[msqueri]

DL has had insufficient numbers from the time Diron Took over until last year’s class.  He recruited only 2 in 2017 and 2018, 1 in 2019, and 2 again in 2020. Things could have worked out better if the DLs that did come panned out at an excellent rate. Instead, Pakola basically never played and Fox and Keneley proved too skinny to fill a 3-4 DE spot. To boot, RJ and DWP weren’t great players and never matched their recruiting profile. Plus the 2020 guys were lightly recruited. The result is ONE really good DL in a 4 year window.

2017 had two (Johnson and Wade-Perry), 2018 had two (Andres Fox and Thomas Booker), 2019 had 1 (Pakola), and 2020 had three (Phillips, Keneley, Franklin). Other teams also have washouts (especially at DL) and also have front seven big athletes/tweeners who move around or end up not having the body type for a particular position. Even then, that 2020 trio now includes two guys slotted for interior DL and another for a position we're signaling will sometimes look like OLB and sometimes like like DE.

If we're going to call eight DL in a four year stretch insufficient, I'd like to compare it to past periods when we did recruit DL sufficiently. Perhaps the four Harbaugh classes (2008-2011) would be an interesting comparison. That was Padric Scott, Terrence Stephens, Josh Mauro, Ben Gardner, Henry Anderson, Eddie Plantaric, Anthony Hayes, Lance Callihan, JB Salem, and Charlie Hopkins. That is two more DL than we recruited in 2017-2020, and the Harbaugh group had many more washouts/useless guys. A good case can be made that we added such a h.u.g.e 2011 DL class (Hopkins, Hayes, Salem, and Callihan) because Scott and Plantaric were duds, that Salem and Callihan were the type of Plan B/C reaches Shaw has avoided, and that ultimately the four man 2011 DL class did absolutely nothing for Stanford football. If anything, it's an example of how volume for the sake of volume gets you little.

Instead, a picture emerges in which the difference between the way that previous recruiting panned out compared to the way the more recent recruiting panned out was that Hart and Turley (and the scheme of Fangio and Mason) were able to get much more out of Stephens, Mauro, Gardner, and Anderson than Reynolds and Carroll (and Anderson's scheme) were able to get out of Johnson, Wade-Perry, Fox, and Booker. That wasn't a recruiting problem. We were over-the-moon thrilled with Johnson, Wade-Perry, Fox, and Booker in back-to-back classes. One can argue that it was partly an evaluation issue, but Booker playing so much and so well early is a data point supportive of my argument that DL simply have not developed under Reynolds. The Harbaugh-era DL, essentially to a man (Mauro had his big emergence in his fourth year), all had big-time breakthroughs in their third season. To put it mildly that has not been the case with Reynolds' charges (I have a separate analysis showing the lack of late career improvement by DL in recent years).

I can't believe Shaw/Anderson/Reynolds are turning me into more of an Xs and Os guy. That's how bad their coaching is.

[msqueri]

DL has had insufficient numbers from the time Diron Took over until last year’s class.  He recruited only 2 in 2017 and 2018, 1 in 2019, and 2 again in 2020. Things could have worked out better if the DLs that did come panned out at an excellent rate. Instead, Pakola basically never played and Fox and Keneley proved too skinny to fill a 3-4 DE spot. To boot, RJ and DWP weren’t great players and never matched their recruiting profile. Plus the 2020 guys were lightly recruited. The result is ONE really good DL in a 4 year window.

2017 had two (Johnson and Wade-Perry), 2018 had two (Andres Fox and Thomas Booker), 2019 had 1 (Pakola), and 2020 had three (Phillips, Keneley, Franklin). Other teams also have washouts (especially at DL) and also have front seven big athletes/tweeners who move around or end up not having the body type for a particular position. Even then, that 2020 trio now includes two guys slotted for interior DL and another for a position we're signaling will sometimes look like OLB and sometimes like like DE.

If we're going to call eight DL in a four year stretch insufficient, I'd like to compare it to past periods when we did recruit DL sufficiently. Perhaps the four Harbaugh classes (2008-2011) would be an interesting comparison. That was Padric Scott, Terrence Stephens, Josh Mauro, Ben Gardner, Henry Anderson, Eddie Plantaric, Anthony Hayes, Lance Callihan, JB Salem, and Charlie Hopkins. That is two more DL than we recruited in 2017-2020, and the Harbaugh group had many more washouts/useless guys. A good case can be made that we added such a h.u.g.e 2011 DL class (Hopkins, Hayes, Salem, and Callihan) because Scott and Plantaric were duds, that Salem and Callihan were the type of Plan B/C reaches Shaw has avoided, and that ultimately the four man 2011 DL class did absolutely nothing for Stanford football. If anything, it's an example of how volume for the sake of volume gets you little.

Instead, a picture emerges in which the difference between the way that previous recruiting panned out compared to the way the more recent recruiting panned out was that Hart and Turley (and the scheme of Fangio and Mason) were able to get much more out of Stephens, Mauro, Gardner, and Anderson than Reynolds and Carroll (and Anderson's scheme) were able to get out of Johnson, Wade-Perry, Fox, and Booker. That wasn't a recruiting problem. We were over-the-moon thrilled with Johnson, Wade-Perry, Fox, and Booker in back-to-back classes. One can argue that it was partly an evaluation issue, but Booker playing so much and so well early is a data point supportive of my argument that DL simply have not developed under Reynolds. The Harbaugh-era DL, essentially to a man (Mauro had his big emergence in his fourth year), all had big-time breakthroughs in their third season. To put it mildly that has not been the case with Reynolds' charges (I have a separate analysis showing the lack of late career improvement by DL in recent years).

I can't believe Shaw/Anderson/Reynolds are turning me into more of an Xs and Os guy. That's how bad their coaching is.