As you may have noticed, I've been spreading out my Big Game personnel notes. Consider it a way to occupy my time in the season/bowl interregnum.
Bench Bunch. The following non-freshman non-injured scholarship players did not appear against Kal.
Bench Bunch. The following non-freshman non-injured scholarship players did not appear against Kal.
- Fifth-year senior WR Isaiah Brandt-Sims. I am going to go ahead and guess that he is injured since he did not appear once all year, and I am fairly sure he was not dressed out for Kal.
- Senior C Brian Chaffin. I don't think he's injured, but he didn't play against UCLA, either. I guess Jesse Burkett is now handling the short-yardage packages, too. Not that those lineups are very effective.
- Junior QB Jack Richardson. Not a surprise. We were not going to see him unless it was a blowout. Had K.J. Costello gone down, it would have been interesting to see if it would have been Richardson or frosh Jack West take the reins, given that we no longer have to worry about West's redshirt and that it is deep enough in the season that he presumably knows more of the playbook. Having said that, my guess is that Shaw would have used Richardson.
- Junior OLB Curtis Robinson. At this point, it is no longer redshirt preservation since he has only played in two games. Is injury or performance holding him off the field?
- Junior WR Donald Stewart. Again, no idea. I suppose he could be injured. Or he could just not be good. It is still surprising that he does not play at all; even last year he played a lot on ST. However, one explanation is that they are intentionally preserving his redshirt (he's played in three games) so that he can play in the Sun Bowl and also be converted to long-snapper for his final two years.
- Senior FB Reagan Williams. This was a surprise. I don't know if he is injured or not, but he was marked as a starter in the unreliable pregame depth chart. Having said that, I don't think the staff has lot of faith in Mr. Williams given that he does not play as much as Stanford FBs of the past have. Part of that is our increased passing game. But part of the reason for that is our ineffective run blocking, which is priority number one, two, and three in the job description for a Stanford FB. I don't know if Williams is back for his fifth year next year, but I pose a question here: I wonder if they will try to convert him to ILB, a la Owen Marecic. Williams was a star ILB in HS, and was recruited by some schools for that position. And we need ILBs.
- Senior OG Nick Wilson. Another surprise given that he is the "starting" Ogre. Not sure if it is injury- or performance-related.