[Goose]

A fair way of comparing Stanford coaches in different years is to identify those Stanford teams that have ranked in the nation’s top 20 in scoring.

I fully agree with the point you are trying to make, but saying that a fair way to compare coaches is by how they ranked in scoring probably isn't right, IMHO. For instance, Elway had to score a lot of points because we couldn't stop anybody  :). He was running the air raid before it was invented. Thus, the Wiggin anomaly. Also, what allowed Ralston to beat SC was 1) no OJ, and 2) the defensive line. Yes, the offense was pretty good, but many argue Plunkett's junior year it was actually better, when we didn't win. The offensive rankings gives no weight at all to the defense the coach created, which kind of does matter.
However, as much as I loved Ralston, he took a lot of flack for the fact he was a CEO head coach and not an "X's and O's" type guy, and also for the "Doink" games that we lost, which were much more frequent then than they are now. Back then, for Stanford, no lead was safe. We chewed our nails all the way through most games.
With Walsh, it was "we may win, but in any case it will be entertaining and exciting". We didn't expect to win against good teams, and mostly, we didn't. We were better than we had been, which was a great improvement.
None of these coaches won as frequently as we have been in the last 6 years. In Walsh's case, that was despite perfecting the "West Coast Offense", which later was so effective for the 49ers. So, while fun to watch, it wasn't as effective in delivering wins.

[Goose]

A fair way of comparing Stanford coaches in different years is to identify those Stanford teams that have ranked in the nation’s top 20 in scoring.

I fully agree with the point you are trying to make, but saying that a fair way to compare coaches is by how they ranked in scoring probably isn't right, IMHO. For instance, Elway had to score a lot of points because we couldn't stop anybody  :). He was running the air raid before it was invented. Thus, the Wiggin anomaly. Also, what allowed Ralston to beat SC was 1) no OJ, and 2) the defensive line. Yes, the offense was pretty good, but many argue Plunkett's junior year it was actually better, when we didn't win. The offensive rankings gives no weight at all to the defense the coach created, which kind of does matter.
However, as much as I loved Ralston, he took a lot of flack for the fact he was a CEO head coach and not an "X's and O's" type guy, and also for the "Doink" games that we lost, which were much more frequent then than they are now. Back then, for Stanford, no lead was safe. We chewed our nails all the way through most games.
With Walsh, it was "we may win, but in any case it will be entertaining and exciting". We didn't expect to win against good teams, and mostly, we didn't. We were better than we had been, which was a great improvement.
None of these coaches won as frequently as we have been in the last 6 years. In Walsh's case, that was despite perfecting the "West Coast Offense", which later was so effective for the 49ers. So, while fun to watch, it wasn't as effective in delivering wins.