STANFORD, Calif. -- Even during its era of unprecedented success, Stanford weathered storms of struggle.
There was the great offensive outage of 2012, one that led to a late-season quarterback change. Then there were more big-time scoring difficulties in 2014. Those spurred an impassioned, expletive-laden locker room speech from senior John Flacco that rattled the walls of Stanford Stadium's old press conference room.
"For a split second, I thought, 'Oh God, we're fracturing,'" coach David Shaw said after that 2014 address, which ended up spurring Stanford's season-ending turnaround.