05-09-2023, 03:18 PM
* Taylor acknowledged that it's going to be tough to get to the 85 man scholarship limit this fall. My guess is we leave about five open. He started to say "there's definitely more..." and then trailed off. It's unclear to me whether he was saying there are more transfers we plan to take, more transfers we are recruiting and hoping to take, more current walk-ons we plan to elevate, and/or more current walk-ons we could consider elevating. He thought better of that sentence and didn't continue. On balance my guess would be we get one, two, or three more transfers and elevate one or two more walk-ons. Taylor also noted that he isn't going to take guys just to get to 85 because he won't sacrifice the long-term, specifically saying we want to be able to sign a great class. I suppose it's obvious stuff, but I love that he's trying to think dynamically in terms of the tradeoffs between the fall 2023 scholarship count and what he may have space for in the 2024 class. Depending on how successful he is in reversing the upperclassmen attrition trends that have plagued Stanford football, I am not convinced that we have as much breathing space for 2024 recruiting as some assume. Personally I do view marginal scholarship fillers as rivalrous and potentially undermining of our recruiting goals. I will be just fine if we go into the fall with only 80 scholarships used.
* There was an interesting follow-up question about if he thinks this will be resolved by Year Two. He said he thinks so and with attrition it takes a while to build the roster. I'm glad he's optimistic about that as he knows a heck of a lot more than I do about how it's shaping up internally. I find it interesting that when asked questions like this Shaw would rhetorically throw his hands up and say how the new era makes roster management impossible and you're always guessing, whereas Taylor projects confidence on this. It's not like Taylor doesn't manage expectations in other areas where he thinks the going will be tough, as I covered above, so Taylor does seem to think he can "build" a roster and get it into a healthier place a year from now. We'll see. My hope is that he and his staff think deeply about the dynamics of roster management and update their models continually, as I always called on Shaw to do to mixed results at best. Perhaps an even greater hope is that Taylor feels - and has legitimate reason to feel - like he has a pulse on the roster and will be better able to manage and forecast attrition than Shaw was. I felt like Shaw was imperial (not building communicative open-door dialogue with players) and laissez faire (roster management too hard!). Hopefully Taylor has a plan for who he wants to return in 2024, how that's going to happen, how to adjust when thrown curve balls, and so forth. Ultimately, I'm not sure Taylor will be able to "build" the 2024 roster like he says but I hope he can.
* Taylor talked about how his points of emphasis are the same every day: playing with great energy, being really competitive but staying on our feet, learning how to practice, progressing/growing/not making the same mistakes, and understanding the scheme. I like the steadiness and the ethos of stacking good days on top of each other. I also like the consistency and what that hopefully augurs for culture building. Taylor's repeated mention of "learning how to practice" (another time saying "learning how to practice aggressively and physically") makes me wonder if he thinks we, ummm, didn't know how to do that previously. I don't think he means it, or anything, in a sardonic way directed at Shaw, but at the same time I do think he's trying to build something different than what we've had and knows it. You can tell from the end of the interview that he believes the number of reps and intensity of his practices are big adjustments that haven't fully sunk in with the players ("we've got to learn how to do it").
* Music to my ears: when asked what his next three months look like he said "recruiting never stops." We knew coaches went on the road but still I like to hear this. Recruiting is most of the game in college football. We need to build a better roster and I have more uncertainty about recruiting than I do about Taylor's ability to do the other parts of his job. We know he can build a culture. We know, at least at the FCS level, that he can do the basics of being a head coach and running a staff. But how good is Stanford's roster going to be in 2024, 2025, 2026? Really don't know that. Need to recruit every day and start turning this around.
* The other pieces of his answer on what's next were end of spring meetings with the players to talk to them about where they're at and what they need to improve on (no idea if Shaw did this....if so I hope Taylor's staff does it better and if not this could be an example of having better sense of the pulse of the roster), and the players training really hard in the off-season. The closing note on training really hard jumped out. He said it with some emphasis/intensity and said it's "going to be a difference-maker for us." Taylor has been around and knows other programs work out too, so for him to say this is going to differentiate us caught my attention. I think Deatrick is a really big part of our theory of the case. So far I'm encouraged but ultimately this is something we just have to have faith in and hope for the best. I also think the emphasis Taylor put on this suggests how important he thinks this is - the team he just coached in the spring isn't good enough and now it's time to level up and build better bodies. Finally, Taylor mentioned that new rules allow the coaches to be on the field a bit this summer and work with the players more.
* There was an interesting follow-up question about if he thinks this will be resolved by Year Two. He said he thinks so and with attrition it takes a while to build the roster. I'm glad he's optimistic about that as he knows a heck of a lot more than I do about how it's shaping up internally. I find it interesting that when asked questions like this Shaw would rhetorically throw his hands up and say how the new era makes roster management impossible and you're always guessing, whereas Taylor projects confidence on this. It's not like Taylor doesn't manage expectations in other areas where he thinks the going will be tough, as I covered above, so Taylor does seem to think he can "build" a roster and get it into a healthier place a year from now. We'll see. My hope is that he and his staff think deeply about the dynamics of roster management and update their models continually, as I always called on Shaw to do to mixed results at best. Perhaps an even greater hope is that Taylor feels - and has legitimate reason to feel - like he has a pulse on the roster and will be better able to manage and forecast attrition than Shaw was. I felt like Shaw was imperial (not building communicative open-door dialogue with players) and laissez faire (roster management too hard!). Hopefully Taylor has a plan for who he wants to return in 2024, how that's going to happen, how to adjust when thrown curve balls, and so forth. Ultimately, I'm not sure Taylor will be able to "build" the 2024 roster like he says but I hope he can.
* Taylor talked about how his points of emphasis are the same every day: playing with great energy, being really competitive but staying on our feet, learning how to practice, progressing/growing/not making the same mistakes, and understanding the scheme. I like the steadiness and the ethos of stacking good days on top of each other. I also like the consistency and what that hopefully augurs for culture building. Taylor's repeated mention of "learning how to practice" (another time saying "learning how to practice aggressively and physically") makes me wonder if he thinks we, ummm, didn't know how to do that previously. I don't think he means it, or anything, in a sardonic way directed at Shaw, but at the same time I do think he's trying to build something different than what we've had and knows it. You can tell from the end of the interview that he believes the number of reps and intensity of his practices are big adjustments that haven't fully sunk in with the players ("we've got to learn how to do it").
* Music to my ears: when asked what his next three months look like he said "recruiting never stops." We knew coaches went on the road but still I like to hear this. Recruiting is most of the game in college football. We need to build a better roster and I have more uncertainty about recruiting than I do about Taylor's ability to do the other parts of his job. We know he can build a culture. We know, at least at the FCS level, that he can do the basics of being a head coach and running a staff. But how good is Stanford's roster going to be in 2024, 2025, 2026? Really don't know that. Need to recruit every day and start turning this around.
* The other pieces of his answer on what's next were end of spring meetings with the players to talk to them about where they're at and what they need to improve on (no idea if Shaw did this....if so I hope Taylor's staff does it better and if not this could be an example of having better sense of the pulse of the roster), and the players training really hard in the off-season. The closing note on training really hard jumped out. He said it with some emphasis/intensity and said it's "going to be a difference-maker for us." Taylor has been around and knows other programs work out too, so for him to say this is going to differentiate us caught my attention. I think Deatrick is a really big part of our theory of the case. So far I'm encouraged but ultimately this is something we just have to have faith in and hope for the best. I also think the emphasis Taylor put on this suggests how important he thinks this is - the team he just coached in the spring isn't good enough and now it's time to level up and build better bodies. Finally, Taylor mentioned that new rules allow the coaches to be on the field a bit this summer and work with the players more.