06-14-2023, 08:55 AM
Something I posted on another board apropos of some of this discussion:
We have a ways to go before we're talking about Taylor's recruiting matching the results of Shaw's recruiting. Shaw's 2012, 2014, and 2017 classes were the greatest on paper in decades for Stanford and arguably all top five all-time for us. Shaw's median class, even including the years in which the emperor had been revealed to have no clothes (including the crappy class Taylor finished in 2023), was #22/#24. If Taylor gets us a class in the 20-25 range it's an average year by our standards over the last 15 years (going back to Harbaugh too).
Taylor has some massive advantages in recruiting other coaches didn't necessarily have. The biggest to my mind is that it's possible there hasn't been a year in the history of college football in which Power Five programs care less about high school recruiting or will sign so few high school recruits. The open shopping in the transfer portal/NIL environment has very complicated competitive effects that cut in all directions, but in the narrow sense of high school recruiting rankings the effect is clear: teams generally putting less stock on high school recruiting because they can and will rely more on transfers within the same 85 man scholarship limit. Taylor is doing Black Friday shopping when a lot of the shoppers have turned to Cyber Monday. Since there's still an 85 man scholarship limit and since other teams load up on proven transfers in a way we can't, the bottom line is that a #20-#25 class in 2024 means a lot less than it did when Harbaugh was getting those kind of classes. We're going to need to get top 20 classes, at least, before we get too impressed with Taylor's recruiting.
Another advantage Taylor has is that there's no time to sell irrational exuberance and big dreams than in the first two years of a rebuild with a fresh new staff. In Harbaugh's second full class he brought in nine players ranked in the top 290 players in the country. Yes, Taylor has an irrelevant program nationally but his staff has quite rightly hit on the real message: we're good coaches with a plan and we're coaching at a program that was one of the best in the nation not long ago. Shaw getting us to four New Year's Six bowls is as an important part of Taylor's recruiting message inheritance as the miserable recent year record is. Don't get me wrong, Taylor's roster/culture inheritance is bleak, but from a recruiting perspective he gets to sell building something without any scar tissue of having failed yet and with a program that can credibly say dominance is possible. He has something to sell.
I have been trying to resist any macro assessment of Taylor's recruiting until we get to August, at least, but there has been such excellent discussion on the board this week that I can't resist. For fun/visualization, I just took a stab at an amazing but not totally crazy case scenario for the 2024 class end game (crazy we're talking end game, but of course this is super premature as a number of current commits could decommit or be rejected by admissions). That includes Elijah Brown, Benedict Umeh, Kwazi Gilmer, Justin Tauanuu, Chris Davis, Emmett Mosley, BJ Gibson, Isaiah Garcia, and Kahlil House (didn't want to just pick out all the highest-rated guys or not account for positional balance). Assuming no decommitments, a 27 person class with those studs in it would have a 243.96 247 class calculator ranking. That would rank it behind Shaw's 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019 (barely, while being barely ahead of the 2020 class) classes. In essence, an average class by Shaw's standards. I would take that to the bank and run for Taylor's first class. As a reminder, I had initially set a goal for Taylor's 2024 class that it have at least as many top 400 prospects as Harbaugh's 2008 class did (five). Right now we have two but my dream class above would have eight. Let's keep it going!
We have a ways to go before we're talking about Taylor's recruiting matching the results of Shaw's recruiting. Shaw's 2012, 2014, and 2017 classes were the greatest on paper in decades for Stanford and arguably all top five all-time for us. Shaw's median class, even including the years in which the emperor had been revealed to have no clothes (including the crappy class Taylor finished in 2023), was #22/#24. If Taylor gets us a class in the 20-25 range it's an average year by our standards over the last 15 years (going back to Harbaugh too).
Taylor has some massive advantages in recruiting other coaches didn't necessarily have. The biggest to my mind is that it's possible there hasn't been a year in the history of college football in which Power Five programs care less about high school recruiting or will sign so few high school recruits. The open shopping in the transfer portal/NIL environment has very complicated competitive effects that cut in all directions, but in the narrow sense of high school recruiting rankings the effect is clear: teams generally putting less stock on high school recruiting because they can and will rely more on transfers within the same 85 man scholarship limit. Taylor is doing Black Friday shopping when a lot of the shoppers have turned to Cyber Monday. Since there's still an 85 man scholarship limit and since other teams load up on proven transfers in a way we can't, the bottom line is that a #20-#25 class in 2024 means a lot less than it did when Harbaugh was getting those kind of classes. We're going to need to get top 20 classes, at least, before we get too impressed with Taylor's recruiting.
Another advantage Taylor has is that there's no time to sell irrational exuberance and big dreams than in the first two years of a rebuild with a fresh new staff. In Harbaugh's second full class he brought in nine players ranked in the top 290 players in the country. Yes, Taylor has an irrelevant program nationally but his staff has quite rightly hit on the real message: we're good coaches with a plan and we're coaching at a program that was one of the best in the nation not long ago. Shaw getting us to four New Year's Six bowls is as an important part of Taylor's recruiting message inheritance as the miserable recent year record is. Don't get me wrong, Taylor's roster/culture inheritance is bleak, but from a recruiting perspective he gets to sell building something without any scar tissue of having failed yet and with a program that can credibly say dominance is possible. He has something to sell.
I have been trying to resist any macro assessment of Taylor's recruiting until we get to August, at least, but there has been such excellent discussion on the board this week that I can't resist. For fun/visualization, I just took a stab at an amazing but not totally crazy case scenario for the 2024 class end game (crazy we're talking end game, but of course this is super premature as a number of current commits could decommit or be rejected by admissions). That includes Elijah Brown, Benedict Umeh, Kwazi Gilmer, Justin Tauanuu, Chris Davis, Emmett Mosley, BJ Gibson, Isaiah Garcia, and Kahlil House (didn't want to just pick out all the highest-rated guys or not account for positional balance). Assuming no decommitments, a 27 person class with those studs in it would have a 243.96 247 class calculator ranking. That would rank it behind Shaw's 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019 (barely, while being barely ahead of the 2020 class) classes. In essence, an average class by Shaw's standards. I would take that to the bank and run for Taylor's first class. As a reminder, I had initially set a goal for Taylor's 2024 class that it have at least as many top 400 prospects as Harbaugh's 2008 class did (five). Right now we have two but my dream class above would have eight. Let's keep it going!