[msqueri]

I love Kelly's athleticism and think he has a chance of sticking in the NFL, but the comparison to Adebo is absurd. Here are their PFF grades:



Adebo: 88.6 as a redshirt freshman (nationally dominant/All-American level), 78.6 as a redshirt sophomore (very good, all-conference level)



Kelly: 66.8 as a true freshman (maybe a tick above average), 58.0 as a true sophomore (below average), 66.9 as a true junior (maybe a tick above average), 63.1 as a true senior (average)

What I see here is a Adebo dropping his PFF score from RSFr to RSSo, and Kelly basically bouncing up and down from freshman to senior year and not showing any improvement over time.  And more broadly, I think the biggest thing that has haunted our team is lack of player development. Guys can be decent as freshmen, but they don’t get better with years in the program.



All of this makes me wonder if you have ever tried to quantify this.  Is my perception correct that players do not develop, or even regress?  How do we compare to other pac-12 teams?



BC

The basic shape of this across the Pac-12/college football is that players close to the ball improve over time and those far away from the ball do not, at least not reliably. Fans who think DBs/WRs will be at their best at the end of their careers are operating mostly on faith rather than evidence. They might have their best years but it's not statistically significant. A third year or a second year could be the best year too. Conversely, for other teams, the trenches tend to improve a lot over time. For Stanford it's more mixed. Sometimes we see it at OL and sometimes we don't, but it's a sea change from the glory years when fourth and fifth year OL were one of the keys to our secret sauce. DL is a horror story. Stanford under the Anderson/Reynolds duo has not been able to realize the gains of maturation/experience at DL you would assume. It's so bad that I don't really have faith in Phillips/Franklin/Moi as long as they're coached by these clowns. Edge players have been very much a mixed bag. Hard to even know what to say about inside linebacker given the dysfunction of that pipeline going back many years, but I don't see good evidence for improvement.

In light of the shape of how this works generally and at Stanford specifically, I think we are highly dependent on being able to squeeze out development over time in QBs and OL. That our offense is what it is this year with a third year (but five years out of high school) QB and a line studded with fourth year guys is a very bad look.

Another way to think about this is to think about our most superstar players and how often we have guys like that emerge late (i.e., a sign of development over time). If you look at the all-conference guys since 2016, it feels like a lot of them (McCaffrey, Thomas, Love, Herbig, Meeks, Adebo, Little, Costello, Arcega-Whiteside, Smith, Booker, etc.) pretty much were who they were. We hit on them more as recruiting wins than developmental wins, in other words. Arguably the same could be said about Dalman, Parkinson, Toohill, Fehoko.

If any of this particularly interests you I can look for more detailed analyses I've done on specific parts.

[msqueri]

I love Kelly's athleticism and think he has a chance of sticking in the NFL, but the comparison to Adebo is absurd. Here are their PFF grades:



Adebo: 88.6 as a redshirt freshman (nationally dominant/All-American level), 78.6 as a redshirt sophomore (very good, all-conference level)



Kelly: 66.8 as a true freshman (maybe a tick above average), 58.0 as a true sophomore (below average), 66.9 as a true junior (maybe a tick above average), 63.1 as a true senior (average)

What I see here is a Adebo dropping his PFF score from RSFr to RSSo, and Kelly basically bouncing up and down from freshman to senior year and not showing any improvement over time.  And more broadly, I think the biggest thing that has haunted our team is lack of player development. Guys can be decent as freshmen, but they don’t get better with years in the program.



All of this makes me wonder if you have ever tried to quantify this.  Is my perception correct that players do not develop, or even regress?  How do we compare to other pac-12 teams?



BC

The basic shape of this across the Pac-12/college football is that players close to the ball improve over time and those far away from the ball do not, at least not reliably. Fans who think DBs/WRs will be at their best at the end of their careers are operating mostly on faith rather than evidence. They might have their best years but it's not statistically significant. A third year or a second year could be the best year too. Conversely, for other teams, the trenches tend to improve a lot over time. For Stanford it's more mixed. Sometimes we see it at OL and sometimes we don't, but it's a sea change from the glory years when fourth and fifth year OL were one of the keys to our secret sauce. DL is a horror story. Stanford under the Anderson/Reynolds duo has not been able to realize the gains of maturation/experience at DL you would assume. It's so bad that I don't really have faith in Phillips/Franklin/Moi as long as they're coached by these clowns. Edge players have been very much a mixed bag. Hard to even know what to say about inside linebacker given the dysfunction of that pipeline going back many years, but I don't see good evidence for improvement.

In light of the shape of how this works generally and at Stanford specifically, I think we are highly dependent on being able to squeeze out development over time in QBs and OL. That our offense is what it is this year with a third year (but five years out of high school) QB and a line studded with fourth year guys is a very bad look.

Another way to think about this is to think about our most superstar players and how often we have guys like that emerge late (i.e., a sign of development over time). If you look at the all-conference guys since 2016, it feels like a lot of them (McCaffrey, Thomas, Love, Herbig, Meeks, Adebo, Little, Costello, Arcega-Whiteside, Smith, Booker, etc.) pretty much were who they were. We hit on them more as recruiting wins than developmental wins, in other words. Arguably the same could be said about Dalman, Parkinson, Toohill, Fehoko.

If any of this particularly interests you I can look for more detailed analyses I've done on specific parts.