Stanford Football: 3 things to watch vs. Rice Owls

Stanford football will be taking on the Rice Owls Saturday evening in Australia in one of the first college football games of 2017.

Mr. 5, Christian McCaffrey, will not be walking out of the tunnel for the Cardinal when they play the Rice Owls on Saturday. That is obviously what every commentator will be talking about before, during and after the game. But there are more things to watch for during this game.

Here are three things to watch for during the Stanford-Rice game:

3. Keller Chryst’s play

Keller Chryst is posed for a big breakthrough season as the quarterback at Stanford and he has the weapons to do it. Last season, he split time with Ryan Burns while he battled with health and consistency issues. He threw for 962 yards, 11 touchdowns, and only two interceptions, not many starting quarterbacks posted a better touchdown-interception ratio. He has shown time and time again that when he is on and healthy he is the right starting quarterback.

Let’s go back to last year when they played Rice. He went threw for 154 yards on 11-for-16 passing with two touchdown passes. He also added 49 yards on the ground and one score. Chryst posted an adjusted QBR of 93.2 and a passer rating of 190.9.

This season the fans in at Stanford should expect to see more of the Keller Chryst they saw when they played Oregon last year instead of the Keller Chryst that played Arizona.