Stanford’s task against the defending national runner-up would have been daunting enough Friday night under the best of circumstances for first-year coach Tavita Pritchard and Co. But the ideal scenario was yanked from the table well before kickoff when five starters, including three on the offensive line, were deemed unable to play because of injury.
Read more Stanford ready to attack bye week to fix issues that led to 45-6 loss to No. 7 Miami
At that point, the likelihood of an upset dropped to well below zero.
Then came kickoff, and the situation took a turn for the gruesome: The 45-6 beatdown by seventh-ranked Miami entered the books as Stanford’s worst home loss in five years. (There have been some bad ones.)
The offense was inept and the defense utterly helpless. Miami receiver Malachi Toney made Stanford’s defensive backs look like junior college players with 12 catches for 234 yards and three touchdowns.
All in all, the Cardinal struggled to cover, tackle, block and catch — and that was just in the first quarter.
“I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly it was, why we didn’t play well enough early on,” Pritchard said. “I just know missing the mark early didn’t change the complexion of the game, but it was a big part of the reason the game continued to go the way it was.”
So lopsided was the matchup that we are left with few conclusions to draw.
In that regard, the performance is perhaps best viewed in tandem with the Cardinal’s Week 0 victory over Hawaii.
Granted, Miami is closer to the top of the sport than the Rainbow Warriors are to the bottom, but the two opponents provide reasonable bookends to assess Stanford’s trajectory with 17 percent of the season complete.
The odds of improvement in Pritchard’s first season — not substantial improvement, just incremental improvement — seem awfully long.
In the past five years, Stanford has posted records of 3-9, 3-9, 3-9, 3-9 and 4-8. It’s arguably the worst five-year stretch since the early 1960s, even more hapless than the string of losing seasons that were unfolding when Pritchard first set foot on campus as a freshman quarterback in 2006.
The Hurricanes will demolish plenty of opponents this season, both inside and outside the ACC. The larger problem for Stanford is that with Hawaii in the rearview mirror, the schedule offers exactly one opportunity to face a team with lesser personnel: Elon’s visit in mid-October.
The other nine remaining opponents have more talent than Stanford or substantially more talent, and five of those nine games will be played on the other side of the country.
All of which leads to the conclusion that Stanford will be hard pressed to better its 2025 performance, when it won four games under interim coach Frank Reich.
If the injuries continue to mount, this season could begin to resemble the fall of 2024, the last year of the Troy Taylor era, when Stanford beat two major college teams and Cal Poly.
The first of the cross-country trips, to Duke, comes in two weeks. Before that, the Cardinal has a bye to recover and retrench following a wipeout that was easy to see coming and somehow worse than imagined.
“We have to get better, and that’s the space this team will continue to live in,” Pritchard said. “I’m learning and growing as a coach. Our staff is going to do that. Our players are going to do that.
“So much about these next couple weeks is about how much better can we get as quickly as we can do it. That’s what it’s going to be about for us, just improving.”
Stanford’s timeframe might be a tad short, but the opportunity is limitless.
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