[CTcard]

We are facing increasing headwinds....
[long list]

Not everything that happens one year is a trend.
After all, I can still remember way back to '17 when Stanford brought in a great recruiting class, complete with the highest ever average player rating.

Stanford does have a habit of letting scholarships lie unused, but that is also hit and miss over the years and not really a trend.

It certainly does look from the outside that the staff fell asleep at the wheel on this class, due to a combination of misjudging the impact of the early signing period, a lack of a meaningful back-up plan, or lack of aggressiveness in recruiting, confounded by a probably larger than expected share of players declaring for the pros early.  ...

From the outside the only thing we really know is that things did not work well this go round. It's not too hard to see some characteristics of Stanford's approach that didn't seem to work out well, but it is much harder to really understand why things that work other years didn't work as well this year. All of the reasons you list look plausible, perhaps even likely, but it's pretty hard to actually know which were really operative - at least in comparison to other years.

I would resist arguments that fundamentally rely upon the coaching staff being dumber than a door-nail, lazy to the point of gross incompetence, or somehow unwilling to have a good football players in the class.

Which perhaps brings us back to,

I'll just say that these issues were predicted through basically all of 2017 by close observers, who proposed several alternatives that were ignored.

I am suggesting that the alternatives were so numerous, and obvious, that the coaches can hardly plead ignorance or the difficulties of recruiting.

I don't think the coaches are ignorant of things that random message board fans know. Agreeing on a course of action may be another issue.

Stanford appears to have consciously made some decisions about how to recruit that may be a hindrance in some years. I suspect the staff thinks that long-term they help.

Particularly noticeable as a reaction against what happened under Harbaugh (and I would probably describe as "excesses under Harbaugh") is that Stanford does not offer very many kids versus most programs, particularly for QBs, and seems to try to make sure that offers are real - i.e. if a kid is offered he is free to commit and lock up a spot.
The plusses and minuses of that approach seem pretty obvious, but perhaps as the timeline gets pushed up further, the balance needs to be reexamined.

[CTcard]

We are facing increasing headwinds....
[long list]

Not everything that happens one year is a trend.
After all, I can still remember way back to '17 when Stanford brought in a great recruiting class, complete with the highest ever average player rating.

Stanford does have a habit of letting scholarships lie unused, but that is also hit and miss over the years and not really a trend.

It certainly does look from the outside that the staff fell asleep at the wheel on this class, due to a combination of misjudging the impact of the early signing period, a lack of a meaningful back-up plan, or lack of aggressiveness in recruiting, confounded by a probably larger than expected share of players declaring for the pros early.  ...

From the outside the only thing we really know is that things did not work well this go round. It's not too hard to see some characteristics of Stanford's approach that didn't seem to work out well, but it is much harder to really understand why things that work other years didn't work as well this year. All of the reasons you list look plausible, perhaps even likely, but it's pretty hard to actually know which were really operative - at least in comparison to other years.

I would resist arguments that fundamentally rely upon the coaching staff being dumber than a door-nail, lazy to the point of gross incompetence, or somehow unwilling to have a good football players in the class.

Which perhaps brings us back to,

I'll just say that these issues were predicted through basically all of 2017 by close observers, who proposed several alternatives that were ignored.

I am suggesting that the alternatives were so numerous, and obvious, that the coaches can hardly plead ignorance or the difficulties of recruiting.

I don't think the coaches are ignorant of things that random message board fans know. Agreeing on a course of action may be another issue.

Stanford appears to have consciously made some decisions about how to recruit that may be a hindrance in some years. I suspect the staff thinks that long-term they help.

Particularly noticeable as a reaction against what happened under Harbaugh (and I would probably describe as "excesses under Harbaugh") is that Stanford does not offer very many kids versus most programs, particularly for QBs, and seems to try to make sure that offers are real - i.e. if a kid is offered he is free to commit and lock up a spot.
The plusses and minuses of that approach seem pretty obvious, but perhaps as the timeline gets pushed up further, the balance needs to be reexamined.