[LuckE2Bhere]

He had some horrifying breakdowns his first year at cornerback, but by his senior year he was excellent. And it seems to me most Stanford fans saw it that way at the time.

This is consistent with my recollection, though I'd add that his "excellent" senior year performance was not necessarily observable via the most traditional metric for his position: INTs.  In fact, I recall one analyst describing a conversation he had with Sherman, who (in touting his performance and rebutting this analyst's assumptions) referenced a precipitous decline in the number of times that opposing teams threw to the receiver he was covering as the year progressed... which the analyst then claimed to have verified by going back and looking at tape.

On a somewhat related note, I loved Ed Reynolds, and believe he should have set the INT Return for TD record (obviously a blown call in the UCLA game, that he basically won for us with that play), but I can't help but think that his 1st Team AA status that year was largely a function of those gaudy play stats (which are clearly somewhat "flukey" given the small sample size, in which +/- one or two makes a tremendous difference).  When his INT #s fell this year, was he really a "dramatically worse player" as those stats would suggest?  Of course not.  Fortunately, they allowed him to build a bit of a "rep" nationally, and his pre-season standing probably supported perceptions of him over the course of the season, but while "the tape never lies", it's easy for INT stats to do so (in yet another example, I believe that my Lions' LB DeAndre Levy led the NFL at his position with 6 picks this year, but still only has 11 over the course of a 5-year career... and I'm not banking on more than 2 next year!).

I'll give Richard (and our opposing QBs/OCs that season) the benefit of the doubt, and assume there was a good reason that they stopped throwing the ball in his direction!

[LuckE2Bhere]

He had some horrifying breakdowns his first year at cornerback, but by his senior year he was excellent. And it seems to me most Stanford fans saw it that way at the time.

This is consistent with my recollection, though I'd add that his "excellent" senior year performance was not necessarily observable via the most traditional metric for his position: INTs.  In fact, I recall one analyst describing a conversation he had with Sherman, who (in touting his performance and rebutting this analyst's assumptions) referenced a precipitous decline in the number of times that opposing teams threw to the receiver he was covering as the year progressed... which the analyst then claimed to have verified by going back and looking at tape.

On a somewhat related note, I loved Ed Reynolds, and believe he should have set the INT Return for TD record (obviously a blown call in the UCLA game, that he basically won for us with that play), but I can't help but think that his 1st Team AA status that year was largely a function of those gaudy play stats (which are clearly somewhat "flukey" given the small sample size, in which +/- one or two makes a tremendous difference).  When his INT #s fell this year, was he really a "dramatically worse player" as those stats would suggest?  Of course not.  Fortunately, they allowed him to build a bit of a "rep" nationally, and his pre-season standing probably supported perceptions of him over the course of the season, but while "the tape never lies", it's easy for INT stats to do so (in yet another example, I believe that my Lions' LB DeAndre Levy led the NFL at his position with 6 picks this year, but still only has 11 over the course of a 5-year career... and I'm not banking on more than 2 next year!).

I'll give Richard (and our opposing QBs/OCs that season) the benefit of the doubt, and assume there was a good reason that they stopped throwing the ball in his direction!