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Stanford football is back at .500 after beating Georgia Tech and now has momentum for its road matchup against Wake Forest. Head coach Tavita Pritchard spoke to reporters on Tuesday to share his thoughts on the win and talk about the upcoming game against the 3-1 Demon Deacons.

Here are key takeaways from what Pritchard said.

The Offense May Finally Be in a Rhythm

The Cardinal put on a solid performance on offense in their Week 0 win over Hawaii, scoring 37 points and getting a dominant performance from the run game. But the next two weeks that followed, the offense went stagnant, with the Cardinal combining for only 13 points in losses to Miami and Duke.

In the Georgia Tech game, the offense — particularly Davis Warren — surged and scored 34 points in a comeback win. Pritchard feels that this type of performance is what the Cardinal needed to have something to build off of.

"He's been pretty consistent over the season of standing in there and working through his progression with his eyes and being pretty accurate with the football, taking care of the football for sure," Pritchard said of QB Davis Warren. "I thought we made some plays outside, which were big, and then I thought we protected the passer really well. 

"I think you saw that this past week that when we can protect Davis, I think we have a good chance to attack people through the air. We've got to do a better job of running the football. So when you talk about building around, right now that's the space that we've got to make sure that we're putting a lot of thought into. But I believe balance is having the threat of doing either."

Stanford faces a tough stretch these next two weeks, facing Notre Dame on the road directly after its road game against a tough Wake Forest program. If the Cardinal want to be competitive these next two weeks, the offense really needs to maintain this level of play, and that begins with protecting the quarterback. 

Stanford is Preparing Accordingly for an Early Kickoff

Stanford plays most of its games either in the afternoon or in the evening over the course of the season, but against Wake Forest, kickoff is at noon local time, meaning that it is a 9 a.m. body clock game for the Cardinal players.

Early games can be tricky when players are not used to it, but according to Pritchard, the team is doing everything it can to make sure that the guys are ready to come out firing on all cylinders.

"Duke, which was a little bit of a later kickoff, was easier," Pritchard told reporters. "The philosophy was a little bit more stay on our body clock, and that was kind of the way we approached that. After some consulting with experts, and our team of people here, we'll approach this one a little bit differently with it being a noon kickoff, it's a little bit of a balance of total sleep for the week. And then if you are trying to kind of phase shift, as they say, and get a little bit more on North Carolina time.

"The reality is, at the end of the day, these are college kids. We're going to have a plan and a well thought out plan. What I come back to is there has to be alignment, there has to be a shared belief that we are doing it this way for a reason. Here's some of the evidence that backs it up."

This game is very important for the Cardinal. A win gets them back over .500 and gives them an even bigger momentum boost for the Notre Dame game. A loss sets them up to potentially start 2-4 and dig themselves out of a huge hole. That is why body preparation is key for this week.

Time to Prove Georgia Tech Win Was Not a Fluke

Pritchard picked up his first ACC win as a head coach by beating Georgia Tech, which is a big accomplishment on its own. But for him, the focus is not on that. Instead, it's on proving that the win was not a fluke and that it's something Stanford can consistently do. Playing Wake Forest on the road is the perfect opportunity for his team to show just that.

"We had a great week of practice last week in large part because we were trying to get a bad taste out of our mouth from the two games prior," Pritchard told reporters. "The challenge for us this week is having it so that the motivation doesn't change how practice looks. We won the game, which is awesome. We showed more fully who we believe that we can be and are. It still wasn't perfect, and there's still a lot to get better at.

"…how do we make today's practice the best possible practice to give ourselves a chance to go play well on Saturday? That's our focus. That's how we're going to achieve what we want, is by making this Tuesday's practice the fricking Super Bowl, so that we can go out there. Then tomorrow, and Thursday and Friday in preparation for this game. And that's the challenge for us, that's what we've got to do."

If Stanford can pull off a second straight win, or at least make it a close game, it will give them yet another thing to build off of. And for a program that is in the middle of a major rebuild, that goes a long way.

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