[Goose]

Regarding Bloomgren and the rest forgetting how to recruit OL, well, yeah, that's exactly what happened. Undeniably. Between February 3, 2016, and November 21, 2018, we had four offensive line commits. Four OL in 2.8 calendar years. That's not an inability to recruit good OL, it's a refusal to recruit OL. Over 2.8 years we recruited 1.4 linemen per year, probably a third of what one would recommend. I know I'm just saying the same facts in different ways but people need this to sink in. Stanford wasn't recruiting OL.

I think we have a bit of a semantic problem here. Recruiting in my world is the process of identifying, communicating with, proselytizing and facilitating players to attend Stanford and play football. You can recruit like mad and still have few players who commit. This can be caused by the group doing the recruiting not doing the "right things", whatever those things are, or it could be due to the feasible population not being as amenable to attending Stanford to play football. When I say the staff didn't "forget how to recruit", I mean the staff presumably used the same processes and level of effort that they used previously. In the past, that recruiting effort returned good results. Stating in 2016, it didn't work any more, based on the number of recruits that committed.

You may have access to information (that I do not) that Bloomgren simply quit recruiting. AFAIK, that wasn't the issue. It also may be that the staff decided it couldn't make do with anything less than 5 star players and made bad choices about recruiting targets. I don't know that is true but it may be. In any case, the departure of Bloomgren did not yield a significantly more effective offensive line. Since the new OL coaches were free to recruit "differently" than Bloomgren, it seems improbable that a bad choice of targets would persist. The number of commitments improved but the play of the OL has not tracked that improvement.

When you account for the fact that two of the four we did recruit were mega whales and thus practical impossibilities to complete their eligibility (and in fact only combined to play less than 2,000 snaps in their career....yikes) and a third was a medical retirement almost immediately upon stepping on campus, you simply cannot say Stanford recruited OL. And when you judge the performance of the OL coaches following Bloomgren you can't act like they had the cards Bloomgren had to play with.....he dealt himself a couple of aces and then burned the deck right before he left for another table to play at.

I suggest you might consider that the less than stellar performance of the "aces" may be due to 1) their injuries and 2) the fact that one of them was certainly overt-rated. It is also true that the following coaches also "dealt" their players, so they don't get a pass based on what Bloomgren left them. If the 2022 line had been very successful, that might support your argument. Obviously, that didn't happen.

As for OL being the most intellectually gifted of all the position groups, that may or may not be true but what I know to be a fact based on extensive research is that the trope popular among Stanford fans that OL is the easiest position for us to recruit is demonstrably false. Quarterback, running back, and tight end are all far easier for Stanford to recruit, and that's been true going back decades. OL simply needs too much volume. It's a lot easier to find a good running back than it is to find five good offensive linemen. OL recruiting is unforgiving for numerous reasons: it requires a lot of volume, individual weak links can be devastating, and OL requires old man strength and savvy and therefore cannot overcome gap years in the way almost every other position can. When you neglect OL recruiting like Willingham did in the early 2000s or like Shaw did in the late 2010s, you cannot recover.

Again, not getting commitments doesn't of itself prove Stanford "neglected" to recruit. You may have other data that indicates the effort was reduced, but I am not aware of such. It may just indicate Stanford sucked at it. It also may mean that the guys Stanford needed who were willing to come to Stanford just weren't out there. It is convenient to assume there are always the guys and we just have to find them. That is a "fact" not in evidence however.

I agree that building a good OL at Stanford can be tough because you do need more than one or two a year. You are totally correct there. All your points regarding that have merit, particularly for a power running team. FWIW, one of the reasons lots of teams like an OL with wider line splits and a "spread" offense is that it reduces the need for "old man strength" and can compensate for having to use young guys. That said, in 2021 Michigan started two sophomores on their OL. It can be done, if you have the horses. It will be interesting to see how the two Stanford transfers do next year. My guess is that Nugent does well. I am not so sure about Hinton.

[Goose]

Regarding Bloomgren and the rest forgetting how to recruit OL, well, yeah, that's exactly what happened. Undeniably. Between February 3, 2016, and November 21, 2018, we had four offensive line commits. Four OL in 2.8 calendar years. That's not an inability to recruit good OL, it's a refusal to recruit OL. Over 2.8 years we recruited 1.4 linemen per year, probably a third of what one would recommend. I know I'm just saying the same facts in different ways but people need this to sink in. Stanford wasn't recruiting OL.

I think we have a bit of a semantic problem here. Recruiting in my world is the process of identifying, communicating with, proselytizing and facilitating players to attend Stanford and play football. You can recruit like mad and still have few players who commit. This can be caused by the group doing the recruiting not doing the "right things", whatever those things are, or it could be due to the feasible population not being as amenable to attending Stanford to play football. When I say the staff didn't "forget how to recruit", I mean the staff presumably used the same processes and level of effort that they used previously. In the past, that recruiting effort returned good results. Stating in 2016, it didn't work any more, based on the number of recruits that committed.

You may have access to information (that I do not) that Bloomgren simply quit recruiting. AFAIK, that wasn't the issue. It also may be that the staff decided it couldn't make do with anything less than 5 star players and made bad choices about recruiting targets. I don't know that is true but it may be. In any case, the departure of Bloomgren did not yield a significantly more effective offensive line. Since the new OL coaches were free to recruit "differently" than Bloomgren, it seems improbable that a bad choice of targets would persist. The number of commitments improved but the play of the OL has not tracked that improvement.

When you account for the fact that two of the four we did recruit were mega whales and thus practical impossibilities to complete their eligibility (and in fact only combined to play less than 2,000 snaps in their career....yikes) and a third was a medical retirement almost immediately upon stepping on campus, you simply cannot say Stanford recruited OL. And when you judge the performance of the OL coaches following Bloomgren you can't act like they had the cards Bloomgren had to play with.....he dealt himself a couple of aces and then burned the deck right before he left for another table to play at.

I suggest you might consider that the less than stellar performance of the "aces" may be due to 1) their injuries and 2) the fact that one of them was certainly overt-rated. It is also true that the following coaches also "dealt" their players, so they don't get a pass based on what Bloomgren left them. If the 2022 line had been very successful, that might support your argument. Obviously, that didn't happen.

As for OL being the most intellectually gifted of all the position groups, that may or may not be true but what I know to be a fact based on extensive research is that the trope popular among Stanford fans that OL is the easiest position for us to recruit is demonstrably false. Quarterback, running back, and tight end are all far easier for Stanford to recruit, and that's been true going back decades. OL simply needs too much volume. It's a lot easier to find a good running back than it is to find five good offensive linemen. OL recruiting is unforgiving for numerous reasons: it requires a lot of volume, individual weak links can be devastating, and OL requires old man strength and savvy and therefore cannot overcome gap years in the way almost every other position can. When you neglect OL recruiting like Willingham did in the early 2000s or like Shaw did in the late 2010s, you cannot recover.

Again, not getting commitments doesn't of itself prove Stanford "neglected" to recruit. You may have other data that indicates the effort was reduced, but I am not aware of such. It may just indicate Stanford sucked at it. It also may mean that the guys Stanford needed who were willing to come to Stanford just weren't out there. It is convenient to assume there are always the guys and we just have to find them. That is a "fact" not in evidence however.

I agree that building a good OL at Stanford can be tough because you do need more than one or two a year. You are totally correct there. All your points regarding that have merit, particularly for a power running team. FWIW, one of the reasons lots of teams like an OL with wider line splits and a "spread" offense is that it reduces the need for "old man strength" and can compensate for having to use young guys. That said, in 2021 Michigan started two sophomores on their OL. It can be done, if you have the horses. It will be interesting to see how the two Stanford transfers do next year. My guess is that Nugent does well. I am not so sure about Hinton.