[lex24]

Criticism is fine. And it comes with the territory. We all second guess.  And of course when we do our play or our strategy always works. Prove otherwise.

I’m with BC. It’s not the particularized criticism. It’s the tone. And the overwrought response when things go wrong.

Most of what a head coach does starts when the game ends and ends when the game starts. Getting your team ready etc. Shaw has excelled on those fronts.

I disagree with some of his game day decisions, play calling clock management (micro scale. On a macro scale I think he manages a game well) and on the number of pages in that play book. But then I Coached a lot of basketball. My only football coaching was two years of 8th grade flag football.
And my biggest beef is people will CONSTANTLY throw a couple big game bad decisions out and try to “define” him with that.

You can choose to celebrate the good or dwell on the bad.

Not to wade further into the meta-debates about Shaw, but one thing has always puzzled me: the centrality of Shaw's (alleged) tendency to stick to his pre-established game plan. More critical people might call it stubbornness, more supportive, a certain kind of fortitude, but basically everyone agrees that that character quality is Shaw's. (Shaw, too, agrees; he often talks about sticking to identity etc. etc.)

I also kind of agree which makes it weird that I'm writing this post. Nevertheless I think focusing on Shaw's cussedness obscures a lot about how his coaching works. For example, to generalize: most of the Shaw critics also think he plays true or redshirt freshmen too rarely. But I saw, and have seen, relatively little acknowledgement that starting Walker Little -- in a dramatic third-game shift -- is an example both of: a) a non-stubborn adjustment that worked and b) playing a true freshman. In other words, Shaw failed to live up to stereotype and no one really adjusted their mental models of him.

So I basically think Shaw, like all coaches, is constantly changing things and adjusting them. (I haven't counted, but would bet lunch that Stanford plays much more in shotgun than it did in 2011.)  I don't think he's changed quite as much as the average coach, but then again he also wins more than the average coach. Fewer losses are the result of fewer problems, and fewer problems means fewer changes.

[lex24]

Criticism is fine. And it comes with the territory. We all second guess.  And of course when we do our play or our strategy always works. Prove otherwise.

I’m with BC. It’s not the particularized criticism. It’s the tone. And the overwrought response when things go wrong.

Most of what a head coach does starts when the game ends and ends when the game starts. Getting your team ready etc. Shaw has excelled on those fronts.

I disagree with some of his game day decisions, play calling clock management (micro scale. On a macro scale I think he manages a game well) and on the number of pages in that play book. But then I Coached a lot of basketball. My only football coaching was two years of 8th grade flag football.
And my biggest beef is people will CONSTANTLY throw a couple big game bad decisions out and try to “define” him with that.

You can choose to celebrate the good or dwell on the bad.

Not to wade further into the meta-debates about Shaw, but one thing has always puzzled me: the centrality of Shaw's (alleged) tendency to stick to his pre-established game plan. More critical people might call it stubbornness, more supportive, a certain kind of fortitude, but basically everyone agrees that that character quality is Shaw's. (Shaw, too, agrees; he often talks about sticking to identity etc. etc.)

I also kind of agree which makes it weird that I'm writing this post. Nevertheless I think focusing on Shaw's cussedness obscures a lot about how his coaching works. For example, to generalize: most of the Shaw critics also think he plays true or redshirt freshmen too rarely. But I saw, and have seen, relatively little acknowledgement that starting Walker Little -- in a dramatic third-game shift -- is an example both of: a) a non-stubborn adjustment that worked and b) playing a true freshman. In other words, Shaw failed to live up to stereotype and no one really adjusted their mental models of him.

So I basically think Shaw, like all coaches, is constantly changing things and adjusting them. (I haven't counted, but would bet lunch that Stanford plays much more in shotgun than it did in 2011.)  I don't think he's changed quite as much as the average coach, but then again he also wins more than the average coach. Fewer losses are the result of fewer problems, and fewer problems means fewer changes.