Daily article on Patrick Fields - Printable Version
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Daily article on Patrick Fields - 82lsju - 06-03-2022
Good read on his road to The Farm
https://stanforddaily.com/2022/06/03/patrick-fields-knows-how-to-win-but-hes-at-his-dream-school-for-more-than-football/?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mailchimp&utm_content=Jun-03-2022
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - msqueri - 06-03-2022
Excellent piece. Very nice job by the reporter, Daniel Wu. Fields, as we knew and like Isaiah Sanders before him, seems like a very neat young man. I'm glad he ended up at Stanford and am looking forward to seeing him on the field.
Now, on this quote: "Fields is fitting well into the culture of a Stanford program that, by his observation, is big on player leadership and developing players’ football IQ. Oklahoma, by contrast, felt “old school in a lot of ways,” Fields said. “Stuff was simple. We were gonna push sleds, run fast, lift heavy weights… our practices were very intense, like crazy.”
Lack of intensity compared to a winning program is concerning. Also maddening is the perennial trope about how Stanford develops football IQ. COACH SHAW, PLEASE STOP WITH THIS BULLSHIT! Football is not a sport in which you need to be smart or in which being smart is a big advantage. To the contrary, it's about pushing sleds, running fast, lifting weights, being intense, being crazy. It's modern day gladiators. You need to impose your will on the other team. You need to harness aggression (with "aggression" more operative than "harness"). You need to play fast.
Our coach is a nerd whose pride in his own intellect and that of the players around him is foundational to his identity, so he concocts a vision of football built around football IQ, but it's a vanity project rather than what's actually important to succeed in football. Our offense takes years for a quarterback to truly master. Every player on our offense has to have numerous plays in their head when they get to the line of scrimmage because every play is a pop quiz on how the defense is lined up and what play we should audible into rather than trusting a good play call and trying to play with any sort of tempo or surprise the defense. Our defenders talk incessantly about "keys" and "eye discipline" and other football IQ virtue signalling. True freshmen rarely make big impacts on either side of the ball.
There are so many tells on how all this BS is a vanity project. Very little of the above traits reflect what's actually successful in football. Watch the best offenses and see if any of them take as long at the line of scrimmage or change up the plays as much. Listen to the best defensive players talk and tell me if any of them talk about the mental side of the game so much. Look at other offenses and see if the effectiveness of the offense is so closely tied to the seniority of QB1.
This all would be bad enough if it only contributed to us being less competitive in football. Alas, it also has the effect of making the football less fun to watch. I think I'm like many fans in that when I watch my team play I want to see them actually play rather than just watch time run off the clock. Alas, out of 130 teams in the full seasons Shaw has coached our plays per game rankings (excluding the short 2020 season when we were #68) have been #129, #95, #127, #128, #120, #111, #109, #120, #93, and #45. Spot the outlier? This list is in order of recency, so #45 was with Andrew Luck at QB as a fourth year human computer. Without Luck (or fellow NFL starting QB Mills in his fourth year getting us to almost average tempo), it's been slow as molasses. Nobody gets to watch their team less than a Stanford fan. On defense, I think I'm like many fans in that when I watch my team play I want to see, sorry if it's uncouth, violence. The defenders who spark joy, always, are the ones who are described as "playing with their hair on fire" or exhibiting "reckless abandon" or who, to use the Stanford phrase, party in the backfield. It's about hitting people, not calculating how to react or what your one eleventh on that play is.
I've given versions of this rant many times but this insight from Fields put me over the edge. We heard happy talk all spring about how intense and focused the team is and in particular how the defense has a newfound aggression. Then, the very player who our coaches and players alike habitually tout as teaching our players how to win and how to have a winning mentality reveals that all the happy talk is BS. Fields was trying to pay Stanford a compliment and I have no reason to believe he doesn't think it's a compliment. But that makes it all the more revealing. Even when the coaches have ostensibly focused on intensity, Fields' takeaway is that we are more cerebral and less intense than the winning program he came from. The identity Shaw has built around this team is hard-wired at this point. It's about Stanford Men excelling in all walks of life and, to the extent there's a theory of the case about how it translates to winning football, it's about finding comparative advantage in the intellect of our players. The team's identity is a lie they tell themselves that being smart is helpful to football.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Phogge - 06-03-2022
The 40 Year Decision. LOL.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - fullmetal - 06-03-2022
Fields seems like a quintessential Stanford student. Wish we could have admitted him earlier. This kid has EUTM.
Intensity is a foundation. Intellect is the peak. You need both to win consistently and deliberately.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - OutsiderFan - 06-03-2022
"Intellectual Brutality' is actually a very strong brand to have.
The problem is when the owner of that brand displays neither smart play nor physical toughness on the field. Then it becomes an empty slogan.
Stanford isn't one of the least penalized teams, and it doesn't stress opponents with tactics that keep them off balance and guessing. And we all know the OL and DL have been Charmin soft, unable to impose or resist anything at the LOS for a while now.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - cardcrimson - 06-03-2022
Great story and seems like a good kid. Welcome!
Two lines jumped out:
"“He kind of has a different mentality,” said fifth-year wide receiver Michael Wilson. “He’s used to winning …"
Ouch.
". . .he brings the kind of experience a floundering Stanford program desperately needs."
Big Ouch.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - gailtate - 06-03-2022
How ironic that Shaw would become the emblem of underachievement after multiple EUTM-legacy seasons of accomplishment. The program is now, for all to see, an empty shell of what it became during the Bowlsby-Harbaugh era. Today Shaw mouths hollow cliches and makes a mockery of the whole concept of intellectual brutality. The only thing brutal about Stanford Football today is how fans are treated and how opponents brutalize the Cardinal. Truly, a travesty of epic proportions compared to a faded past. It happened on Shaw's watch and it will follow him always, right along with his three Rose Bowls. Gotta take with the bad with the good, coach. You had it good for several years. Today? Nothing but bad as far as the eye can see. And it happened on your watch.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - CardinalSagehen - 06-03-2022
It is not news that our practices are less intense than most. KJ Costello said essentially the same thing a couple years ago upon his arrival at Miss. St. and his exposure to Mike Leach's practices.
I'm just guessing, but I don't think it's about Shaw's vanity or his academic belief that football needs to be extremely cerebral. I think it's because he actually has a conscience. In my imagination, I speculate that Shaw's paycheck and competitiveness wage war in his soul against his fundamental knowledge that today's football is not good for a young man's long-term health.
Shaw has rationalized and stated that the inherently violent sport of football can be practiced and played more safely. This is partly true, but mostly false in practice. For example, maybe the "Oklahoma Drill" and other similarly barbarian practices actually serve a useful purpose for building a winning football team, at the expense of numerous sub-concussive head traumas?
Shaw serves as the chair of the NCAA Rules Committee, which is mostly about health & safety. As the head of this committee, he walks the walk at Stanford. Some of our players also wear accelerometers in their helmets to measure head impacts, for the purpose of CTE research.
Too much conscience is not necessarily a good thing for winning games as a college football coach. (One could argue that it's not such a bad thing for a football coach at Stanford, though. One could also argue that football is bloodsport and we're all supporting it.)
That said, Shaw has won many games as a college football coach, and I believe he can still be successful. It may just take some more changes than he's prepared to make.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - fullmetal - 06-03-2022
Intense contact drills are a problem, no doubt. I was hoping that we could be intense in non-contact drills -- sled pushes, route running, lifting, conditioning, ball-handing, etc.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - gailtate - 06-03-2022
(06-03-2022, 04:33 PM)CardinalSagehen Wrote: It is not news that our practices are less intense than most. KJ Costello said essentially the same thing a couple years ago upon his arrival at Miss. St. and his exposure to Mike Leach's practices.
I'm just guessing, but I don't think it's about Shaw's vanity or his academic belief that football needs to be extremely cerebral. I think it's because he actually has a conscience. In my imagination, I speculate that Shaw's paycheck and competitiveness wage war in his soul against his fundamental knowledge that today's football is not good for a young man's long-term health.
Shaw has rationalized and stated that the inherently violent sport of football can be practiced and played more safely. This is partly true, but mostly false in practice. For example, maybe the "Oklahoma Drill" and other similarly barbarian practices actually serve a useful purpose for building a winning football team, at the expense of numerous sub-concussive head traumas?
Shaw serves as the chair of the NCAA Rules Committee, which is mostly about health & safety. As the head of this committee, he walks the walk at Stanford. Some of our players also wear accelerometers in their helmets to measure head impacts, for the purpose of CTE research.
Too much conscience is not necessarily a good thing for winning games as a college football coach. (One could argue that it's not such a bad thing for a football coach at Stanford, though. One could also argue that football is bloodsport and we're all supporting it.)
That said, Shaw has won many games as a college football coach, and I believe he can still be successful. It may just take some more changes than he's prepared to make.
"...I believe he can still be successful. It may just take some more changes than he's prepared to make."
What you're doing is hoping against hope. And there's a preponderance of evidence that he's unprepared to change.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - msqueri - 06-04-2022
(06-03-2022, 01:37 PM)OutsiderFan Wrote: "Intellectual Brutality' is actually a very strong brand to have.
The problem is when the owner of that brand displays neither smart play nor physical toughness on the field. Then it becomes an empty slogan.
Stanford isn't one of the least penalized teams, and it doesn't stress opponents with tactics that keep them off balance and guessing. And we all know the OL and DL have been Charmin soft, unable to impose or resist anything at the LOS for a while now.
Brand is the right word. It's marketing rather than a description of optimal football strategy. The "intellectual" part of it describes something about Stanford we're proud of, not something that is important to football. Yet Shaw has fallen into the trap of believing his own hype and confusing marketing with strategy. We try to play up the intellectual demands of being a football player at Stanford. It's core to our identity and to the design of both our offense and defense.
It's not just this passing comment from Fields. Listen to all the interviews with our coaches and players over several years - despite how smart they are (presumably smarter than the average opposing player), they talk all the time about how much mental demand our coaches/system put on the players. They say it as a point of pride. This is not how other players/coaches talk, not anywhere to this extent. My point with regard to Fields was that this comment is revealing because it shows that his overriding impression of Stanford comports with my observation. The reason this works me up is that it's become clear that making "intellectual" part of the strategy rather than just marketing is actively counterproductive - it leads to an offense and defense that are too difficult for talented youngsters to learn and make an impact, an offense that plays painfully slowly and therefore bores fans to tears and gives defenses ample time to rest and anticipate plays, and a defense that plays mechanically rather that instinctually or violently.
Fields used the word "simple" to describe Oklahoma's approach. We shouldn't view that as an epithet. Football isn't rocket science. It makes us feel smart and special to pretend it is, but it doesn't help us win football games or entertain fans.
(06-03-2022, 04:33 PM)CardinalSagehen Wrote: It is not news that our practices are less intense than most. KJ Costello said essentially the same thing a couple years ago upon his arrival at Miss. St. and his exposure to Mike Leach's practices.
I'm just guessing, but I don't think it's about Shaw's vanity or his academic belief that football needs to be extremely cerebral. I think it's because he actually has a conscience. In my imagination, I speculate that Shaw's paycheck and competitiveness wage war in his soul against his fundamental knowledge that today's football is not good for a young man's long-term health.
Shaw has rationalized and stated that the inherently violent sport of football can be practiced and played more safely. This is partly true, but mostly false in practice. For example, maybe the "Oklahoma Drill" and other similarly barbarian practices actually serve a useful purpose for building a winning football team, at the expense of numerous sub-concussive head traumas?
Shaw serves as the chair of the NCAA Rules Committee, which is mostly about health & safety. As the head of this committee, he walks the walk at Stanford. Some of our players also wear accelerometers in their helmets to measure head impacts, for the purpose of CTE research.
Too much conscience is not necessarily a good thing for winning games as a college football coach. (One could argue that it's not such a bad thing for a football coach at Stanford, though. One could also argue that football is bloodsport and we're all supporting it.)
That said, Shaw has won many games as a college football coach, and I believe he can still be successful. It may just take some more changes than he's prepared to make.
If you're right, this only applies to the intensity issue. The issue of why our offense and defense are always described as complex and mentally taxing is a different one. That's what I was referring to as a vanity project. It has nothing to do with "conscience" to make things so hard for QBs to learn, make every player treat every snap like a pop quiz on how to adjust at the line of scrimmage, and generally make "football IQ" the defining feature of your program.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - BostonCard - 06-04-2022
Has something changed compared to 5+ years ago, when our players were expounding the same things, but going to a bowl every year, and winning the PAC-12 north about every other year (2012, 2013, 2015, 2017)?
I think our playbook was just as big (probably bigger), the term “intellectual brutality” was in its heyday, and our players pointing out the same aspects about our approach than they do now. So what has changed?
One can argue that the “intellectual” thing is neither here nor there, and that the difference is the loss of brutality, due to changes in S&C, the transfer portal, injuries, or the guys we recruit (or a combination thereof).
A theory of the case must account for a Stanford that is at the bottom of the conference now, but also one that was at the top of the league a half decade ago.
BC
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Phogge - 06-04-2022
If Stanford practices aren’t intense how come so many injuries have occurred at practice the last few years.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - msqueri - 06-04-2022
(06-04-2022, 09:00 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Has something changed compared to 5+ years ago, when our players were expounding the same things, but going to a bowl every year, and winning the PAC-12 north about every other year (2012, 2013, 2015, 2017)?
I think our playbook was just as big (probably bigger), the term “intellectual brutality” was in its heyday, and our players pointing out the same aspects about our approach than they do now. So what has changed?
One can argue that the “intellectual” thing is neither here nor there, and that the difference is the loss of brutality, due to changes in S&C, the transfer portal, injuries, or the guys we recruit (or a combination thereof).
A theory of the case must account for a Stanford that is at the bottom of the conference now, but also one that was at the top of the league a half decade ago.
BC
Yes, many things, but in short: the magic ran out. The 2011-2015 teams still had tons of Harbaugh era fingerprints on them. Every year the fingerprints got fainter. In 2016, for instance, we still could put a good defense out there. But the personality of the team shifted over time to the point where the 2022 personality is not recognizable compared to 2011-2015. Shaw excelled spectacularly as a steward of an identity crafted by Harbaugh and then continued to excel spectacularly as the lab scientist concocting an identity that melded Harbaugh and Shaw. (In many cases, the happy medium between Harbaugh and Shaw was far better than Harbaugh, actually) But eventually Shaw was no longer the steward nor the scientist but rather the architect. It became fully his, and THAT identity is not a winning one.
Some things that may have changed:
* As you noted, the emphasis over time shifted from the Brutality in Intellectual Brutality to the Intellectual. If the Brutality was really the salient factor, the Intellectual being emphasized does us no favors. This can't be underestimated.
* One of the best offensive minds in the sport, Greg Roman, left but we continued to do the complexity thing but without his chops. Complex is good if it's brilliant but complex is not necessarily brilliant. Many of us have viewed Shaw's failed NFL tenure and having to then take a job below the major college football level on Harbaugh's USD staff as very longstanding evidence Shaw is not an offensive genius. And then our offenses in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2019 made pretty clear statements undermining a claim to brilliance.
* The players who cut their teeth under two of the best defensive coaches in the sport, Vic Fangio and Derek Mason, are long gone. The coaches who remain have no track record of good defense once the fingerprints all over the defense have been theirs. As a result, the defense cratered over time and could no longer hide the offense's warts.
* Turley got fired.
* Eventually all the Harbaugh-recruited football fanatic guys cycled out and every player on the roster was a Stanford Man Renaissance Man with a personality that appeals to Shaw. This has an effect on intensity, work ethic, team culture, and more.
* Eventually every player on Stanford's roster became a player with no memory of having played on a great team. We are now multiple seasons into having a roster of players who have only known mediocrity. Aside from Fields, the grand total of players who have ever even played in a bowl game are Michael Wilson, Kendall Williamson, Jacob Mangum-Farrar, Jay Symonds, Ethan Bonner, and Ricky Miezan. Eight players on the roster who have played in a bowl game. And only three (Fields, Wilson, Williamson) were significant parts of a bowl, and for Wilson and Williamson that was the 14-13 win over Pitt at the Sun Bowl, hardly the habit-forming crucible of a good team. Our players basically have no idea what it takes to win, no experience winning, and, more to the point, know how to lose and are used to it and are probably living just fine lives having the habits and accountability they've had. All of this has an effect on intensity, work ethic, team culture, and more as well.
I think this theory of the case is very robust in response to all the evidence. Really, the magic ran out. Shaw managed a beautiful alchemy but what had been turning into gold eventually turned into vinegar when he forgot or lost access to some of the ingredients. An attempt at a pithy description of the arc:
2011: Come on, he inherited Andrew Luck, David DeCastro, Jonathan Martin, Chase Thomas, Coby Fleener, Delano Howell, Stepfan Taylor, and Ben Gardner.
2012: Leveraged the dominance of Trent Murphy, Chase Thomas, Ben Gardner, and Ed Reynolds partying in the backfield to weather a rocky QB transition
2013: Still dominant due to all of those players plus Shayne Skov back, and the offense was on firmer, or at least more consistent footing
2014: brobdingnagian disappointment relative to talent and defensive performance, the limitations of Shawfense and severe reliance on great QB/OL play, which many had noted in 2012 and 2013, finally bit us. But still a good team.
2015: Everything clicked, and I will always argue against those who don't give Shaw credit. This is why I refer to alchemy and the combination of his and Harbaugh's influence. Harbaugh-recruited players wouldn't have done this because Harbaugh couldn't recruit on paper like Shaw and would have been hard-pressed to hit on a class like his 2008 class in a hundred years.
2016: Shaw's sea level, as TJ says, became clearer. The combination of Shaw's recruiting and enough muscle memory from the days of true Intellectual Brutality was enough that the team was still good.
2017: Another season I give Shaw a ton of credit for. The team still had a winning attitude and muscle memory and Shaw had recruited very well. Borderline great team, and very far removed from Harbaugh. Along with 2015 Shaw's crowning achievement when adjusting for circumstances and apportioning credit.
2018: Still a good team but I think this is where the bottom fell out and we saw the unsustainability of Shaw's alchemy and the identity he grafted on to the team. Intellectual Brutality simply no longer described either side of the ball. Period. 100 percent an empty slogan. Not an identity. The actual identity was what Shaw had been developing over years - complexity without Roman/Fangio/Mason, run-oriented philosophy without brutes of the like Harbaugh favored, Anderson trying to make the flame alive but without dudes in the front seven (though the underachievement of said front seven was epic)
2019: The same but now no longer even Turley-trained and the roster even more completely comprised by players who hadn't played important roles on great teams.
Every year since has seen more and more of that process. Now, in 2022, we're trying to reverse the process and recreate a winning culture. But there is no more winning culture anymore, hence the comments we see not only from Fields but, more tellingly and honestly, Shaw himself and all the players and coaches talking about how Fields knows how to win and how to teach other players to have the habits and accountability that gets there. Create. Teach. We're starting over.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Phogge - 06-04-2022
One add Matt. Henry Andersen. The difference vs Oregon in 2012.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - BostonCard - 06-04-2022
Its a good narrative, but I think it is a “just so” story. The median tenure of a head football coach is about four years. If we are attributing Shaw’s success 7 years after Harbaugh’s departure to the “imprint” he left, then when Harbaugh took over in 2007, the team would have still had DNA going back to Tyrone Willingham.
I think there have been two changes specifically to the college football landscape that have happened in the last few years that Shaw has not dealt with well, and that have degraded the talent on the field.
The first is the adoption of an early signing period. This started in 2017, which is the start of the significant decline in both recruiting and the product on the field. Perhaps not coincidentally, the 2018 class was ranked 40, the worst since the 12-person 2013 class. I think Shaw has adjusted, and the 22 class was finally large and well rounded. But toward the late teens, we were abominably late to offer recruits, we didn’t have them come for official visits until after the signing period, and we were perennially under the scholarship limit. Also, we struggled to recruit defensive linemen (and to a lesser extent OL) and, not surprisingly, the defense generally suffered, and the defensive line sucked. This was a self-inflicted error, and probably the best example of Shaw is stubborn and slow to adopt (much better than the idea that he doesn’t change the offense, which is unrecognizeable compared to 10 years ago).
The second issue that Shaw has struggled with is the transfer portal, and the general move towards players leaving programs earlier, whether routinely going to the NFL after three strong seasons, or graduate transferring (or transferring without losing eligibility). We will never be beneficiaries of the transfer portal, and while I know Sam McFadden has been a strong advocate of scouring the portal for opportunities, I don’t think it will be much more than an occasional bonus (like landing Fields), certainly not a Lomb-term solution. But what I think Shaw can and must do better is stopping the bleeding of key fifth years who transfer out. The idea of intellectual brutality is absolutely dependent on having our players on the field be juniors, seniors, and fifth years, with the occasional McCaffrey or Skov coming in as freshmen and dominating by their second year. Yes, it takes players time to learn the playbook (though I think that’s a bit overrated; the best players, especially on defense, develop instinct from experience), but they also need to develop physically, and having fifth year players transfer out (and often thrive for our opponents) is painful to watch. Shaw needs to do better here; better planning for graduate school admissions at Stanford, better planning for to make sure the guys we want to come back know it and are actively recruited to stay. Again, its good we have a full 85 person roster, which meant not every senior from last year could come back. But retaining a number of players who left over the guys who were enabled to come back was would have made me a bit more hopeful going into next year.
The issue will lessen somewhat in a a couple of years when the COVID year rolls off, but it is still going to be necessary to manage the roster well.
There are other issues brewing (like NIl) that might also affect us, and that will require more agility on the part of our staff than they have shown recently to ensure that we are not adversely affected. Unlike many people here, I don’t think this is an issue of terminal decline. Shaw has demonstrated that he can win (as recently as two seasons ago, or three full seasons ago if you want to throw 2020 out). With 12 games, college Football is an inherently noisy sport, and no trend goes forever.
BC
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Red80 - 06-04-2022
(06-04-2022, 11:08 AM)Phogge Wrote: One add Matt. Henry Andersen. The difference vs Oregon in 2012.
No way Stanford wins the P12 in 2012 without Hogan taking the reins at QB. His mobility gave the offense a critical boost. It was most evident in the win over Oregon.
Pep Hamilton redesigned the offense in '12. A very smart move considering a major drop-off in talent. Smash-mouth ball-control running + mobile QB + solid defense was the winning formula.
I believe it still is...
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Phogge - 06-05-2022
Andersen terrorized Mariota in the second half. Without him they lose.
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Hurlburt88 - 06-05-2022
Heard talk by Condoleeza Rice on thursday (thanks Stanford Club of Pasadena). She is predicting 8 wins . . . the "Fields effect"?
On a serious note, I thought her talk was superb
RE: Daily article on Patrick Fields - Red80 - 06-05-2022
(06-05-2022, 05:09 AM)Phogge Wrote: Andersen terrorized Mariota in the second half. Without him they lose.
They also lose without Taylor's 33 carries for 160. Whenever a RB posts those kind of numbers his team's chance for a win are extremely high. Total carries are more telling than yards per carry. Stanford had a 23 minute edge in TOP that night. A staggering 43 minute advantage in the '13 win over UO. Stanford's defense got a big assist from its offense in both games.