[Goose]

Even if St. Brown is not the 4th guy and even if he doesn't get a lot of passes thrown his way, I can imagine him burning his redshirt.  Look at Shaw's history of burning WR redshirts.  Stewart, Irwin, Owusu, and Montgomery all did while Shaw has been head coach.  And when Shaw was OC or co-OC under Harbaugh, they burned redshirts for Patterson, Terrell, Owusu, Baldwin and Gatewood.  Over the course of that 10 year run, 9 WRs have burned their redshirts and less than half have been significant contributors.

Shaw has expressed the belief many times that he must put the lineup on the field that gives Stanford the best chance to win that day's game, period. No redshirting for "tactical" reasons at the expense of winning. I think that is very consistent with your point. However, ask yourself, would having another really good receiver have helped Stanford win more last year? I don't think it would have mattered. I think by game 2 Shaw will know what he has, and unless it is really ambiguous (which I doubt it will be), he can hold people out if they won't help Stanford win. Burning the red shirt only makes sense if we can protect the passer well enough to throw it and the QB is accurate enough to hit a fast wideout stretching the field. If we can do that, then the question would be do we need person X in order to win? That could be harder to answer, but given that there are two other choices in addition to the trio identified as "primary", I would expect that this would be the time the red shirt stays on. Now, if  St. Brown turns out to be all-world, he will play for sure. If we can't protect the passer and/or the QB has problems completing passes, he probably won't, IMHO.

[Goose]

Even if St. Brown is not the 4th guy and even if he doesn't get a lot of passes thrown his way, I can imagine him burning his redshirt.  Look at Shaw's history of burning WR redshirts.  Stewart, Irwin, Owusu, and Montgomery all did while Shaw has been head coach.  And when Shaw was OC or co-OC under Harbaugh, they burned redshirts for Patterson, Terrell, Owusu, Baldwin and Gatewood.  Over the course of that 10 year run, 9 WRs have burned their redshirts and less than half have been significant contributors.

Shaw has expressed the belief many times that he must put the lineup on the field that gives Stanford the best chance to win that day's game, period. No redshirting for "tactical" reasons at the expense of winning. I think that is very consistent with your point. However, ask yourself, would having another really good receiver have helped Stanford win more last year? I don't think it would have mattered. I think by game 2 Shaw will know what he has, and unless it is really ambiguous (which I doubt it will be), he can hold people out if they won't help Stanford win. Burning the red shirt only makes sense if we can protect the passer well enough to throw it and the QB is accurate enough to hit a fast wideout stretching the field. If we can do that, then the question would be do we need person X in order to win? That could be harder to answer, but given that there are two other choices in addition to the trio identified as "primary", I would expect that this would be the time the red shirt stays on. Now, if  St. Brown turns out to be all-world, he will play for sure. If we can't protect the passer and/or the QB has problems completing passes, he probably won't, IMHO.