10-21-2018, 07:46 AM
(10-20-2018, 08:51 AM)washingtonismoney Wrote: I think stupac raised the point above that the defense may be less talented than the offense, but at a certain point a lack of talent becomes less of an excuse and more of an indictment: namely, you'd think Stanford, given its record, should be able to recruit talented defensive players. Certainly there are enough NFL role models to point to; Stanford also has a pretty long record of putting up sacks, TFLs, etc., which again you'd think is appealing.
That's what I said, but I think there's a more subtle point as well, which is that we seem to be a lot worse at recruiting talent across all positions on defense. For a while it was the DL, now it seems to be ILB/safety. Part of this is the natural fluctuations in "who's talented and can get into Stanford?" but then you have the odd medical retirement or injuries during a season or early exits to the draft (how much better would the defense look with Meeks and Reid?) and things can get dire quickly.
We seem to have a bit less trouble with that on the offensive side of the ball.