[msqueri]

Four dimensional analysis on Marceau-Olayinka:

Services: 247 composite NR, On3 consensus NR, 247 NR, On3 NR, Rivals NR, ESPN NR

Offers: Stanford, Massachusetts

Production: Maxpreps did not report any stats for his team during his high school career whatsoever, foiling efforts to determine how dominant he was relative to his peers. Maxpreps judges the competition to be heinous, with the senior schedule bottom eight percent of Stanford recruits and that being the toughest competition he faced (junior year, for instance, was bottom three percent). As a senior, Marceau-Olayinka self-reported 37 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks, 2 blocked field goals, and 6 passes defended. As a junior, he self-reported 32 tackles, 14 tackles for loss, 3 sacks, 1 forced fumble, and 4 passes defended. He's never played in a game with even a single major college football prospect, at least as captured by the 247 database.

Highlights: In this section my practice is to limit analysis to games against teams with major prospects. Especially for a lineman playing against woefully outmatched high school kids it doesn't strike me as a very good use of time to dissect tape against the Little Sisters of the Poor. I thought about making an exception here as there isn't much else to dig into, but honestly if services, offers, and production are all saying the same thing, that this isn't even a plausibly Group of Five recruit, much less Power Five, it's not worth my time.

I'm so depressed we're likely going to trade Cameron Brandt for Braden Marceau-Olayinka. I hope I'm wrong about that but suspect Brandt to flip to Michigan by the end of the week. Flyer would be a generous term to describe this recruitment. The reality is that Stanford's pipeline is laid very low right now and Taylor has evidently calculated that anybody with a pulse gets a scholarship because there's no point leaving them unused. There's an inescapable logic in that. Beggars can't be choosers and insurgencies are built with insurgents. At the same time, I am starting to get worried about the standards we're setting as a program and the competitive message it sends to the players currently on the roster for us to be recruiting like this. What makes Marceau-Olayinka, Thomason, and Hampton deserving of scholarships rather than Zephron Lester, Logan Berzins, and Caleb Robinson? Or are we just giving everybody scholarships irrespective of competition? Marceau-Olayinka, Thomason, and Caleb Hampton are three recruits in a row with no recruiting profile whatsoever, Ivy League recruits literally nobody in Power Five football wanted. One can imagine taking a flyer or two a year, but at this point over a third of our 2023 class are recruits Rivals gives a 5.5 grade or lower (5.6 being essentially the low-end of the Power Five standard and 17.6 percent of them not having any grade at all. I suspect some here may be annoyed at me pointing this out. "What did you expect?" "Shaw left a bombed out program." "This is what rebuilding looks like." All fair to a point, but I am really itching for Taylor to start getting recruits that excite. We're only 44 days in but so far the recruiting is feeling more like 2005-2006 (late Teevens/early Harris) than 2007/2008 (early Harbaugh). Big caveat because I need to end on a note of optimism: the theory of the case with Taylor isn't and never was recruiting, it was culture, and his identification/indoctrination of his own guys could be part of turning this around, regardless of how low the profiles seem to recruitniks.

[msqueri]

Four dimensional analysis on Marceau-Olayinka:

Services: 247 composite NR, On3 consensus NR, 247 NR, On3 NR, Rivals NR, ESPN NR

Offers: Stanford, Massachusetts

Production: Maxpreps did not report any stats for his team during his high school career whatsoever, foiling efforts to determine how dominant he was relative to his peers. Maxpreps judges the competition to be heinous, with the senior schedule bottom eight percent of Stanford recruits and that being the toughest competition he faced (junior year, for instance, was bottom three percent). As a senior, Marceau-Olayinka self-reported 37 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks, 2 blocked field goals, and 6 passes defended. As a junior, he self-reported 32 tackles, 14 tackles for loss, 3 sacks, 1 forced fumble, and 4 passes defended. He's never played in a game with even a single major college football prospect, at least as captured by the 247 database.

Highlights: In this section my practice is to limit analysis to games against teams with major prospects. Especially for a lineman playing against woefully outmatched high school kids it doesn't strike me as a very good use of time to dissect tape against the Little Sisters of the Poor. I thought about making an exception here as there isn't much else to dig into, but honestly if services, offers, and production are all saying the same thing, that this isn't even a plausibly Group of Five recruit, much less Power Five, it's not worth my time.

I'm so depressed we're likely going to trade Cameron Brandt for Braden Marceau-Olayinka. I hope I'm wrong about that but suspect Brandt to flip to Michigan by the end of the week. Flyer would be a generous term to describe this recruitment. The reality is that Stanford's pipeline is laid very low right now and Taylor has evidently calculated that anybody with a pulse gets a scholarship because there's no point leaving them unused. There's an inescapable logic in that. Beggars can't be choosers and insurgencies are built with insurgents. At the same time, I am starting to get worried about the standards we're setting as a program and the competitive message it sends to the players currently on the roster for us to be recruiting like this. What makes Marceau-Olayinka, Thomason, and Hampton deserving of scholarships rather than Zephron Lester, Logan Berzins, and Caleb Robinson? Or are we just giving everybody scholarships irrespective of competition? Marceau-Olayinka, Thomason, and Caleb Hampton are three recruits in a row with no recruiting profile whatsoever, Ivy League recruits literally nobody in Power Five football wanted. One can imagine taking a flyer or two a year, but at this point over a third of our 2023 class are recruits Rivals gives a 5.5 grade or lower (5.6 being essentially the low-end of the Power Five standard and 17.6 percent of them not having any grade at all. I suspect some here may be annoyed at me pointing this out. "What did you expect?" "Shaw left a bombed out program." "This is what rebuilding looks like." All fair to a point, but I am really itching for Taylor to start getting recruits that excite. We're only 44 days in but so far the recruiting is feeling more like 2005-2006 (late Teevens/early Harris) than 2007/2008 (early Harbaugh). Big caveat because I need to end on a note of optimism: the theory of the case with Taylor isn't and never was recruiting, it was culture, and his identification/indoctrination of his own guys could be part of turning this around, regardless of how low the profiles seem to recruitniks.