2018 Season Recap:
9-4 w/ Sun Bowl win over Pittsburgh
Going into the 2018 season the Stanford Cardinal had high expectations with Heisman candidate Senior RB Bryce Love. QB KJ Costello, RB Bryce Love, and WR JJ Arcega-Whiteside were the leaders of what was expected to be a strong offense with experienced leadership. The defense, led by Senior linebacker Bobby Okereke, was experienced with a good amount of starters returning from 2017.
Stanford started the 2018 on the right foot winning their first 4 games against Sand Diego State, USC, UC Davis, and Oregon. Stanford was ranked #5 in the country at the time about to face off with #8 Notre Dame. Stanford ended losing to Notre Dame, and lost the next week to Utah to take them to 4-2. The next two weeks Stanford won at Arizona State before losing to #14 WSU at home in a shootout. In week 9 Stanford traveled up to Seattle to play UW, the Huskies won 27-23.
The Huskies went up 21-0 in the first half but were unable to put away the Cardinal until the final play of the game when Taylor Rapp intercepted KJ Costello. Myles Gaskin ran for 148 yards and the Huskies intercepted Costello 3 times in the game. This game was a turning point in the season for both teams, the Huskies won their next three games clinching a Rose Bowl bid while Stanford went on to win the final 4 games of the season. Stanford beat Oregon St., UCLA, Cal, and Pitt, to finish the season 9-4. KJ Costello started every game in 2018, he threw for 3540 yards and 29 TDs. Senior WR JJ Arcega Whiteside led the team with 1000 yards receiving and 14 TDs in 2018. Senior RB Bryce Love and Tight End Kaden Smith were also major contributors on offense that are gone in 2019.
2018 Offense: 27.2 points per game, 3550 passing yards, 1403 rushing yards, 29 passing touchdowns, 16 rushing touchdowns
2018 Defense: 21.4 points per game allowed, 3432 passing yards allowed, 1899 rushing yards allowed, 17 passing touchdowns allowed, 22 rushing touchdowns allowed
2019 Stanford Cardinal
Head Coach: David Shaw (Career Record: 82-26)
Offense: Coming into 2019 the Stanford Cardinal knew they were have their hands full replacing their leading rusher and receiver from 2018. RB Bryce Love was a potential Heisman candidate in 2018, he didn’t have the success expected but is still a huge loss. Returning for the 2019 season was QB KJ Costello who has started 19 games for Stanford coming into the 2019 season. However Costello has missed 2 starts this year because of head and hand injuries.
Costello did not start last week against Oregon State because of a hand injury but is listed as week to week and it has not been announced either way for this week’s game. If Costello is not able to play the starter will be Junior QB Davis Mills. Mills has played in 4 games this season starting 2. Last week he was 18 of 25 for 245 yards and 3 TDs. Starting at RB is Senior Cameron Scarlett, he came into the season with a bit of playing experience rushing for 300+ yards and 8 TDs each of the last 2 seasons.
This year he has been splitting carries with true freshman RB Austin Jones. Scarlett has 413 yards rushing so far this season averaging 4.4 yards per carry. WR Connor Wedington, WR Michael Wilson, and TE Colby Parkinson have stepped up to replace Arcega-Whiteside and Caden Smith in the passing game this season. Wedington leads the team in catches with 25, while Michael Wilson leads the team in yards and touchdown with 266 and 3. Overall the team has struggled to score points on offense, they are down to 20 points per game this season a 7 point drop from 2018 and have only scored 7 offensive touchdowns so far this season.
Defense: Stanford lost a number of key players from their defense from last season including leading tackler Bobby Okereke and starting corner Aliyah Holder. The losses have been felt early in 2019 as their points per game has risen from 20.8 points per game last season to over 29 points per game so far this year. Senior linebacker Casey Toohill has stepped up as a leader this year. He leads the team in sacks with 4 in the first 5 weeks. In 2018 nobody had more than 5 sacks on the season.
The Stanford defense has only forced 6 turnovers so far this season, 2 interceptions and 4 fumbles. 4 of those forced turnovers came in week 1 vs Northwestern. The Stanford defense has really struggled to keep teams from putting up big numbers through the air this season. 3 of the last 4 weeks the opposing QB has thrown for 325+ yards and 3+ TDs. One guy to watch for on Stanford’s defense is junior corner Paulson Adebo. He had 4 interceptions last season for the Stanford defense and has 1 so far this season. One thing Stanford has going for them in this game is they are at home. On the year they are allowing 39 points per game on the road and only 14 points per game at home. That being said I really don’t see the Huskies struggling to score against Stanford this weekend.
Results: Stanford started the season at home against Northwestern. The Stanford defense forced 4 turnovers in week 1 as the Cardinal beat Northwestern 17-7. KJ Costello was injured in their week 1 win and missed the game vs USC in week 2. Stanford was not ready to stop the USC air raid as Kedon Slovis threw for 377 yards and 3 touchdowns in his first career start to beat Stanford 45-20. Week 3 Stanford went on the road to face #17 UCF, and for the second week in a row Stanford’s defense was torn up by a freshman quarterback. UCF’s QB threw for 347 yards and 4 touchdowns as UCF beat Stanford 45-27.
Stanford returned home to face Oregon in week 4, this time it was the Stanford offense that struggled to find any success. KJ Costello was held to 120 yards passing and 1 interception while Justin Herbert threw 3 touchdowns for the Ducks to beat Stanford 21-6. Last week Stanford traveled to Oregon State, Davis Mills started at quarterback for Stanford for his second start of the year. Stanford went up 21-0 early in the third quarter but Oregon State made a comeback to tie the game at 28. Stanford was able to get a late drive and kick a game winning field goal with no time left to win 31-28. They come into Seattle this week with 2-3 after just squeezing out 2 wins against two teams with low expectations for the season.
