Cal Football Countdown: 84 Days, A Look at Stanford
The countdown to Cal's kickoff with UC Davis continues with a look at Stanford.
Spring Indicator #1: Who's the next guy?
You know the one.
Since the Toby Gerhardt days, there's been one pain-in-the-ass, Cal-killing offensive player in Red and White. Sometimes more than one at once. Bryce Love. Christian McCaffrey. Zach Ertz. JJ Arcega-Whiteside, long may he be in the NFL.
This year's candidates, though, are yet to be discovered. Cameron Scarlett will be getting his first full season of action, but he's played on and off for a few years without really flashing the same sort of gamebreaker ability. Tight end Colby Parkinson is likely to take over Arcega-Whiteside's role as the guy Stanford throws six red zone fades to a game, having drawn seven touchdowns on his 29 catches last season already, and they boast some other familiar receivers -- including the other St. Brown, Osiris -- but no one yet as terrifying as the names listed above.
While the DNA of the program dictates that they'll keep running the ball and blowing at least one game a year they shouldn't through baffling game management decisions, Stanford's improvement will definitely depend on KJ Costello, who might be the second best QB in the Pac-12 right now after posting a 29:11 TD:INT ratio and 3540 yard season. The challenge: doing it all again without his top receiver and running back. Spring results are somewhat inconclusive at the moment.
Spring Indicator #2: Turnover on defense
The Cardinal took a slight step back on defense last year, and were actually beaten out by Cal in most defensive metrics, including YPP and points allowed.
Only five players are back from last year's group -- including All-Pac-12 first team corner Paulson Adebo -- but that number that would have been seven before linebacker Sean Barton and safety Frank Buncom both stepped away from football. Another team that only had a spring scrimmage, rather than an actual game due to injuries, the Cardinal did discover redshirt freshman Ricky Miezan as solid replacement for one of the department linebackers and he's been projected by the staff as a lock there.
The main thing heading into fall is in the rest of the front seven, where 13.5 sacks of collective production have moved on -- nearly a third of the team's total. Gabe Reid (5.5 sacks), Jordan Fox (4.5), and Jovan Swann (4.5) all return and make up the top three, but as a team that hasn't had elite pass rushers since the duo of Harrison Phillips and Solomon Thomas, Stanford will need to continue to patch up depth there if no one emerges behind them. (In yet another similarity, that is very much like Cal, who also has had to piece together a pass rush without any outstanding individual rushers.)