On Tuesday, Stanford football head coach Troy Taylor spoke at a weekly press conference prior to Saturday’s away game against Notre Dame.

Injury updates

Junior quarterback Ashton Daniels will be available for Saturday’s game at Notre Dame. Daniels suffered a leg injury in the fourth quarter of the game against Clemson. He dressed for the game against Virginia Tech last week, but did not play.

Running back Micah Ford “has a chance to play,” Troy said, depending on how his recovery from a lower leg injury progresses. Ford suffered the injury during the last drive of the Virginia Tech game last Saturday.

Junior safety Jay Green remains out after suffering an injury against Clemson. Coach Taylor provided no updates on senior center Levi Rodgers, who exited the game against Virginia Tech. 

Finding the explosives

When asked to evaluate the offensive performance against Virginia Tech, Coach Taylor praised the offense for being productive and able to move the ball. The offense put together productive drives against Virginia Tech, but was only able to find the end zone once, on a 19 yard touchdown pass to Elic Ayomanor. That pass was thrown by Ford, who played quarterback in high school and is another wrinkle in the offense that the Cardinal would lose if Ford isn’t able to play on Saturday. 

In addition to the positives on the offensive side of the ball, Coach Taylor also lamented that a lack of explosive plays prevented the Cardinal from putting points on the board. Those explosive plays will not get any easier this upcoming week, as the Cardinal travel to Indiana to take on No. 11 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Coach Taylor praised their defense as “tremendously coached, and well disciplined. They do it all really well.”

Here come the Irish

Coach Taylor will take his first trip out to South Bend this Saturday, with kickoff scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. It will be the third time in four weeks that the Cardinal play in Eastern Daylight Time.

Coach Taylor said the team is much deeper than last year’s, but this game will be a tough test for the depth of a Cardinal team fighting to get through various injuries. The Irish have a 4-1 record, with their only loss being an early season upset to Northern Illinois.

The Cardinal will test their top-20 rush defense against a ground game that Notre Dame has heavily leaned on. The Irish have averaged 214 yards per game on the ground this season. The Cardinal have given up an average of 104 yards on the ground and have only allowed 88 rushing yards per game on the road this season. The battle in the trenches will be crucial. The Cardinal will hope that they can drag this game into the mud and win a defensive struggle, much like Northern Illinois in week two.