Entering 2024, Stanford football was coming off three consecutive seasons with a 3-9 record. But Troy Taylor was building up the program, and with 18 returning starters, this was the time to build momentum. Welp, the Cardinal went exactly 3-9 for a fourth consecutive season, and enter 2025 in shambles.
Taylor was released by the program after a scandal, and Andrew Luck (General Manager) has since asked his buddy from the NFL, Frank Reich, to take over at Head Coach. Despite some success with the Colts, Reich is just a stopgap for this program until it can find a long-term solution. He’s tagged as the “temporary” coach, which doesn’t exactly inspire much hope — and the players have taken notice.
Stanford lost plenty of talent heading into 2025, and was unable to replace any of it. Luck and Reich landed virtually no help in the transfer portal, leaving little reason to believe that this will be the year that the program finally exceeds three victories.
As for the schedule, Stanford does open a short road favorite at Hawaii (-2.5 as of June 26). However, 72% of the early money is on the Rainbow Warriors, and I’d expect this game to close much closer to a pick’em. Hawaii hosted UCLA in Week 1 of last season, and while the Bruins escaped with a three-point victory, that was in a game with a spread of 14 points. This is a difficult opener for Stanford, and the first of six road games that all involve changing time zones.
If Stanford does lose on the island, the win total would be in excellent position to go under. But even with a win, there are only three more realistic wins on the schedule. Boston College, San Jose State and Cal are home games that could all be considered a coin flip at best for Stanford. Essentially, Stanford is going to have to win all four of the coin flip games on its schedule. If the Cardinal even drop one of those games, they’ll need to pull a pretty big upset to go over the win total. That’s assuming Stanford only loses one of those coin flip games. I believe it’ll drop multiple. I also believe it’ll go off as a home underdog in most of those three games.
Phil Steele ranks Stanford dead last in the ACC this season, which is 17th place. Athlon agrees with the ranking, and to go even further, ranks Stanford dead last in the ACC at every single position in their conference positional rankings. Yes, 17 out of 17 at every position on the field. Yikes.
That’s enough for me to fade what appears to be a really bad situation with this Stanford football program, and play the under on the win total. With prices as steep as -190 in the market, DraftKings Sportsbook is offering us the shortest price in the industry to play the under.
Stanford UNDER 3.5 Wins (-135) – 3-units
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