Spread is up to UW +8

Let the number continue to rise ...

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.

Tequilla said:

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.

I was impressed by the Hawaii/EWU games. That kind of preparation should really put you in a position to beat Stanford.

AEB said:

Tequilla said:

Let the number continue to rise ...

Most right now are paying attention to the UW's results and not what Petersen is getting done underneath the results ...

This scares me. I get and agree with your analysis of Furd, and I agree that much about UW has been kept under raps. However, we still know very little about this team and what we do is generally not good: DB youth, QB questions, WR questions. I don't think we can assume Coach Pete has the team lying in wait.

I agree with your general assessments.

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.