[Goose]

In case you all haven't, I would encourage you to read this: https://archive.is/KS3vu

It's why I'm all for fresh thinking and a departure from what didn't work in the past.

Excellent article on the decline of Stanford's program by Stewart Mandel (4 year old article). The section on Turley's departure alone is worth reading. It is worth pointing out that Stanford's injuries dramatically declined when Turley was in charge and dramatically increased when he left. In his last two years, 2017 and 2018, just two opening day starters missed more than two games. One year later, after Turley's departure and Stanford's first losing season in 11 years, 27 players were unavailable for the Notre Dame game.

Then why was Colorado the most-injured team in the Pac-12 with Turley as their head of S&C for 2 years, and then not retained or hired anywhere else after that?

This recurring post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy simply refuses to die. Quite frustrating. The fact Turley couldn't replicate his Stanford success elsewhere clearly demonstrates that he didn't have a magic formula that works under all conditions. Stanford was simply a victim of the inevitable regression to the mean. We have been through several strength and conditioning regimes after Turley was let go. They have had mixed results, but certainly no panacea has been found. The same can be said for football teams everywhere. The "best practices" spread rapidly throughout the strength and conditioning community. There are no "trade secrets" that last more than a season or two.
 
IMO the article hasn't aged well at all. One obvious shortcoming of the article is that it doesn't say exactly what Shaw did wrong that "caused" Stanford's decline. That was true from the day it was written. The article argues" the further Stanford got from Harbaugh, the more the program strayed from its physical identity." This is hardly a call for "new ideas" or "fresh thinking", but rather an endorsement of preserving the status quo. Yet the article starts with an example of a traditional team bonding and hardening activity that was no longer possible due to changing conditions. The world was changing. Football rules were changing. The article criticizes Shaw for being "complacent", yet it endorses the idea of remaining true to the Harbaugh legacy. These two concepts are contradictory. If Shaw responded to changing conditions, he would of necessity depart from the Harbaugh legacy in some cases.
 
Shaw in fact did respond to changing conditions. Mandel erroneously asserts that the teams led by CMC and Bryce Love were faithful to/examples of the Harbaugh legacy. Anybody who follows Stanford football know that simply wasn't the case, particularly during the BL years. Those teams did run the ball, but not in the same fashion as the previous Harbaugh/Shaw teams did. It wasn't "intellectual brutality" anymore. Despite Shaw's repeated protestations that CMC could run the ball between the tackles (which he could to a limited extent), the reality was CMC would read the blocking and adjust to what he saw. He is a "patient" runner. He would run where the hole was, not where it was supposed to be. With BL it was "just give him a crease and he is gone". Most of the time there was no crease and he got two yards, but when there was, he was indeed gone. Neither CMC or BL were "similar" to their predecessors in the Harbaugh/Shaw era.
 
Mandel cites the departures of Mason and Bloomgren as problems. Presumably these were not some of the people Shaw should have fired :-). No recommendations of exactly who should have been fired are present in the article. Bloomgren left a somewhat bare cupboard when he departed. Stanford's OL had started to have issues after 2015, and from 2017 it was a real problem. IMO that was the point where it was no longer even remotely possible to meaningfully continue the Harbaugh legacy.
 
Was that Shaw's "fault"? Arguably yes, if one believes there was a strategy that would have allowed the "Harbaugh approach" to continue. It is reasonable to argue that the replacements for Mason and  Bloomgren were not "successful".  Stanford went through several OL coaches trying to fix the problem, but never succeeded. Shaw tried an approach that involved smaller, faster backs and more passing, partly because that is what he could get and partly because the OLs seemed to be better at pass blocking than run blocking. That didn't work out too well, and the rest was history. IMO the "take-away" from that history should be that if you don't have a "good" OL, your offensive philosophy and your ideas, whether new and innovative or attempts to continue Harbaugh's legacy, don't make much difference.

[Goose]

In case you all haven't, I would encourage you to read this: https://archive.is/KS3vu

It's why I'm all for fresh thinking and a departure from what didn't work in the past.

Excellent article on the decline of Stanford's program by Stewart Mandel (4 year old article). The section on Turley's departure alone is worth reading. It is worth pointing out that Stanford's injuries dramatically declined when Turley was in charge and dramatically increased when he left. In his last two years, 2017 and 2018, just two opening day starters missed more than two games. One year later, after Turley's departure and Stanford's first losing season in 11 years, 27 players were unavailable for the Notre Dame game.

Then why was Colorado the most-injured team in the Pac-12 with Turley as their head of S&C for 2 years, and then not retained or hired anywhere else after that?

This recurring post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy simply refuses to die. Quite frustrating. The fact Turley couldn't replicate his Stanford success elsewhere clearly demonstrates that he didn't have a magic formula that works under all conditions. Stanford was simply a victim of the inevitable regression to the mean. We have been through several strength and conditioning regimes after Turley was let go. They have had mixed results, but certainly no panacea has been found. The same can be said for football teams everywhere. The "best practices" spread rapidly throughout the strength and conditioning community. There are no "trade secrets" that last more than a season or two.
 
IMO the article hasn't aged well at all. One obvious shortcoming of the article is that it doesn't say exactly what Shaw did wrong that "caused" Stanford's decline. That was true from the day it was written. The article argues" the further Stanford got from Harbaugh, the more the program strayed from its physical identity." This is hardly a call for "new ideas" or "fresh thinking", but rather an endorsement of preserving the status quo. Yet the article starts with an example of a traditional team bonding and hardening activity that was no longer possible due to changing conditions. The world was changing. Football rules were changing. The article criticizes Shaw for being "complacent", yet it endorses the idea of remaining true to the Harbaugh legacy. These two concepts are contradictory. If Shaw responded to changing conditions, he would of necessity depart from the Harbaugh legacy in some cases.
 
Shaw in fact did respond to changing conditions. Mandel erroneously asserts that the teams led by CMC and Bryce Love were faithful to/examples of the Harbaugh legacy. Anybody who follows Stanford football know that simply wasn't the case, particularly during the BL years. Those teams did run the ball, but not in the same fashion as the previous Harbaugh/Shaw teams did. It wasn't "intellectual brutality" anymore. Despite Shaw's repeated protestations that CMC could run the ball between the tackles (which he could to a limited extent), the reality was CMC would read the blocking and adjust to what he saw. He is a "patient" runner. He would run where the hole was, not where it was supposed to be. With BL it was "just give him a crease and he is gone". Most of the time there was no crease and he got two yards, but when there was, he was indeed gone. Neither CMC or BL were "similar" to their predecessors in the Harbaugh/Shaw era.
 
Mandel cites the departures of Mason and Bloomgren as problems. Presumably these were not some of the people Shaw should have fired :-). No recommendations of exactly who should have been fired are present in the article. Bloomgren left a somewhat bare cupboard when he departed. Stanford's OL had started to have issues after 2015, and from 2017 it was a real problem. IMO that was the point where it was no longer even remotely possible to meaningfully continue the Harbaugh legacy.
 
Was that Shaw's "fault"? Arguably yes, if one believes there was a strategy that would have allowed the "Harbaugh approach" to continue. It is reasonable to argue that the replacements for Mason and  Bloomgren were not "successful".  Stanford went through several OL coaches trying to fix the problem, but never succeeded. Shaw tried an approach that involved smaller, faster backs and more passing, partly because that is what he could get and partly because the OLs seemed to be better at pass blocking than run blocking. That didn't work out too well, and the rest was history. IMO the "take-away" from that history should be that if you don't have a "good" OL, your offensive philosophy and your ideas, whether new and innovative or attempts to continue Harbaugh's legacy, don't make much difference.