06-19-2019, 08:49 AM
Quote:Shaw has pretty consistently fielded an elite unit on either offense or defense. He has never managed to field two in the same year. He has had three offenses finish 16th or better in Off. S&P+, but Stanford averaged a Def. S&P+ ranking of 46.3 in those years. He has had four defenses rank 12th or better, but his offense averaged 44.8 in those years. Very strange.
Am I the only one that doesn't find this all that strange? He even mentions the cause: the restricted recruiting pool. You could argue (as many of us here do) that in recent years it has been partly self-inflicted, but it's really hard to be elite on both sides of the ball at any school, when you're recruiting from like 5% of the pool and competing with more storied programs for those recruits it's going to be virtually impossible.
It sucks, because we can sit back here and think about what would've happened if 2015 had 2014's defense, etc, but I don't think it's particularly surprising. If anything the fact that we're elite on one side of the ball so frequently should be surprising.