07-25-2022, 02:23 PM
Football Recruiting Class of 2023
07-25-2022, 02:28 PM
I was responding to Spiny Norman's comment: "Stanford may not get a scholarship QB in this class. But they will have a QB." I may have misinterpreted what he was saying though.
When I registered here in 2014, TrumpCard seemed like an apolitical user ID...
07-25-2022, 03:06 PM
Superstar does not equate with All Conference to me. Muth had a very good senior season but superstar, no. Ertz almost makes it as a consensus AA. However they are few and far between.
Plunkett, Elway, Luck, Nevers, Albert, Horse Reynolds, Corbus, McColl, Margerum, McCaffrey for sure. Garrett, Brodie,
Nelson, DeCastro, Yankey, Skov, Love, Burford, Bones Hamilton, Moscrip, Pat Donovan and others close.
Then there is Jim Brown, super superstar.
Matter of opinion which makes it a great topic for argument.
Plunkett, Elway, Luck, Nevers, Albert, Horse Reynolds, Corbus, McColl, Margerum, McCaffrey for sure. Garrett, Brodie,
Nelson, DeCastro, Yankey, Skov, Love, Burford, Bones Hamilton, Moscrip, Pat Donovan and others close.
Then there is Jim Brown, super superstar.
Matter of opinion which makes it a great topic for argument.
Superstar does not equate with All Conference to me. Muth had a very good senior season but superstar, no. Ertz almost makes it as a consensus AA. However they are few and far between.
Plunkett, Elway, Luck, Nevers, Albert, Horse Reynolds, Corbus, McColl, Margerum, McCaffrey for sure. Garrett, Brodie,
Nelson, DeCastro, Yankey, Skov, Love, Burford, Bones Hamilton, Moscrip, Pat Donovan and others close.
Then there is Jim Brown, super superstar.
Matter of opinion which makes it a great topic for argument.
Plunkett, Elway, Luck, Nevers, Albert, Horse Reynolds, Corbus, McColl, Margerum, McCaffrey for sure. Garrett, Brodie,
Nelson, DeCastro, Yankey, Skov, Love, Burford, Bones Hamilton, Moscrip, Pat Donovan and others close.
Then there is Jim Brown, super superstar.
Matter of opinion which makes it a great topic for argument.
07-25-2022, 06:57 PM
(07-25-2022, 02:28 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: I was responding to Spiny Norman's comment: "Stanford may not get a scholarship QB in this class. But they will have a QB." I may have misinterpreted what he was saying though.
I think the point was that given that the last two classes have featured both a scholarship QB and a PFO, the idea that the staff would foresake a Scholarship QB because a PFO has committed doesn’t seem to be supported by precedent.
BC
(07-25-2022, 02:28 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: I was responding to Spiny Norman's comment: "Stanford may not get a scholarship QB in this class. But they will have a QB." I may have misinterpreted what he was saying though.
I think the point was that given that the last two classes have featured both a scholarship QB and a PFO, the idea that the staff would foresake a Scholarship QB because a PFO has committed doesn’t seem to be supported by precedent.
BC
07-25-2022, 07:47 PM
Yeah, I am assuming that the staff will continue to try to find a scholarship QB for the class. But at least it won't be an empty class wrt the QB position.
"We have an unwritten rule around here not to do anything stupid."
-Casey Jacobsen, Feb 3, 2000
Yeah, I am assuming that the staff will continue to try to find a scholarship QB for the class. But at least it won't be an empty class wrt the QB position.
"We have an unwritten rule around here not to do anything stupid."
-Casey Jacobsen, Feb 3, 2000
07-26-2022, 08:59 AM
Stanford adds another OL to the class.
[twitter]https://twitter.com/ChadSimmons_/status/1551952101982572544[/twitter]
[twitter]https://twitter.com/ChadSimmons_/status/1551952101982572544[/twitter]
"We have an unwritten rule around here not to do anything stupid."
-Casey Jacobsen, Feb 3, 2000
Stanford adds another OL to the class.
[twitter]https://twitter.com/ChadSimmons_/status/1551952101982572544[/twitter]
[twitter]https://twitter.com/ChadSimmons_/status/1551952101982572544[/twitter]
"We have an unwritten rule around here not to do anything stupid."
-Casey Jacobsen, Feb 3, 2000
07-26-2022, 09:05 AM
Four dimensional analysis on Yamauchi:
Services: 247 composite #889 (#64 interior OL), On3 consensus #739 (#70 interior OL), 247 #87 interior OL, On3 #86 interior OL, Rivals #69 interior OL (5.7 grade, same grade as Kenji Swanson, James Pogorelc, Jake Hornibrook, Trey Stratford, Jack Dreyer, AT Hall, Thomas Oser, Cameron Fleming, David Yankey, Cole Underwood, Khalil Wilkes, Kevin Danser, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro), ESPN NR
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Arizona, Army, Cal, Colorado, Fresno State, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah State, Washington State
Production: As a junior playing left tackle for Bishop Gorman, Yamauchi was named first team all-Southern Nevada, one of two Gael linemen so honored along with Oklahoma 4-star Jake Taylor. [Teammate Benjamin Hudson, our reach of an ILB signee, did not make any of the first, second, or honorable mention teams.] Maxpreps views Bishop Gorman's schedule as very good but not great, but that doesn't tell the whole story: they travel all across the country and also host national powers in the beginning part of the season before settling into the perennial drama-less annihilation of the hopelessly outgunned in-state competition. Bishop Gorman's nine in-state games last year had a combined score of 478 to 27 (not typos). Analyzing stats comes against that backdrop of the oddity of playing one of the best teams from five different states but otherwise winning practically every other game 50+ to zero. Against that schedule, Taylor, Yamauchi, and the other linemen blocked for an offense with a 58/42 run/pass ratio and 7.7 yards per carry (8.7 yards per carry for the lead back, a Tennessee commit, and 6.0 yards per carry for the secondary back, a Boston College running back). Yamauchi saw his sophomore year completely wiped out by the pandemic and he wasn't yet on varsity as a freshman. 247 didn't have Yamauchi in the top three offensive linemen at the Polynesian Bowl combine but they did say "he was another standout offensive lineman in a really good group" and that he "had some strong one-on-one reps in which he didn’t give up an inch of ground." [Ethan Thomason merited the same kind of honorable mention]
Highlights: Given the pandemic, junior highlights are the only thing to go by. They show Yamauchi playing left tackle, which it should be noted is not the blind side given Bishop Gorman's left handed quarterback. With Jake Taylor now at Oklahoma I assume Yamauchi will flip over to right tackle as a senior but we'll see. In terms of the junior highlights, Yamauchi playing tackle makes it somewhat hard to assess traits suitable to interior offensive line (where every recruiting service pegs him), at least for this layman. The highlights are refreshing in that they show such balance in terms of pass protection and run blocking. The clips against elite competition give me some pause about his ability to handle speed rushes and don't show the kind of evidence of sheer strength to move people in Pale's highlights or athleticism in Baklenko's highlights. The survey of powerhouses started against Hawaii powerhouse St. Louis, a game in which Yamauchi mustered a fair number of highlights but did not get occasion to show his wares against notable prospects as Arizona edge commit Julian Savaiinaea lined up across the right tackle and the bulk of St. Louis' top prospects were offensive linemen. The guy Yamauchi mostly handled has a lone FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Next up was Miami Central and their six and counting major college football defenders. Yamauchi seemed to get the best of his main assignment, an edge defender now at FCS Campbell, but got victimized for a sack on an inside rush move by 4-star DL Rueben Bain. That I have one incident of victimization by Bain to acknowledge may in itself be a decent data point for Yamauchi and/or the Bishop Gorman line as Bain had 19.5 sacks on the season - beast. The third game was against Lone Peak, which despite being a national power did not have many notable prospects. Yamauchi gave up a sack in this one too, an outside bull rush that led to a fumble giving Lone Peak the ball in the red zone. I have to imagine that was a low point of Yamauchi's season. The perpetrator was a guy named Connor Kelley, who is headed to FCS Southern Utah after an LDS mission and was a terror in Utah last year, earning 6A Defensive Player of the Year honors and racking up 13 sacks. Unlike with Bain where the one highlight of note did not turn out well for our guy, Yamauchi put numerous highlights on tape stifling Kelley in pass protection. This seems like a battle of great high school players where some went one way and some went the other way. The final game against an out-of-state opponent was the sole Bishop Gorman loss of the year, to Arizona power Chandler Hamilton. There was no rest for the weary as this one featured incoming Arizona edge rusher Russell Davis II, who had 17.5 sacks on the season and got one of them racing past Yamauchi. Another sack by another player also came off the edge on Yamauchi's side and I don't know if Yamauchi should have kicked out to try to neutralize that guy or if it was just a case of the defense dialing something up that was pretty hard to defend (there was no help on Yamauchi's side so hard to see what he could have done). Yamauchi did pancake Davis several times but Davis probably won more matchups. In-state, the toughest challenge was the top non-Gael power in Nevada, Liberty. I count at least five major college football players on Liberty's defense but Yamauchi's highlights show him squaring off against lower-profile players, with one exception of him stoning incoming Oregon outside linebacker Anthony Jones in pass protection. Jones' highlights had one play of him moving laterally before Yamauchi could engage him in run blocking, but as it was a 5-6 yard gain that doesn't seem like a black mark against Yamauchi. The lone highlight for uncommitted 3-star DL AJ Fuimaono (expected to go to UCLA) was an embarrassing one for Yamauchi as our guy was lined up directly across Fuimaono, ran right past him to block air in the second level, and Fuimaono promptly tackled the running back for a loss of 2-3 yards (assuming refs gave forward progress). Outside the marquee highlights, the tidbit to note is that incoming San Diego State DL Ryan Henderson had a few plays in run defense not getting by/through Yamauchi per se but winning the battle to clog the run and Yamauchi didn't have highlights beating Henderson as far as I could tell.
We're filling out the OL room. We need to keep recruiting some volume as the high-end OL recruiting has been quite dry the last three years, although I'm really hoping Evan Link can be this class' OL headliner. Yamauchi as OL4 or OL5 in a class isn't bad at all. I'm more excited about the others in the class but plausibly Power Five volume is part of the game too. Really want Link though.
Services: 247 composite #889 (#64 interior OL), On3 consensus #739 (#70 interior OL), 247 #87 interior OL, On3 #86 interior OL, Rivals #69 interior OL (5.7 grade, same grade as Kenji Swanson, James Pogorelc, Jake Hornibrook, Trey Stratford, Jack Dreyer, AT Hall, Thomas Oser, Cameron Fleming, David Yankey, Cole Underwood, Khalil Wilkes, Kevin Danser, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro), ESPN NR
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Arizona, Army, Cal, Colorado, Fresno State, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah State, Washington State
Production: As a junior playing left tackle for Bishop Gorman, Yamauchi was named first team all-Southern Nevada, one of two Gael linemen so honored along with Oklahoma 4-star Jake Taylor. [Teammate Benjamin Hudson, our reach of an ILB signee, did not make any of the first, second, or honorable mention teams.] Maxpreps views Bishop Gorman's schedule as very good but not great, but that doesn't tell the whole story: they travel all across the country and also host national powers in the beginning part of the season before settling into the perennial drama-less annihilation of the hopelessly outgunned in-state competition. Bishop Gorman's nine in-state games last year had a combined score of 478 to 27 (not typos). Analyzing stats comes against that backdrop of the oddity of playing one of the best teams from five different states but otherwise winning practically every other game 50+ to zero. Against that schedule, Taylor, Yamauchi, and the other linemen blocked for an offense with a 58/42 run/pass ratio and 7.7 yards per carry (8.7 yards per carry for the lead back, a Tennessee commit, and 6.0 yards per carry for the secondary back, a Boston College running back). Yamauchi saw his sophomore year completely wiped out by the pandemic and he wasn't yet on varsity as a freshman. 247 didn't have Yamauchi in the top three offensive linemen at the Polynesian Bowl combine but they did say "he was another standout offensive lineman in a really good group" and that he "had some strong one-on-one reps in which he didn’t give up an inch of ground." [Ethan Thomason merited the same kind of honorable mention]
Highlights: Given the pandemic, junior highlights are the only thing to go by. They show Yamauchi playing left tackle, which it should be noted is not the blind side given Bishop Gorman's left handed quarterback. With Jake Taylor now at Oklahoma I assume Yamauchi will flip over to right tackle as a senior but we'll see. In terms of the junior highlights, Yamauchi playing tackle makes it somewhat hard to assess traits suitable to interior offensive line (where every recruiting service pegs him), at least for this layman. The highlights are refreshing in that they show such balance in terms of pass protection and run blocking. The clips against elite competition give me some pause about his ability to handle speed rushes and don't show the kind of evidence of sheer strength to move people in Pale's highlights or athleticism in Baklenko's highlights. The survey of powerhouses started against Hawaii powerhouse St. Louis, a game in which Yamauchi mustered a fair number of highlights but did not get occasion to show his wares against notable prospects as Arizona edge commit Julian Savaiinaea lined up across the right tackle and the bulk of St. Louis' top prospects were offensive linemen. The guy Yamauchi mostly handled has a lone FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Next up was Miami Central and their six and counting major college football defenders. Yamauchi seemed to get the best of his main assignment, an edge defender now at FCS Campbell, but got victimized for a sack on an inside rush move by 4-star DL Rueben Bain. That I have one incident of victimization by Bain to acknowledge may in itself be a decent data point for Yamauchi and/or the Bishop Gorman line as Bain had 19.5 sacks on the season - beast. The third game was against Lone Peak, which despite being a national power did not have many notable prospects. Yamauchi gave up a sack in this one too, an outside bull rush that led to a fumble giving Lone Peak the ball in the red zone. I have to imagine that was a low point of Yamauchi's season. The perpetrator was a guy named Connor Kelley, who is headed to FCS Southern Utah after an LDS mission and was a terror in Utah last year, earning 6A Defensive Player of the Year honors and racking up 13 sacks. Unlike with Bain where the one highlight of note did not turn out well for our guy, Yamauchi put numerous highlights on tape stifling Kelley in pass protection. This seems like a battle of great high school players where some went one way and some went the other way. The final game against an out-of-state opponent was the sole Bishop Gorman loss of the year, to Arizona power Chandler Hamilton. There was no rest for the weary as this one featured incoming Arizona edge rusher Russell Davis II, who had 17.5 sacks on the season and got one of them racing past Yamauchi. Another sack by another player also came off the edge on Yamauchi's side and I don't know if Yamauchi should have kicked out to try to neutralize that guy or if it was just a case of the defense dialing something up that was pretty hard to defend (there was no help on Yamauchi's side so hard to see what he could have done). Yamauchi did pancake Davis several times but Davis probably won more matchups. In-state, the toughest challenge was the top non-Gael power in Nevada, Liberty. I count at least five major college football players on Liberty's defense but Yamauchi's highlights show him squaring off against lower-profile players, with one exception of him stoning incoming Oregon outside linebacker Anthony Jones in pass protection. Jones' highlights had one play of him moving laterally before Yamauchi could engage him in run blocking, but as it was a 5-6 yard gain that doesn't seem like a black mark against Yamauchi. The lone highlight for uncommitted 3-star DL AJ Fuimaono (expected to go to UCLA) was an embarrassing one for Yamauchi as our guy was lined up directly across Fuimaono, ran right past him to block air in the second level, and Fuimaono promptly tackled the running back for a loss of 2-3 yards (assuming refs gave forward progress). Outside the marquee highlights, the tidbit to note is that incoming San Diego State DL Ryan Henderson had a few plays in run defense not getting by/through Yamauchi per se but winning the battle to clog the run and Yamauchi didn't have highlights beating Henderson as far as I could tell.
We're filling out the OL room. We need to keep recruiting some volume as the high-end OL recruiting has been quite dry the last three years, although I'm really hoping Evan Link can be this class' OL headliner. Yamauchi as OL4 or OL5 in a class isn't bad at all. I'm more excited about the others in the class but plausibly Power Five volume is part of the game too. Really want Link though.
Four dimensional analysis on Yamauchi:
Services: 247 composite #889 (#64 interior OL), On3 consensus #739 (#70 interior OL), 247 #87 interior OL, On3 #86 interior OL, Rivals #69 interior OL (5.7 grade, same grade as Kenji Swanson, James Pogorelc, Jake Hornibrook, Trey Stratford, Jack Dreyer, AT Hall, Thomas Oser, Cameron Fleming, David Yankey, Cole Underwood, Khalil Wilkes, Kevin Danser, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro), ESPN NR
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Arizona, Army, Cal, Colorado, Fresno State, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah State, Washington State
Production: As a junior playing left tackle for Bishop Gorman, Yamauchi was named first team all-Southern Nevada, one of two Gael linemen so honored along with Oklahoma 4-star Jake Taylor. [Teammate Benjamin Hudson, our reach of an ILB signee, did not make any of the first, second, or honorable mention teams.] Maxpreps views Bishop Gorman's schedule as very good but not great, but that doesn't tell the whole story: they travel all across the country and also host national powers in the beginning part of the season before settling into the perennial drama-less annihilation of the hopelessly outgunned in-state competition. Bishop Gorman's nine in-state games last year had a combined score of 478 to 27 (not typos). Analyzing stats comes against that backdrop of the oddity of playing one of the best teams from five different states but otherwise winning practically every other game 50+ to zero. Against that schedule, Taylor, Yamauchi, and the other linemen blocked for an offense with a 58/42 run/pass ratio and 7.7 yards per carry (8.7 yards per carry for the lead back, a Tennessee commit, and 6.0 yards per carry for the secondary back, a Boston College running back). Yamauchi saw his sophomore year completely wiped out by the pandemic and he wasn't yet on varsity as a freshman. 247 didn't have Yamauchi in the top three offensive linemen at the Polynesian Bowl combine but they did say "he was another standout offensive lineman in a really good group" and that he "had some strong one-on-one reps in which he didn’t give up an inch of ground." [Ethan Thomason merited the same kind of honorable mention]
Highlights: Given the pandemic, junior highlights are the only thing to go by. They show Yamauchi playing left tackle, which it should be noted is not the blind side given Bishop Gorman's left handed quarterback. With Jake Taylor now at Oklahoma I assume Yamauchi will flip over to right tackle as a senior but we'll see. In terms of the junior highlights, Yamauchi playing tackle makes it somewhat hard to assess traits suitable to interior offensive line (where every recruiting service pegs him), at least for this layman. The highlights are refreshing in that they show such balance in terms of pass protection and run blocking. The clips against elite competition give me some pause about his ability to handle speed rushes and don't show the kind of evidence of sheer strength to move people in Pale's highlights or athleticism in Baklenko's highlights. The survey of powerhouses started against Hawaii powerhouse St. Louis, a game in which Yamauchi mustered a fair number of highlights but did not get occasion to show his wares against notable prospects as Arizona edge commit Julian Savaiinaea lined up across the right tackle and the bulk of St. Louis' top prospects were offensive linemen. The guy Yamauchi mostly handled has a lone FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Next up was Miami Central and their six and counting major college football defenders. Yamauchi seemed to get the best of his main assignment, an edge defender now at FCS Campbell, but got victimized for a sack on an inside rush move by 4-star DL Rueben Bain. That I have one incident of victimization by Bain to acknowledge may in itself be a decent data point for Yamauchi and/or the Bishop Gorman line as Bain had 19.5 sacks on the season - beast. The third game was against Lone Peak, which despite being a national power did not have many notable prospects. Yamauchi gave up a sack in this one too, an outside bull rush that led to a fumble giving Lone Peak the ball in the red zone. I have to imagine that was a low point of Yamauchi's season. The perpetrator was a guy named Connor Kelley, who is headed to FCS Southern Utah after an LDS mission and was a terror in Utah last year, earning 6A Defensive Player of the Year honors and racking up 13 sacks. Unlike with Bain where the one highlight of note did not turn out well for our guy, Yamauchi put numerous highlights on tape stifling Kelley in pass protection. This seems like a battle of great high school players where some went one way and some went the other way. The final game against an out-of-state opponent was the sole Bishop Gorman loss of the year, to Arizona power Chandler Hamilton. There was no rest for the weary as this one featured incoming Arizona edge rusher Russell Davis II, who had 17.5 sacks on the season and got one of them racing past Yamauchi. Another sack by another player also came off the edge on Yamauchi's side and I don't know if Yamauchi should have kicked out to try to neutralize that guy or if it was just a case of the defense dialing something up that was pretty hard to defend (there was no help on Yamauchi's side so hard to see what he could have done). Yamauchi did pancake Davis several times but Davis probably won more matchups. In-state, the toughest challenge was the top non-Gael power in Nevada, Liberty. I count at least five major college football players on Liberty's defense but Yamauchi's highlights show him squaring off against lower-profile players, with one exception of him stoning incoming Oregon outside linebacker Anthony Jones in pass protection. Jones' highlights had one play of him moving laterally before Yamauchi could engage him in run blocking, but as it was a 5-6 yard gain that doesn't seem like a black mark against Yamauchi. The lone highlight for uncommitted 3-star DL AJ Fuimaono (expected to go to UCLA) was an embarrassing one for Yamauchi as our guy was lined up directly across Fuimaono, ran right past him to block air in the second level, and Fuimaono promptly tackled the running back for a loss of 2-3 yards (assuming refs gave forward progress). Outside the marquee highlights, the tidbit to note is that incoming San Diego State DL Ryan Henderson had a few plays in run defense not getting by/through Yamauchi per se but winning the battle to clog the run and Yamauchi didn't have highlights beating Henderson as far as I could tell.
We're filling out the OL room. We need to keep recruiting some volume as the high-end OL recruiting has been quite dry the last three years, although I'm really hoping Evan Link can be this class' OL headliner. Yamauchi as OL4 or OL5 in a class isn't bad at all. I'm more excited about the others in the class but plausibly Power Five volume is part of the game too. Really want Link though.
Services: 247 composite #889 (#64 interior OL), On3 consensus #739 (#70 interior OL), 247 #87 interior OL, On3 #86 interior OL, Rivals #69 interior OL (5.7 grade, same grade as Kenji Swanson, James Pogorelc, Jake Hornibrook, Trey Stratford, Jack Dreyer, AT Hall, Thomas Oser, Cameron Fleming, David Yankey, Cole Underwood, Khalil Wilkes, Kevin Danser, Jonathan Martin, David DeCastro), ESPN NR
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Arizona, Army, Cal, Colorado, Fresno State, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah State, Washington State
Production: As a junior playing left tackle for Bishop Gorman, Yamauchi was named first team all-Southern Nevada, one of two Gael linemen so honored along with Oklahoma 4-star Jake Taylor. [Teammate Benjamin Hudson, our reach of an ILB signee, did not make any of the first, second, or honorable mention teams.] Maxpreps views Bishop Gorman's schedule as very good but not great, but that doesn't tell the whole story: they travel all across the country and also host national powers in the beginning part of the season before settling into the perennial drama-less annihilation of the hopelessly outgunned in-state competition. Bishop Gorman's nine in-state games last year had a combined score of 478 to 27 (not typos). Analyzing stats comes against that backdrop of the oddity of playing one of the best teams from five different states but otherwise winning practically every other game 50+ to zero. Against that schedule, Taylor, Yamauchi, and the other linemen blocked for an offense with a 58/42 run/pass ratio and 7.7 yards per carry (8.7 yards per carry for the lead back, a Tennessee commit, and 6.0 yards per carry for the secondary back, a Boston College running back). Yamauchi saw his sophomore year completely wiped out by the pandemic and he wasn't yet on varsity as a freshman. 247 didn't have Yamauchi in the top three offensive linemen at the Polynesian Bowl combine but they did say "he was another standout offensive lineman in a really good group" and that he "had some strong one-on-one reps in which he didn’t give up an inch of ground." [Ethan Thomason merited the same kind of honorable mention]
Highlights: Given the pandemic, junior highlights are the only thing to go by. They show Yamauchi playing left tackle, which it should be noted is not the blind side given Bishop Gorman's left handed quarterback. With Jake Taylor now at Oklahoma I assume Yamauchi will flip over to right tackle as a senior but we'll see. In terms of the junior highlights, Yamauchi playing tackle makes it somewhat hard to assess traits suitable to interior offensive line (where every recruiting service pegs him), at least for this layman. The highlights are refreshing in that they show such balance in terms of pass protection and run blocking. The clips against elite competition give me some pause about his ability to handle speed rushes and don't show the kind of evidence of sheer strength to move people in Pale's highlights or athleticism in Baklenko's highlights. The survey of powerhouses started against Hawaii powerhouse St. Louis, a game in which Yamauchi mustered a fair number of highlights but did not get occasion to show his wares against notable prospects as Arizona edge commit Julian Savaiinaea lined up across the right tackle and the bulk of St. Louis' top prospects were offensive linemen. The guy Yamauchi mostly handled has a lone FCS offer from Incarnate Word. Next up was Miami Central and their six and counting major college football defenders. Yamauchi seemed to get the best of his main assignment, an edge defender now at FCS Campbell, but got victimized for a sack on an inside rush move by 4-star DL Rueben Bain. That I have one incident of victimization by Bain to acknowledge may in itself be a decent data point for Yamauchi and/or the Bishop Gorman line as Bain had 19.5 sacks on the season - beast. The third game was against Lone Peak, which despite being a national power did not have many notable prospects. Yamauchi gave up a sack in this one too, an outside bull rush that led to a fumble giving Lone Peak the ball in the red zone. I have to imagine that was a low point of Yamauchi's season. The perpetrator was a guy named Connor Kelley, who is headed to FCS Southern Utah after an LDS mission and was a terror in Utah last year, earning 6A Defensive Player of the Year honors and racking up 13 sacks. Unlike with Bain where the one highlight of note did not turn out well for our guy, Yamauchi put numerous highlights on tape stifling Kelley in pass protection. This seems like a battle of great high school players where some went one way and some went the other way. The final game against an out-of-state opponent was the sole Bishop Gorman loss of the year, to Arizona power Chandler Hamilton. There was no rest for the weary as this one featured incoming Arizona edge rusher Russell Davis II, who had 17.5 sacks on the season and got one of them racing past Yamauchi. Another sack by another player also came off the edge on Yamauchi's side and I don't know if Yamauchi should have kicked out to try to neutralize that guy or if it was just a case of the defense dialing something up that was pretty hard to defend (there was no help on Yamauchi's side so hard to see what he could have done). Yamauchi did pancake Davis several times but Davis probably won more matchups. In-state, the toughest challenge was the top non-Gael power in Nevada, Liberty. I count at least five major college football players on Liberty's defense but Yamauchi's highlights show him squaring off against lower-profile players, with one exception of him stoning incoming Oregon outside linebacker Anthony Jones in pass protection. Jones' highlights had one play of him moving laterally before Yamauchi could engage him in run blocking, but as it was a 5-6 yard gain that doesn't seem like a black mark against Yamauchi. The lone highlight for uncommitted 3-star DL AJ Fuimaono (expected to go to UCLA) was an embarrassing one for Yamauchi as our guy was lined up directly across Fuimaono, ran right past him to block air in the second level, and Fuimaono promptly tackled the running back for a loss of 2-3 yards (assuming refs gave forward progress). Outside the marquee highlights, the tidbit to note is that incoming San Diego State DL Ryan Henderson had a few plays in run defense not getting by/through Yamauchi per se but winning the battle to clog the run and Yamauchi didn't have highlights beating Henderson as far as I could tell.
We're filling out the OL room. We need to keep recruiting some volume as the high-end OL recruiting has been quite dry the last three years, although I'm really hoping Evan Link can be this class' OL headliner. Yamauchi as OL4 or OL5 in a class isn't bad at all. I'm more excited about the others in the class but plausibly Power Five volume is part of the game too. Really want Link though.
07-26-2022, 10:47 AM
The range of his comparisons goes from complete non-entity at the power five level to all-American and NFL stud.
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
The range of his comparisons goes from complete non-entity at the power five level to all-American and NFL stud.
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
07-26-2022, 11:31 AM
(07-26-2022, 10:47 AM)BostonCard Wrote: The range of his comparisons goes from complete non-entity at the power five level to all-American and NFL stud.
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
I think I basically agree with your point but chafe at your selection of Martin. He was one of the greatest linemen to ever play for Stanford and by no means is a Rivals 5.7 as likely to turn into Martin as to turn into Underwood. We were quite fortunate to have the run we did with DeCastro, Martin, Yankey, and Fleming and I think all should be viewed as outliers for 5.7 recruits. I take our last decade of results as more reflective of what Shaw would be likely to get with a 5.7 OL going forward. The typical (median) OL for us in this overall group have been Danser, Wilkes, Hall, and Hornibrook, but it's probably telling that among the 12 (excluding Swanson and Pogorelc, who are far too young to judge/compare against the others) literally the top six were recruited in the Harbaugh era. If you look at only Shaw recruits the median from this group would be Dreyer and Underwood. I'm going to hold out hope Yamauchi will be better than that but even an optimistic read here would be that Yamauchi replicates Hornibrook.
That's not to disagree with your broader point about volume to get more shots on goal. It's a good point. Across Anderson, Heyer, Swanson, Maikkula, Pale, Baklenko, and Yamauchi, you might figure two of them will be useless, one of them will be a superstar, and most of them will be either solid starters (if even as solid depth for much of their career before a late career turn as a starter). Odds improve if we add more to the group.
(07-26-2022, 10:47 AM)BostonCard Wrote: The range of his comparisons goes from complete non-entity at the power five level to all-American and NFL stud.
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
I think I basically agree with your point but chafe at your selection of Martin. He was one of the greatest linemen to ever play for Stanford and by no means is a Rivals 5.7 as likely to turn into Martin as to turn into Underwood. We were quite fortunate to have the run we did with DeCastro, Martin, Yankey, and Fleming and I think all should be viewed as outliers for 5.7 recruits. I take our last decade of results as more reflective of what Shaw would be likely to get with a 5.7 OL going forward. The typical (median) OL for us in this overall group have been Danser, Wilkes, Hall, and Hornibrook, but it's probably telling that among the 12 (excluding Swanson and Pogorelc, who are far too young to judge/compare against the others) literally the top six were recruited in the Harbaugh era. If you look at only Shaw recruits the median from this group would be Dreyer and Underwood. I'm going to hold out hope Yamauchi will be better than that but even an optimistic read here would be that Yamauchi replicates Hornibrook.
That's not to disagree with your broader point about volume to get more shots on goal. It's a good point. Across Anderson, Heyer, Swanson, Maikkula, Pale, Baklenko, and Yamauchi, you might figure two of them will be useless, one of them will be a superstar, and most of them will be either solid starters (if even as solid depth for much of their career before a late career turn as a starter). Odds improve if we add more to the group.
07-26-2022, 11:40 AM
(07-26-2022, 11:31 AM)msqueri Wrote:(07-26-2022, 10:47 AM)BostonCard Wrote: The range of his comparisons goes from complete non-entity at the power five level to all-American and NFL stud.
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
I think I basically agree with your point but chafe at your selection of Martin. He was one of the greatest linemen to ever play for Stanford and by no means is a Rivals 5.7 as likely to turn into Martin as to turn into Underwood. We were quite fortunate to have the run we did with DeCastro, Martin, Yankey, and Fleming and I think all should be viewed as outliers for 5.7 recruits. I take our last decade of results as more reflective of what Shaw would be likely to get with a 5.7 OL going forward. The typical (median) OL for us in this overall group have been Danser, Wilkes, Hall, and Hornibrook, but it's probably telling that among the 12 (excluding Swanson and Pogorelc, who are far too young to judge/compare against the others) literally the top six were recruited in the Harbaugh era. If you look at only Shaw recruits the median from this group would be Dreyer and Underwood. I'm going to hold out hope Yamauchi will be better than that but even an optimistic read here would be that Yamauchi replicates Hornibrook.
That's not to disagree with your broader point about volume to get more shots on goal. It's a good point. Across Anderson, Heyer, Swanson, Maikkula, Pale, Baklenko, and Yamauchi, you might figure two of them will be useless, one of them will be a superstar, and most of them will be either solid starters (if even as solid depth for much of their career before a late career turn as a starter). Odds improve if we add more to the group.
You should compare Stanford's recruit production vs. player recruit ratings to Utah's. Utah doesn't typically out recruit Stanford based on recruit ratings, but Utah is producing much better players lately. And OL in specific, a couple years ago Utah had I think 4 OL drafted. My suspicion is Utah knows how to develop football players better than Stanford does.
(07-26-2022, 11:31 AM)msqueri Wrote:(07-26-2022, 10:47 AM)BostonCard Wrote: The range of his comparisons goes from complete non-entity at the power five level to all-American and NFL stud.
I think this is why the question of volume is important at the OL. Sure, you’d love to have whales like Little, Sarrell, Murphy, Peat, where the floor is basically being a multi-year starter, it for the guys who are not going to be almost sure things, more shots on goal helps. You might get one Cole Underwood there mixed in with a Jonathan Martin… which, on balance, is not bad.
BC
I think I basically agree with your point but chafe at your selection of Martin. He was one of the greatest linemen to ever play for Stanford and by no means is a Rivals 5.7 as likely to turn into Martin as to turn into Underwood. We were quite fortunate to have the run we did with DeCastro, Martin, Yankey, and Fleming and I think all should be viewed as outliers for 5.7 recruits. I take our last decade of results as more reflective of what Shaw would be likely to get with a 5.7 OL going forward. The typical (median) OL for us in this overall group have been Danser, Wilkes, Hall, and Hornibrook, but it's probably telling that among the 12 (excluding Swanson and Pogorelc, who are far too young to judge/compare against the others) literally the top six were recruited in the Harbaugh era. If you look at only Shaw recruits the median from this group would be Dreyer and Underwood. I'm going to hold out hope Yamauchi will be better than that but even an optimistic read here would be that Yamauchi replicates Hornibrook.
That's not to disagree with your broader point about volume to get more shots on goal. It's a good point. Across Anderson, Heyer, Swanson, Maikkula, Pale, Baklenko, and Yamauchi, you might figure two of them will be useless, one of them will be a superstar, and most of them will be either solid starters (if even as solid depth for much of their career before a late career turn as a starter). Odds improve if we add more to the group.
You should compare Stanford's recruit production vs. player recruit ratings to Utah's. Utah doesn't typically out recruit Stanford based on recruit ratings, but Utah is producing much better players lately. And OL in specific, a couple years ago Utah had I think 4 OL drafted. My suspicion is Utah knows how to develop football players better than Stanford does.
07-26-2022, 11:55 AM
The Utah comparison doesn't interest me too much as it's obvious Utah develops players quite well. I'd be more interested in trying to find a way to assess average development in the Pac-12 and compare us to that baseline. It's well-known that Utah develops among the best in the sport.
You may be interested in a separate analysis I did earlier this off-season about our track record with development under Shaw, which I'll reproduce here:
My rants about our OLB track record spurred a quick project idea: looking at the most standout players Shaw and his staff have recruited and coached up and seeing if we can assess any patterns when it comes to how often standouts are produced in relation to how well we've recruited respective positions.
To baseline this analysis, I want to define a universe of Shaw staff recruit/protege superstar players. I think the cleanest way to do this is to look at the players who made first or second team all-conference as offensive or defensive players (i.e., excluding special teams) and never played for a staff with Harbaugh as the head coach, to try to make the focus as much as possible on players the Shaw staff developed rather than those for whom the Harbaugh staff may have deserved more credit.
This approach leaves us with the following breakdown of superstar players:
QB (2): Kevin Hogan, KJ Costello
RB (2): Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love
WR (3): Ty Montgomery, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko
TE (4): Austin Hooper, Dalton Schultz, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson
OL (7): Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Kyle Murphy, Nate Herbig, David Bright, Walker Little, Drew Dalman
DL (4): Aziz Shittu, Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, Thomas Booker
LB (2): Blake Martinez, Casey Toohill
DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a per capita basis, TE really jumps out on the high end and LB really jumps out at the low end. Otherwise superstars seem to be spread around pretty evenly per capita.
The other thing I wanted to comment on before getting to the original goal of this post, to assess the above in light of recruiting, is how this makes our current assistant coaches look. To wit:
* Turner coached all four of these superstars and was the only position coach any of them ever knew. Talent tells a big part of the story, but that's a resume one can sell.
* Akina coached all six of these superstars and for four of them were the only Stanford coach they knew (and a fifth trained his last two years under Akina).
* Kennedy coached two of them, although one was Kennedy's first year. He's only been on staff for four seasons so that's a good track record.
* For all the shade I/others throw at Reynolds (I think deservedly), he's actually had three superstars in six years. That's not bad. Some context though: one came in his first year, one came in his second year, and mileage may vary on whether the third was actually a superstar at Stanford but I'm including him because of my methodological rigor. This adds up to a picture in which it's easy to give previous DL/strength coaches the lion's share of the credit for the superstar track record.
* Pritchard has been the primary position coach for two superstars among the six QB1s he's coached.
[For what it's worth, I didn't cover special teamers above because I don't think they're really the point of this exercise, but Bailey and Toner have made all-conference.]
* Heffernan has only been on the staff for one season so not very fair/interesting to comment on here.
* Sanders has only been on the staff for two seasons so still a bit premature to evaluate him, but he's on the clock.
* Gould technically has one but it was his first year as a coach. He's had none in the four years since.
* Anderson has a lone superstar (and I personally thought Toohill as all-conference was extremely generous). Anderson padded the resume considerably in the early years with Trent Murphy and Chase Thomas, who were both first team all-conference twice. The guys he has been responsible for developing since then have been a decidedly less impressive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In assessing how impressive two superstar QBs, four superstar TEs, four superstar DL, etc. is, I think it would be useful to look at how effectively the 2011-2018 classes recruited each position. [2018 makes sense as the cutoff to me as the story is still to be written on how many superstars there are in the 2019 and beyond classes, but it bears mentioning that this approach compares peaches to nectarines a bit as Kyu Blu Kelly is a superstar from a class not included in this sample, but I think that's a minor knock to the rigor here] Here are top 100, top 200, and top 400 recruits for each position group in that span with the parentheses repeating for ease of reading the above findings on numbers of superstars:
QB (2): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 6 top 400
RB (2): 2 top 100, 4 top 200, 8 top 400
WR (3): 1 top 100, 4 top 200, 7 top 400
TE (4): 3 top 100, 3 top 200, 5 top 400
OL (7): 6 top 100, 8 top 200, 13 top 400
DL (4): 2 top 100, 2 top 200, 9 top 400
LB (2): 3 top 100, 5 top 200, 8 top 400
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
I'd be curious what others make of any of the information in this post. To my eyes, it suggests that when it comes to translating recruiting inputs into superstar talent the Shaw era has been most successful at TE, DL, and DB, and least successful at LB, RB, and QB. The TE and DB successes are owned by those position coaches and seem pretty notable. I believe that the DL success has a lot to do with Randy Hart and Shannon Turley, both now gone, as well as getting one of the true mutants in Stanford history in Solomon Thomas. On the less pleasant side of the ledger, OLB, RB, and to a lesser extent QB coaching don't come out looking so good in this analysis. As both the defensive coordinator and the position coach Anderson pretty clearly owns his failures. Pritchard, on the other hand, as we've discussed for years, is extremely hard if not impossible to evaluate because there's no way to know how his scheme/playcalling/QB instruction would look divorced from Shaw's influence. Perhaps the most significant insight from this analysis IMHO is how poorly RB coaching looks. That hasn't been all Gould but, when you couple this with the observation that he hasn't had an all-conference back in the last four years despite having numerous top 400 backs in his room, it doesn't look good for him. I have no opinion on whether this is a deterioration in coaching ability/effectiveness compared to his incredible run at Cal back in the day or a reversion to the mean, just observing that his effectiveness as Stanford's RB coach has been poor.
You may be interested in a separate analysis I did earlier this off-season about our track record with development under Shaw, which I'll reproduce here:
My rants about our OLB track record spurred a quick project idea: looking at the most standout players Shaw and his staff have recruited and coached up and seeing if we can assess any patterns when it comes to how often standouts are produced in relation to how well we've recruited respective positions.
To baseline this analysis, I want to define a universe of Shaw staff recruit/protege superstar players. I think the cleanest way to do this is to look at the players who made first or second team all-conference as offensive or defensive players (i.e., excluding special teams) and never played for a staff with Harbaugh as the head coach, to try to make the focus as much as possible on players the Shaw staff developed rather than those for whom the Harbaugh staff may have deserved more credit.
This approach leaves us with the following breakdown of superstar players:
QB (2): Kevin Hogan, KJ Costello
RB (2): Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love
WR (3): Ty Montgomery, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko
TE (4): Austin Hooper, Dalton Schultz, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson
OL (7): Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Kyle Murphy, Nate Herbig, David Bright, Walker Little, Drew Dalman
DL (4): Aziz Shittu, Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, Thomas Booker
LB (2): Blake Martinez, Casey Toohill
DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a per capita basis, TE really jumps out on the high end and LB really jumps out at the low end. Otherwise superstars seem to be spread around pretty evenly per capita.
The other thing I wanted to comment on before getting to the original goal of this post, to assess the above in light of recruiting, is how this makes our current assistant coaches look. To wit:
* Turner coached all four of these superstars and was the only position coach any of them ever knew. Talent tells a big part of the story, but that's a resume one can sell.
* Akina coached all six of these superstars and for four of them were the only Stanford coach they knew (and a fifth trained his last two years under Akina).
* Kennedy coached two of them, although one was Kennedy's first year. He's only been on staff for four seasons so that's a good track record.
* For all the shade I/others throw at Reynolds (I think deservedly), he's actually had three superstars in six years. That's not bad. Some context though: one came in his first year, one came in his second year, and mileage may vary on whether the third was actually a superstar at Stanford but I'm including him because of my methodological rigor. This adds up to a picture in which it's easy to give previous DL/strength coaches the lion's share of the credit for the superstar track record.
* Pritchard has been the primary position coach for two superstars among the six QB1s he's coached.
[For what it's worth, I didn't cover special teamers above because I don't think they're really the point of this exercise, but Bailey and Toner have made all-conference.]
* Heffernan has only been on the staff for one season so not very fair/interesting to comment on here.
* Sanders has only been on the staff for two seasons so still a bit premature to evaluate him, but he's on the clock.
* Gould technically has one but it was his first year as a coach. He's had none in the four years since.
* Anderson has a lone superstar (and I personally thought Toohill as all-conference was extremely generous). Anderson padded the resume considerably in the early years with Trent Murphy and Chase Thomas, who were both first team all-conference twice. The guys he has been responsible for developing since then have been a decidedly less impressive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In assessing how impressive two superstar QBs, four superstar TEs, four superstar DL, etc. is, I think it would be useful to look at how effectively the 2011-2018 classes recruited each position. [2018 makes sense as the cutoff to me as the story is still to be written on how many superstars there are in the 2019 and beyond classes, but it bears mentioning that this approach compares peaches to nectarines a bit as Kyu Blu Kelly is a superstar from a class not included in this sample, but I think that's a minor knock to the rigor here] Here are top 100, top 200, and top 400 recruits for each position group in that span with the parentheses repeating for ease of reading the above findings on numbers of superstars:
QB (2): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 6 top 400
RB (2): 2 top 100, 4 top 200, 8 top 400
WR (3): 1 top 100, 4 top 200, 7 top 400
TE (4): 3 top 100, 3 top 200, 5 top 400
OL (7): 6 top 100, 8 top 200, 13 top 400
DL (4): 2 top 100, 2 top 200, 9 top 400
LB (2): 3 top 100, 5 top 200, 8 top 400
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
I'd be curious what others make of any of the information in this post. To my eyes, it suggests that when it comes to translating recruiting inputs into superstar talent the Shaw era has been most successful at TE, DL, and DB, and least successful at LB, RB, and QB. The TE and DB successes are owned by those position coaches and seem pretty notable. I believe that the DL success has a lot to do with Randy Hart and Shannon Turley, both now gone, as well as getting one of the true mutants in Stanford history in Solomon Thomas. On the less pleasant side of the ledger, OLB, RB, and to a lesser extent QB coaching don't come out looking so good in this analysis. As both the defensive coordinator and the position coach Anderson pretty clearly owns his failures. Pritchard, on the other hand, as we've discussed for years, is extremely hard if not impossible to evaluate because there's no way to know how his scheme/playcalling/QB instruction would look divorced from Shaw's influence. Perhaps the most significant insight from this analysis IMHO is how poorly RB coaching looks. That hasn't been all Gould but, when you couple this with the observation that he hasn't had an all-conference back in the last four years despite having numerous top 400 backs in his room, it doesn't look good for him. I have no opinion on whether this is a deterioration in coaching ability/effectiveness compared to his incredible run at Cal back in the day or a reversion to the mean, just observing that his effectiveness as Stanford's RB coach has been poor.
The Utah comparison doesn't interest me too much as it's obvious Utah develops players quite well. I'd be more interested in trying to find a way to assess average development in the Pac-12 and compare us to that baseline. It's well-known that Utah develops among the best in the sport.
You may be interested in a separate analysis I did earlier this off-season about our track record with development under Shaw, which I'll reproduce here:
My rants about our OLB track record spurred a quick project idea: looking at the most standout players Shaw and his staff have recruited and coached up and seeing if we can assess any patterns when it comes to how often standouts are produced in relation to how well we've recruited respective positions.
To baseline this analysis, I want to define a universe of Shaw staff recruit/protege superstar players. I think the cleanest way to do this is to look at the players who made first or second team all-conference as offensive or defensive players (i.e., excluding special teams) and never played for a staff with Harbaugh as the head coach, to try to make the focus as much as possible on players the Shaw staff developed rather than those for whom the Harbaugh staff may have deserved more credit.
This approach leaves us with the following breakdown of superstar players:
QB (2): Kevin Hogan, KJ Costello
RB (2): Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love
WR (3): Ty Montgomery, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko
TE (4): Austin Hooper, Dalton Schultz, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson
OL (7): Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Kyle Murphy, Nate Herbig, David Bright, Walker Little, Drew Dalman
DL (4): Aziz Shittu, Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, Thomas Booker
LB (2): Blake Martinez, Casey Toohill
DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a per capita basis, TE really jumps out on the high end and LB really jumps out at the low end. Otherwise superstars seem to be spread around pretty evenly per capita.
The other thing I wanted to comment on before getting to the original goal of this post, to assess the above in light of recruiting, is how this makes our current assistant coaches look. To wit:
* Turner coached all four of these superstars and was the only position coach any of them ever knew. Talent tells a big part of the story, but that's a resume one can sell.
* Akina coached all six of these superstars and for four of them were the only Stanford coach they knew (and a fifth trained his last two years under Akina).
* Kennedy coached two of them, although one was Kennedy's first year. He's only been on staff for four seasons so that's a good track record.
* For all the shade I/others throw at Reynolds (I think deservedly), he's actually had three superstars in six years. That's not bad. Some context though: one came in his first year, one came in his second year, and mileage may vary on whether the third was actually a superstar at Stanford but I'm including him because of my methodological rigor. This adds up to a picture in which it's easy to give previous DL/strength coaches the lion's share of the credit for the superstar track record.
* Pritchard has been the primary position coach for two superstars among the six QB1s he's coached.
[For what it's worth, I didn't cover special teamers above because I don't think they're really the point of this exercise, but Bailey and Toner have made all-conference.]
* Heffernan has only been on the staff for one season so not very fair/interesting to comment on here.
* Sanders has only been on the staff for two seasons so still a bit premature to evaluate him, but he's on the clock.
* Gould technically has one but it was his first year as a coach. He's had none in the four years since.
* Anderson has a lone superstar (and I personally thought Toohill as all-conference was extremely generous). Anderson padded the resume considerably in the early years with Trent Murphy and Chase Thomas, who were both first team all-conference twice. The guys he has been responsible for developing since then have been a decidedly less impressive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In assessing how impressive two superstar QBs, four superstar TEs, four superstar DL, etc. is, I think it would be useful to look at how effectively the 2011-2018 classes recruited each position. [2018 makes sense as the cutoff to me as the story is still to be written on how many superstars there are in the 2019 and beyond classes, but it bears mentioning that this approach compares peaches to nectarines a bit as Kyu Blu Kelly is a superstar from a class not included in this sample, but I think that's a minor knock to the rigor here] Here are top 100, top 200, and top 400 recruits for each position group in that span with the parentheses repeating for ease of reading the above findings on numbers of superstars:
QB (2): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 6 top 400
RB (2): 2 top 100, 4 top 200, 8 top 400
WR (3): 1 top 100, 4 top 200, 7 top 400
TE (4): 3 top 100, 3 top 200, 5 top 400
OL (7): 6 top 100, 8 top 200, 13 top 400
DL (4): 2 top 100, 2 top 200, 9 top 400
LB (2): 3 top 100, 5 top 200, 8 top 400
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
I'd be curious what others make of any of the information in this post. To my eyes, it suggests that when it comes to translating recruiting inputs into superstar talent the Shaw era has been most successful at TE, DL, and DB, and least successful at LB, RB, and QB. The TE and DB successes are owned by those position coaches and seem pretty notable. I believe that the DL success has a lot to do with Randy Hart and Shannon Turley, both now gone, as well as getting one of the true mutants in Stanford history in Solomon Thomas. On the less pleasant side of the ledger, OLB, RB, and to a lesser extent QB coaching don't come out looking so good in this analysis. As both the defensive coordinator and the position coach Anderson pretty clearly owns his failures. Pritchard, on the other hand, as we've discussed for years, is extremely hard if not impossible to evaluate because there's no way to know how his scheme/playcalling/QB instruction would look divorced from Shaw's influence. Perhaps the most significant insight from this analysis IMHO is how poorly RB coaching looks. That hasn't been all Gould but, when you couple this with the observation that he hasn't had an all-conference back in the last four years despite having numerous top 400 backs in his room, it doesn't look good for him. I have no opinion on whether this is a deterioration in coaching ability/effectiveness compared to his incredible run at Cal back in the day or a reversion to the mean, just observing that his effectiveness as Stanford's RB coach has been poor.
You may be interested in a separate analysis I did earlier this off-season about our track record with development under Shaw, which I'll reproduce here:
My rants about our OLB track record spurred a quick project idea: looking at the most standout players Shaw and his staff have recruited and coached up and seeing if we can assess any patterns when it comes to how often standouts are produced in relation to how well we've recruited respective positions.
To baseline this analysis, I want to define a universe of Shaw staff recruit/protege superstar players. I think the cleanest way to do this is to look at the players who made first or second team all-conference as offensive or defensive players (i.e., excluding special teams) and never played for a staff with Harbaugh as the head coach, to try to make the focus as much as possible on players the Shaw staff developed rather than those for whom the Harbaugh staff may have deserved more credit.
This approach leaves us with the following breakdown of superstar players:
QB (2): Kevin Hogan, KJ Costello
RB (2): Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love
WR (3): Ty Montgomery, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko
TE (4): Austin Hooper, Dalton Schultz, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson
OL (7): Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Kyle Murphy, Nate Herbig, David Bright, Walker Little, Drew Dalman
DL (4): Aziz Shittu, Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, Thomas Booker
LB (2): Blake Martinez, Casey Toohill
DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a per capita basis, TE really jumps out on the high end and LB really jumps out at the low end. Otherwise superstars seem to be spread around pretty evenly per capita.
The other thing I wanted to comment on before getting to the original goal of this post, to assess the above in light of recruiting, is how this makes our current assistant coaches look. To wit:
* Turner coached all four of these superstars and was the only position coach any of them ever knew. Talent tells a big part of the story, but that's a resume one can sell.
* Akina coached all six of these superstars and for four of them were the only Stanford coach they knew (and a fifth trained his last two years under Akina).
* Kennedy coached two of them, although one was Kennedy's first year. He's only been on staff for four seasons so that's a good track record.
* For all the shade I/others throw at Reynolds (I think deservedly), he's actually had three superstars in six years. That's not bad. Some context though: one came in his first year, one came in his second year, and mileage may vary on whether the third was actually a superstar at Stanford but I'm including him because of my methodological rigor. This adds up to a picture in which it's easy to give previous DL/strength coaches the lion's share of the credit for the superstar track record.
* Pritchard has been the primary position coach for two superstars among the six QB1s he's coached.
[For what it's worth, I didn't cover special teamers above because I don't think they're really the point of this exercise, but Bailey and Toner have made all-conference.]
* Heffernan has only been on the staff for one season so not very fair/interesting to comment on here.
* Sanders has only been on the staff for two seasons so still a bit premature to evaluate him, but he's on the clock.
* Gould technically has one but it was his first year as a coach. He's had none in the four years since.
* Anderson has a lone superstar (and I personally thought Toohill as all-conference was extremely generous). Anderson padded the resume considerably in the early years with Trent Murphy and Chase Thomas, who were both first team all-conference twice. The guys he has been responsible for developing since then have been a decidedly less impressive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In assessing how impressive two superstar QBs, four superstar TEs, four superstar DL, etc. is, I think it would be useful to look at how effectively the 2011-2018 classes recruited each position. [2018 makes sense as the cutoff to me as the story is still to be written on how many superstars there are in the 2019 and beyond classes, but it bears mentioning that this approach compares peaches to nectarines a bit as Kyu Blu Kelly is a superstar from a class not included in this sample, but I think that's a minor knock to the rigor here] Here are top 100, top 200, and top 400 recruits for each position group in that span with the parentheses repeating for ease of reading the above findings on numbers of superstars:
QB (2): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 6 top 400
RB (2): 2 top 100, 4 top 200, 8 top 400
WR (3): 1 top 100, 4 top 200, 7 top 400
TE (4): 3 top 100, 3 top 200, 5 top 400
OL (7): 6 top 100, 8 top 200, 13 top 400
DL (4): 2 top 100, 2 top 200, 9 top 400
LB (2): 3 top 100, 5 top 200, 8 top 400
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
I'd be curious what others make of any of the information in this post. To my eyes, it suggests that when it comes to translating recruiting inputs into superstar talent the Shaw era has been most successful at TE, DL, and DB, and least successful at LB, RB, and QB. The TE and DB successes are owned by those position coaches and seem pretty notable. I believe that the DL success has a lot to do with Randy Hart and Shannon Turley, both now gone, as well as getting one of the true mutants in Stanford history in Solomon Thomas. On the less pleasant side of the ledger, OLB, RB, and to a lesser extent QB coaching don't come out looking so good in this analysis. As both the defensive coordinator and the position coach Anderson pretty clearly owns his failures. Pritchard, on the other hand, as we've discussed for years, is extremely hard if not impossible to evaluate because there's no way to know how his scheme/playcalling/QB instruction would look divorced from Shaw's influence. Perhaps the most significant insight from this analysis IMHO is how poorly RB coaching looks. That hasn't been all Gould but, when you couple this with the observation that he hasn't had an all-conference back in the last four years despite having numerous top 400 backs in his room, it doesn't look good for him. I have no opinion on whether this is a deterioration in coaching ability/effectiveness compared to his incredible run at Cal back in the day or a reversion to the mean, just observing that his effectiveness as Stanford's RB coach has been poor.
07-26-2022, 01:05 PM
I'm clearly out of touch. I'd have guessed we've had Gould for only a couple of years. It doesn't seem that far back, but I think Covid has been a 2 or 3 year hole in my perception of the elapse of time.
Nectarines are peaches.
Nectarines are peaches.
07-26-2022, 01:35 PM
(07-26-2022, 11:55 AM)msqueri Wrote: DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
Matt - I think that you could break down the DB analysis to assess CB and safety separately. Akina likely still comes out looking ok from a DB perspective. But development of safeties has been lacking (and that's being charitable). Only Richards and Reid have achieved "superstar" status. And Akina barely gets credit for Richards who only played one year under him.
"We have an unwritten rule around here not to do anything stupid."
-Casey Jacobsen, Feb 3, 2000
(07-26-2022, 11:55 AM)msqueri Wrote: DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
Matt - I think that you could break down the DB analysis to assess CB and safety separately. Akina likely still comes out looking ok from a DB perspective. But development of safeties has been lacking (and that's being charitable). Only Richards and Reid have achieved "superstar" status. And Akina barely gets credit for Richards who only played one year under him.
"We have an unwritten rule around here not to do anything stupid."
-Casey Jacobsen, Feb 3, 2000
07-26-2022, 02:32 PM
(07-26-2022, 01:35 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: Matt - I think that you could break down the DB analysis to assess CB and safety separately. Akina likely still comes out looking ok from a DB perspective. But development of safeties has been lacking (and that's being charitable). Only Richards and Reid have achieved "superstar" status. And Akina barely gets credit for Richards who only played one year under him.
Hard to develop a rotating carousel of converted offensive players and walk-ons.
(07-26-2022, 01:35 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: Matt - I think that you could break down the DB analysis to assess CB and safety separately. Akina likely still comes out looking ok from a DB perspective. But development of safeties has been lacking (and that's being charitable). Only Richards and Reid have achieved "superstar" status. And Akina barely gets credit for Richards who only played one year under him.
Hard to develop a rotating carousel of converted offensive players and walk-ons.
07-26-2022, 03:29 PM
It will be interesting to see if any non-corners can get all-conference for Stanford this year. Williamson, Fields, McGill, and Wyrick may be the best or one of the best safety/nickel (however you want to refer to non-corners) groups in the conference. Can anyone be a stud? I'm less confident in that, but Akina has more material to work with here than he has in many recent years (and the carousel at safety has been a result of shortcomings for which he bears some responsibility).
Separately, I have an emerging pet issue which is that it appears to be a best practice in college football these days to have two defensive back coaches rather than just one. This makes sense for several reasons. First, nickel is the real base defense so DBs are 45 percent of a defense. A really big responsibility for one coach, in the same way OL is a very big responsibility for one coach and TE coaches often serve as secondary OL coaches. Second, many astute football observers have called DB coaching one of the most important coaching positions on a staff, so there can be a logic to doubling up on it. Third, corner back and safety are quite different positions so there can be specialization to be gained from having different coaches for the two.
The choice Stanford makes is a) take a precious coaching spot and dedicate it exclusively to special teams (which I think is defensible but we should be cognizant of opportunity cost) and b) to have three different coaches for the front seven. Given long-term trends in college football it might be worth considering whether it would be preferable to have two front seven coaches and two DB coaches. I'm just throwing that out there as I believe (as with any decision) there would be tradeoffs/opportunity cost.
By the way, in case anybody thinks I'm making this up, when I analyzed this last year Nick Saban, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, and Mike Gundy were among the coaches who separated safeties and corners. That speaks volumes to me.
Separately, I have an emerging pet issue which is that it appears to be a best practice in college football these days to have two defensive back coaches rather than just one. This makes sense for several reasons. First, nickel is the real base defense so DBs are 45 percent of a defense. A really big responsibility for one coach, in the same way OL is a very big responsibility for one coach and TE coaches often serve as secondary OL coaches. Second, many astute football observers have called DB coaching one of the most important coaching positions on a staff, so there can be a logic to doubling up on it. Third, corner back and safety are quite different positions so there can be specialization to be gained from having different coaches for the two.
The choice Stanford makes is a) take a precious coaching spot and dedicate it exclusively to special teams (which I think is defensible but we should be cognizant of opportunity cost) and b) to have three different coaches for the front seven. Given long-term trends in college football it might be worth considering whether it would be preferable to have two front seven coaches and two DB coaches. I'm just throwing that out there as I believe (as with any decision) there would be tradeoffs/opportunity cost.
By the way, in case anybody thinks I'm making this up, when I analyzed this last year Nick Saban, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, and Mike Gundy were among the coaches who separated safeties and corners. That speaks volumes to me.
It will be interesting to see if any non-corners can get all-conference for Stanford this year. Williamson, Fields, McGill, and Wyrick may be the best or one of the best safety/nickel (however you want to refer to non-corners) groups in the conference. Can anyone be a stud? I'm less confident in that, but Akina has more material to work with here than he has in many recent years (and the carousel at safety has been a result of shortcomings for which he bears some responsibility).
Separately, I have an emerging pet issue which is that it appears to be a best practice in college football these days to have two defensive back coaches rather than just one. This makes sense for several reasons. First, nickel is the real base defense so DBs are 45 percent of a defense. A really big responsibility for one coach, in the same way OL is a very big responsibility for one coach and TE coaches often serve as secondary OL coaches. Second, many astute football observers have called DB coaching one of the most important coaching positions on a staff, so there can be a logic to doubling up on it. Third, corner back and safety are quite different positions so there can be specialization to be gained from having different coaches for the two.
The choice Stanford makes is a) take a precious coaching spot and dedicate it exclusively to special teams (which I think is defensible but we should be cognizant of opportunity cost) and b) to have three different coaches for the front seven. Given long-term trends in college football it might be worth considering whether it would be preferable to have two front seven coaches and two DB coaches. I'm just throwing that out there as I believe (as with any decision) there would be tradeoffs/opportunity cost.
By the way, in case anybody thinks I'm making this up, when I analyzed this last year Nick Saban, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, and Mike Gundy were among the coaches who separated safeties and corners. That speaks volumes to me.
Separately, I have an emerging pet issue which is that it appears to be a best practice in college football these days to have two defensive back coaches rather than just one. This makes sense for several reasons. First, nickel is the real base defense so DBs are 45 percent of a defense. A really big responsibility for one coach, in the same way OL is a very big responsibility for one coach and TE coaches often serve as secondary OL coaches. Second, many astute football observers have called DB coaching one of the most important coaching positions on a staff, so there can be a logic to doubling up on it. Third, corner back and safety are quite different positions so there can be specialization to be gained from having different coaches for the two.
The choice Stanford makes is a) take a precious coaching spot and dedicate it exclusively to special teams (which I think is defensible but we should be cognizant of opportunity cost) and b) to have three different coaches for the front seven. Given long-term trends in college football it might be worth considering whether it would be preferable to have two front seven coaches and two DB coaches. I'm just throwing that out there as I believe (as with any decision) there would be tradeoffs/opportunity cost.
By the way, in case anybody thinks I'm making this up, when I analyzed this last year Nick Saban, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, and Mike Gundy were among the coaches who separated safeties and corners. That speaks volumes to me.
Fire Anderson, bring back Mason to be DC and coach safeties.
BC
BC
07-26-2022, 03:58 PM
(07-26-2022, 03:48 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Fire Anderson, bring back Mason to be DC and coach safeties.
BC
Or Jimmy Lake or Gary Patterson or probably some others if I thought about it.
Realistically, we may not be in the ballpark of being able to afford Derek Mason or being attractive to him as a destination. Oklahoma State probably doing more for his wallet and for his chances of getting a head coaching job again in the future than Stanford.
I have an ingrained skepticism of trying to recapture lightning in a bottle/going to the same well twice/whatever other metaphor one wants to use for retreads. No man ever steps into the same river twice for it's no longer the same river and he's no longer the same man. Part of me thinks that it would be better to get a proven Group of Five or FCS coordinator.
(07-26-2022, 03:48 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Fire Anderson, bring back Mason to be DC and coach safeties.
BC
Or Jimmy Lake or Gary Patterson or probably some others if I thought about it.
Realistically, we may not be in the ballpark of being able to afford Derek Mason or being attractive to him as a destination. Oklahoma State probably doing more for his wallet and for his chances of getting a head coaching job again in the future than Stanford.
I have an ingrained skepticism of trying to recapture lightning in a bottle/going to the same well twice/whatever other metaphor one wants to use for retreads. No man ever steps into the same river twice for it's no longer the same river and he's no longer the same man. Part of me thinks that it would be better to get a proven Group of Five or FCS coordinator.
07-26-2022, 04:22 PM
(07-26-2022, 03:29 PM)msqueri Wrote: It will be interesting to see if any non-corners can get all-conference for Stanford this year. Williamson, Fields, McGill, and Wyrick may be the best or one of the best safety/nickel (however you want to refer to non-corners) groups in the conference. Can anyone be a stud? I'm less confident in that, but Akina has more material to work with here than he has in many recent years (and the carousel at safety has been a result of shortcomings for which he bears some responsibility).
Separately, I have an emerging pet issue which is that it appears to be a best practice in college football these days to have two defensive back coaches rather than just one. This makes sense for several reasons. First, nickel is the real base defense so DBs are 45 percent of a defense. A really big responsibility for one coach, in the same way OL is a very big responsibility for one coach and TE coaches often serve as secondary OL coaches. Second, many astute football observers have called DB coaching one of the most important coaching positions on a staff, so there can be a logic to doubling up on it. Third, corner back and safety are quite different positions so there can be specialization to be gained from having different coaches for the two.
The choice Stanford makes is a) take a precious coaching spot and dedicate it exclusively to special teams (which I think is defensible but we should be cognizant of opportunity cost) and b) to have three different coaches for the front seven. Given long-term trends in college football it might be worth considering whether it would be preferable to have two front seven coaches and two DB coaches. I'm just throwing that out there as I believe (as with any decision) there would be tradeoffs/opportunity cost.
By the way, in case anybody thinks I'm making this up, when I analyzed this last year Nick Saban, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, and Mike Gundy were among the coaches who separated safeties and corners. That speaks volumes to me.
Cal has two DB coaches, one of which is Terrence Brown, former starting Stanford DB.
(07-26-2022, 03:29 PM)msqueri Wrote: It will be interesting to see if any non-corners can get all-conference for Stanford this year. Williamson, Fields, McGill, and Wyrick may be the best or one of the best safety/nickel (however you want to refer to non-corners) groups in the conference. Can anyone be a stud? I'm less confident in that, but Akina has more material to work with here than he has in many recent years (and the carousel at safety has been a result of shortcomings for which he bears some responsibility).
Separately, I have an emerging pet issue which is that it appears to be a best practice in college football these days to have two defensive back coaches rather than just one. This makes sense for several reasons. First, nickel is the real base defense so DBs are 45 percent of a defense. A really big responsibility for one coach, in the same way OL is a very big responsibility for one coach and TE coaches often serve as secondary OL coaches. Second, many astute football observers have called DB coaching one of the most important coaching positions on a staff, so there can be a logic to doubling up on it. Third, corner back and safety are quite different positions so there can be specialization to be gained from having different coaches for the two.
The choice Stanford makes is a) take a precious coaching spot and dedicate it exclusively to special teams (which I think is defensible but we should be cognizant of opportunity cost) and b) to have three different coaches for the front seven. Given long-term trends in college football it might be worth considering whether it would be preferable to have two front seven coaches and two DB coaches. I'm just throwing that out there as I believe (as with any decision) there would be tradeoffs/opportunity cost.
By the way, in case anybody thinks I'm making this up, when I analyzed this last year Nick Saban, Lincoln Riley, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, and Mike Gundy were among the coaches who separated safeties and corners. That speaks volumes to me.
Cal has two DB coaches, one of which is Terrence Brown, former starting Stanford DB.
(07-26-2022, 05:30 PM)Phogge Wrote: David Bright a Superstar? LOL Matt.
Feel good dunking on me? I think it is abundantly obvious from every post in which I've used "superstar" that I am trying to use an objective, third party metric in order to be able to compare across time without just making it my subjective accounting of who is best. Who Pac-12 coaches have voted on as the best in the conference strikes me as a better (and certainly more intellectually honest and consistent) way than just randomly asserting who I think was/wasn't a superstar. I showed my work and was explicit about my methodology. It's an analytical exercise that takes as one of its assumptions that first or second team all-conference is a meaningful cutoff. You can take exception with David Bright being named to that level, but I am confident the analysis is more interesting and useful making the cutoff there. Guys being second team like Stepfan Taylor, Tyler Gaffney, Cameron Fleming, Khalil Wilkes, AJ Tarpley, Kevin Hogan, Ronnie Harris, Quenton Meeks, David Bright, KJ Costello, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Colby Parkinson, Casey Toohill, and Thomas Booker tells you something. Excluding those guys because you don't think Bright was a "superstar" would lead to a dumb, uninteresting glimpse into who the best players for Stanford have been. Call it "all-conference' instead of "superstar" if you want.
(07-26-2022, 05:30 PM)Phogge Wrote: David Bright a Superstar? LOL Matt.
Feel good dunking on me? I think it is abundantly obvious from every post in which I've used "superstar" that I am trying to use an objective, third party metric in order to be able to compare across time without just making it my subjective accounting of who is best. Who Pac-12 coaches have voted on as the best in the conference strikes me as a better (and certainly more intellectually honest and consistent) way than just randomly asserting who I think was/wasn't a superstar. I showed my work and was explicit about my methodology. It's an analytical exercise that takes as one of its assumptions that first or second team all-conference is a meaningful cutoff. You can take exception with David Bright being named to that level, but I am confident the analysis is more interesting and useful making the cutoff there. Guys being second team like Stepfan Taylor, Tyler Gaffney, Cameron Fleming, Khalil Wilkes, AJ Tarpley, Kevin Hogan, Ronnie Harris, Quenton Meeks, David Bright, KJ Costello, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Colby Parkinson, Casey Toohill, and Thomas Booker tells you something. Excluding those guys because you don't think Bright was a "superstar" would lead to a dumb, uninteresting glimpse into who the best players for Stanford have been. Call it "all-conference' instead of "superstar" if you want.
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