Cardinal slink to No. 11 in the Pac-12 Recruiting Race

The Stanford Cardinal are one of just three teams to have fewer than 10 committed players for the class of 2021. Though unconcerning at this time due to head coach David Shaw’s policy on early enrollees, the Cardinal class of 2021 ranks just 11th in the conference and is behind notable teams such as Colorado and Arizona, each of whom struggled to receive commitments early on.

Despite a low ranking, however, the Cardinal have one thing to hang their hats on so far for the class of 2021. The fact that their 247Sports average ‘recruit points’ accumulated for each recruit ranks as the fourth-highest in the conference.

Essentially what that means is that if they were to have 21 commitments like that of Arizona, they’d absolutely be in fourth place or in the top half, at least, of the conference based upon total recruit points.

The fact that Stanford has just seven committed players this far through August is one thing, but the approach is clearly quality over quantity.

Stanford’s class currently sees a recruit average 86.95 recruit points per commit, according to 247Sports and their Composite Ranking system. Those include:

QB Ari Patu — 88.97

S Josh Moore — 87.68

TE Shield Taylor — 87.02

CB Jimmy Wyrick — 86.67

S MItch Leigber — 86.28

S Caleb Ellis — 85.06

P Connor Weselman — no rating on composite

Patu is the nation’s 14th-best dual-threat quarterback while Moore and Leigber sit as top-50 prospects at their positions. Wyrick is the country’s 46th-best corner while Taylor is the nation’s 26th-ranked tight end. Ellis is a top 150-player in the state of Texas, which should have their own ranking system essentially, and Wesselman ranked out as the nation’s sixth-best punter by a different rating system.

So clearly, the approach is quality per recruit, and that may also explain why the likes of USC, Oregon and all but Utah, Oregon State and Stanford have at least 12 committed players for 2021.

With conference’s 11th-ranked recruiting class to date, though, where does Stanford go from here? We’ll take a look at their top targets utilizing 247Sports and their knowledge base as well.

According to them, Stanford’s top four targets are Patu, Moore who have already committed as well as four-star CB Ceyair Wright (96.56 Composite) and four-star DE Aaron Armitage (92.07). It’d be no doubt that if these two were to commit to Stanford that they’d rise in the rankings and 247Sports has the Cardinal as one of the top four teams of choice for Wright and top five teams for Armitage.

It all remains to be seen how this class will shake up, but for those teams in the Pac-12 that find themselves on the outside looking in at the top half of the recruit rankings, Stanford has to absolutely be the least concerned about where they stand now.

For many reasons.