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Cardinal will win even if they spot Washington St 14 points
By Michael Duca October 22, 2008 |
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PALO ALTO--Stanford Stadium is a gorgeous place but unfortunately you will see more of the stadium then people watching the ball game. They sure can do with a serious upgrade in attendance. It's kind of unfortunate they have some very attractive package deals parking is free and you get hang out with some of the wealthiest people in America. Not the worse thing that you could do for a Saturday afternoon, it really is a nice stadium the sight lines are great. Looking back on the UCLA loss the final drive for a score was 84 yards and it took them most of the length of the field right down to the final gun and at the end it was broken coverage in the end zone that lead to the touchdown that gave UCLA that narrow squeaker victory just like Stanford pulled off essentially the same thing the week before with a narrow squeaker victory over Arizona. It's an Arizona team that by the way showed Cal how good they really are. It's kind of an unfortunate circumstance for Stanford to lose that game in that way just because number one they have such a long history of being snake bitten and it was at the Rose Bowl last Saturday. Number two, they were really one of the top 25 teams in the nation in the red zone. The red zone defense was really one of their calling cards and against UCLA they just couldn't get it done. That was a bad penalty they took at the end and that led to that field position and a wide open receiver in the corner of the end zone and I mean wide open and I'm not sure where your sitting but the guy was open from me to you in any event. Next up Washington State: The Cougars are an extremely undermanned at the start of practice. Then they suffered about as many injuries as any Division one college football team in a long time. They're using walk ons and they were talking try outs from people on campus a couple of weeks ago. Their decimated that's a tough situation your heart has to go out there to the kids trying to play football and doing their best playing a game they love and just getting their hat not handed to them but delivered to them. Cal went up there and just crunched that team and USC crushed them 69-0, oh my goodness. As long as they've been playing football in Pullman that is the worst shutout loss in Washington State history and frankly the Trojans let up they were up 62-0 in the third quarter. Duca's coaches corner: Right now head coach Jim Harbaugh has to settle on a quarterback or a quarterback rotation, it was Cardinal quarterback TJ Pritchard against Arizona and then although it wasn't announced in the press box he took a blow to the head that gave him a concussion symptoms so Stanford went with their number two and number three quarterbacks in the second half and they were actually running some options. So the problem is that each of he quarterbacks is pretty distinctive, Pritchard pretty much is going to be the guy who is going to throw the ball down field and Lucas is the guy who is going to run the option and occasionally pass that makes it a little bit easier for teams to defend if you bring Lucas on 2nd and 11 you pretty much know what is going to happen. It would be advisable that Harbaugh rotate quarterbacks even in the third series until Prtichard is healthy enough to play a full game. Something that makes it a little more difficult for teams to scheme them in the second half. Because UCLA did a pretty good job of scheming them. All that having been said it's clear that a team in red is going to win that game on November 1st at Stanford Stadium. There is no way that Washington State can beat Stanford in that game. Finally the Cougars will go O'for for the season. Michael Duca is covering Stanford football each week with game coverage by Jeremy Kahn for Sportstalk. |
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