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Unlike last year, there is no quarterback competition at Stanford. But the recently released post-spring depth chart does reveal some potentially interesting developments to eye-ball heading into fall.

Starting on offense -- there are only two running backs listed -- Anthony Wilkerson "or" Tyler Gaffney as the starter. Both are trying to replace three-time 1,000-yard rusher Stepfan Taylor, though it's widely believed the Cardinal will take more of a committee approach than they did last year, when Taylor led the Pac-12 with 322 carries. There is plenty of depth, albeit mostly inexperienced, behind Gaffney and Wilkerson.

Also of note offensively is the addition of Kevin Danser on the depth chart at center. He's slated to start at right guard, though there is also an "or" separating Khalil Wilkes, Conor McFadden and Danser at center. It will be interesting to watch in the fall if Danser continues to get work at center. And if he wins the job, it would allow the Cardinal to insert Josh Garnett into the starting rotation at guard. That would give the Cardinal a starting front of Andrus Peat (LT), David Yankey (LG), Danser (C), Garnett (RG) and Cam Fleming (RT).

With the news of Josh Nunes' retirement yesterday, Evan Crower is locked in as the backup to Kevin Hogan and, for now, Devon Cajuste looks like he'll start opposite Ty Montgomery at receiver.

Fullback Geoff Meinken also announced he'll retire after struggling to return from a knee injury that kept him out of 2012.

At tight end -- Stanford's go-to receiving position the last couple of years -- Luke Kaumatule and Davis Dudchock are separated by an "or." However both will probably get a ton of work in Stanford's two-tight-end sets.

Defensively, there are only two "ors" on the depth chart. Henry Anderson and Josh Mauro have a good competition going at defensive and Blake Lueders and James Vaughters are undecided at the outside linebacker spot to release Chase Thomas. Though the Cardinal rotate backers and defensive linemen so frequently that "starter" is more of an honorary title.

Worth noting also that Devon Carrington, who has spent his career at safety, is also listed as a backup with Usua Amanam at right cornerback behind Wayne Lyons. Amanam is Stanford's go-to nickelback and Carrington is also backing up Ed Reynolds.

Looking at the specialists, up for grabs is the punter, which could go to either Ben Rhyne or Conrad Ukropina. Montgomery looks set at kick return while it's a four-way race between him, Kodi Whitfield, Keanu Nelson and Barry Sanders to return punts.

You can see the complete depth chart here and interpret it as you see fit.

Stanford's post-spring depth chart was released Monday, and it revealed that sophomore quarterback Evan Crower is now Kevin Hogan's backup.

A big reason for that was revealed that Josh Nunes, who started the first eight games of 2012 before being beaten out by Hogan, has been forced to retire due to injuries, the school announced.

The injury that has ended Nunes' career was not announced, but it is believed to be a biceps muscle injury on his throwing arm that he suffered while lifting weights in January, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Nunes passed for 1,643 yards with 10 TDs and seven interceptions last season. He was the starter when the Cardinal upset then-No. 2 USC 21-14 on Sept. 15, a performance that will be his career highlight. He also led the Cardinal to a comeback win over Arizona.

Dallas Lloyd is expected to be the Cardinal's No. 3 QB. Neither Crower nor Lloyd have game experience.

Ted Miller explains how a pair of Stanford Cardinal linemen could be breakout stars on each side of the trenches.

Six Pac-12 players made the initial 28-player Heisman Trophy Watch List, published by the Heisman Pundit blog.

The Pac-12 players are:

Ka'Deem Carey, Jr., RB, Arizona
Kevin Hogan, So., QB, Stanford
Brett Hundley, So., QB, UCLA
Marqise Lee, Jr., WR, USC
Marcus Mariota, So., QB, Oregon
De'Anthony Thomas, Jr., RB, Oregon

Makes sense. And if you were making a list of the top 10 candidates, both Lee and Mariota would surely be on it.

You potentially could add Arizona State QB Taylor Kelly and Washington RB Bishop Sankey to the list, but these six probably already register in the minds of Heisman voters even outside the West Coast.

Obviously, guys will be added and subtracted from the list as the season wears on.

Every game counts. But some games count more. Or tell us more.

We're going through the Pac-12 and picking out one game that seems most important -- or potentially most revealing -- for each team from our vantage point today.

And then we'll let you vote from a list of potential options.

We're going in reverse alphabetical order.

Stanford

Most important game: Nov. 30 vs. Notre Dame

Why it's important: Now wait a minute before your heads explode.

Yes, Stanford's Nov. 7 visit from Oregon is the Cardinal's most important game. Without question.

It very likely will determine the Pac-12 North Division crown. It also seems possible the winner will thereafter become a participant in the BCS title game.

So, yeah, Stanford-Oregon on Thursday night will be about as big as it gets among all 2013 college football games. That unassailable idea is the very reason I am typing this and not Kevin, who I could feel smirking through the phone at me while I made the case for Notre Dame.

Then why the heck am I typing this? Well, a big reason is that on Wednesday we'll do the "Most Important game: Oregon," and then we'll hyperventilate about the potential Ducks-Cardinal Game of the Century.

About 60 percent of this is an avoidance of redundancy.

But blogging expediency is not the only reason. There is concrete grounds for this. Really!

Here's the logic: 1. Stanford has played in three consecutive BCS bowl games, so getting to another will not represent a significant step forward; 2. Last year, Stanford beat Oregon, won the Pac-12 outright and won the Rose Bowl, so doing that again will not represent a significant step forward; 3. There is only one significant step forward the program can take.

Stanford, which could begin the 2013 season ranked in the top three, almost certainly will need to beat Oregon to play for the national title. The same, of course, could be said for the Ducks.

But if you compare Oregon's and Stanford's schedule, you might notice something. While the Ducks have a nice home game with Tennessee the first month of the season, they do not play a marquee nonconference game against a potential top-10 team.

And so we have Stanford.

Not only does the Cardinal have a marquee nonconference game against a potential top-10 team, it has the game ON THE LAST DAY OF THE REGULAR SEASON.

And, well, it's Notre Dame, which makes it bigger, at least in terms of aesthetics, than if it were, say, against a top-10 West Virginia squad. Yes, aesthetics matter. If Stanford ends up in a beauty contest with another FBS team with the same record for a spot in the title game, beating Notre Dame, which played for the national title last year, to end the regular season probably would hold significant sway with voters.

And what if the Fighting Irish are in the national title mix, too?

Wait... there's more!

I seem to remember Notre Dame and Stanford playing last year. How did that end? Lookie here: Revenge angle. That's fun.

Further, let's just say Stanford goes unbeaten until losing to Notre Dame the final weekend of the season. Then the Cardinal win the Pac-12 title game -- yeah, that game also would stand between Stanford and a national title game berth -- and the Rose Bowl over a Big Ten team.

What would folks across the country say and write? Notre Dame > Stanford. Stanford > Pac-12. Ergo, Notre Dame > Pac-12.

So the Pac-12's self-respect also could be on the line (unless, of course, USC beats Notre Dame).

The way to look at this is 1A (vs. Oregon) and 1B (vs Notre Dame).

For a magical season to happen, Stanford needs to win both. Losing either will feel horrible. And losing to Notre Dame after beating Oregon might actually feel worst of all.

We can consider that bridge if we get there.

Michele Steele and Mark Schlabach preview what to expect from the BCS meetings in Pasadena, Calif., this week about the future college football playoff.

Everybody loves rankings lists, and college football fans -- by necessity -- seem to like lists even more than average folk.

So we have Athlon making another list. First it ranked Pac-12 coaches. Now it ranks all 125 coaches for FBS programs.

Obviously, any ranking like this is highly subjective, as Kevin noted with his notes on the Pac-12 coach rankings.

I really like Athlon's top three. That would be mine. If Chip Kelly were still at Oregon, I'd rank him third, but he is not.

After that? Well, there were some head-scratchers.

LSU's Les Miles way down at No. 24? New Arkansas and former Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema buried at No. 25? Vanderbilt's second-year coach James Franklin way up at 17? Three words: No, No, No.

There is no conceivable way to rank Franklin ahead of Miles, WHO HAS WON A NATIONAL TITLE!, nor is it reasonable to rate Franklin over Stanford's David Shaw, WHO HAS WON A ROSE BOWL, nor Bielema who owns THREE BIG TEN TITLES and won 68 games in seven years at Wisconsin.

Franklin? He's done some nice things at Vandy, making a terrible program respectable, but please identify for me a signature win from 2012? Or 2011. I'll wait here.

Yep. Nada.

Just last season, Shaw, who is No. 1 in the Pac-12 but only 20th in the nation, beat Oregon, which finished ranked No. 2, and WON THE ROSE BOWL. He's a muffed field goal away from winning consecutive BCS bowl games.

Vanderbilt, winners of the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl over the doughty NC State a year after losing to Cincinnati in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl, took advantage of a weakened SEC East, and it's notable that the one adventurous nonconference tilt ended up a double-digit loss at Northwestern. You know: The so-called slow Big Ten.

And I think Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald is a bit high at No. 12, too.

(Deep breath) OK ... I'm OK.

Anyway: Here's how Athlon ranked the Pac-12 coaches in the nation (national rank).

1. David Shaw, Stanford (20)
2. Mike Riley, Oregon State (21)
3. Rich Rodriguez, Arizona (22)
4. Todd Graham, Arizona State (29)
5. Mike Leach, Washington State (31)
6. Mike MacIntyre, Colorado (44)
7. Steve Sarkisian, Washington (45)
8. Jim Mora, UCLA (54)
9. Kyle Whittingham, Utah (55)
10. Sonny Dykes, California (56)
11. Lane Kiffin, USC (57)
12. Mark Helfrich, Oregon (73)

Here's a question I bet you know the answer to: Which team has led the Pac-12/10 over the past three seasons in turnovers forced? And which team has led the conference in fewest giveaways?

Oregon fans just started shouting "Oregon" maniacally over and over again, as they are wont to do when any college football question is asked, and that makes them more than half-right in this case. Stanford fans looked up from the Wall Street Journal, took a nibble of their croissant and smugged (Cal fans tell me Stanford fans can make "smug" into a verb), "Stanford, of course."

Yes, we wish to annoy before we salute.

Oregon and Stanford have owned the conference for the past three years. The biggest reason is better players and better coaching. But turnover margin also tells a notable portion of the story.

It's just that the programs go at turnovers from a different lead direction.

Oregon has forced 106 turnovers over the past three seasons. It forced 40 in 2012, which led the nation. It forced 38 in 2010, which ranked second. It ranked 19th in the nation with 29 in 2011.

No other Pac-12 team forced more than 79 turnovers over the past three seasons.

Then there's Stanford. The Cardinal have surrendered 52 turnovers over the past three seasons. They gave away 18 last year, which tied for No. 1 in the Pac-12 and ranked 29th in the nation. They gave away 17 in 2011, which ranked first in the conference and 14th in the nation. Stanford gave away 17 in 2010, which ranked 16th in the nation.

No other Pac-12 team gave away fewer than 63 turnovers over the past three seasons.

Here's the cool kicker, though: Guess who that 79 and 63 are?

That's right: Sanford tied Arizona State for second with 79 forced turnovers over the past three years. And Oregon's 63 turnovers over the past three seasons ranks second to Stanford.

Oregon is plus-43 and Stanford plus-27 in turnover margin over the past three years, which concluded with BCS bowls for each. The next best Pac-12 teams are Arizona State (plus-9) and Washington (plus-8). Utah, which led the Pac-12 in 2011 with a plus-10 margin, is plus-14 over the past two seasons.

College football analyst Phil Steele is well-known for foreseeing teams' turnover margins reducing to the mean -- turnovers=turnaround! -- and thereby swinging teams in negative and positive directions from the previous season. His numbers are compelling.

But most teams aren't Stanford and Oregon, winners of 35 and 36 games over the past three seasons.

If you want to play around with these numbers -- or any others -- this is an excellent place to do it.

Here's how the Pac-12 stacks up over the past three years:

1. Oregon (106 takeaways, 63 giveaways): +43
2. Stanford (79, 52): +27
3. Arizona State (79, 70): +9
4. Washington (75, 67): +8
5. Oregon State (74, 70): +4
6. USC (75, 74): +1
7. California (65, 71): -6
8. UCLA (71, 80): -9
9. Arizona (61, 71): -10
10. Washington State (60, 74): -14

As noted, Utah is plus-14 over the past two season, while Colorado is minus-23, including minus-19 in 2012, which tied for second worst in the nation.

Stanford has announced that through an anonymous donation, its defensive coordinator position has been endowed and will be known as the Willie Shaw Directorship of Defense.

The position is named for the former Stanford defensive coordinator and father of head coach David Shaw.

"Gifts like this make it possible for us to attract and retain the best coaches in America," David Shaw said in a statement from the school. "Also, it is important to recognize how vital our defensive performance has been to our recent success, helping to elevate this program to the upper echelon of college football."

This is a common practice at Stanford. David Shaw's official title is the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football. Last May, another anonymous donor endowed the offensive coordinator position as the Andrew Luck Director of Offense.

All 85 of Stanford's football scholarships are endowed and there are 10 other head coaches at Stanford in different sports who have endowed positions.

Derek Mason, who is in his fourth year with Stanford and third as coordinator, is Stanford's first Willie Shaw Director of Defense.

"The honor of this endowed position is all about these kids, this staff and this program, with what we have achieved, worked toward and aspired to become: one of the best defensive units in the country," said Mason. "What our defense has been able to accomplish has been nothing short of a blessing. People are now starting to take notice that Stanford's brand means playing physical, unrelenting football on both sides of the ball."

Last season, Stanford's defense was No. 1 nationally in sacks, No. 2 in tackles for a loss and No. 5 nationally in rush defense. While going 12-2 and winning the Pac-12 championship and the Rose Bowl, Stanford ranked 11th nationally in scoring defense, allowing 17.2 points per game on average. Over its final six games last season, Stanford held opponents scoreless in the fourth quarter or overtime.

The Cardinal enter the 2013 season riding an eight-game winning streak and they are expected to be a top-five team in the preseason rankings.

With recruiting behind us and spring well underway, the Pac-12 blog thought it would be fun to examine each team's chances of winning its respective division.

This is not whether the team of the day can win the Pac-12. And we're not predicting any winners. Rather, this is our take on the team's chances of winning the North or South.

Buy or sell Stanford winning the North?

Ted Miller

Buy: Sure most of you saw this coming. My feeling as we sit today is the winner of the Oregon-Stanford game on Nov. 7 will play for the national championship. Not to get your juices flowing or anything.

And, by the way, that will only be the greatest ESPN Thursday night game in the history of ESPN Thursday night games. So you probably need to start planning where and with whom you will watch the game right now. As in stop reading and fire off some emails.

Vegas?

OK. So back to the buy rating on Stanford.

It's pretty simple. There is little to suggest Stanford won't be a top-5 team in 2013. The Cardinal welcomes back 16 starters from a team that finished 12-2, won at Oregon, won the Pac-12 and won the Rose Bowl. Among those starters are QB Kevin Hogan, four starters from an outstanding offensive line and eight starters from the Pac-12's best defense, including All-American candidates such as OLB Trent Murphy, ILB Shayne Skov, DE Ben Gardner and FS Ed Reynolds.

Stanford has a strong, established culture. There's no reason to anticipate complacency or some sort of massive, USC-2012-like underachievement. My strong feeling is the 2013 Cardinal will be better than the 2012 version, and that might mean getting a date to Pasadena.

Kevin Gemmell

Buy: Just as any conversation about buying Oregon has to include Stanford, any conversation about buying Stanford has to include Oregon. The Cardinal fixed their Oregon problem in 2012. The question is, was it a one-year booster shot? Or a long-term vaccination?

Maybe Mark Helfrich has his "hello-world" moment against the Cardinal, breaking down Stanford's fortification with schematic brilliance brick-by-seemingly-unbreakable-brick. Maybe Stanford rolls to a double-digit win? Enjoying the kind of victory at home their fans thought they would have in 2011 -- before the Cardinal forgot their football fundamentals.

Everything Ted says is true. About the wealth of returners. About the epic Thursday night showdown. And did somebody say Vegas?

I'm a slight Stanford lean right now in my personal power rankings -- because of the defense, and because of the grand return of running back Tyler Gaffney, who I characterized as a potential "game-changer." And I firmly believe he will be. He's the kind of hard-nosed back Stanford needs to grind out close games in the fourth quarter.

Speaking of close games...

One Stanford stat I continue to hammer home is their record in close games last season. The Cardinal played in 10 games that were decided by a touchdown or less and went 8-2, including 2-1 in overtime games. Some people might see that as cautionary. But with so many veteran returners (potentially 19 juniors and seniors in the starting 22), that tells me this is a team that knows how to win and doesn't panic or press when things get tight.

Unlike 2011, when it seemed like their whole season was contingent on what happened against Oregon, they are measuring their year by what happens against San Jose State. And then Army. And then ASU. And so on and so on...

Five of their last six games will be against probable top 25 teams -- and the sixth is rival Cal. It's a vicious second half, for sure. The Cardinal will probably provide investors with plenty of edge-of-their-seats moments. But there's also a good chance Stanford will be the smartest Pac-12 investment you can make in 2013.

STANFORD, Calif. -- Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan, as a redshirt freshman, made his first career road start against No. 2 Oregon in Autzen Stadium, the most inhospitable venue in the Pac-12. Entering the game, the Ducks had won 13 games in a row overall, the nation's longest winning streak, and they had won 26 of their past 27 games at home.

With Andrew Luck playing quarterback the two previous years, Stanford teams that would finished ranked in the top-10 had suffered blowout defeats against the Ducks.

So when Hogan led Stanford to a 17-14 win -- of course, with a strong assist from a superlative defensive performance -- it seemed liked a time for celebration and euphoria. If there ever was a moment for a young player to whoop and holler and then wear a Cheshire cat grin in front of the media, this was it.

Yet here was Hogan sitting at the postgame interview table looking... bored? No, that implies some degree of rudeness. Sedated? No, that implies something unnatural. Poised? Yes, but that also implies something more practiced than how Hogan appeared as he provided brief and humble answers to questions in his signature monotone.

Sleepy? Hmm. That feels, perhaps unexpectedly, accurate. Let's combine poised and sleepy and say Hogan was "sloised."

Hogan would go 5-0 as the Cardinal starter after taking over the sputtering offense at midseason, with his final victory giving Stanford its first Rose Bowl win since 1972. His play was steady and efficient, but rarely flamboyant. Sort of like the young man himself.

When you ask Hogan's teammates about him, about whether he lets his hair down when the cameras aren't around or has a secret dark side, you're met with an amused grin.

Said linebacker Shayne Skov, a demonstrative sort, "You don't get much out of him much of the time."

Other than winning, which is nice. Oh, and Stanford is widely viewed as a top 2013 national title contender because many expect Hogan to give the Cardinal a lot more in 2013.

The 2012 season was largely the "Year of the Young QB" in the Pac-12, with first-year starters such as Hogan, Oregon's Marcus Mariota, Arizona State's Taylor Kelly and UCLA's Brett Hundley turning in outstanding debut seasons. The 2013 campaign projects as something different. What will these guys do for their encore?

The most interesting one might be Hogan, 2.0. While Mariota, Kelly and Hundley put up big numbers in high-powered, up-tempo offenses last fall, Hogan was mostly a game-manager for the Cardinal's physical, run-first attack.

Yet with a year of seasoning, you'd expect Hogan would be champing at the bit to showcase his passing skills.

Hogan doesn't do champing at the bit.

"I'd love to hand it off every time again if that's what gets us first downs and touchdowns," he said. "Whatever they need. I like winning. Whatever it takes to get that."

Good answer. But Stanford is no longer trying to win 10 games or end up in the top-10. Coach David Shaw admits he's thought about the program making the proverbial next step from conference champion to national champion. That requires eliminating the one or two losses that speckled the Cardinal's previous three seasons, which it's worth noting is the best run in school history.

That means Hogan becomes capable of taking a game into his own hands when things are slightly off on either side of the ball. That means in those close games where two or three critical plays go horribly wrong, Hogan steps up and takes corrective action with two or three plays he creates from the ether.

"The big thing for Kevin is taking the next step as far as knowledge and understanding," Shaw said. "He's going to work hard. He's very selfless. He's very team-oriented. We're to the point now where we can give him more to do, more things in the passing game, more things to handle at the line of scrimmage."

Stanford likely will remain a run-first team in 2013, in large part because it might have the nation's best offensive line. But with questions at tight end and improvement at receiver, there's a good reason Hogan said his primary focus this spring is getting better at throwing the deep ball. The Cardinal running game will be that much better if opposing secondaries are fretting about getting beat over the top, thereby limiting their leaning into run support.

Another aspect of Hogan's game worth watching: His running. He rushed for 263 yards and two touchdowns, averaging 4.8 yards per carry, and not exclusively on scrambles. The 6-foot-4, 225 pounder is agile and not easy to bring down, and the Cardinal isn't afraid of throwing a few designed quarterback runs at a defense.

"His athleticism is our bailout," Shaw said. "His ability to run changes defenses."

The 2013 season will feel different for Hogan and Stanford. For the team, it will face a season rated as a top title contender by just about every pundit with few legitimate doubters. Each of the previous three seasons, that was not entirely the case. As in: How can they possibly replace Toby Gerhart!? Jim Harbaugh!? Luck!?

And the spotlight will burn much brighter on the understated Hogan.

That might not test his innate poise, but it could prove grating and distracting.

"There's going to be a higher amount of pressure on him, but he needs to just embrace it," Skov said. "Expectations are going to rise. But he's more than capable. So embrace the higher demands and pressure. I'm sure he's going to deliver. He did it time and time again last year, and he's only going to get better."

One thing working in Hogan's favor is the type of school Stanford is. As Luck often noted, Stanford's student body isn't the sort to go gaga over a quarterback. Luck, in fact, barely created a stir when he hung around this spring. Johnny Manziel might be forced to take on-line classes at Texas A&M to avoid to paparazzi, but that won't be the case for Hogan. He said his budding star turn in 2012 didn't earn him a fan club on campus that he's noticed.

"I wouldn't say it's changed too much," he said. "That's one of the things about this school. There's so much going on and there are so many people doing great things that people congratulate you after winning games, but they treat you like any other student. That's one of the nice things about being here. Being able to stay myself."

Hogan, Shaw and the Stanford players talk mostly about winning the Pac-12 and getting back to the Rose Bowl. They say that's something they can control with their play on the field. The national title game is something that includes outside forces, such as the final year of the BCS computations.

So Hogan said repeatedly it's all about getting back to Pasadena. Next question: "You do know the national title game is in Pasadena, too, right?

Sloised Hogan, "Yes."

STANFORD, Calif. -- The first step in Stanford's national ascendancy was wearing blue shirts a mechanic would wear at the gas station. The message then-coach Jim Harbaugh was trying to deliver was simple: Sure, Stanford is one of the nation's elite universities, chock full of members of the privileged class. But the football team wanted to adopt a blue-collar mentality.

It was such an obsession for Harbaugh that he once congratulated a reporter for noticing the Cardinal seemed eager to sneak in a few shots after the whistle blew.

That was good enough for 8-5 in 2009, Year 3 under Harbaugh. It was the program's first winning record since 2001.

Over the next three years, however, Stanford won 35 games and lost five. The Cardinal were a missed chip-shot field goal from going 3-0 in BCS bowl games. Yet during that span the locker room theme was a lack of national respect. Players saw doubt from every angle: Could the program survive the loss of Toby Gerhart? Surely things are done now that Harbaugh is off to the NFL? A team simply can't replace Andrew Luck, can it?

Oh, and Stanford has an Oregon problem.

Doubts were addressed. Wins piled up. The Ducks were plucked in their own house last November.

Now it's the spring of 2013. Much to everyone's chagrin on the Farm, respect has arrived. Now just about everyone views Stanford as a top national title contender. Even SEC fans seem to tip their hats to the Cardinal's bruising brand of run-the-ball-and-play-tough-defense football.

Ah, but this is where the "C" word comes in. Stanford coach David Shaw knows his biggest enemy is complacency. His team taking winning for granted. His team feeling entitled. His team, well, acting like USC a year ago.

"You can't talk your way into winning games," Shaw said. "The circumstances that surround a game never matter. Only the game matters. We've done a good job as coaches here really beating that into the players' heads. The first question I asked guys before we started spring football was 'Are we collectively hungry?' You have to have that hunger."

Said linebacker Shayne Skov, "People have finally started to notice what we've been doing around here but we have to stick to the same plan we've had every single year, the same method. Guys are still hungry."

Hunger is good because talent is not the question. The Cardinal, which starts its second spring session April 1, welcomes back 16 starters from last year's Rose Bowl champions, including quarterback Kevin Hogan, who went 5-0 as the starter and was the quarterback of record in the clutch 17-14 overtime win at Oregon.

But returning starters doesn't tell the whole story, particularly on the offensive line, where four starters are back. Stanford has a troika of extremely talented sophomores who are fighting for starting jobs or at least playing time.

Andrus Peat -- 6-foot-7, 310 pounds and two years ago the nation's No. 1 prep offensive lineman -- is the likely starter at left tackle, which allows Morris Trophy winner David Yankey to move inside to his natural guard position. There are NFL teams that have weaker combinations on the left side of their line.

Meanwhile, Kyle Murphy is pushing Cameron Fleming at right tackle and is certain to see action at multiple positions and act as a sixth O-lineman when Stanford goes "big," as it is wont to do. Inside at guard, 317-pound Josh Garnett is in the mix, which could allow veterans Kevin Danser or Khalil Wilkes to take over at center.

However this crew stacks up, it's getting tested by the Pac-12's best defensive front seven. Suffice it to say, when Stanford goes full-go in practice, things get pretty salty.

Stanford's two biggest questions -- tight end and running back -- don't seem to worry many folks around the program. The return of Tyler Gaffney from pro baseball eased concern at running back, while there's young talent at tight end, not to mention a deeper crew at receiver.

Of course, Stanford is sharing its "national title contender" label with a familiar foe: Oregon. Winning the Pac-12's North Division might turn out to be nearly as difficult as winning the national title. But the Cardinal bucked its Oregon problem last year, and that victory still resonates, both as fact and symbol.

Every Stanford player or coach (or fan) quickly picks up the story when someone refers to the biggest play of that game, and perhaps of the college football season: Backup safety Devon Carrington slipping by De'Anthony Thomas to catch Ducks quarterback Marcus Mariota from behind to prevent a long touchdown run in the first half.

"That play exemplified the heart and determination we are going to play with," Shaw said. "There also were multiple times we had a guy in space with Kenjon Barner and we tackled him. Last couple of years, we missed that tackle. You miss that tackle, and it's over."

Oregon could no longer simply outrun Stanford. And if Oregon can't outrun Stanford, no one can.

Stanford may still view itself as a blue-collar team, but it's moved into college football's penthouse. The question is no longer can it stay there. The new question is whether it can take the next -- and final -- step up.

Stanford Cardinal defensive end Ben Gardner talks with Ted Miller about getting rid of his mullet, the Cardinal defense and beating Oregon.

Running back Tyler Gaffney talks about his return to football from pro baseball, replacing Stepfan Taylor and how he missed football.

Stanford coach David Shaw talks about avoiding complacency, quarterback Kevin Hogan and beating Oregon.