[winflop]

When the deluge of Stanford portal entries hit, my initial reaction was the same as pretty much everyone's: WTF is going on with Stanford's Football program?  First a 4-8 season, now all these transfers? Surely there must be something rotten going on.

But after taking in some wider perspective and looking at the roster, it dawned on me that more likely than not Shaw has nudged some guys out of the program, or at least prepared them to be nudged out, to make room for the 2020 Frosh signing class, after he knows they will have graduated.


Everyone has sort of lamented Stanford's less than aggressive recruiting, but stepping back a bit, bringing in a signing class so large when there were many possible 5th year Seniors betrays a different kind of aggressiveness. Namely, getting guys out of the program who may or may not have been really valuable contributors, to make room for players with more upside potential.

This totally makes sense for about half of the guys in the portal who weren't going to get PT next year. But there's a half-dozen guys who were either going to start for sure (Swann, Williams, Hamilton) or be backups at worst (Pryts, Hattis, Powell, Eboh, Costello). It's this latter group that concerns me because if they were happy with the program I don't think this many would be in the portal.

Something is broken is Shaw's house. The questions are whether a) he realizes it, and b) what if anything he does about it.

[winflop]

When the deluge of Stanford portal entries hit, my initial reaction was the same as pretty much everyone's: WTF is going on with Stanford's Football program?  First a 4-8 season, now all these transfers? Surely there must be something rotten going on.

But after taking in some wider perspective and looking at the roster, it dawned on me that more likely than not Shaw has nudged some guys out of the program, or at least prepared them to be nudged out, to make room for the 2020 Frosh signing class, after he knows they will have graduated.


Everyone has sort of lamented Stanford's less than aggressive recruiting, but stepping back a bit, bringing in a signing class so large when there were many possible 5th year Seniors betrays a different kind of aggressiveness. Namely, getting guys out of the program who may or may not have been really valuable contributors, to make room for players with more upside potential.

This totally makes sense for about half of the guys in the portal who weren't going to get PT next year. But there's a half-dozen guys who were either going to start for sure (Swann, Williams, Hamilton) or be backups at worst (Pryts, Hattis, Powell, Eboh, Costello). It's this latter group that concerns me because if they were happy with the program I don't think this many would be in the portal.

Something is broken is Shaw's house. The questions are whether a) he realizes it, and b) what if anything he does about it.