Stephen Herron has emerged as Stanford's leader on the defensive line

Going into the 2022 season there was a major question mark surrounding this Stanford defensive line.

In the past few years this unit has underperformed, and this season's starters were for the most part, vastly inexperienced. It took a few weeks for the Stanford defense to put together a complete game, as in three of their four losses the defense played one strong half and would unravel the next or they would look terrible in the first half, then lock down in the second. However, this most recent win over Notre Dame showed us three things.

For starters, this defense is in fact capable of stopping the run. Over the past three games this defensive front was absolutely abysmal against the run, giving up up an average of 284 yards rushing. They held Notre Dame to just 150 yards rushing on 4.4 yards per carry, which is great considering Stanford's defense gives up an average 5.4 yards per carry on the season. The second thing was that they finally figured out a game plan that translated to a full 60 minutes. Like I previously mentioned, this unit was pretty much just good for one half of strong play.

The third observation that I gathered from the Notre Dame game, and was something that was starting to reveal itself in games prior is the fact that senior defensive end, Stephen Herron, is the defensive front's leader. This team changed their defensive scheme to a 4-3 in order to get more pressure on the quarterback and create more opportunities to make plays in the backfield, and Herron is a prime example of what they were hoping for.

He leads the team in both sacks (3.5) and tackles for a loss (4.5), and is proving to be the defensive line's most reliable rusher. He also forced a huge fumble in the game against Notre Dame that helped seal the deal for the Cardinal.

While those aren't the most gaudy numbers, he has already surpassed his sack total from a year ago. So, if he can continue to grow as a pass rusher and keep making plays in the backfield, it can really help this team turn around what has been a slow start to the season. He just has a knack for getting to the ball in the backfield, and is single handily creating the pass rush that this defense has been missing for years.