[msqueri]

Hope you're both proud at the state of Stanford football you both created.  The cupboards weren't this bare even in the early 2000s.

That said, I still have faith in the new staff and the new team.

Give us a break, the buddy teevens years at the bottom were stacked with dreadful 3 and 2 star players.  There are a slew of 4 stars on the current roster still.

Shaw's coaching was a liability in the end - especially with offense.  But it wasn't all on him.  NIL stance by Stanford was and still is slow.

 

The 2023 skill position cupboard sure seems bare (beyond Ben Yurosek). What current receivers and running backs were 4-star recruits?  

In 2007, Harbaugh inherited Evan Moore and Mark Bradford. Both were 4-star Teevens recruits. The '07 team also featured two key Walt Harris recruits: Richard Sherman (3 stars) and Toby Gerhart (3 stars). 

I see no current Stanford receivers or running backs of that caliber.

Did you miss John Humphreys, EJ Smith, Tiger Bachmeier? and that's all from a 5 second cursory look.

Bachmeier is a stretch but yes, we do have former 4-star recruits at the skill positions:

Humphreys: Unanimous 4-star, borderline whale

Smith: Unanimous 4-star, borderline whale

Roush: Consensus 4-star

That's not even to mention the many 4-star OL (Rogers, McLaughlin, Pogorelc, Anderson) or the guys who were 4-stars in the view of some but not most (Ungar, Yurosek, Farrell, Patu, Uke, Heyer, Hawkins, Borden, Jackson, Irvin, Bachmeier, Pale, Harris).

So yeah, Stanford has 4-stars in three different rooms on offense and at least two arguable 4-stars in every single room.

Talent alone cannot explain what we see. 247 crunched all the numbers and, inclusive of transfers and attrition not just for us but everybody, they assess us as having the #37 talent in the country. That seems about right. And clearly we perform much, much worse than that on offense. Here's why that's the case:

1. Football starts up front and our OL is almost entirely new and was eviscerated by attrition. We have very little experience and zero fifth or sixth year guys, which is very hard to overcome empirically at this position. Our OL is going to be a work in progress this year and maybe longer.

2. The most important single position is QB and all of our competitors shopped to get a proven QB. We shopped in the transfer portal too, but like Cal the best we could do was a non-proven QB. That's tough when almost everybody you play has a QB they know is solid (or in the case of half our schedule downright great) and you have a QB you hope is solid.

3. Shaw's culture of leaving killed us. Just absolutely killed us. On offense alone, among departed guys with eligibility this year, Nugent is the top-ranked OL for Michigan so far this season and as we know an elite player, Rouse is starting for Oklahoma, Metcalf is the top-ranked OL for UCF, Hinton is starting for Michigan, Hornibrook is starting for Duke, Miller is starting for Cal, McKee left without his degree as far as I know and had two years of eligibility remaining, Wilson left eligibility on the table though a sixth year when the opportunity cost is playing in the NFL is a lot to ask, Higgins left eligibility on the table and looks like a fringe NFL player though he did make an active roster albeit not with the team that drafted him, Jones is STILL playing at USC and has been 6th/17th/18th in the Pac-12 in yards from scrimmage and would have been the superstar for a team that doesn't have a single non-Yurosek player who has ever been top 50 in the conference in yards from scrimmage (Yurosek has been 15th and 46th), and Peat is STILL playing at Missouri and has been 43rd in the Pac-12 in yards from scrimmage and is currently 12th in the SEC in yards from scrimmage through two games so he would have been a big help too. Give us McKee, Nugent OR Rouse OR Metcalf, Wilson OR Higgins, and Jones OR Peat and this is a totally different offense.

4. Shaw killed the culture, the commitment, strength and conditioning, everything. We saw for half a decade what was happening to our program and are now seeing what it all culminated in. The total has been less than the sum of the parts for years and it will take time for Taylor to rebuild all that atrophied (or worse).

5. Despite the on-paper number of former 4-stars, I think our eyeballs tell us that we are lacking talent at the skill positions. Yurosek is genuinely spectacular (though even he is somewhat one dimensional). Humphreys is Trent Irwin-lite - a reliable, decently talented guy you'd love to have as WR3 rather than WR1. Smith is exactly what I thought he was the moment we recruited him - a deadly third down back/versatile receiving weapon who is much more pedestrian and unreliable if you need him to be the bell cow. Roush is a big tease so far, looking hapless in the first 14 games of his college career despite the hype. Ungar has never been healthy even going back all through high school. Farrell is an ok weapon in small doses, a novelty rather than a feature piece. Patu and Jackson are buried on the QB depth chart. The new coaching staff has been a disaster for Hawkins and I'm not sure if he will play again before inevitably transferring out somewhere he meshes better with the coaches. Borden and Harris couldn't even make the travel roster ahead of walk-ons, a horribly ominous sign for our WR pipeline going forward. Irvin looks like he might be interesting, let's see. Bachmeier is playing a lot, which would be encouraging except he's been useless so far. All in all I think it's a very troubling skill position group, both for this year and looking into the future. Taylor and his staff need to address this via recruiting and/or transfers.

[msqueri]

Hope you're both proud at the state of Stanford football you both created.  The cupboards weren't this bare even in the early 2000s.

That said, I still have faith in the new staff and the new team.

Give us a break, the buddy teevens years at the bottom were stacked with dreadful 3 and 2 star players.  There are a slew of 4 stars on the current roster still.

Shaw's coaching was a liability in the end - especially with offense.  But it wasn't all on him.  NIL stance by Stanford was and still is slow.

 

The 2023 skill position cupboard sure seems bare (beyond Ben Yurosek). What current receivers and running backs were 4-star recruits?  

In 2007, Harbaugh inherited Evan Moore and Mark Bradford. Both were 4-star Teevens recruits. The '07 team also featured two key Walt Harris recruits: Richard Sherman (3 stars) and Toby Gerhart (3 stars). 

I see no current Stanford receivers or running backs of that caliber.

Did you miss John Humphreys, EJ Smith, Tiger Bachmeier? and that's all from a 5 second cursory look.

Bachmeier is a stretch but yes, we do have former 4-star recruits at the skill positions:

Humphreys: Unanimous 4-star, borderline whale

Smith: Unanimous 4-star, borderline whale

Roush: Consensus 4-star

That's not even to mention the many 4-star OL (Rogers, McLaughlin, Pogorelc, Anderson) or the guys who were 4-stars in the view of some but not most (Ungar, Yurosek, Farrell, Patu, Uke, Heyer, Hawkins, Borden, Jackson, Irvin, Bachmeier, Pale, Harris).

So yeah, Stanford has 4-stars in three different rooms on offense and at least two arguable 4-stars in every single room.

Talent alone cannot explain what we see. 247 crunched all the numbers and, inclusive of transfers and attrition not just for us but everybody, they assess us as having the #37 talent in the country. That seems about right. And clearly we perform much, much worse than that on offense. Here's why that's the case:

1. Football starts up front and our OL is almost entirely new and was eviscerated by attrition. We have very little experience and zero fifth or sixth year guys, which is very hard to overcome empirically at this position. Our OL is going to be a work in progress this year and maybe longer.

2. The most important single position is QB and all of our competitors shopped to get a proven QB. We shopped in the transfer portal too, but like Cal the best we could do was a non-proven QB. That's tough when almost everybody you play has a QB they know is solid (or in the case of half our schedule downright great) and you have a QB you hope is solid.

3. Shaw's culture of leaving killed us. Just absolutely killed us. On offense alone, among departed guys with eligibility this year, Nugent is the top-ranked OL for Michigan so far this season and as we know an elite player, Rouse is starting for Oklahoma, Metcalf is the top-ranked OL for UCF, Hinton is starting for Michigan, Hornibrook is starting for Duke, Miller is starting for Cal, McKee left without his degree as far as I know and had two years of eligibility remaining, Wilson left eligibility on the table though a sixth year when the opportunity cost is playing in the NFL is a lot to ask, Higgins left eligibility on the table and looks like a fringe NFL player though he did make an active roster albeit not with the team that drafted him, Jones is STILL playing at USC and has been 6th/17th/18th in the Pac-12 in yards from scrimmage and would have been the superstar for a team that doesn't have a single non-Yurosek player who has ever been top 50 in the conference in yards from scrimmage (Yurosek has been 15th and 46th), and Peat is STILL playing at Missouri and has been 43rd in the Pac-12 in yards from scrimmage and is currently 12th in the SEC in yards from scrimmage through two games so he would have been a big help too. Give us McKee, Nugent OR Rouse OR Metcalf, Wilson OR Higgins, and Jones OR Peat and this is a totally different offense.

4. Shaw killed the culture, the commitment, strength and conditioning, everything. We saw for half a decade what was happening to our program and are now seeing what it all culminated in. The total has been less than the sum of the parts for years and it will take time for Taylor to rebuild all that atrophied (or worse).

5. Despite the on-paper number of former 4-stars, I think our eyeballs tell us that we are lacking talent at the skill positions. Yurosek is genuinely spectacular (though even he is somewhat one dimensional). Humphreys is Trent Irwin-lite - a reliable, decently talented guy you'd love to have as WR3 rather than WR1. Smith is exactly what I thought he was the moment we recruited him - a deadly third down back/versatile receiving weapon who is much more pedestrian and unreliable if you need him to be the bell cow. Roush is a big tease so far, looking hapless in the first 14 games of his college career despite the hype. Ungar has never been healthy even going back all through high school. Farrell is an ok weapon in small doses, a novelty rather than a feature piece. Patu and Jackson are buried on the QB depth chart. The new coaching staff has been a disaster for Hawkins and I'm not sure if he will play again before inevitably transferring out somewhere he meshes better with the coaches. Borden and Harris couldn't even make the travel roster ahead of walk-ons, a horribly ominous sign for our WR pipeline going forward. Irvin looks like he might be interesting, let's see. Bachmeier is playing a lot, which would be encouraging except he's been useless so far. All in all I think it's a very troubling skill position group, both for this year and looking into the future. Taylor and his staff need to address this via recruiting and/or transfers.