Stanford traveled to Eugene, Oregon on Saturday hoping to recapture a bit of the same magic it had a year ago when the third-ranked Ducks came to The Farm and left with their first loss of the season. The game kicked off shortly after 11 p.m. ET, so those who didn’t stay up past the first quarter are forgiven.

And if you called it a night early on, you might have checked out with Stanford still very much in the game. The Cardinal were down only 10 points after the first quarter. Penalties and misfires from Oregon made for a choppy start. But the Ducks got rolling in the second and put the game to bed. It was 31-3 at halftime.

The Cardinal have been outscored 83-24 in first halves over the last three games.

A few garbage-time scores made the scoreline a bit more respectable, at 45-27. Still a loss, though, and Stanford faithful have endured a run of nine straight now to Power Five opponents (10 if you count Notre Dame).

Which led many on Saturday to start questioning the job security of coach David Shaw going forward.

Shaw has long been viewed as one of the best coaches in the Pac-12. He’s a Stanford man and seemed at the outset of the season to be darn near untouchable. But four games, three of them losses, with the offense resembling nothing that made Shaw’s early teams great and the defense a mess, and the tide feels like it’s starting to shift.

A former Stanford receiver in the 90s, Shaw has been at the helm of the program since 2011. He has a career 94-48 record (a .662 winning percentage). In five of his first six seasons, Stanford reached double-digit wins. It finished ranked in the final AP poll in six of his first seven seasons. And it played in bowl games in each of his first eight seasons.

Since the start of the 2019 season, Stanford is 12-22 overall and 9-18 in conference play. Only three of those wins came against teams that finished their respective seasons with a winning record. The COVID year looks like an outlier, when Stanford won four of its six games. In the last three full seasons, the Cardinal have gone 8-20.

Stanford (1-3, 0-3 Pac-12) faces Oregon State on Saturday. Here’s some of the reaction to the Oregon loss:

https://twitter.com/A_G_Haubner/status/1576434920058064901?s=20&t=yCCG5Wmn5UePvcWcJRAMeA