Playoff ? Playoff ? Shaw keeps focus on team’s season
Even if No. 7 Stanford beats No. 8 Notre Dame on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium, David Shaw doesn’t want to be asked about whether the Cardinal should be in the conversation for the College Football Playoff.
When the Stanford head coach was asked about that possibility Tuesday, he said that as far as he’s concerned, “there is no conversation” about Stanford in the Final Four.
“It’s the difference between the world that I live in and the world you (the media) all exist in,” he said “For me, you’re not going to a bowl game until they invite you to a bowl game. You’re not going to the playoff until they tell you you’re in the playoff. All this probability stuff ? You haven’t won a game until the game is over.
“So for me, there’s conversation. The end is nowhere in sight. We’re 2-0 in our conference right now, which is huge for us, the most important thing we’ve got going for us. We’ve got a big game on the road this week. For us to think about anything else, I think, is asinine.”
Saturday’s game on NBC will be the first time the schools have met when both were in the AP top 10. Both teams are 4-0, and the last time Stanford and Notre Dame played when both were undefeated was in the 1925 Rose Bowl. Stanford was 7-0-1 and Notre Dame 9-0.
Talk about legends: That game matched Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen and head coach Knute Rockne against Stanford’s Ernie Nevers and head coach Pop Warner. The Fighting Irish won 27-10 to earn their first national title.
Suffice it to say that Saturday’s winner will be one step closer to the CFP and the loser will need a lot of help to get there.
Stanford is coming off a 38-31 overtime win at Oregon, in which it rallied from a 24-7 deficit late in the third quarter and a 31-21 deficit in the final 3:10 of regulation. Notre Dame routed Wake Forest 56-27.
The Ducks averaged 6.4 yards per rush in the first half but 1.6 in the second. The difference was that after the break, the Cardinal defense “didn’t abandon our responsibilities,” Shaw said.
“We got off blocks and tackled guys. We missed some tackles in the first half. Sometimes you can’t consider them missed tackles because we didn’t get close enough to make us miss.”
In the second half, “We closed the cushion on runners. We contained the passer better. We did a better job of containing them as opposed to giving them a lot of free runs.”
One play the Cardinal didn’t contain in the third quarter was Jaylen Redd’s end-around for an apparent 17-yard touchdown. After a replay review, the ball was placed on the 1-yard line because Redd’s left foot hit the pylon, which is out of bounds, before the ball crossed the goal line.
Shaw said it was a clear-cut call, although he said many college and pro ball-carriers mistakenly try to kick the pylon as they’re driven out of bounds. “It’s all about where the ball is,” he said. “The key is getting the ball over the white line.”
Alfieri’s TD: Joey Alfieri’s 80-yard scoop-and-score against Oregon drew some Twitter love from countrymusic singer Tim McGraw, who tweeted: “Run @jalfieri4, run !!!! Go cardinal!! ..... love that kid!” It was the first career touchdown for the fifth-year linebacker. All four of his turnovers have come in his home state of Oregon; the others were a fumble recovery at Oregon State in 2015 and two interceptions at Oregon in 2016.