RJ Abeytia previews the Stanford Cardinal

Dawgman.com’s Kim Grinolds caught up with RJ Abeytia from The Bootleg, the Stanford site for the 247Sports Network, to get a sense for what Washington fans might see from the Cardinal on the field Saturday when they take on Washington at Husky Stadium, but also what’s going on with Stanford Athletics behind the scenes now that they’ve had to uproot their program for a couple of weeks due to new Santa Clara County COVID-19 testing and tracing guidelines.In short, not only is Stanford’s football team adversely affected, but their basketball teams are also suffering as a result.They also talk about the perception of Stanford Football Head Coach David Shaw, the current dean of the Pac-12 coaching fraternity. He is the most successful head coach in the history of the program, but is he untouchable?The conversation moved to the Cardinal offense, led by quarterback Davis Mills. He may be a senior, but he’s still a player that is developing. Stanford has a number of receivers he can go to, including former Sumner star and one-time UW commit Connor Wedington. They also talk about running back Austin Jones and their tight ends and what they do to contribute to Stanford’s offense as a whole.To wrap up talk on the offense, Abeytia focuses on Stanford’s big offensive line and why they may be built more to promote the pass at this point in 2020 compared to the run.Flipping to the other side of the ball, RJ goes in-depth with Stanford’s defense, starting with an improvement on the defensive line despite losing a couple of graduate transfers they were hoping to have this fall. They are led on the line of scrimmage by Thomas Booker, Thomas Schaffer, and Dalyn Wade-Perry.There’s one thing Abeytia points to as an area of concern for the Cardinal; third-down defense. But they’ve been able to make up for some of that with hawking the ball and grabbing turnovers.The Cardinal linebackers are experienced, yet are still just gelling as a unit. The younger guy of that group, Levani Damuni, is the one that has really flashed early in the season. But they haven’t been able to wreak a lot of havoc along the edges in terms of producing a consistent pass rush.In the secondary, Abeytia talked enthusiastically about the younger defensive backs and how willing they’ve been when asked to stick their nose in and be physical.To wrap up the chat, RJ talks tactics and how he sees the chess game unfolding within the football game, as well as how he sees special teams potentially impacting the final score and what Stanford will need to do to win the game.