[washingtonismoney]

The wide receiver issue is weird. It's not that wide receivers can't improve while at Stanford--look at Whalens and Doug Baldwin. So what is it? Saying there are five wide receivers on the roster three stars or more is not particularly helpful here--the odds of success go discontinuously up between three- and four-star players. Currently there are four four-star wide receivers, if you believe Rivals. Whitfield is a bit young, so there are realistically three four-star wideouts on the roster. Research indicates (http://mgoblog.com/diaries/5-stars-first...ecruit-pro) that about 22% of four-star wideouts are drafted. It seems pretty certain neither Patterson nor Roberts will be drafted, at this point so about 60.48% chance of neither being drafted--as expected. Then again, add in the three-stars (e.g. Keanu Nelson, Drew Terrell) who haven't really panned out, and the team looks, perhaps, mildly unlucky.

An additional impact factor hidden in OutsiderFan's posing of the problem--Stanford's attracting better athletes than ever before. The question might be asked: well, how do we get such great athletes at DB (relative to Stanford, at least) and not at WR? Well, part of the answer here I think is that the coaches allocated some athlete talent to DB that in other coaching regimes might have gone to WR. Jordan Richards was listed at ATH in the recruiting websites, and Alex Carter played a lot of WR in high school. It's entirely conceivable that your alternate universe wideout starters are Richards and Carter...but then your DBs lose their highest-potential corner, and are forced to start Devon Carrington (with highly minimal depth behind) instead. Is that a sound tradeoff? I think so, but damned if it isn't painful.

It's possible the first-half performance is flukish; it's hard to believe they're this bad at catching the ball. But if I were Shaw, I'd be making sure to kill the problem dead: more Kelsey Young now, and the hard sell to Jordan Cunningham and Devon Allen for 2013.

[washingtonismoney]

The wide receiver issue is weird. It's not that wide receivers can't improve while at Stanford--look at Whalens and Doug Baldwin. So what is it? Saying there are five wide receivers on the roster three stars or more is not particularly helpful here--the odds of success go discontinuously up between three- and four-star players. Currently there are four four-star wide receivers, if you believe Rivals. Whitfield is a bit young, so there are realistically three four-star wideouts on the roster. Research indicates (http://mgoblog.com/diaries/5-stars-first...ecruit-pro) that about 22% of four-star wideouts are drafted. It seems pretty certain neither Patterson nor Roberts will be drafted, at this point so about 60.48% chance of neither being drafted--as expected. Then again, add in the three-stars (e.g. Keanu Nelson, Drew Terrell) who haven't really panned out, and the team looks, perhaps, mildly unlucky.

An additional impact factor hidden in OutsiderFan's posing of the problem--Stanford's attracting better athletes than ever before. The question might be asked: well, how do we get such great athletes at DB (relative to Stanford, at least) and not at WR? Well, part of the answer here I think is that the coaches allocated some athlete talent to DB that in other coaching regimes might have gone to WR. Jordan Richards was listed at ATH in the recruiting websites, and Alex Carter played a lot of WR in high school. It's entirely conceivable that your alternate universe wideout starters are Richards and Carter...but then your DBs lose their highest-potential corner, and are forced to start Devon Carrington (with highly minimal depth behind) instead. Is that a sound tradeoff? I think so, but damned if it isn't painful.

It's possible the first-half performance is flukish; it's hard to believe they're this bad at catching the ball. But if I were Shaw, I'd be making sure to kill the problem dead: more Kelsey Young now, and the hard sell to Jordan Cunningham and Devon Allen for 2013.