{"id":34527,"date":"2014-07-22T06:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=34527"},"modified":"2014-07-21T15:45:59","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T20:45:59","slug":"2014-stanford-cardinal-college-football-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/2014-stanford-cardinal-college-football-preview-34527\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 Stanford Cardinal College Football Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stanford Cardinal
\nHead Coach:\u00a0 David Shaw
\n2013-14 Record:\u00a0 11-3, 7-2 Pac-12 Conference
\n2013-14 Bowl Result:\u00a0 24-20 loss to Michigan State in Rose Bowl
\nOdds to Win National Championship:\u00a0 +3208<\/strong><\/p>\n

Returning Starters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Offense:\u00a0 5, Defense:\u00a0 7<\/p>\n

Offense<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Stanford Cardinal will likely fail to reach a double-digit win total in 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Junior quarterback Kevin Hogan will try to direct the program into winning its third consecutive Pac-12 Conference title, but the offensive line has just 26 career starts coming back\u2014something that Shaw must address due to the team\u2019s reliance on a power running game over the years.<\/p>\n

Stanford certainly has some weapons on the offensive end, with the biggest one being senior wide receiver Ty Montgomery, who is a threat on the perimeter and also in kick returns.<\/p>\n

Replacing Tyler Gaffney at running back is going to be a tall order, but the trio of Barry Sanders, Ricky Seale and Kelsey Young were once highly-touted players that should be able to carry the torch.<\/p>\n

Defense<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cardinal returns seven starters from a unit that again led the Pac-12 in scoring defense, while also limiting opponents to a pedestrian 89.4 rushing yards per game.<\/p>\n

College football handicappers need to be aware that the program is solid at all levels of its stop unit, especially in the secondary\u2014a group that watched opponents go to the air a conference-high 554 times last year.<\/p>\n

Senior linebacker A.J. Tarpley will be the leader of the group, as he ranked second on the team with 93 tackles a season ago.<\/p>\n

Schedule<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that the Cardinal will be tested at home against the USC Trojans in Week 2, which can\u2019t be ignored when looking over the college football odds page, but they\u2019ve also won five of the last seven overall meetings in that series.<\/p>\n

Stanford\u2019s going to have a hard time extending its streak of being one of just two teams to win at least 11 games in each of the last four seasons, considering they go on the road against Washington, Notre Dame, Arizona State, Oregon and UCLA.<\/p>\n

Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shaw\u2019s been able to elevate the program since Jim Harbaugh\u2019s departure from Palo Alto to the San Francisco 49ers, but I believe it will experience a drop off in terms of performance in 2014.<\/p>\n

Stanford has dominated the trenches with its physicality in recent years, but the rest of the conference has started to catch up in that department.<\/p>\n

A new face will represent the Pac-12 in the 2015 Rose Bowl.<\/p>\n

Make sure to become a long term subscriber for the best college football picks anywhere for the upcoming 2014-15 NCAA football season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stanford Cardinal Head Coach:\u00a0 David Shaw 2013-14 Record:\u00a0 11-3, 7-2 Pac-12 Conference 2013-14 Bowl Result:\u00a0 24-20 loss to Michigan State in Rose Bowl Odds to Win National Championship:\u00a0 +3208 Returning Starters Offense:\u00a0 5, Defense:\u00a0 7 Offense Junior quarterback Kevin Hogan will try to direct the program into winning its third consecutive Pac-12 Conference title, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":29401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[8383,8382,5256,7647,5263,2528,7986],"class_list":["post-34527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-a-j-tarpley","tag-barry-sanders","tag-david-shaw","tag-kevin-hogan","tag-pac-12-conference","tag-stanford-cardinal","tag-ty-montgomery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34528,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34527\/revisions\/34528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}