03-18-2022, 05:07 PM
I think you’ve made a reasonable case that the coaches have underperformed; that case is not necessarily strengthened by the fact that other teams fire coaches, other than in a normative sense.
I still think poor recruiting has been a contributor to poor performance, and again, I don’t say that to absolve the coaches, who have been here long enough to have recruited everyone. We have always done pretty well in terms of recruiting on the high end. I’m old enough to remember that Buddy Teevens recruited Julian Jenkins, probably our highest rated defensive lineman ever. The issue for Stanford has generally been recruiting quality depth so that it can withstand attrition or recruiting disappointment (Michael Craven, anyone). It is compounded by the fact that transfers in are rare and opportunistic; we generally can’t just say “hey, we have a hole at d-line, let’s see who is in the portal”. In a nod to Samuel, I’ll note that we don’t even try. But the bottom line is that the number of 4* players recruited over a certain span is not the be all of how good a defense should be.
BC
I still think poor recruiting has been a contributor to poor performance, and again, I don’t say that to absolve the coaches, who have been here long enough to have recruited everyone. We have always done pretty well in terms of recruiting on the high end. I’m old enough to remember that Buddy Teevens recruited Julian Jenkins, probably our highest rated defensive lineman ever. The issue for Stanford has generally been recruiting quality depth so that it can withstand attrition or recruiting disappointment (Michael Craven, anyone). It is compounded by the fact that transfers in are rare and opportunistic; we generally can’t just say “hey, we have a hole at d-line, let’s see who is in the portal”. In a nod to Samuel, I’ll note that we don’t even try. But the bottom line is that the number of 4* players recruited over a certain span is not the be all of how good a defense should be.
BC