Stanford Football: 3 keys for bounce-back victory vs. UCF in Week 3
By Dante Pryor
3. Figure out the run game
The theme of these three keys are, “The Stanford Cardinal have an identity problem.”
Somewhere, their “intellectual brutality” was broken. They aren’t the same team that they’ve been. Maybe it’s Mike Bloomgren leaving to coach Rice or maybe it was premier sports performance director Shannon Turley getting fired. Who knows when or where, but this isn’t the Stanford Cardinal we’ve gotten to know under David Shaw.
They’ve seemed unable to move people upfront. They aren’t physical in the trenches. You could argue they don’t have a Toby Gerhart or Bryce Love in the back field, but they’ve always been able to manufacture a running game with less talented running backs. Stanford has averaged under four yards per carry the last two years.
Last year, JJ Arcega-Whiteside covered a lot of Stanford’s deficiencies on offense last season, but now he’s in the NFL.
If they want to have any sort of chance against Central Florida, they have to figure it out on the ground. Even if they have to play every running back on their roster, they need some production in the run game. The Knights’ tempo will be too much to overcome if they can’t run the football. Besides, it’s part of their identity, isn’t it?