(11-07-2022, 02:53 PM)cardcrimson Wrote: (11-07-2022, 02:19 PM)msqueri Wrote: (11-07-2022, 01:18 PM)mutoo1 Wrote: (11-07-2022, 12:31 PM)marchballer Wrote: I feel like people are jumping off a cliff here. It’s been 4 years of poor execution on the field. It’s clear and obvious the talent on the field is there. The coaching and talent progression has been poor.
There’s no reason to believe we can’t continue to compete at the D1 level with improvement in the coaching staff.
"It’s clear and obvious the talent on the field is there."
with all due respect, it is clear and obvious the talent on the field is seriously lacking as compared with (1) many of our opponents, and (2) our successful teams from the recent past.
the most noticeable issues i see are (1) the overall lack of team speed & quickness as compared with, for example, u$c, oregon & ucla (and we will see it again against utah), (2) poor offensive line coaching, and (3) the worst defensive line play, and perhaps talent, in recent memory. the dl is just getting pushed around. so perhaps a strength issue as well.
Put me in the "clear and obvious we have talent" camp. I'm not saying it's USC level talent or Stanford glory years level talent, but it's very competitive Pac-12 talent. Free your mind from comparing to Shaw Rose Bowl teams and think about Stanford's 1960-2007 level teams. Do you not think our talent is noticeably lacking compared with that? To my mind, we are a bit more talented on defense than the historical Stanford norm, a mixed bag on offense, and clearly deeper almost everywhere except QB and RB than what Stanford had pre-Harbaugh (recall that almost half of our rosters for all of eternity were Group of Five level or worse recruits).
I'm not so sure on the talent. Throughout many of those years we had some great players: Plunkett, Vataha, Lofton, Elway, Nelson, Margerum, Vardell. And some good ones: Benjamin, Schoenert, Dils, Edwards, Husak, Stenstrom, Muster, Milbyrn, Hill, McCaffery, Walters, Johnson. And those are just O skill position players.
One thing all those guys had was the ability to generate excitement. Do we have anyone on the roster who is at those levels? Do we have anyone who generates excitement at all? Who is even mildly interesting to watch at this moment?
You are picking standout players from a 40-50 year window, hardly a systematic way of looking at talent on a given year's roster.
My comment was made in an impressionistic way as well, reflecting on the general talent level on rosters. I think comparing the starters from the current team to many past teams would be a judgment call. I think comparing depth is a pretty open and shut case. Stanford backups of yesteryear almost never were Power Five level players save at a couple of positions. Now most positions at least have plausible backups. This is a function of the depth of our recruiting, enabled by several factors (e.g., Harbaugh's ambition and how it transformed recruiting at Stanford, a more sophisticated recruiting operation/ability to use 21st century tools to scour the country better these days, etc.). We used to get something like 6-12 top 1000 recruits a year (you can approximate top 1000 for pre-recruting service classes in the 70s, 80s, and 90s by asking whether a recruit had numerous Power Five offers). We now routinely get many more than that.
If one wanted to be more systematic about comparing the elite players on rosters aside from the depth question, one way to do it would be to look at NFL draft picks. That's a lagging indicator of talent but a useful gauge. Over the last four drafts we've had 13 picks (3.25 per year), over the last three it's been eight (2.67 per year), and over the last two it's been six (3.00 per year). This seems generally in the ballpark for Stanford talent. Excluding guys drafted after the 259th pick (to try to make it apples-to-apples), in the 40 drafts between 1971-2010 Stanford had 115 guys drafted (2.88 per year). I don't see any evidence our elite talent is terribly different from our norm.
I take your point on generating excitement and being mildly interesting but think, especially since you're talking about offensive skill position talent, that you're conflating Shawfense with individual talent. These guys are boring because our offense is boring, not because the individuals lack talent. Put Mike Wilson on USC or Elijah Higgins on TCU or Tanner McKee at Ole Miss and they'd be a lot more fun to watch.