(08-07-2018, 03:07 PM)CornFed Wrote: I find this article much more interesting. That is probably because there has been limited discussion in detail here about the effect that Osiris-Brown might have on our O. Sounds like it might be the effect that folks here were hoping Donald Stewart might have, which really hasn't materialized.
https://www.ruleoftree.com/2018/8/5/1753...-different
I agree that the article is interesting in a "wouldn't it be nice" kind of way.
However, that author provides no actual evidence that Brown will be that guy - or will be this year, ignores evidence to the contrary, and just gets a ton of things wrong.
First off, it seems to be from the same guy who wrote an article about Costello we were discussing about a week ago. What bugs me most is that he keeps saying that Stanford mostly passes out of the pistol formation. As far as I can tell, the pistol is about the only formation Stanford doesn't use (or at least rarely uses). He seems to be referring to Stanford's relatively standard shotgun formation, with the back more or less beside the QB. I guess it's just terminology and by itself doesn't matter much.
More substantively, Stanford has a deep threat of a sort already, or sort of two.
The main one is JJAW. He is not a burner, but I'd say faster than most people seem to give him credit for. Fast or slow, he gets down the field. He averaged 16.27 yds/catch last year, which not only was 3rd in the conference among guys who caught enough passes to be eligible (2 per game - and JJAW had a lot more catches than the two guys ahead of him), but that is a bigger number than Montgomery ever put up who was the example of a deep threat used by the author. While Montgomery was fast enough, his big strength was … strength - and he had notorious difficulties hauling in the long ball. JJAW's yds/catch is the third largest number a qualifying WR has put up at Stanford over the past decade, just beaten out by Rector in 2015 (16.44) and twice by Cajuste 2014 (16.38) and 2013 (22.93).
The second deep threat, of a somewhat different type, is at TE. Stanford has made deep threats out of its TEs for years, notably Fleener in 2011 (19.62). Last year Smith averaged a substantial 18.00 yds/catch, but was 5 catches short of qualifying (he had 23).
The next issue is Brown himself. He might be fast on the scale of Stanford's WRs, but I cannot find much indication that he is a real burner.
The good news is that there were reports out of spring camp that Brown was beating everybody deep, though I don't remember seeing that in the spring game (is that just my memory?). Obviously I hope it's true, but hard to know what to make of each and every positive comment floating out of training camp.
The recruiting services analysis of Osiris included comments like "great hands" "great route runner" "good length". The comments I could find on speed included "things to work on: speed" or "has surprising speed" (which could be either good or a back-handed compliment).
Also on Brown, while he may end up an excellent deep threat and I have high hopes he'll be a star in the future, I haven't heard anything that suggests he is going to emerge as a dominant receiver this year. Certainly not at the scale the author is talking about. (which is a little confusing, as he says Stanford hasn't had a dominant receiver since Zach Ertz, but also is looking for somebody to be like Ty Montgomery who was playing two years after Ertz). I suspect that our dominant receiver this year will be JJAW, though he may not be a dominant receiver to the level the author is looking for.
Finally, I don't think anything is going to keep opponents from stacking the box against us this year, Love is just too good. What I hope will happen is that we will then make teams par for that stacking by hitting big plays over the top (clearly something that Shaw likes to do - though we've been hit or miss on how successful we've been at it).
