some thoughts

Tough loss, mostly because it felt so winnable even with all the mistakes.   This team has definitely shown some promise but makes a lot of errors.  Stanford is a good team and has only lost to 2 top 15 teams (USC,SDSU).  We had every chance to get a win.  We held them to 13 points under their season avg.  Normally they run for 260, only 196 against us.  We can still win a lot of games going forward.  The only game from here out that really looks like a blowout is UW.  Everything else should be within a TD which means if we can make a few plays more than the other guys we can win any of them.  

USC offense is struggling right now and Darnold is trying to make up for it by pushing plays that he normally wouldn’t need to.  Thats a huge advantage for our defense.  Their line has yet to gel with the new guys coming in for the injuries and our dLine is getting good pressure which is turning into TOs but not as many sacks.  This is a morgan/pease game plan.  Sitake was big into sacks but scalley/pease use pressure to create TOs and it wins ball games.  Totals sacks went down with pease/scalley but TOs have gone way up.  We live and die by TOs right now, unfortunately, because our offense is still in shambles like so many other years.  We will never win a pac12 game where we are -2 in turn overs.  

ASU is very winnable game and we will likely be 7-10 pt favorites going into the game even if we lose the USC game.  They will get throttled next week by UW.  

Oregon is likely a toss up but with their QB out they are looking very pedestrian on offense and have yet to show any defensive qualities that would keep them in the game.  If their new QB can’t get comfortable fast we should be able to with this game as well.  

UCLA has the 120th worst defense in the country.  They are a good match up for us this year.  We have a strong secondary.  We get a lot of pressure with 4-5 man rush and this helps create TOs.  This should be a win.   

WSU is a tough game but statistically they would likely only be favored by 5-7 pts right now.  It will be interesting going foward to see how our common opponents do.  Any game within a TD is winnable and its a home game with hopefully huntley back to 100%

UW is killing everyone.  We will be lucky to get 7-10 pts in that game.  It will take a perfect game to keep that one close.   

Colorado does not look good right now on either side of the ball.  They have moments where they can look good and then go straight back to middle of the road.  Montez is more erratic than the games he played in last year for some reason and nowhere near as dynamic as sefo was.  This should be a win as well. 

In my mind that makes 4 more “should be” wins (col, ucla, oreg, asu), 2 tight games (usc, wsu) that could go either way, and 1 sure loss (UW).  Honestly we will probably go 3-1 in the first category and 1-1 in the second and still lose to UW.  That gives a final of 8-4 and 5-4 in conference.  If huntley comes back and is as healthy and accurate as before is probably worth 1 more win.  9-3 can win the south.  The south is wide open still.  

Usc will lose 2 more for sure with the way their offense is playing.  They did not look like a top 15 team against osu.  

Ariz still has usc/wsu/cal/ucla that are all possible losses.  I don’t see how they come out of that better than 2-2

UCLA still has UW/utah/USC/Arizona.  Again 2-2 at best from those 4.  Probably 1-3 given how they have played so far.  

ASU has UW/Utah/USC/Arizona that all look like losses with how ASU has played.  probably will get 1-3 on some freak performance.

colorado already has 3 losses.  They wont win out to get to 6-3.  

6-3 is still a very real possibility for us especially if huntley can get back to full steam quickly.