Defense unleashes ‘controlled chaos’ before Spring Game
Payback time. After being bested by the Cardinal offense in a short-yardage competition Saturday, the Stanford defense fought back with a fury on Tuesday during a third-down blitz session.
Payback time. After being bested by the Cardinal offense in a short-yardage competition Saturday, the Stanford defense fought back with a fury on Tuesday during a third-down blitz session.
After concentrating on conditioning for the last few weeks, the Stanford football team will finally be back in spring practice from Monday, with players ready to start competing for key places in next season’s starting lineup.
This year was supposed to be the transition season. Optimists hoped Stanford would be competitive enough in big games and good enough in winnable ones to end up in a solid bowl game and keep a bit of momentum from the Luck era. All Stanford needed was a solid season to keep recruits until quarterbacks Dallas Lloyd and Ryan Burns were ready to lead Stanford back to glory.
Welcome back to the real world, Stanford football fans. Welcome back to the land of disgustingly tense fourth quarters, missed plays from all stretches of the roster and nearly botched games against 25-point underdogs that shouldn’t even come close to matching up with the Cardinal.
Just three days until the season opener against San Jose State, the Stanford football starting roster for game one has almost been finalized—keyword being “almost” because the left guard position on the offensive line is still up in the air.
The No. 21 Stanford football team released its depth chart to open the season on Saturday night with few surprises, other than the confirmation that several freshmen will see playing time on the offensive line.
Not many college football teams in the nation can lose an offensive guard and tackle to the first two rounds of the NFL Draft and still boast a robust offensive line. Stanford is one of the few teams that can. The Cardinal can thank some newly arrived and much-hyped freshmen for that. Heralded as the focal point of the best recruiting class in school history, the Stanford freshman offensive linemen have more than lived up to expectations thus far in preseason camp.
Less than a week after welcoming the best recruiting class in team history, the Stanford football program was honored for its efforts, as assistant coach Lance Anderson was named the National Recruiter of the Year by Scout/FOXSportsNext.