[washingtonismoney]

For next year:

Defensively, we lose our best players (Harris, Shittu, Martinez). That's not a surprise. Older players are generally better than young players, and (duh) they're also more likely to graduate. I feel reasonably confident about replacing the production of Shittu (with Thomas), and Harris (with Holder). Martinez has, at this moment, no obvious replacement -- Perez was victimized again last night. Palma gets the job done but I'm not sure how much more he can give. Perhaps Barton or Branch can step up.

The issue, defensively, has been the Shaw regime's careless burning of redshirts. Neither Shittu nor Martinez contributed all that much their freshmen year. They should be coming back for a fifth year and anchoring a defense with real prospects. Instead we're crossing our fingers for a defense that's roughly as good as this year's. (My guess is we improve at one safety spot with Reid...)

Offensively, the foundation of the unit is the versatility and depth of its skill position players. If Hooper returns, then the only departing skill position players are Cajuste and Wright. Meanwhile we can probably expect improvement from Love and Irwin; potential contributions from C. Scarlett and Arcega-Whiteside; and ________? from the incoming recruiting class.

The question is, how good is Chryst as a replacement for Hogan? Hogan is like, say, Kyle Korver in basketball. He doesn't, in of himself, manufacture opportunities; he's a very good converter of the opportunities presented to him. My guess is that this type of player is easier to replace than an Andrew Luck, who created his own "shots." This is perhaps suggested by Football Outsiders' ranking our offense 69th in passing downs.

Meanwhile the offensive line loses Murphy and Garnett. No insight into how good the replacements will be.

So the offense could still be quite good even if Chryst is a slight dropoff from Hogan. His pre-college accolades suggest he could be better (though he haven't heard any buzz to that effect; so I doubt that this will occur). The problem is that, in order to stay at this level -- or even improve -- we need to see something new, some improvement. This is probably recency bias speaking, but I don't know where that's coming from.

EDIT: of course this is a statement of the real Stanford football problem: the timing paradox. We don't seem to recruit talent in sufficient quality to be a well-rounded team all the time. Put the 2012 defense with the 2011 offense and that's a national championship team. Pair the 2014 defense with the 2015 offense and the same. It's like a romantic comedy meet-cute that never quite comes off.

[washingtonismoney]

For next year:

Defensively, we lose our best players (Harris, Shittu, Martinez). That's not a surprise. Older players are generally better than young players, and (duh) they're also more likely to graduate. I feel reasonably confident about replacing the production of Shittu (with Thomas), and Harris (with Holder). Martinez has, at this moment, no obvious replacement -- Perez was victimized again last night. Palma gets the job done but I'm not sure how much more he can give. Perhaps Barton or Branch can step up.

The issue, defensively, has been the Shaw regime's careless burning of redshirts. Neither Shittu nor Martinez contributed all that much their freshmen year. They should be coming back for a fifth year and anchoring a defense with real prospects. Instead we're crossing our fingers for a defense that's roughly as good as this year's. (My guess is we improve at one safety spot with Reid...)

Offensively, the foundation of the unit is the versatility and depth of its skill position players. If Hooper returns, then the only departing skill position players are Cajuste and Wright. Meanwhile we can probably expect improvement from Love and Irwin; potential contributions from C. Scarlett and Arcega-Whiteside; and ________? from the incoming recruiting class.

The question is, how good is Chryst as a replacement for Hogan? Hogan is like, say, Kyle Korver in basketball. He doesn't, in of himself, manufacture opportunities; he's a very good converter of the opportunities presented to him. My guess is that this type of player is easier to replace than an Andrew Luck, who created his own "shots." This is perhaps suggested by Football Outsiders' ranking our offense 69th in passing downs.

Meanwhile the offensive line loses Murphy and Garnett. No insight into how good the replacements will be.

So the offense could still be quite good even if Chryst is a slight dropoff from Hogan. His pre-college accolades suggest he could be better (though he haven't heard any buzz to that effect; so I doubt that this will occur). The problem is that, in order to stay at this level -- or even improve -- we need to see something new, some improvement. This is probably recency bias speaking, but I don't know where that's coming from.

EDIT: of course this is a statement of the real Stanford football problem: the timing paradox. We don't seem to recruit talent in sufficient quality to be a well-rounded team all the time. Put the 2012 defense with the 2011 offense and that's a national championship team. Pair the 2014 defense with the 2015 offense and the same. It's like a romantic comedy meet-cute that never quite comes off.