I’m an optimist. Don’t be believe me? Before the season began, I was fantasizing about a National Championship. I also said that with the talent we have, 7-5 would be a terrible year. Now I’m starting to believe that the only way we make it to 7-5 is if every team on Stanford’s remaining schedule fails to show up. Yes, Stanford has gone 2-1 in its last three games with an upset over #15 Washington. But I’m feeling even worse about the team now than I did after our loss to Oregon.
The football program is in shambles. Before the season, I worried that a bad season would signal the end of Stanford’s reign over college football. Now I know the reign is over. Stanford football is an average program at best, and we’re trending toward rock bottom.
During the off-season, Shannon Turley was mysteriously fired by Stanford—even after keeping our players healthy and hungry year after year. Without Turley, Stanford is becoming increasingly depleted, without the depth to replace our injured talent. Against UCLA, we had our third-string quarterback and six total offensive linemen available. Some might excuse this as a “down year,” but if we remained consistently healthy for the past decade—and suddenly aren’t now—maybe we should find somebody who can keep the team healthy?
The worst part, though, is the part I never saw coming. I never thought David Shaw would be part of Stanford football’s downfall. I once was worried that Stanford’s downfall would come after Shaw left for the NFL—leaving us to look back on how we lost the best football coach in Stanford history. Never in a million years did I imagine that Shaw would be at the helm as things fell apart.
Between Shaw and Tavita Pritchard, I don’t know who the real offensive play caller is. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Either way, the offense isn’t getting its job done—and it’s not just because of injuries; the offense hasn’t gotten its job done in quite some time. It’s becoming clearer than ever before that we need a new offensive coordinator who can bring fresh ideas to the Stanford offense.
Our player development has continued to fall off the deep end. As we’ve gone deeper into Stanford’s depth chart, it’s becoming more apparent that our talent isn’t developing. Jack West came to Stanford ranked nationally in the top ten of pro-style quarterbacks. Last night, he looked thoroughly unprepared—even scared—to play a college football game. He now joins Keller Chryst and Ryan Burns as Stanford quarterbacks who haven’t developed.
Looking ahead, Stanford’s recruiting pipeline seems to be drying up. The 2020 recruiting class has only one player in the ESPN top 200 (16th-ranked 5-star OT Myles Minton). I wonder if Stanford’s inability to develop its players is affecting whether top talent even wants to come to Stanford anymore?
After the most recent game, Stanford’s odds look bleak for the remainder of the season. UCLA had only one more college football win than I do—and I never played college football! Against a hapless UCLA team, outside of garbage time Stanford only scored 3 offensive points. Stanford only got 198 total yards against a UCLA team whose best defensive performance prior to facing Stanford was when it gave up “only” 373 yards. Meanwhile, the Stanford defense completely broke down.
Stanford may not be Alabama or Ohio State, but that doesn’t mean that the team shouldn’t strive for greatness. The time has come not to blindly support Shaw and his coaching staff, but to question why our offensive game plan is falling flat and why our recruits aren’t developing. We can’t keep looking at Stanford’s past achievements under Shaw; we have to look to where we’re trending.
Bill Connelly commented in his preseason analysis that ever since Shaw took over from Harbaugh, Stanford “acted like a house settling into its foundation — on average, it sinks slightly each year.” But Stanford football is now sinking faster than we ever could’ve imagined—it’s as though Shaw built his foundation on top of quicksand. And the excuses are running out quickly. Maybe it’s a bad season—maybe we’ve had bad luck with recent recruits—maybe it was just a bad game against UCLA. But all of these excuses ignore the trends that were forming around this coaching staff for quite some time. The Stanford Empire has come to an end. And unless the coaching staff takes a hard look at itself, it’s not coming back.
Comments
Multiple Issues Cascade
Realism dictates that it would have been very unlikely for us to continue the level of success we had from 2010-2015 indefinitely. Various reasons for that, ranging from assistant coaching talent decreasing on the team (as compared with what it was at the front end of that run) which impacts both recruiting and player development, increased level of competition in the conference (UW got much better, WSU got much better, USC improved from its probation period, Cal is now better, etc.), and early player attrition to NFL and the transfer portal, to name some of the bigger ones. We’re not Alabama … we’re the kind of program that will have ups and downs given our limitations academically and in terms of fan-booster base. Not realistic to expect 10+ wins every season.
Having said that, the variance, given David Shaw’s presence, and the commitment of the university to the program, should really be between something like 6 wins and 10+, with down years being .500 and up years being like 2015. We are deteriorating below that now, and that’s definitely a cause for concern for anyone who is invested in the program.
It’s one concern among many. Certainly injuries have become much more of an issue for us than they have been in the past, and Turley had his bag of magic tricks, allegedly. But it’s one concern among many, really. We have massive assistant problems all over the map at this point. It’s like a 5-alarm fire.
It’s a problem of assistant coaches.
On the offensive side, we don’t really have an OC other than in a pro forma sense. Shaw is very much an offensively-minded HC, and so he keeps a lot of control over the offense. This has been a problem in the past, even with better OCs, but with Tavita as OC it’s gone from a problem to a disaster. Shaw needs a real OC who has independent control over the offense for the most part. My guess is he doesn’t want that because he has very strong ideas about the offense and wants to control it to a greater degree than many HCs do. If my guess is right, then that’s a problem.
We have lost a lot of talent at other assistant positions over the years, and have not replaced it with similar talent. This is having a depressing effect on player development and that, yes, does have a depressing effect on recruiting. This won’t change without a concerted effort by Shaw to address it, which would mean that he would first need to see it as a problem — and I doubt he does, to be frank. In his mind this is likely "all about execution".
As of now, at 3-4, and looking at the remaining schedule …. we have one virtually guaranteed loss against ND, we have a likely loss in Pullman against WSU. Otherwise it’s UofA, at Colorado, and Big Game. UofA is a "should" win, but so was UCLA. Colorado won’t be a picnic on the road for our team this season, and Cal will come rolling into Stanford Stadium looking to settle scores with us for our dominance of them over the past decade. The realistic best case scenario is 6-6 (unless we pull of a miracle in Pullman). More likely to me is some finish around 4 or 5 wins. That is not good enough, obviously, given the investment in the program and the recruiting quality we have had in prior years. It’s tolerable for one season (happens to most teams from time to time), but it must generate change in the program. If it does not do so, we will be looking at many more of these kinds of seasons moving forward, because the conference isn’t getting any easier, and we are getting worse.
By Brendan Ross on 10.20.19 7:33am
Quit blaming injuries
At this time of the year every team has injuries. USC played Arizona with 5 starters on defense out and 2 more were injured in the game. Both running backs were injured and a frosh running back who had never played a game scored a TD. USC demolished Arizona anyway.
By gaffman on 10.20.19 8:23am
One bad year does not mean the sky is falling
I disagree that the football program is in shambles or that injuries don’t matter this year. Stanford’s football recruiting pool is only about 50 students each year (in addition to a demanding high school curriculum, recruits have to score in the 83% or higher percentile ranking in the ACT). Landing a class of 25 each year necessarily means several non-4 or 5 star recruits. When a four star recruit goes down to injuries, Stanford does not have the quality reserves of other schools. Oregon’s pool of possible recruits, for example, is 164; at USC it is 77. And this year, to date, Stanford has lost one five star Offensive Lineman, two four star QB’s, at least 3 other four star offensive linemen, its starting kicker, and an untold number of linebackers. So comparing Stanford’s injuries to USC’s is a false comparison in my mind.
As for the future, Shaw and company must be credited for landing the people they have on the roster for next year. 7 four star wide receivers (5 in the top 150 overall prospects in the country); 2 four star QB’s (Davis Mills and Tanner McKee); 4 four star linebackers; one of the top 10 RB’s in the country; #3 Kicker/Punter; 2 four star OT,, and 1 four star CB, DE, and OG. If Little, Sarell, and Hamilton decide to return next year and can stay healthy, you add 2 five stars and 1 four star linemen to this mix. The cupboard is hardly bare next year.
This does not mean there are not concerns about the program or the staff. Why have certain players not developed? (5 star Curtis Robinson, 4 stars Jack West, Ryan Johnson, or Trey Stratford, for example) Why have there been so many injuries in the past two years? (The firing of Shannon Turney was not "mysterious", nor is that the cause of the injuries as they began occurring two years ago when he was still with the team.)
Shaw and his staff need to do some real sour-searching this off season. (Face it, no matter how many or few games the team wins the rest of the year, this season has a been a very disappointing disaster.) Should the offensive game plan adjust when it will have a good arm at QB and a stable of talented wide receivers? (I agree that Stanford under Shaw is a run first offense, but why recruit all those talented wide outs if you don’t use them?) Is Pritchard up to the task of actually doing the job of offensive coordinator? (No doubt Shaw won’t ever give up his role of running the offense during games, but even he would accept input from a decent OC.) Can the linebackers return to prominence in the defense? Can Akina get somebody to play the safety position well? And can the defensive line get stronger this off season? There are 83 players on scholarship, at least 25 of whom are 4 star recruits. Fashioning a team of 22 from that pool is not too much to ask.
By SU74 on 10.20.19 9:36am
So what happened with Turley?
Do tell. I only hear side references to his firing. All of the official sources I’ve seen say that no public reason was given.
By g8tgod on 10.20.19 6:02pm
I'll wait until the season settles out to see if Shaw can right the ship
I think the article and the two posts above are both valid. However, Shaw has managed to stabilize things in the past so don’t want to rule out that he could salvage this bad year with the return of a healthy #1 or #2 QB. A good QB can make a world of difference.
By worldblee on 10.20.19 9:38am
Recruit star rating is no sure thing
"Stars" do not always guarantee success at the college level. It is similar to Professional Football in that many little-known college players ("star-less" if you will) succeed at the Pro level. I believe UCLA, that just beat Stanford, has no 5-star recruits, few or none 4-star recruits. Cal has a pretty good, well-coached team this year with no significant number of 4 and no 5-star recruits. Oregon State and Washington State never have 5-star and rarely 4-star recruits. It is the 3-star recruits that are motivated, well-coached and develop that form the backbone of any team. I believe Arcega-Whiteside and our current center Dalman were 3-star recruits. Every college team has the same number of players and there is no reason why Stanford doesn’t have the "quality reserves" to compete. The main disadvantage at Stanford that I see currently is that we do not accept players from the transfer system, do not allow early enrollment, and do not accept junior college players. We also never recruit mobile QBs but that is another story.
By gaffman on 10.20.19 3:54pm
Personally I’m hoping for 4-8 rather than 6-6
4-8 (let’s just win big game) means Shaw really will re-evaluate. 6-6 and he will think, heck with all the injuries to our o line and qbs, the coaching staff did a heck of a job coaching up 3rd stringers to 6-6 in such a competitive pac-12, blah blah blah. We need a revamp. 4-6 maybe the impetus that’s gets us there
By stanford6thman on 10.20.19 5:35pm
Sometimes, fantasies need more substance than is available.
nn23, you tipped off your adrift expectations when you described a misconstrued image of Shannon Turley’s role. Stanford football injuries flared when Turley got kicked up stairs, when he became the Athletic Dept’s top trainer. His role had changed. Whatever led to his dismissal, Turley’s magic had left the football program a couple of years earlier, at least operationally. If you weren’t aware, apparently your other assumptions are askew too.
College football is in decline, and a high-rung, tight-admissions program like LSJU is an archtypical miner’s canary for that syndrome. Last year, David Shaw only used 79 of the 85 allocated football scholarshlps. The TWU has been running lean on depth since 2016, at least. The defensive line has been fodder for underestimation since before Brennan Scarlett blessed the Cardinal with his grad transfer in 2015. Until Duane Akina came aboard, Stanford’s secondary needed a feisty front seven to prevent overexposure of that flawed defensive rear. That’s still a weakness.
It’s incredibly tough to recruit eligible athletic talent to Stanford; the pickings are slim. It’s tougher to recruit high-caliber football talent to Stanford, where each small freshman class is squeezed by admissions competition from 4/5-star recruits to 35 other Stanford varsity teams. Realize that Stanford’s football and basketball cachet aren’t dominant concerns on campus. The Cardinal has won 25 consecutive NACDA Director’s Cups without a pivotal contribution from football or basketball. Today’s overblown expectations from those 2 "big-boy" sports is anachronistic in the past 2 decades. Stanford football has been an overachiever; that fantastic 2015 Christian McCaffery season, finishing #3, garnered only a 12-2 record.
Lots of hype is given to the Harbaugh era, which was more fittingly the Andrew Luck era. Harbaugh never had a winning season without Luck. David Shaw has yet to have a losing season without Luck. Lots of fans have lots of shoulda-woulda-coulda wishful thinking that may not fit the LSJU reality.
By Candid One on 10.21.19 12:54am
Institutional rot in the foundation
I want preface everything by getting this out of the way. Down years happen to every team in college football. Not even the Alabamas, USCs, Texas or Michigan can escape them. Plus the terrible injury luck this year can derail even dominant playoff teams. Our dominance earlier in the decade was simply not sustainable for all the reasons my respected RoT peers have pointed out in various posts in the forum. That we have been on the decline was noticeable for even the casual observer and yet the 8+ wins kept flowing through the collection of talent and close game / injury luck.
The position we are in currently though is the culmination of all the missteps and lack of course correction of the year’s past. Starting from recruiting adjustments for early recruiting period to not recruiting enough lineman (OL & DL), replacing key assistant coaches and coordinators with green coaches without prior experience, collapse in the strength and conditioning + trainer programs, not revamping our schemes enough to adjust for the talent (square peg round hole) and much more. As bill_c pointed out this is a building that was sinking slowly and yet coach Shaw didn’t see it fit to check the foundation and strengthen it. It culminates in the whole thing crumbling for a minor quake.
There is still so much talent on this team that I refuse to believe this is the best they could have done. I still believe David shaw is the best guy (duh?) to lead this program. All we are asking of David is flexibility in his thinking and work in a few changes. Change is a constant in life and even if he doesn’t change, the game is changing around him and evolving. A little infusion of change can reinvigorate everyone and give a breath of fresh air to this program.
The expectation is a competent product on the field and an average of 8 wins with a few down years and an uptick to a rose bowl. So the final blow has been far from dealt (by the way the stanford men’s basketball is in worse situation having missed the big dance for 5 years now)
By layman on 10.21.19 3:01am
Beat reporter said same thing.. institutional rot
When the guys on the outside closest to the team are saying that, there’s got to be some truth to it. Coach Shaw you owe it to the players to make the game fun again. To play and to watch
"That joy is gone from Stanford Football right now. It’s been replaced by a joyless ennui that reduces football to a miserable slog where touchdowns are Herculean achievements and nobody involved seems to be having any fun at all."
By stanford6thman on 10.21.19 6:02am
The 3 most dreaded words from postgame Stanford football: "Just didn't execute"
By gaffman on 10.21.19 8:19am