08-17-2021, 11:25 PM
(08-17-2021, 02:28 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Wlat's approach cratered at Stanford, even though he was pretty successful at Pitt. You might have thought that Teevens, who had been successful at Dartmouth, but not in D1 (Tulane) might have been able to leveraged Stanford's "institutional draw" just as much as Shaw has, but alas he wasn't. Even Walsh cratered in his second go around.
Willingham, who you define as "successful" at Stanford (and I would be inclined to agree) had a career 44-36-1 record at Stanford. That's a 55% winning percentage. He had 4 winning seasons in 7, and never won more than 9 games; he won the conference once. In contrast, in 10 seasons, Shaw has exactly the same number of losses as Willingham did, and more than twice as many wins (90-36), a 71% winning percentage. He's had 9 winning seasons in 10 and won double digit games 5 times (to be fair, the number of regular season games has gone from 11 to 12, and Shaw made it to a conference championship 4 times, winning 3). He won the conference three times (despite it being a larger conference). I don't see how you can define Willingham as "successful" and be non-plussed by Shaw's record.
My first year at Stanford was 1993. Here's the record of coaches since I've been a fan:
David Shaw 90-36 (71%) [9 winning seasons in 10 years, 3 conference titles]
Jim Harbaugh 29-21 (58%) [2 winning seasons in 4 years, 0 conference titles]
Wlat Harris 6-17 (26%) [0 winning seasons in 2 years, 0 conference titles]
Buddy Teevens 10-23 (30%) [0 winning seasons in 3 years, 0 conference titles]
Tyrone Willingham 44-36-1 (55%) [4 winning seasons in 7 years, 1 conference title]
Bill Walsh* 7-14-1 (33%) [0 winning seasons in 2 years, 0 conference titles]
With that as my reference, of the six guys who have coached since I enrolled at Stanford, 3 were failures, with a losing record and 0 winning seasons between them, three were moderately successful, winning more than 50% of their games and having winning seasons just over half the time, and one coach has been wildly successful.
Note, since I started Stanford in the second year of Walsh II, I only ever witnessed Walsh' last two years, both of them losing seasons. If you look at all of Walsh 2 you get 17-17-1 record, 50% winning percentage, 1 winning season, and 0 conference titles; if you look at both Walsh stints, you get 34-24-1 59%, with three winning seasons in 5 years, and no conference titles.
Another way to look at it would be to look at Shaw's last five years, when he was all on his own without any of Harbaugh's recruits.
36-22, 62% winning percentage, 4 winning seasons in 5 years, 0 conference titles. In other words, Shaw's five worst years, the ones that everyone cites as evidence of the irrevocable decline of Stanford football, have produced a better winning percentage than any other coach since I've been a fan (including three that you cite as "successful") and it's produced as many winning seasons as Willingham, and more than Harbaugh or Walsh.
Yes, but "delays of game", am I right?
BC
BC, I suspect you're sharp enough to appreciate that part of evaluating a coach's success is evaluating what he inherited versus what he built. SHAW HAS NO COMPARISON in terms of inheriting a Ferrari. Period. End of sentence. You could have won 11 games (and probably the Fiesta Bowl - because you would not have taken the ball out of Luck's hands and put it on the foot of a kid shakily coming back from injury) coaching that 2011 team.
Shaw gets some credit for maintaining very good records after Harbaugh left (particularly in 2015). But we're just now seeing Shaw at sea level, imo. It's decent, but will be a bit of a downer given the heights he joined the program at.