(08-28-2022, 08:08 PM)BostonCard Wrote: (08-28-2022, 02:44 PM)msqueri Wrote: I don't think it's helpful to think about bottom of the class as if the bottom of the class in 2017 means the same thing as the bottom of the class in 2022. Your bottom five for 2017 includes multiple guys who were 4-stars on major services. In years with small classes (2013, 2017) it's questionable whether you should even think of the class having a "bottom." Dalman was the composite #650 recruit in the country. Not only is that no doubt about it Power Five recruit, it's a very high 3-star.
Rather than thinking about Dalman as the last guy in his class, it would be more accurate to say he was the 14th highest-regarded guy in one of the most talented classes in Stanford history. For what it's worth, Dalman's ranking would have been the 10th highest of the 21 person most recent class. That's a far cry from a marginal recruit for any program. You can't call the third OL in a class a marginal recruit. Because we were able to get Little, Sarell, and Dalman, that year we passed on 4-star Brett Neilon, among other extremely coveted linemen. [Indeed, USC's highly touted current line are largely guys who could have gone to Stanford if we weren't so high on the hog.]
In other words, you don't have marginal recruits every year. Some years you go light and it's about quality rather than quantity. I don't think it makes sense to view anybody in the 2013 or 2017 classes as the 85th man.
If you look at things like which recruit at a position a player was and when we offered (i.e., were they Plan A or otherwise good enough to be a no doubt about it member of the class), you'll find that there haven't really been the hidden stars you're talking about. Herbig originally committed to us before his senior year even began. Levani Damuni was a 4-star according to Rivals. In what world are these marginal recruits? They simply were not.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? The class of 2017 didn’t have to be as small as it was. Im pretty sure there was room for more than 14 recruits that year. Unfortunately, Langdude’s extremely helpful roster summary only extends back to 2018, but at that point we had only 79 scholarship players, and I don’t remember the problem developing all of a sudden in the class of 2018. So even though we were “high on the hog” in 2017 with OL, we could have recruited Neilon; he’d have come in handy with all the injuries in 2019, and could have anchored the line with Dalman last year.
Indeed, in those years where we are blessed with a plethora of quality recruits, it makes sense to absolutely bring them in (being vicious, if we have to, about culling marginal fifth years). Yeah, there will be some more marginal years, in which case we might be a bit less picky, and keep some fifth years on scholarship who might be more marginal contributors.
For what it’s worth, here are the scholarship numbers by year. 2018: 79; 2019: 81; 2020: 81; 2021: 82; 2022: 84. Are you telling me that there weren’t a couple of players in each of the years between 2018 and 2021 who wouldn’t have been worth taking a flyer on?
BC
I think some years there would be and some years there wouldn't be. It also depends on how deep of a Plan B board the coaches cultivate. It takes work and significant opportunity cost to work with prospects on navigating their class schedules, applications, etc. and it's even trickier for prospects who may or may not have a spot in the class, which by definition is the case for a marginal guy. Sometimes it will be worth it and sometimes it won't. I don't think pure flyer/what the hell recruitments are very attractive for us and it really does come down to the simple question of whether we think a recruit will help the team.
I've long beat the drum on "being vicious, if we have to, about culling marginal fifth years." But this is a clarifying point actually. By their nature, the marginal/flyer recruits are going to be ones you have less confidence being significant contributors. In some years even that discounted expectation wouldn't have that hard of a time outweighing our most expendable fifth year players. Treyjohn Butler wouldn't have been a particularly hard fifth year player to do without. But in other years it's dubious a marginal recruit would be a better long term bet than the expected one-year contribution of the marginal fifth year. This year may actually be an example of that: we're expecting value from Ethan Bonner and Jay Symonds. I don't think you bring in a Paxton Segina/Jay Tyler flyer at the expense of one year of Bonner or Symonds.
And, of course, the decisions are murkier and more contingent than a Segina vs. Symonds decision, as one can forecast attrition but not clairvoyantly anticipate it. It's a guessing game knowing exactly how many spots there will be and what kind of tradeoff the ultimate edge case will present. That's arguably even more true in this transfer portal era.
I can't/won't defend using only 78/79/81 scholarships. I was very critical of that when it was happening. That's too much of a miscalculation to be defensible. I can see explanations for 82/83/84. In any case, I think what you recruit at the top of the roster has a bigger impact on the roster than how fully the bottom of the roster is optimized. Both are part of a coach's job and it's fair game for you and me to dissect it, but we're going to be made or broken by what we do with spots 1-5 in a class rather than spots 18-22.
