No, it's not a bye week for No. 5 Stanford

The schedule says bye week. But don't let that confuse you. This is not a bye week.

"It's Improvement Week," said tight end Zach Ertz. "We're using this time to improve."

And to drive home that point, the Cardinal had a visitor last week to practice, Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice.

[+] Enlarge Matt Kartozian/US PRESSWIRE"I'm a typical coach," David Shaw said. "We only concentrate on the things we have to get better at. We're not good at patting ourselves on the back.""He gave us some great, wise words," said head coach David Shaw. "He never took a play off and he never took a day off because he knew if he did, someone was going to beat him. And it's that mentality of if we back off and say 'we're doing this well and this well' and don't push ourselves to be better, somebody is going to come in here and beat us."

Translation: Don't even think about using this time to catch your breath. The Cardinal return to action Oct. 1 when they host UCLA.

"We're picking things from the first three games that we need to work on in all three phases," Shaw said. "We're not really jumping on UCLA just yet. We're really concentrating on us and what we need to work on. We're having freshman scrimmages and non-travel scrimmages for the guys that aren't playing right now to continue to train them and get them ready to play at some point. We're taking some of the hits off the other guys that played a lot of football in the first three games.

"But at the same time, it's too early in the season for us to not go hard. So we're going to have physical practices and then end those physical practices with a young-guy scrimmage."

Shaw's first thoughts about the early bye week were that he didn't like it. But with school starting next week and this week filled with orientation meetings, the players can practice in the morning and then meet all of their school-oriented requirements in the afternoons.

Shaw said despite the team's 3-0 record and No. 5 ranking nationally, he's more focused on what the Cardinal have done wrong during the three-game stretch than what they have done right.

"I'm a typical coach," he said. "We only concentrate on the things we have to get better at. We're not good at patting ourselves on the back because the things you don't do well are the things that teams use against you. That's what we have to spend this week on, tightening up things in all three phases."

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