Stanford heads into Saturday night’s trip to Lane Stadium with a simple problem to solve: keep Virginia Tech from turning this into another road rout.
The Cardinal are coming off a 52-24 loss at Louisville, a game that got away after Stanford actually led on the road for the first time this season on Halloween. Stanford went in front twice in the second quarter and was tied at 24 in the third before Louisville ripped off the final 28 points. The defeat stretched Stanford’s road losing streak to 15 games, the longest active run in FBS.
Now the Cardinal are back after a bye, sitting at 4-5 overall and 2-4 in the ACC. Virginia Tech, meanwhile, is 6-3 and 3-3 after falling 51-28 at SMU on Nov.
- If Stanford is going to stay in this one deep into the fourth quarter, it will likely need big nights from three players.
Quarterback Ben Gulbranson Warren has been steady all season, and Stanford has leaned on that consistency. He has thrown just three interceptions on 308 attempts, a sharp contrast to 2024, when he started nine games for Michigan and threw nine picks on 209 attempts.
Warren walked on at Michigan, earned a scholarship and eventually became the starter. A torn ACL wiped out all of 2025, and he transferred to Stanford in January.
This year, Warren has completed 186 of 308 passes for 2,203 yards and 14 touchdowns. Seven of those touchdowns have come in the last two games, with four against NC State and three at Louisville, where he threw for 270 yards.
Virginia Tech’s secondary is coming off a night in Dallas in which Kevin Jennings threw for 350 yards and four touchdowns, but Warren doesn’t need to match that kind of output. Stanford just needs him to keep operating cleanly and avoid giving the Hokies easy chances.
The other name to watch is running back Ford, who is closing in on a major milestone. He needs 249 rushing yards over Stanford’s final three regular-season games to reach 1,000, and Stanford hasn’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since Bryce Love topped 2,000 in 2017.
Ford’s season has taken off in October. Through Stanford’s first five games, he had 302 yards at 3.7 per carry.
In the four games since, he has 449 yards at 6.1 per carry, including 179 yards and four touchdowns against Elon and 150 more against NC State. The four rushing scores against Elon tied Stanford’s single-game record.
Louisville slowed him down to 72 yards on 20 carries, but he still made an impact as a receiver with six catches, including a catch-and-run touchdown that tied the game early in the third quarter. For the season, he has 26 catches for 224 yards.
Virginia Tech’s run defense looked stout entering the SMU game, ranking No. 12 in FBS at 93.4 yards allowed per game. But the Mustangs ran for 219 yards, which dropped the Hokies to No. 23 nationally and pushed their average to 107.3 yards allowed per game. That gives Stanford a path if Ford can keep finding space.
The third key figure is Green, whose job on defense could be the difference between Stanford hanging around and getting buried. Stanford has only six sacks in nine games, tied with Arkansas State for the second-fewest per game in FBS. When a defense can’t consistently pressure the quarterback, missed tackles become a problem, and Green and linebacker Sam Mattingly lead the team with 57 and 56 tackles, respectively.
The fifth-year safety from Houston spent two seasons at Washington before transferring. Last season, he earned coaches’ All-ACC honorable mention after leading Stanford with 631 defensive snaps and eight passes defended. He now plays for Kris Richard, the former Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator who runs Stanford’s defense and coaches its defensive backs.
Green and the rest of Stanford’s defense will be tested by Virginia Tech’s backfield. Jeffrey Overton Jr. ran for 123 yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries at SMU, while Ethan Grunkemeyer completed 28 of 38 passes for 291 yards. If Overton gets into the secondary the way he did in Dallas, Green is the player Stanford cannot afford to miss.
Stanford still has a bowl path in front of it. The Cardinal need two wins in their final three games to become bowl-eligible.
After Saturday, they visit California on Nov. 21 and finish the regular season at home against SMU on Nov. 28.
Five wins would be Stanford’s most since 2018. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m.
ET on ACC Network.
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