The USC Trojans take on the Stanford Cardinal in one of the college football games on Saturday, September 17, 2016 start time at 8:00 PM ET, at Stanford Stadium, Stanford, California.
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No school has won more Pac-12 football championships than USC (38, more than double second place), but Stanford has won three of the last four titles.
“Stanford has definitely established an identity for themselves as far as being a physical team, being a run-first team”, junior right guard Viane Talamaivao said.
Against Stanford, the Trojans will be facing a front seven that will be similar to that of Alabama. “Even though we won, there’s a lot of stuff we got to fix”.
The only question about the game is whether or not USC will be able to score against Stanford. It was also the eighth consecutive game in which he had at least 200 all-purpose yards. A minute later, Thomas Dunstan issued a blast that made it 2-0 Trojans, and after Baron shut down another Stanford 6-on-5 it was Blake Edwards who let fly a nearside bar-in blast to make it 3-0.
Stanford: TB Christian McCaffrey.
USC plans to show different looks meant to confuse Stanford quarterback Ryan Burns, who will be making his second career start.
After Stanford’s victory over Kansas State in the season opener, Cardinal offensive coordinator Mike Bloomgren evaluated the offensive line play and was disappointed by several aspects of the game.
Outside USC’s locker room on Saturday, quarterback Sam Darnold said “it looked like the game was over”.
Major weapon: USC’s leader in receiving yardage was tight end Tyler Petite, with 73 yards on three catches.
Additionally, USC has some solid running backs in Justin Davis and Ronald Jones. Two went well; Burns looked perfectly adequate in Week 1, while Browne rebounded from a tough opener vs. Alabama to throw for 186 yards and two touchdowns against Utah State.
“That was a thing of beauty”, Whittingham said. He’ll continue to be in our thoughts as we move forward. We stabbed ourselves in the foot. “We have to correct those early penalties”. But the Cardinal’s eight-play drive left USC with time for only one more series.
Christian McCaffrey #5 of the Stanford Cardinal scores a touchdown against the USC Trojans in the first half. The Cardinal forced a quick punt then needed only two plays to strike again.
McCaffrey’s rushing yards accounted for more than 40 percent of Stanford’s total offense. Stein would throw up a field block against Stanford’s final power play chance of the first, and USC’s 3-0 advantage was intact going into the second.
“We wanted to pin them deep, which we did”, Helton said. He finished an 8-play, 57-yard drive comprised entirely of runs with a 1-yard plunge on fourth down to make it 17-3 with 2:21 left before halftime. After the Trojans decided that they weren’t going to guard him, he sprinted 56-yards untouched to the end zone.
You can blame safety Marvell Tell III for not following McCaffrey but he is supposed to be coached well enough to not leave the Heisman Trophy favorite.
Deploying a quarterback spy may prevent Darnold from using his feet, but it takes a man out of coverage that can lead to additional space in the secondary.
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“We gave them a couple big plays, one on the wheel route”, USC coach Clay Helton said.
