Pac-12 Sleeper: Stanford Cardinal
Four. You’re going to insult me and the rest of the college football world with a win total on the board of four?!
That’s what BetMGM had, but Stanford should blow past that with relative ease.
The Cardinal came up with a 4-2 season in 2020 and they’re only two years removed from being a dominant force.
Oh how quickly everyone forgets that the program won 101 games from 2009 to 2018.
The 2019 team got beaten up, battered and bruised right away, and it was never right in an aberration of a 4-8 season. This year’s team under David Shaw should be more like normal.
– Predicting Every 2021 Pac-12 Game
Don’t get too caught up in the schedule that goes 12-for-12 with an all Power Five slate. Get a little closer, though, and Kansas State is beatable, and so is Vanderbilt – even though those two games are away from Palo Alto.
Not playing Arizona and Colorado from the South is a brutally bad break, but getting Oregon, Washington, Utah and Notre Dame at home eases that pain somewhat.
The defense is going to be a rock up front around a great front 6 or 7 – depending on the alignment – and the offense should be more consistent as long as the running game is going again.