Both Stanford and Washington State suffered frustrating Week 1 losses. But the two are a combined 8-1 in Pac-12 play, and the winner of Saturday's game will control its destiny in the North division race.
Week 1 is basically the preseason, a week that resides completely outside of the flow of the college football season. Teams have had an abnormal amount of time to prepare for one opponent, freshmen are seeing the field for the first time, the depth chart is wet concrete and procedural penalties are abound. The results count, but they are often inexplicable, defied by everything we see thereafter.
Here are some Week 1 results from this season:
- South Carolina 17, North Carolina 13. The Tar Heels haven't lost since and have beaten at least two teams that are, on paper, quite a bit better than the Gamecocks.
- Auburn 31, Louisville 24. The sixth-ranked Tigers wobbled but held steady against a pretty strong Cardinals team. Two promising teams ... who have since gone 6-6.
- Texas A&M 38, Arizona State 17. A fun, back-and-forth game between two top-20 caliber teams expected to contend in their respective divisions. The two are unranked and a combined 4-4 in conference play.
Et cetera. Because we are starved for football and so desperate to get answers to all the questions we asked in the offseason, we overreact to every shred of evidence Week 1 provides us. And then the next 13 weeks overrule almost everything we saw.
That Stanford and Washington State might be playing the biggest game of Week 9 tells us everything we need to know about Week 1's predictive value. The Cardinal traveled to Northwestern on Sept. 5 and came away with a feckless 16-6 loss. The Wildcats' defense was strong for a few weeks before fading, but the Cardinal have surged since this disaster (which reminded us of all of Stanford's 2014 inefficiencies and drive-finishing inability).
During its current six-game winning streak, Stanford has scored at least 31 points in every game and has scored at least 41 four times. The same Cardinal unit that couldn't get out of its own way in Evanston now ranks 10th in Off. S&P+, and considering both current quality and upcoming schedule, Stanford might be the one-loss team most well-positioned to reach the Playoff at the moment.
Then there's Wazzu. The Cougars fell, 24-17, to Portland State in Week 1, sparking major concerns (conclusions, even) regarding Mike Leach's future in Pullman. Granted, Portland State has proven to be a decent team -- 12th in the FCS coaches poll, 106th in Sagarin, 6-1 with only a loss to North Dakota and a walloping of North Texas -- but when you've got a nine-game conference slate to look forward to, this isn't a game you can afford to lose if you have serious bowl aspirations.
Since then, Washington State is 5-1. The Cougs fell by six on the road to Cal but won at Oregon and Arizona, survived a cross-country road trip against Rutgers, and pounded Wyoming and Oregon State. The offense, a liability against Portland State, is now hotter than it's ever been under Leach.
Washington State has scored 47.3 points per game in its last three conference games (all wins), against Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona. The Cougs have averaged 597.3 yards per game, 6.6 per play, and are enjoying their most prolific three-game span ever under Mike Leach.
Sophomore quarterback Luke Falk was already producing solid numbers during Wazzu's 2-2 start, but during this three-game streak, his numbers are off the charts: 73 percent completion rate, 16 touchdowns, just two interceptions. Gabe Marks has 22 catches for 303 yards and seven scores in this span; those seven touchdown receptions would rank 13th in the country for the whole season.
Stanford is up to eighth in the AP poll, and Washington State is receiving votes. The winner of this Pac-12 After Dark contest (10:30 p.m. ET Saturday on ESPN) controls its destiny in the Pac-12 North race. We expected all of this. Totally.
We knew nothing after one week, but what do we know about this matchup after a full seven games each?
1. Efficiency will decide the game
The methods couldn't possibly be more different. Washington State throws more frequently than any team in the country and operates at a top-25 pace. Stanford runs more than two-thirds of the time on standard downs and takes its sweet time. But the goals are the same. Both offenses rely on efficiency over big plays, on jabs instead of uppercuts.
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Eschewing opponent adjustments, Stanford currently ranks third in the country in success rate and 100th in IsoPPP (which measures the magnitude of successful plays). The Cardinal are really good at getting on base but aren't hitting many home runs. The Cougars? Exactly the same: Fifth in success rate, 110th in IsoPPP.
Adjusting for opponent gives Stanford far more credit than Wazzu, but the personality here is the same. Nearly 50 percent of Christian McCaffrey's carries gain at least five yards, and the Cardinal are nearly automatic in short-yardage situations. Meanwhile, Wazzu's Luke Falk is completing a brisk 73 percent of his passes. On first downs, he's completing 79 percent while averaging just nine yards per completion. And both teams are in the top 30 in third down conversion rate.
Stanford's biggest advantage might simply be defending relatively efficiently. The Cardinal have struggled with defensive depth and inexperience, especially up front (the pass rush is almost nonexistent), but they swarm to the ball, tackle well and rank a respectable 25th in defensive success rate. Wazzu? 107th. The Cougars prevent big plays but don't disrupt your offensive flow. That could be a problem.
2. If efficiency doesn't, short yardage might
For fun, I added up the (very athletic) weight of @StanfordFball personnel in this package: 3,017lbs (1.5 tons) pic.twitter.com/8wKnqClwMk
— J.B. Long (@JB_Long) October 26, 2015It makes perfect sense that Stanford, which all but moves into a nine-lineman formation in short-yardage situations, would be pretty good at moving your defense forward a couple of yards. The Cardinal rank third in the country in Power Success Rate at 88 percent. But to Wazzu's credit, the Cougars are pretty good at providing resistance in these situations, ranking 23rd in the same category by allowing conversions just 55 percent of the time. If stuffed on third-and-2, conservative David Shaw might elect to punt and give Washington State an opportunity to wear down Stanford's thin defense. But few teams actually stuff Stanford.
Meanwhile, remember when Stanford was awful at finishing drives? The Cardinal blew multiple games for exactly that reason last season and ranked a baffling 109th in points per scoring opportunity, then began this season by scoring six points in three opportunities (not including a punt from the Northwestern 37) in Evanston. Since then, they've been nearly automatic. They're now up to 11th in the country, averaging 5.57 points per opportunity. (That average would have potentially won the Northwestern game.) Wazzu, meanwhile, is allowing 4.93 points per chance (93rd). Whatever chance the Cougars have is magnified if they can force an appearance of last year's Stanford red zone offense.
On the flipside, Wazzu is averaging 5 points per chance (49th), and Stanford is allowing the same 5 points (96th). If the Cougars can finish drives better than the Cardinal, they will buy themselves some margin for error.
3. Washington State still probably isn't that great
We all have our "College football is more fun when [random team] is good" biases. For some, it's a historical powers like Nebraska or Michigan. For others, including me, that random team is Whoever Mike Leach Is Coaching. That Leach has a 5-2 team that has turned on the offensive afterburners of late is awesome, and the scene in Pullman if the Cougs upset the Cardinal will be somewhere between cathartic and apocalyptic. But S&P+ win probabilities only give Wazzu about a 28 percent chance of doing that, even at home, because the Cougars still haven't been incredibly impressive this year.
Improvement is improvement, and wins are wins. But Wazzu still only ranks 60th in S&P+, which makes sense when you look at the schedule at hand. Of WSU's five victims, none rank better than 57th in S&P+, and the average score in the Cougars' four games against top-100 opponents (which obviously doesn't even count Portland State) is WSU 39, Opponent 37. Sixtieth (28th on offense, 93rd on defense) seems about right.
Stanford, meanwhile, has proven far more on paper. The Cardinal are 14th in S&P+, having defeated two top-20 teams by a combined 97-66. Over the last six games, their average percentile performance is 81.3 percent. WSU's: 60.2.
Still, a 28 percent chance means a win is far from impossible; roll two dice, and there's a 28 percent chance you roll a nine or higher. After Week 1, there was a far lower than 28 percent chance that WSU would be playing in a game of this magnitude this late in the year. Don't tell the Cougs the odds.
4. Both teams are due a turnaround from the turnovers fairy
Against Northwestern, Stanford recovered only one of four fumbles and was unable to turn any of four pass break-ups into interceptions. For the season, the Cardinal have had some of the worst turnovers luck in the country, averaging nearly 4.1 points per game of bad bounces. That makes their accomplishments -- six wins by an average of three touchdowns each -- even more impressive.
Wazzu, on the other hand? Plus-5.1 points per game of turnovers luck. Only Miami (plus-8.1), Houston (plus-5.9), and Bowling Green (plus-5.9) have benefited more. And while WSU's two losses were each by a touchdown or less, so were three of the Cougars' wins. The bounce of the ball has been kind.
There's nothing saying that has to change, of course. Washington State is but a couple of good bounces and a red zone stop or two from having a serious chance of controlling the North. That's an incredible thing to say considering what we thought we knew seven weeks ago.