It’s Stanford football’s bye week, so this is a perfect time to focus on other sports. There are so many other things going on in the world of sports — the MLB playoffs, the beginning of the NHL, the thick of the NFL season, the NBA preseason and the realization that college football players break the rules, just to name a few.

But let’s be honest, this is college football season. So with apologies to the Rangers’ first series victory, a new class in the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Brett Favre’s latest way of staying in the headlines, here is a review of the first half of Stanford’s football season.

Let’s start with the good:

Record: The most important stats for any team are wins and losses, and the Cardinal sits at 5-1 through six games. A 5-1 record has to be considered a success for almost any team, and let’s not forget that Stanford just broke a string of seven straight seasons without racking up more than five wins. Looking at the schedule before the year, just about any Cardinal fan would be happy with five wins at this point in the season.

Replacing Toby Gerhart: Pundits all around the country doubted Stanford’s ability to replace its star from 2009, Toby Gerhart. While there is no doubt among the Cardinal faithful that Gerhart was a big part of the team’s success last season, the team has clearly moved on. The backfield-by-committee approach has turned into the Stepfan Taylor Show in the past few weeks. This is partly due to injuries, but it is mostly due to Taylor’s success. He has rushed for over 100 yards each of the past three games, and Stanford as a team ranks in the top 25 in the nation in rushing at over 200 yards per game. Toby who?

Andrew Luck: In case you haven’t heard, Stanford has a quarterback named Andrew Luck, and he’s pretty good. As in top-10-in-the-nation-in-passing-efficiency and tied-for-fourth-in-passing-touchdowns good. Oh, and don’t forget that he’s second on the team in rushing at over 40 yards per game, including a ridiculous 52-yard touchdown against Wake Forest. The craziest part about Luck’s season might be the fact that exactly zero people are surprised by his success. Many experts project him to be the top overall pick in next year’s NFL Draft, and he’s only a sophomore. And while no one with an ounce of sense could complain about Luck’s first half, it’s fair to say that he hasn’t come close to his best football, and that’s certainly good for Stanford football.

Defense…at first: The biggest question mark for Stanford coming into the season was the ability of the defense to keep the Cardinal in big games. During Stanford’s first four games, every defensive question was answered and more. The Cardinal threw its first road shutout in 36 years against conference foe UCLA, which later rolled Texas in Austin. The secondary, which had been the source of countless near-heart attacks, looked dominant during the first three weeks, ranking first in the nation in pass defense. Stanford allowed only 11 points per game in the first four weeks, and the normally potent rushing attacks of UCLA and Wake Forest were stymied. Everything looked rosy.

Which brings us to the bad:

Defense against good teams: The biggest negative for Stanford this season, and the biggest change between the first four weeks and the last two, has been the defense. After pounding four mediocre-at-best teams — not one has a winning record — the Cardinal ran into the buzz saw that is the Oregon spread option. The loss was not the issue — Oregon might very well win every game it plays this year by double digits — but the inability of the Stanford defense to get a stop did not bode well. Giving up 626 yards, including a staggering 388 on the ground, said even worse things about the Cardinal defense.

While these numbers are gruesome for a defense, Oregon’s video game-style offense stopped many fans from worrying. That should change after the abysmal effort of Stanford’s defense last Saturday against USC. The matchup was supposed to be another chance for the Cardinal to assert itself over the rival Trojans. Stanford was favored by 10, and USC was reeling from a last-second loss to Washington. Then the Cardinal secondary decided not to cover Trojan wideout Robert Woods, and the USC offense made it pay. As in 12 catches for 224 yards and three touchdowns, making him the only player in the country to put up those numbers in a game this year. Woods’ numbers in five games coming in? 13 catches for 175 yards and one touchdown.

Stanford cannot take the next step to becoming a powerhouse unless it figures out a way to hold teams like USC below 35 points. The run defense was better against the Trojans, but a top-10 team would not give up 390 yards to Matt Barkley, even if he’s having a better year.

Turnovers: One of the best attributes of Luck during his first season on the Farm was his ball security (he only had four interceptions all year). Gerhart didn’t cough up the ball too easily, so Stanford was one of the best teams last year at avoiding turnovers. This trend was expected to continue into 2010, but the last few games have hardly reinforced this notion.

In the past three weeks, Stanford has committed nine total turnovers, three in each game. This total is unacceptable for a top-tier program, and it will cost the Cardinal dearly. Taylor’s fumble late in the fourth quarter against USC might have been the difference if not for the final drive and field goal by Nate Whitaker.

Are turnovers really that important, you might ask? Well, something that separates top teams like Ohio State, Oklahoma, Alabama, Boise State and TCU is their ball security. None of these four teams has committed more than seven turnovers all year, and that’s no coincidence. Among top teams, only Oregon has racked up more turnovers than Stanford, but the Ducks can get away with it because they lead the nation with 22 takeaways. The Cardinal, on the other hand, has a negative turnover margin over the past few weeks, and this will be a big problem if it continues during the meat of Pac-10 play.

Despite its 5-1 record, Stanford has plenty to work on during this bye week, from covering receivers to making extra points. So far, though, the Cardinal has lived up to high expectations for the season, and there’s a lot to look forward to in Palo Alto.

The Oregon Ducks would have lost if they played football like Jacob Jaffe plays video games. Challenge him to an Xbox duel at jwjaffe “at” stanford.edu.