Chase Thomas leads a strong defense for the increasingly underrated Cardinal |
The 12 Days of BCS will provide you with everything you need to know for the five BCS games starting on New Year's Day. Each day will be a different subject finishing on New Year's Eve.
Jim Harbaugh, gone. Andrew Luck, gone. Coby Fleener, gone. Yet, the Stanford Cardinal did not miss a beat this season. Despite starting the season with an ugly loss against Washington and a tough OT defeat to #1 Notre Dame, Stanford rallied back to win its last seven games including four wins against ranked opponents. The finest of all the Cardinal's wins came in the Autzen Zoo against the #2 Ducks; they absolutely dominated the most explosive offenses in the country, holding them to only 14 points.
That's where this team starts and that's where it finishes. Defensively they are among the country's best allowing only 17.5 points per game in the wide open Pac-12 conference. Chase Thomas and Shayne Skove lead a great linebacker core with Trent Murphy as their resident sack artist (10 sacks this season). Sophomore ballhawk safety Ed Reynolds patrols the airways and is tied for fifth in the nation with six INTs, three of which he's taken to the promise land. The individual stats don't wow you as much as the fact that they've held such prolific offenses such as USC, Oregon and UCLA to an average of 17 points; it's quite astonishing and wildly underrated.
Josh Nunes is no Andrew Luck, that's pretty clear. But Nunes' replacement, freshman Kevin Hogan, has been putting up impressive numbers. In five games, Hogan's completing 73% of his passes and he's only turned the ball over three times as opposed to nine TDs. He's also showed an ability to move outside the pocket, but the real offensive presence comes in Stepfan Taylor who emerged last year playing alongside Luck. Taylor is an absolute bruiser of a running back and he really sets the tone for this offense, which also features stud tight end Zach Ertz.
For some reason, even at the high rank of sixth, this team has gotten no love from the media or fans. Probably because of Oregon's ridiculously exciting offense or because Andrew Luck no longer rocks #12 for them, but it doesn't mean this team isn't a high caliber squad. If only they didn't cough up that game to Arizona earlier in the season, we might be talking about them in the National Championship game. Might.
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