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* The biggest story is a macro one of the coaches looking at the most beleaguered position rooms on the roster and not being defeatist or resting on their laurels but rather trying to upgrade the roster via the transfer portal. Six transfers in one off-season is, obviously, a sea change for us. It will be interesting to get a few years of data points to see if this is a new feature of recruiting at Stanford rather than a transitional period of leeway for a new coaching staff with a half dozen open scholarships. Judging from Shaw's comments late in his tenure, this is ostensibly a new feature rather than something transitional. I hope so. The other thing to watch for will be if the quality of incoming transfers will improve with what I hope is a rebuild and eventually return to relevance for Stanford football. So far we're getting low Power Five level transfers at best but one can imagine a more successful Stanford program getting notable transfers.
* As is always the case with transfers, our best gauge of their quality is how they've played in college. In Lytle's case it's a very sparing amount he's played. He redshirted his first year, played only 29 snaps the COVID mulligan year (grading abysmally on a very small sample), played 43 snaps in 2021 (grading somewhat poorly on a very small sample), and played only six snaps in 2022 (too small a sample to mean anything). On special teams, he was never a major special teams player for Wisconsin but does have some punt return unit and kick return unit experience as a blocker (grading mediocre in 2021 and excellently in 2022, both on very small samples). Availability has been an issue in college and through four years he's appeared on defense in 12 games and on special teams in 10 games. Whether due to not being good enough compared to peers (likely a big part of it judging by the totality of evidence) or injury (Wisconsin's site notes he missed half the season in 2021 due to injury) or a combination, he has not been a significant player in college.
* The most optimistic read of this would be that April and D'Onofrio know Lytle well and after a spring with our woeful ILB group have enough eyeball evidence to be confident Lytle can help us. After all, Wisconsin is one of the best front sevens in America and Stanford in recent years has been one of the worst, and the ILB room going forward looks super bleak. A tantalizing tidbit for those looking for the rose colored interpretation is that Wisconsin mega star ILB Maema Njongmeta, the shining feather in D'Onofrio's cap, came in the same year as Lytle and Njongmeta himself only played 63 snaps those first three years (to Lytle's 72) before exploding last year. One can always hope for a magical turn of events. A data point that could be reassuring or troubling depending on how you look at it is that Lytle was an OLB the bulk of his time at Wisconsin before switching to ILB the year he only played six snaps. That's reassuring in the sense that it could support a view D'Onofrio in particular thinks this is an upgrade over our room. (And I'm fairly predisposed to believe this as our ILB room is a former walk-on who we know to be a plucky but limited former walk-on, an undersized guy who has been bad or mediocre at best at Stanford, an undersized guy who has been productive at the Group of Five level, a guy who looks the part but sent up major red flags last year by not being able to see the field, and two redshirt freshmen who were major reaches as recruits and never have seemed Power Five level) It's troubling in the sense that this is a profile of somebody with limited utility, and we certainly don't need OLB help of his ilk.
* The most pessimistic read of this is that our coaches have half a dozen unused scholarships and there's no skin off their nose giving a Stanford degree to a guy they know to be a good kid. If Spencer Jorgensen, Benjamin Hudson, and Matt Rose get to be on scholarship this year, why not Spencer Lytle? That the offer evidently came a month before players report suggests to me that the coaches beat the bushes to see what they could rustle up and, upon realizing that they weren't in danger of filling up with better players, threw Lytle the bone. It has the feel of the late cycle Plan Cs/class filler in the 2023 class. [By the way, Lytle talking about ending his athletic career at Stanford is a tell that this isn't a significant football prospect. Hopefully recruits in the Taylor era will have enough talent and confidence to want to play NFL football after Stanford]
* As I alluded to before, right now we're staring down the barrel of an ILB rotation of Jorgensen, Sinclair and Bernadel. My hope is that Bernadel's high level of run defense productivity translates a level up despite his size limitations. Regardless, I think the practical question determining whether Lytle is a helpful transfer or a bone to throw a nice kid is whether he can surpass one of these three. Can he save us from relying on Jorgensen, for instance? Lytle was ILB5 or ILB6 at Wisconsin but it wouldn't be crazy to be ILB3 at Stanford.
* Because of the 2020 COVID year, Lytle would be eligible for a sixth year in 2024. One can easily imagine a scenario in which two of our top three ILBs are gone after this year. In that case a lot rides on the underwhelming group of Dubre, Hudson, and Rose. Pretty easy to see use cases for Lytle being good-enough-to-help-given-woeful-depth. That's probably the bottom line: D'Onofrio has seen enough from his room to think this is worth a scholarship in 2023 and/or 2024.
* That being said, a guy meeting this description cuts against Taylor's own professed philosophy on transfers. He has been explicit we want guys in it for the long haul. Since this is obviously a rebuild and the coaches are leaning into that steady improvement mindset, fifth year transfers are not ideal. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Wisconsin guys advocated for Lytle and Taylor needed convincing.
* I don't think high school football is relevant for a fifth year player so I'm not going to dig deep in there. But for those wondering, Lytle was a consensus very low 4-star/very high 3-star and a historically notable recruit by Wisconsin's standards, along with Nick Herbig a big part of Bobby April's reputation as a good recruiter. Rivals especially liked him as an edge, viewing him comparably to Ernest Cooper, Teva Tafiti, Wilfredo Aybar, Joey Alfieri, and Blake Lueders. At St. John Bosco as a senior, Lytle was the top tackler and number three sack/tackle for artist guy for his incredible team.
* I know I already took a stab at a bottom line but I'll offer another one for good measure: to me this is of a piece with every other transfer with the exception of Bernadel (who I think is a legitimately proven major college football player), a guy who can credibly help our competition given the low state of the roster at his position.
