Stanford Football

Star running back Bryce Love won't play the No. 9 Stanford Cardinal's home game against UC Davis on Saturday because of an undisclosed injury. 

Head coach David Shaw made the announcement Tuesday, per ESPN.com's Kyle Bonagura. 

Love suffered the injury at some point during last Saturday's 17-3 victory over USC at Stanford Stadium. He had 136 rushing yards and one touchdown on 22 carries before leaving the game in the fourth quarter. 

This isn't the first time the 5'10", 196-pound running back has been hit by the injury bug. He missed a game in 2017 because of an ankle injury, but he was able to return the next week and play in the final six contests.

Love proved last year that he is one of the most dynamic playmakers in the nation. He had a breakout season as a junior, piling up 2,118 yards and 19 touchdowns on the ground. Even having missed a game, Love finished second in the 2017 Heisman Trophy voting.    

There's no question that Stanford isn't the same team without Love. He ran for 162.9 yards per game last season and averaged 8.1 yards per carry. When he was sidelined, the Cardinal ran for 81 yards on 27 carries (3.0 yards per carry) and had to rally for a 15-14 victory—against a 1-6 Oregon State squad.

Cameron Scarlett turned into the feature back against the Beavers, and Bonagura noted the senior will likely be the first in line to receive the bulk of the carries with Love out of action.

Class of 2019 running back Austin Jones announced Friday he's decided to play college football for Stanford.

Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle reported Jones selected the Cardinal over Cal, Oregon, UCLA and Utah. 

The Bishop O'Dowd High School product is a 4-star prospect and the No. 85 overall recruit in the 2019 class, according to 247Sports' composite rankings. He's also listed as the sixth-best running back and the No. 16 player from California among next year's group.

Jones told Brandon Huffman of 247Sports he chose Stanford because it represented the "best fit" for both football and academics.

"It would be like they used Christian McCaffrey, at running back, lining me up at receiver, just getting the ball to me a bunch of different ways," he said about his projected role.

Jones will need to add more power to his 5'11", 190-pound frame if he's eventually going to take on the wide-ranging role McCaffrey, who now plays for the NFL's Carolina Panthers, handled for Stanford.

That said, the coveted prospect features ample playmaking ability and his elusiveness figures to make him a serious threat in the Cardinal passing game.

Jones could also find himself in contention for a significant role as a freshman.

Stanford's top two rushers from 2017, Heisman Trophy contender Bryce Love and Cameron Scarlett, will both be seniors during the upcoming season. That's going to leave a major void for the Pac-12 program to fill heading into 2019.

His first offensive involvement figures to come on third down and in other passing situations, but his number of touches could increase quickly if he makes an instant impact.

Tanner McKee is heading to Stanford. The 4-star quarterback prospect announced his commitment to the Cardinal on Wednesday, choosing them over Alabama, Texas, Texas A&M and Brigham Young, per Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports.                   

Feldman noted McKee will serve a two-year mission for his church and return to the program in 2020.

247Sports' composite rankings list McKee as the 46th-ranked prospect in the 2018 recruiting class. He is the third-best pro-style quarterback and seventh-ranked player in the state of California. 

At 6'6" and 220 pounds, McKee has prototypical size and has added necessary bulk to his formerly wiry frame. He threw for 2,147 yards and 23 touchdowns with two interceptions as a senior, leading to an influx of offers from national powers.

Stanford was considered the favorite early in the process. Every 247Sports expert around predicted he'd land with the Cardinal, though he also mentioned he had interest in BYU, Alabama, Texas and Washington about seven months ago, per Chris Kirschner of SEC Country.

McKee spent most of his first two seasons in high school as a backup and only began to show the full breadth of his skills as an upperclassman. 

"As he gets more experience, he gets better," Centennial High School head coach Matt Logan said, per Johnny Moseman of the Left Bench. "He needs to always look through his progressions and be able to follow through on his fourth and fifth options. Experience will only help that."

McKee is the 15th prospect to commit to Stanford as part of its 2018 class, which makes it 37th in 247Sports' composite team rankings. 

Stanford linebacker Ryan Beecher announced on Friday that he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma last month.

"In December, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma," Beecher wrote on Twitter. "I am receiving treatments while attending classes at Stanford. I look forward to making a full and healthy recovery. With the help and support of my family, friends and teammates, I remain inspired to once again contribute to the Cardinal football team."

A California native, Beecher was a walk-on at Stanford in 2015 after graduating from San Joaquin Memorial High School. 

"As soon as I got accepted to Stanford, it is where I was going," Beecher told Andy Drukarev of Cardinals Sports Report as he began his college career. "The walk-on spot at Stanford is something I have wanted ever since the idea of a walk-on was introduced to me."

Beecher just finished his junior season for Cardinal football team. He appeared in 13 games in 2017, recording three total tackles. 

Stanford running back Bryce Love is returning to school for his senior season and will forgo entry into the 2018 NFL draft.

According to Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle, Love's father, Chris, revealed the news in a text Tuesday morning that read, "Bryce will return for his senior year!"

After rushing for 1,005 yards and five touchdowns in his first two seasons with the Cardinal, Love exploded in 2017, accumulating 2,118 yards on the ground and 19 touchdowns.

His huge numbers made him one of the finalists for the Heisman Trophy, with Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield ultimately winning the award.

Despite his breakout season, it's hard to project where Love would have fallen in the NFL draft had he declared. On his most recent big board, B/R's Matt Miller listed him as the ninth-best running back in his positional rankings. In a strong running back class, that could have left Love as anything from a potential first-rounder to an early third-day pick.

In October, Bucky Brooks of NFL.com compared him to the Cincinnati Bengals' Giovani Bernard, noting: "Love is an intriguing back with the skills and production to entice evaluators looking for a rotational back with big-play potential. If he can master the nuances of route running, he can rival his predecessor, Christian McCaffrey, as a versatile offensive weapon."

Love didn't present the overall potential of a player like Penn State's Saquon Barkley, however. Given the other players likely above him in the draft, returning for his senior season could see his draft stock improve even further in 2019.

lmao that look on love's face pic.twitter.com/nb1bMzGLd7

— ✌️ (@nick_pants) December 29, 2017

Following a 39-37 loss to TCU in the Alamo Bowl, Stanford running back Bryce Love probably wasn't in the mood to pose for selfies with fans on the field. 

But the gracious Heisman Trophy finalist obliged at least one fan who caught Love on his way off the field.

At first glance the video above might not look like much, but check out Love's reaction as he notices the fan pull off a TCU sweatshirt to reveal what appears to be a Stanford shirt underneath. 

I think sports fans everywhere can sympathize with the look on Love's face. 

For once in his life, Bryce Love is moving at a leisurely pace, emerging from a class on child cognitive development and weaving his bicycle through lunchtime traffic on the Stanford campus without even bothering to work the pedals. His lunch is tucked onto the seat behind him, and a large camouflage backpack is strapped around his shoulders. Other than the number 20 emblazoned on his sweatpants, there is little to distinguish one of the best running backs in the country from any of the other students emerging from the basement of a building crammed with high-level math students and dotted with flyers promoting lectures on the Quantization of Compact Lagrangians and Mean Field Learning Models.

There are many things about Love that can be classified as abnormal, his uncanny Olympic-caliber speed foremost among them. But on a campus rife with overachievers, Love is just another prodigy, an aspiring pediatrician who spends what little spare time he has working alongside Ph.D. candidates in a stem-cell laboratory—many of whom, like the other students he swerves past on that bicycle, have no idea he plays football.

That anonymity is a large part of why Love, like the Stanford stars who came before him, chose to play running back here in the first place. It's also why he appears vaguely uncomfortable with the school's last-minute campaign to promote him for the Heisman Trophy in the midst of a remarkable season slowed only by an ankle injury that has limited his workload over the second half of the year.

Yet what makes Love unique even on this campus is that, over the course of his three football seasons at Stanford, he has utilized his analytical mind both to work his way through a challenging curriculum as a human biology major and to transform himself from one of the fastest running backs in the country into one of the best running backs in the country heading into this weekend's Pac-12 Championship Game against USC.

"When you challenge Bryce Love with something, he will go obsess over it and turn that weakness into a strength," Stanford strength coach Shannon Turley says. "He will not allow it be a liability."

Perhaps if you've witnessed pieces of Stanford's football season from afar, you've only seen the highlights of the marathon touchdown bursts that have elevated Love into a Heisman contender. Perhaps, like some professional scouts undoubtedly will, you view Love as a potential NFL archetype: a 5'10", 196-pound speed back best deployed as a passing option on third downs, a player not big enough to become a durable three-down back.

"His size and speed make you think 'scatback,'" says B/R NFL draft scout Matt Miller, "but the lack of reps as a receiver (Love has six receptions this season) make that an unknown right now."

But here is where the people who know Bryce Love best will tell you that you are wrong. Stanford coach David Shaw compares Love to a young Jamaal Charles, a player who endured questions about his ability to run between the tackles before rushing for 1,000 yards in five out of six NFL seasons between 2009 and 2014.

Here is where they'll tell you that you're doing the one thing that motivates Love most of all—except that, unlike the myriad of modern athletes who publicly direct their motivation at perceived "doubters," Love's challenges to himself occur almost entirely in his head.

"The best thing you can do for Bryce is put a limit on him," says Dr. Michael Longaker, who oversees the stem-cell lab where Love works. "He's thinking well beyond what you would expect. Bryce is incredibly comfortable in his own skin and needs no validation or attention. He's extremely quiet, but do not underestimate him."

It's something of a challenge to get Love to talk about himself, so here's a little secret he hasn't often shared: Before his speed rendered him something of a legend in his hometown of Wake Forest, North Carolina, he was a "pudgy" little kid who wasn't particularly fast. Around the time he hit the first or second grade, a growth spurt allowed genetics to kick in, and Love, the son of a former college football player and sprinter, began outrunning his classmates during their daily races on the playground.

Soon after, Love began running track. By the time he was eight, he made it to the nationals, and he started to write down and internalize goals for himself. "He asked me then, 'What are the fastest times that have ever been run?'" says his father, Chris. "The way he outlined his goals was incredible."

"He's very meticulous in everything he does," his mother, Angela, says. "And [in] every decision he makes."

Stories of Bryce's speed soon blossomed into legend: During one Pop Warner game, an opposing coach asked if Love's jersey might be greased. By the time he started playing with the junior varsity, says Wake Forest High football coach Reginald Lucas, his coaches and teammates began holding their breath on every play, waiting for Love to break into the open field on those simple sweeps left or sweeps right.

On the track, he set multiple national records and had the nickname "Baby Bolt" bestowed on him. His burst off the line was so powerful that if his coaches didn't position the blocks carefully, he'd knock them backward. Before his freshman year in high school, he set a national record for the boys' 13-14 age group by running the 100-meter dash in 10.73 seconds. A few years later, he took off so quickly during the anchor leg of a 4x100 relay that his teammate couldn't catch him to hand him the baton.

Despite the potential to pursue an Olympic track career, Love continued to gravitate toward football.

"I started hearing about this kid named Bryce Love before he got to high school," Lucas says. "His brother [Chris Jr., who just completed his senior year as a cornerback at East Carolina] was already on my team and very talented, and people began saying that he was going to be better than his brother. I thought, 'If that's true, this kid is going to be pretty good.'"

At the same time, on the other side of the country, Shaw had begun a search for a new type of athlete. The Cardinal's primary Pac-12 nemesis at that moment was Oregon; while Shaw had typically relied on size and physicality as the cornerstones of Stanford's success, a pair of brutal losses to the Ducks in 2010 and 2011 led him to realize he needed to recruit speed on both sides of the ball as well.

Shaw shifted the Cardinal's recruiting focus from big backs like Toby Gerhart to smaller and speedier talents such as Christian McCaffrey and Love. Shaw sent former running backs coach Lance Taylor to Wake Forest to confirm if Love was as fast in person as he appeared to be on tape.

"He calls back and says, 'Coach, this guy is fast,'" Shaw says. "'He's not the biggest guy, but he runs physical. He's not like a slot receiver masquerading as a running back.'"

Love flew across the country to visit the Stanford campus and found it was exactly what he was seeking, both athletically and academically. And so a program looking to get faster and an athlete seeking to capitalize on his speed forged a partnership.

Love was slotted in to fill the utility-back role Christian McCaffrey (with whom Love became a close friend) had previously stepped into as an underclassman. One of the first things Love did was subject himself to an assessment of his weaknesses. For someone who had grown up relying on his ability to outrun everyone else, Love wanted to figure out how to turn himself into something more than just a fast guy.

Love bided his time as a backup to McCaffrey, averaging more than seven yards per carry his first two seasons. At the same time, he labored through a challenging sophomore year of classes in his human biology major: 10 units in the fall, winter and spring, all while working in Longaker's lab. None of it seemed to rattle him. "He has good control over his emotions, and great perspective," says Melissa Schellberg, an academic advisor for Stanford's football program. "I've never seen him get angry or frustrated about anything."

In the weight room, he consulted with Turley, the Cardinal's strength coach, who challenged him to alter his body.

"I think it's well-documented Bryce is fast," Turley says, but what Love lacked, in part because of his sprinter's background, was what's known as "force reduction": He could run, but he couldn't stop himself. Eventually, Turley says, that inability to reduce his force could take a toll on his tendons. It also made him less effective as a running back now that he was facing college defenders who could swarm him, particularly when he ran between the tackles.

Love had hit the weight room hard starting in high school, but he'd never entirely shed that childhood stockiness—which wasn't a bad thing for someone who runs a 4.35 40-yard dash. Turley's goal was to get him stronger and more flexible without sacrificing that speed. Over the course of his career at Stanford, Love has gained 16 pounds while shedding body fat; he can bench-press 345 pounds nearly 20 reps at a time. By utilizing targeted exercises, Turley helped Love develop more flexibility in his hips, lower body, ankles and spine, which allowed him to develop the kind of spin moves and jump cuts that have baffled so many defenders this season.

"When he did NFL combine-style agility tests and cone drills as a freshman, you'd see a blur and then he'd have to touch the line and he'd be stuck there, like you pressed pause," Turley says. "That's the force reduction, when you stop. You have to train this into people. It's not natural. Now I don't see blur, stop, blur. Now all I see is blur."

Without slowing himself down, Love turned himself into a far more dangerous back, one capable of forging paths through the center of a defense rather than simply seeking open space to utilize his speed.

In Stanford's win over Washington on November 10, Love carried the ball 30 times for 166 yards, most of them punishing runs between the tackles as the Cardinal clung to a lead in the fourth quarter. Love repeatedly had to go to the bench to tape and then retape a sore ankle that might have limited a running back without Love's strength and flexibility to half-speed, if not confined him to the bench.

A copious note-taker, both in class and in team meetings, Love is always watching and analyzing. His parents say he studied YouTube videos of running backs like Barry Sanders growing up. Now he studies both the tendencies of a defense and the habits of his offensive linemen, with a focus on "understanding where the crease might be, and understanding how you're gonna hit it if the D-line slips this way or that way," Love says. "Understanding the little things like that just results in a comfort back there, and through that comfort you're relaxed, and not in a rush, so to speak."

Put all that together, and you have a running back who is far more complete than he may appear to be. If you speak to his coaches and his teammates and his parents, they'll tell you Love has willed himself into becoming a more well-rounded football player in the same way he's transformed himself into a more sophisticated thinker.

Love has been able to grow and mature under the radar on the Stanford campus, even as the Heisman hype has burgeoned nationally. This, says Schellberg, is a place where former Stanford linebacker Shayne Skov once landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated's college football preview in 2013, and someone in a class asked him, "What's Sports Illustrated?" But soon enough, Love will be subject to the prodding of NFL scouts who will point out his weaknesses. And if history holds, Love will internalize every one of those criticisms until they, too, become strengths.

"He's just incredibly sophisticated in his thinking," says Longaker. "The more he masters, the more he can do."

       

Michael Weinreb (@MichaelWeinreb) is the author, most recently, of Season of Saturdays: A History of College Football in 14 Games.

Stanford Cardinal running back Bryce Love will miss Thursday night's game against the Oregon State Beavers as he nurses an ankle injury, according to ESPN's Laura Rutledge.

Stanford head coach David Shaw told Rutledge he was worried Love wouldn't be effective at less than 100 percent.

Love leads FBS with 1,387 rushing yards, while his 11 rushing touchdowns are also tied for seventh. Bleacher Report's Adam Kramer highlighted how Love's numbers look even more impressive when laid out game by game:

The Bryce Love game log will never not look and feel completely fake pic.twitter.com/KJpecgpE4Y

— Adam Kramer (@KegsnEggs) October 25, 2017

The junior likely would've feasted against an Oregon State defense that's allowing 200.1 yards per game on the ground (101st).

The Beavers porous defense should at least give the Cardinal some optimism about Love's replacement, Cameron Scarlett. Scarlett has carried the ball 41 times for 217 yards and six touchdowns. His best performance came in the 58-34 win over the UCLA Bruins when he ran for 86 yards and three touchdowns on 10 carries.

Oregon State is also allowing an opponent passer rating of 166.2 (124th) and 278.1 passing yards per game (121st). The Cardinal can lean more heavily on the passing game and should expect to consistently move the ball in Love's absence.

Stanford running back Bryce Love set a new Cardinal single-game record with 301 rushing yards in Saturday's 34-24 victory over Arizona State at Stanford Stadium in California.

CFB Now passed along word of the accomplishment. Christian McCaffrey set the previous mark of 284 in a game last season against Cal.

Love added three touchdown runs on 25 carries in the contest.

The monster performance continued a string of standout games for the junior rusher. He's rushed for at least 160 yards in all five of Stanford's games this season and has now gained 564 yards over the past two weeks combined after a 263-yard showing against UCLA last week.

Zach Barnett of Football Scoop provided some historical context:

Barry Sanders's first 5 games in 1988:
130 carries for 1,002 yards

Bryce Love's first 5 games this season:
98 carries for 1,088 yards https://t.co/MAXyTObLjq

— Zach Barnett (@zach_barnett) September 30, 2017

ESPN Stats & Info‏ noted his seasonal total is the fourth-most in FBS history after five games:

Bryce Love ran for a school record 301 yards on Saturday and now has over 1,000 rushing yards on the season pic.twitter.com/5OIGqDS0YV

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) September 30, 2017

On Friday, Michael Wagaman of the Associated Press passed along comments from Love about what he learned from McCaffrey.

"The big thing with it, and Christian had the same thing, just always believe, have that belief," he said. "I'm not big with numbers and stuff like that but why not come in and have however many yards? The big thing with me and him is just we always wanted to win."

Although Love might not keep track of his own stats, it's getting more difficult for Heisman Trophy voters to ignore his breakout campaign. He ranked seventh in ESPN's Heisman Watch coming into the week, but that should improve after his record-breaking performance.

He'll look to keep his jaw-dropping stretch of rushing success going next Saturday when Stanford travels to face Utah at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City.

The Stanford Cardinal and Arizona State Sun Devils will wear sexual assault awareness ribbons on their uniforms during Saturday's Pac-12 showdown at Stanford Stadium.

Brenda Tracy, who is a member of the NCAA Committee to Combat Sexual Violence, made the announcement Tuesday on Twitter:

Coach Shaw & Stanford 🏈 are hosting the FIRST EVER #SetTheExpectation game!! ASU will also rep the ribbon!!! Tune in this Saturday! pic.twitter.com/yy0UIm1ocH

— Brenda Tracy (@brendatracy24) September 26, 2017

Tracy, who is a sexual assault survivor, has addressed many high school and college programs about taking the Set The Expectation pledge, which states athletes will "display courage and stand up against sexism and violence against women and others" and hold others accountable for their actions.

According to the Mercury News' Jon Wilner, Tracy has met with Stanford and Arizona State, as well as several other Pac-12 programs, since Set The Expectation was initiated.

"It was emotional, it was real, it was more impactful than I had hoped," Stanford head coach David Shaw said of Tracy's meeting with his team, per Wilner. "She reached them, and she pushed them."