[OutsiderFan]

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.

I agree that this is concerning. I will reserve judgment until the final decisions on whether players are going to transfer or not are made, but let's not try and sugar coat this. This is highly unusual and indicative that there is some kind of leadership issue.  It is very rare for a starter to transfer much alone 6 starters. We can downplay 4 of the starters as feeling threatened in their starting roles, but come on, 6 of those guys started at least half of our games this year and justifying that there is a chance that they will be beat out next year is trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Shaw recruited the class a long time before the guys went into the portal.

[OutsiderFan]

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.

I agree that this is concerning. I will reserve judgment until the final decisions on whether players are going to transfer or not are made, but let's not try and sugar coat this. This is highly unusual and indicative that there is some kind of leadership issue.  It is very rare for a starter to transfer much alone 6 starters. We can downplay 4 of the starters as feeling threatened in their starting roles, but come on, 6 of those guys started at least half of our games this year and justifying that there is a chance that they will be beat out next year is trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Shaw recruited the class a long time before the guys went into the portal.