. Illinois clearly isn't Stanford. But we've been super vanilla for a lot of the season. We schemed a bit against Illinois and started to bring out some of the wrinkles and dominated as a result. You'll clearly see wrinkles this week on both sides of the ball. I expect there to be a significant amount of confusion for Stanford on both sides. We know what they are going to do. They don't really know what we're going to do.
We still don't know anything really other than what Derek wrote in his article that this team isn't good enough to just show up. We are a decent team that if we get a little luck and are solid can win 10 or 11 (counting the bowl) games. We are also a flawed team that could end up winning 8.
Stanford is a strong road team too. They have a very good program. Every loss they had the past few seasons was very close. Every loss you listed was a one score game.
The only game I'm somewhat disappointed in was the Hawaii game because I was expecting Lindquist to play better. What he basically showed in that game was that we're in real trouble if Miles gets hurt - which in turn limits the offense a bit because we have to be a little smarter about how often we run him (I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing Lindquist playing in spots now where we want to dial up a QB run because the threat of him throwing the ball is still enough for it to be better than a straight wildcat type of situation but it allows us to be smarter about when/how Miles runs).
Eastern I thought we learned a couple of great lessons. First, the offense executed at a very sound level with Miles in charge. Second, we jumped on a team early and thought we could front run the rest of the way against a team that while inferior to us, was still a dangerous opponent that could hurt us if we dropped our attention. Great lesson for the team. Also, a number of defensive letdowns took place in the game due to either being mentally soft or not capitalizing on plays where opportunities were there. The game was more 59-31 than it was 59-52 ... but credit to Eastern for making some plays.
Illinois was easily our most complete game so far where we basically dominated them for the first half and then ran clock for the second half. This is the game that I'd point to as the primer for what this team is capable of.
We know that there are a lot of good players out there on this team. We know that there are growing pains that we've already gone through and more that we'll see during the year. I'm not saying that we'll always respond well to adversity and win games when faced with it. However, I'm far more willing to embrace a team that is capable of responding against it than a team that hasn't proven how to respond.
We've shown that we have a coach capable of making adjustments as they've been critical against Hawaii, Eastern, and Georgia State defensively.
We've shown that our attention to detail on special teams is far better than in previous seasons as it is not only creating positive field position for us, but also creating turnovers.
And finally, we've so far shown an ability to protect the football while also finding opportunities to change field position by creating turnovers. This is often a hallmark of a good football team.
There are signs there that we're the kind of football team that we all thought we'd see before the season ... however, the results have presented more of a cloudy picture on that.
Ultimately, winning or losing against Stanford is often driven by which team executes better, makes less mistakes, and wins the special teams battle.
I'm on board with the idea that they haven't shown the full arsenal yet and that the coaches and players have been approaching the first four weeks as scrimmages. That still leaves me in show me mode. I think we can beat Stanford but I haven't seen enough yet to risk any of my drug and hooker money on it.
Losing Price, Smith, ASJ, Stringfellow and Kasen not being 100% is huge. Mickens can't even stretch the cupcake teams vertically. The blocking is much worse. Last year it was great bc you had ASJ on the edge with Smith and Kasen who could spring Mickens. Also we no longer have Sankey, who was the best back in the country.
Last year we were riding high in front running Sark fashion and had our best performance of the year, almost beating a top 5 team on the road. It would have been the program's best win since 2000 Miami or 2002 WSU (as far as how good the opponent was).
Stanford lost a lot and we have home field but we really are a shell of that team and Stanford is mostly intact though not as good as they were. The front 7 has to step up and control the game and we need to win the turnover battle to have a realistic shot. It will be a similar game to 2012 but we don't have the game breakers like we had then to win that game. Ross is clearly not 100%.