[msqueri]

While this post is about Edwards and the horrible situation he was in, Ostrander certainly gets honorable mention for the beatings he took. In addition to the 2004 Oregon State and Cal games and 2005 Cal and Notre Dame games in which Ostrander got the Edwards treatment, after Edwards' career ended Ostrander was then sacked six times by Arizona, four times by Washington, five times by Oregon State, and four times by Cal. All in all, in 2006 we gave up 50 sacks. 50!

And I'm sure you recall that the reason Tavita started in The Greatest Upset Ever was because Ostrander had taken a beating the previous week and had a seizure the following night at the Grolsch (sic?) brewery while dining with his parents.

The two quotes above are more than enough justification to make having the oline coach be the number one assistant on the staff and that oline recruiting comes first.

And to never again double up your OL coach by making him OC. When Bloom got promoted and wore both, OL performance started to drop off and it hasn't recovered (enough) since despite all the highly-rated recruits coming in the door.

Bloomgren was OC/OL starting in 2013. The 2013 offense was #21 in Offensive FEI and the 2015 offense was #2, one of the top two or three offenses in Stanford history. The offensive decline happened many years after Bloomgren became OC and, really, happened after he left. His 2017 offense, his last one at Stanford, was #17. Bloomgren's lack of OL recruiting for an unhealthy chunk of time deserves a lot of the blame for what happened subsequently, but I think your narrative about offensive decline being tied to him being OC is just wrong.

I definitely agree that our OL performance dropped off over time but I am having trouble seeing facts line up that tie it to Bloomgren's coaching. We were bullies most years when he was the OL coach, and in the years we weren't (2014 and 2016) those were the years in which we had young lines.

Coaches and fans alike don't like to think that the causal story is as mechanical as "how old are the starting linemen" but that's been the main story of our OL performance drop off, not whether Bloomgren had an OC title or not.

[msqueri]

While this post is about Edwards and the horrible situation he was in, Ostrander certainly gets honorable mention for the beatings he took. In addition to the 2004 Oregon State and Cal games and 2005 Cal and Notre Dame games in which Ostrander got the Edwards treatment, after Edwards' career ended Ostrander was then sacked six times by Arizona, four times by Washington, five times by Oregon State, and four times by Cal. All in all, in 2006 we gave up 50 sacks. 50!

And I'm sure you recall that the reason Tavita started in The Greatest Upset Ever was because Ostrander had taken a beating the previous week and had a seizure the following night at the Grolsch (sic?) brewery while dining with his parents.

The two quotes above are more than enough justification to make having the oline coach be the number one assistant on the staff and that oline recruiting comes first.

And to never again double up your OL coach by making him OC. When Bloom got promoted and wore both, OL performance started to drop off and it hasn't recovered (enough) since despite all the highly-rated recruits coming in the door.

Bloomgren was OC/OL starting in 2013. The 2013 offense was #21 in Offensive FEI and the 2015 offense was #2, one of the top two or three offenses in Stanford history. The offensive decline happened many years after Bloomgren became OC and, really, happened after he left. His 2017 offense, his last one at Stanford, was #17. Bloomgren's lack of OL recruiting for an unhealthy chunk of time deserves a lot of the blame for what happened subsequently, but I think your narrative about offensive decline being tied to him being OC is just wrong.

I definitely agree that our OL performance dropped off over time but I am having trouble seeing facts line up that tie it to Bloomgren's coaching. We were bullies most years when he was the OL coach, and in the years we weren't (2014 and 2016) those were the years in which we had young lines.

Coaches and fans alike don't like to think that the causal story is as mechanical as "how old are the starting linemen" but that's been the main story of our OL performance drop off, not whether Bloomgren had an OC title or not.