Stanford game

[ProudUte]

SDSU had the perfect game plan to stop Love.  Our old nemesis, Rocky Long stacked the box and blitzed the gaps every play.  There was no way Love was going anywhere.  It worked well and Love only got 28 yards on 18 carries.  That included a 14 yard run in the 4th quarter.

In the first half Stanford was stubborn and kept going to the Love well.  They weren’t going to change.  They finally went to the pass very late in the half and scored their first TD with less than 30 seconds to play.  They wised up and went to their passing game in the second half and scored three TDs to pull away from SDSU.

I don’t think we have to pull the same stunt as Rocky Long to slow Love.  Also, we have a much better defensive backfield than SDSU.  I know it was a first game for both teams.  But, I like our chances against the trees. 🙂

Some below are suggesting that Moss may be the best RB in the Pac 12.  I hope that is the way it works out.  But, Long is a great defensive coach and had all off season to scheme for this game.  I doubt any other team will try the same thing.  It leaves your DBs isolated.  Also, there are a lot of good RBs in the conferfence.  Gaskins from UW comes to mind.  He is a stud!

 

 

[Tony (admin)]

If we stack the box we won’t get burned one-on-one like SDSU did in the secondary.

[Ma’ake Kava]

It will be interesting to see if we can contain Love by stacking the box (on some plays), letting the LBs and Safeties fill the gaps and limit the damage on others. We haven’t had a safety that can cut off edge plays like RoJo did looking like a rocket coming up… until Marquise Blair.

When they’re forced into throwing, I see JJohnson, Blackmon and Nurse play Arcega-Whiteside better than SDSU’s surprisingly weak CB performance, along with Blair/Ballard, Burgess/Afia helping. We won’t see A-W burn us deep like that, maybe once, but they’ll probably try to find Irwin & TEs on shorter routes.

I suspect Scalley is going to do everything from stacking the box to bringing pressure (selectively). It should be a fascinating matchup. In the various matchups, I think our D will limit their O to some FG attempts and maybe 1, possibly 2 TDs. We should be able to limit them to 20 or less, which swings the battle to Utah’s O vs Stanford’s D, and maybe ST big plays.

[Utah]

Last year Fotu played DE vs Stanford. With how good our tackles are, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Utah do that again.