Stanford vs. Hawaii: Can the Rainbow Warriors Cover the Spread?

Stanford Cardinal (0-0 SU, 0-0 ATS) vs. Hawaii Rainbow Warriors (0-1 SU, 1-0 ATS)

College Football Week 1

Date and Time: Friday, September 1, 2023 at 11PM EDT

Where: Clarence C.T. Ching Athletics Complex, Honolulu, Hawaii

TV: CBS Sports Network

Point Spread: STAN -4/HAW +4 (Bovada – This is going to be a great game to live bet and Bovada has the best platform on the planet! Plus bonuses up to 75%!)

Over/Under Total: 61

The Stanford Cardinal came to Honolulu to take on the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors in week one action. Hawaii is looking for better in the second season under head coach and former star QB Timmy Chang following a rough 3-10 season. While performing capably last Saturday in spots, they came out on the wrong side of a 35-28 road game to Vanderbilt. Stanford faces a coaching change for the first time in a dozen years, with David Shaw out the door and Troy Taylor taking over. He will have his work cut out after consecutive 3-9 seasons for Stanford, as they find themselves in one of their biggest funks in years. Despite Hawaii typically taking on teams from the Golden State, this will be the first time they faced Stanford since 1972.

Prognosis for Both Teams

Some might derive some hope from Stanford’s coaching hire, with the 55-year-old Taylor coming off a long run as a great high school coach that was followed by a good three-year run with Sacramento State. He has vast offensive know-how and will need to unveil it with a Stanford offense that has been suffering for the past few seasons. But even though he gets what seems like a negotiable week-one debut, this isn’t high school or the Big Sky Conference, and Stanford has a lot of ground to cover to get back to the team regularly putting together double-digit win seasons. But those teams were usually characterized by a game-changing back, a good QB, a beefy front, and we don’t know if the 2023 Cardinal will have all those things in order.

Hawaii’s best chance in this game might be what’s happening on the other sideline. Point blank—there is little cause for optimism. The new head coach was not particularly active in the transfer portal; they suffered key departures, and their roster simply didn’t improve. The things that were previously hallmarks of this team vanished, and they haven’t reappeared for several seasons. They couldn’t catch many breaks on the injury front. But Taylor is adept at getting offenses to operate efficiently. Getting Emmitt’s kid EJ Smith back in the fold after injuries cost him most of last season could be big. There’s a lot of work to be done on the other side of the ball, which was actually worse.

To Hawaii’s credit, they were maybe better than their record last season, performed capably against the spread, and finished the season in a way that fosters some promise moving forward in Chang’s second year. A 17-point dog on Saturday, they got within a TD of an SEC team on the road. Sullying the equation are the departures of their leading back, WR, TE, three starting offensive linemen, and the bulk of their difference-making defensive talent. QB Brayden Schaefer returns after a year that could charitably be called so-so, but 351 yards and three TDs on Saturday were promising. Tylan Hines is a talented back with over 600 yards from last season, but getting this run game loose with this O-line could be a dicey proposition, even against a Stanford defensive front that rarely flashed its fangs last season. That Hawaii offensive line was a big part of what made them deceptively scrappy last season, and they might not have that in ’23. At least not to open the season. Still, getting good games from Schaeger, along with WRs Pofele Ashlock and Steven McBride against Vandy, was promising.

What to Expect

While it’s wishful thinking to assume Taylor comes in and makes a Stanford offense credible starting in week one. But with Hawaii’s defense having been hammered by departures and trying to work in so many moving pieces. They return some guys, but even those players were on a team that gave up over 5.5 yards per play to every team they faced, but one and was near the bottom in all the categories used to gauge defensive effectiveness. And even if we see a young Stanford offense off-key, this was one of the worst defenses in getting takeaways last season. Most of their strength on defense seems to exist in the secondary, where they get a lot of work from the front seven, not getting the job done. I’d look for Stanford and Smith to do some damage on the ground in this spot, punctuating things with some short-pass work to a really good tight end in Benjamin Yurosek.

The lack of a concrete quarterback casts a pallor over Stanford’s offensive prospects, with it apparently coming down to Tanner McKee’s backup, Ari Patu or Ashton Daniels. Other than Yurosek, there aren’t any proven producers aerially. They return one starter on a beleaguered offensive line. When you look at what’s going on with the other side of the ball, a lot of things you may have liked about Stanford start to melt away—their new coach, greater prestige as a program, and how, on paper, this seems like an easy week one win. With a new coach who spends more time discussing conference realignment than actual football, I just don’t get the feeling that they’re equipped to be in the role of 8-point road favorites in anything but the cushiest FBS settings.

Take the Points

Even if one is inclined to believe that Stanford isn’t the worst Power Five conference team in the nation, they’re not that far off that placement. Whether Hawaii can replicate that level of pluckiness we saw at times last season and last week is also up in the air, but at home against an opponent whose name looms larger than the actual football product they now bring to the table, I can see Hawaii running the ball well enough against this sometimes-shambolic Stanford “D” while getting enough done aerially with what might be an upgraded Hawaii passing-game to at least keep this one close and perhaps be in there late with a shot to win the game. I’ll take the Rainbow Warriors.

Loot’s Pick to Cover the Point Spread: I’m betting on the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors plus 4 points.

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