[Red80]

Shaw has not changed and will not change.  He is using a system successful 10 years, but opposing teams know what to expect and how to defend against his teams.  

The current system is actually completely different from the system that was successful - it's been a few years since Stanford has employed "Intellectual Brutality" which was the foundation for Harbaugh and early Shaw.

Exactly right, DC 86. What makes me chuckle is that Shaw's biggest critics don't seem to see that his offenses, since 2018, have actually evolved toward the kind of schemes and play-calling that they hoped for, just without the desired results. Stanford has looked a lot like their opponents on offense the past few seasons, to their detriment.



Harbaugh brought physical offense to Stanford. After he departed, Stanford became Even More physical, and realized plenty of success because of it. 



That style of football is gone, and with it have the fortunes of Stanford football.

I don't think the causal story is as straightforward as this implies, nor do I think the loss of Intellectual Brutality was intentional.

The move away from the physical style was not for a lack of trying to be physical. Rather, we a) lost Shannon Turley, b) experienced significant discontinuity in offensive line coaching (three coaches in five years), c) whiffed horribly in 2015-2016 OL recruiting, d) did not get very many football years out of the 2017 OL class, and e) almost entirely skipped OL recruiting in 2018 (and since Stratford never played for all intents and purposes did entirely skip OL recruiting). If one is inclined toward a monocausal explanation of why Stanford football lost its Intellectual Brutality, the best explanation is quite simple: we stopped having the horses to dominate in the trenches.

When you think about it, a big part of the story for Intellectual Brutality was having two NFL linemen on a line at the same time, usually deep into their career: DeCastro and Martin in 2010 and 2011, Fleming and Yankey in 2013, Garnett and Murphy in 2015. That's what we've been missing. A case can be made that at no point in the last five seasons have we had a healthy OL pipeline. At best, there have been one or two seasons with good line situations. Meanwhile, we recruited pass catchers incredibly well for much of this period. It would have been malpractice for Shaw to stick with two receiver sets given this confluence of circumstances.

Anyway, I think you're mistaken if you think Shaw intended to move away from his physical style. Incompetence (see a-e) explains more of this than intention. It's more debatable the extent to which the loss of our style explains the fall. Ultimately I think it comes down to not winning in the trenches. If we dominated in the trenches we could have won regardless of whether we had a bunch of ogre sets (which didn't exactly disappear in all of the bad recent years). It's the lack of trench effectiveness, not the style, that's held us up the most IMHO.

I never said Shaw intentionally moved away from Smash Mouth (Except 2014, Big Mistake), just that his offenses had trended in a direction favored by a lot of the fan base. The results have sucked, just as I knew they would.

[Red80]

Shaw has not changed and will not change.  He is using a system successful 10 years, but opposing teams know what to expect and how to defend against his teams.  

The current system is actually completely different from the system that was successful - it's been a few years since Stanford has employed "Intellectual Brutality" which was the foundation for Harbaugh and early Shaw.

Exactly right, DC 86. What makes me chuckle is that Shaw's biggest critics don't seem to see that his offenses, since 2018, have actually evolved toward the kind of schemes and play-calling that they hoped for, just without the desired results. Stanford has looked a lot like their opponents on offense the past few seasons, to their detriment.



Harbaugh brought physical offense to Stanford. After he departed, Stanford became Even More physical, and realized plenty of success because of it. 



That style of football is gone, and with it have the fortunes of Stanford football.

I don't think the causal story is as straightforward as this implies, nor do I think the loss of Intellectual Brutality was intentional.

The move away from the physical style was not for a lack of trying to be physical. Rather, we a) lost Shannon Turley, b) experienced significant discontinuity in offensive line coaching (three coaches in five years), c) whiffed horribly in 2015-2016 OL recruiting, d) did not get very many football years out of the 2017 OL class, and e) almost entirely skipped OL recruiting in 2018 (and since Stratford never played for all intents and purposes did entirely skip OL recruiting). If one is inclined toward a monocausal explanation of why Stanford football lost its Intellectual Brutality, the best explanation is quite simple: we stopped having the horses to dominate in the trenches.

When you think about it, a big part of the story for Intellectual Brutality was having two NFL linemen on a line at the same time, usually deep into their career: DeCastro and Martin in 2010 and 2011, Fleming and Yankey in 2013, Garnett and Murphy in 2015. That's what we've been missing. A case can be made that at no point in the last five seasons have we had a healthy OL pipeline. At best, there have been one or two seasons with good line situations. Meanwhile, we recruited pass catchers incredibly well for much of this period. It would have been malpractice for Shaw to stick with two receiver sets given this confluence of circumstances.

Anyway, I think you're mistaken if you think Shaw intended to move away from his physical style. Incompetence (see a-e) explains more of this than intention. It's more debatable the extent to which the loss of our style explains the fall. Ultimately I think it comes down to not winning in the trenches. If we dominated in the trenches we could have won regardless of whether we had a bunch of ogre sets (which didn't exactly disappear in all of the bad recent years). It's the lack of trench effectiveness, not the style, that's held us up the most IMHO.

I never said Shaw intentionally moved away from Smash Mouth (Except 2014, Big Mistake), just that his offenses had trended in a direction favored by a lot of the fan base. The results have sucked, just as I knew they would.