It's been nice to see Taylor start to haul in some commitments. Hopefully they can start to generate some momentum. Right now we have no buzz (#48 in the composite team rankings), but now having multiple commits who visited during the first Junior Day starts to open up a realistic hope that guys who checked out campus together will start to see each other as a potential band of brothers. Given the visitor list any momentum would largely sweep up solid 3-star recruits rather than blue chip guys, but at least one big recruit (Benedict Umeh) was on that visit. Something to watch.
As the 2024 class starts to look more real rather than an abstraction, I thought it might be interesting to ponder the needs for this class. Far and away the biggest need in my view is studs. Kind of an obvious/throwaway/evergreen comment but it bears emphasizing at a time when Stanford's roster is arguably one of the worst we've had in half a century (I view it as bottom 2-3 of the last quarter century). We need to inject talent. The last composite top 400 recruit to enter the program was David Bailey. Almost 16 months without a big recruit is pretty ugly. The other big thing we're looking to do in recruiting is change the culture and bring in the kind of guys who will turn Taylor's vision into reality. There's really no way for me to assess how individual recruits do that and I just have to trust that each middling 3-star commitment or worse is taking a salutary step in that direction.
Neither the stud dimension nor the culture dimension gives us much purchase in being concrete about team needs in 2024 recruiting. For that, one needs to accept that while the bottom line is we need to strengthen the roster everywhere it's the positions we've recruited the weakest that meet a traditional definition of need. To inform that discussion, here is a breakdown of the last two classes (the ones the next class should be seeking to compensate for, to the extent recruiting is about need):
QB: #459 Myles Jackson, #995 Ashton Daniels
RB: #517 Sedrick Irvin, #1254 Caleb Hampton, NR Ryan Butler
WR: #448 Ahmari Borden, #484 Tiger Bachmeier, #600 Mudia Reuben, #690 Jackson Harris, #925 Elic Ayomanor, #1099 Ismail Cisse [I'm not aware of Jason Thompson having a scholarship yet but he was #1371]
TE: #296 Sam Roush, #676 CJ Hawkins
OL: #268 Fisher Anderson, #305 Lucas Heyer, #593 Simione Pale, #663 Luke Baklenko, #854 Jake Maikkula, #1090 Charlie Symonds, #1632 Allen Thomason
DL: #541 Jaxson Moi, #736 Zach Rowell, #1322 Pat Caughey, #1334 Braden Marceau-Olayinka
OLB: #66 David Bailey, #154 Ernest Cooper, #264 Tevarua Tafiti, #906 Gavin Geweniger (but maybe DL), #1208 Omar Staples
ILB: #965 Tre Williams, #1428 Matt Rose, #1435 Benjamin Hudson
DB: #415 JShawn Frausto-Ramos, #710 Joshua Thompson, #736 Collin Wright, #854 Terian Williams, #1032 Che Ojarikre, #1449 Aaron Morris, #2008 Scotty Edwards
In terms of volume relative to bodies needed per position, we are lightest at OL, DL, ILB, and DB. Definitely need some volume at each of those this year.
In terms of recruiting profile relative to Power Five standards, we are weakest at QB, RB, and ILB.
I often note that DB is the biggest exception to the rule that need isn't about who you are losing but rather about how the pipeline just ahead looks. There are several reasons for that but in essence DBs can play early, aren't reliant on improvement over time, and constitute a room with pretty significant diminishing returns for marginal players (the seventh DB is way less important than the seventh OL in my view). As such, it's always hard to put DB near the top of a need list, unless the pipeline just ahead really stinks (which I have no more reason to believe for our DB group than our OL, DL, ILB, QB, or RB groups).
Putting it all together, the top of my wish list for 2024 are:
1) Stud QB
2) Stud ILB (but depth also extremely important since that room is so troubled)
3) DL volume (would love a stud of course)
4) OL volume (would love a stud of course)
5) Stud RB (but depth also important since that room is so troubled)
Order is arbitrary and not strongly felt. I could make a case it all starts in the trenches and that's where we most need to bolster.
Anyway, just wanted to order my thoughts beyond "top 400 players please" and would welcome any other thoughts.
As the 2024 class starts to look more real rather than an abstraction, I thought it might be interesting to ponder the needs for this class. Far and away the biggest need in my view is studs. Kind of an obvious/throwaway/evergreen comment but it bears emphasizing at a time when Stanford's roster is arguably one of the worst we've had in half a century (I view it as bottom 2-3 of the last quarter century). We need to inject talent. The last composite top 400 recruit to enter the program was David Bailey. Almost 16 months without a big recruit is pretty ugly. The other big thing we're looking to do in recruiting is change the culture and bring in the kind of guys who will turn Taylor's vision into reality. There's really no way for me to assess how individual recruits do that and I just have to trust that each middling 3-star commitment or worse is taking a salutary step in that direction.
Neither the stud dimension nor the culture dimension gives us much purchase in being concrete about team needs in 2024 recruiting. For that, one needs to accept that while the bottom line is we need to strengthen the roster everywhere it's the positions we've recruited the weakest that meet a traditional definition of need. To inform that discussion, here is a breakdown of the last two classes (the ones the next class should be seeking to compensate for, to the extent recruiting is about need):
QB: #459 Myles Jackson, #995 Ashton Daniels
RB: #517 Sedrick Irvin, #1254 Caleb Hampton, NR Ryan Butler
WR: #448 Ahmari Borden, #484 Tiger Bachmeier, #600 Mudia Reuben, #690 Jackson Harris, #925 Elic Ayomanor, #1099 Ismail Cisse [I'm not aware of Jason Thompson having a scholarship yet but he was #1371]
TE: #296 Sam Roush, #676 CJ Hawkins
OL: #268 Fisher Anderson, #305 Lucas Heyer, #593 Simione Pale, #663 Luke Baklenko, #854 Jake Maikkula, #1090 Charlie Symonds, #1632 Allen Thomason
DL: #541 Jaxson Moi, #736 Zach Rowell, #1322 Pat Caughey, #1334 Braden Marceau-Olayinka
OLB: #66 David Bailey, #154 Ernest Cooper, #264 Tevarua Tafiti, #906 Gavin Geweniger (but maybe DL), #1208 Omar Staples
ILB: #965 Tre Williams, #1428 Matt Rose, #1435 Benjamin Hudson
DB: #415 JShawn Frausto-Ramos, #710 Joshua Thompson, #736 Collin Wright, #854 Terian Williams, #1032 Che Ojarikre, #1449 Aaron Morris, #2008 Scotty Edwards
In terms of volume relative to bodies needed per position, we are lightest at OL, DL, ILB, and DB. Definitely need some volume at each of those this year.
In terms of recruiting profile relative to Power Five standards, we are weakest at QB, RB, and ILB.
I often note that DB is the biggest exception to the rule that need isn't about who you are losing but rather about how the pipeline just ahead looks. There are several reasons for that but in essence DBs can play early, aren't reliant on improvement over time, and constitute a room with pretty significant diminishing returns for marginal players (the seventh DB is way less important than the seventh OL in my view). As such, it's always hard to put DB near the top of a need list, unless the pipeline just ahead really stinks (which I have no more reason to believe for our DB group than our OL, DL, ILB, QB, or RB groups).
Putting it all together, the top of my wish list for 2024 are:
1) Stud QB
2) Stud ILB (but depth also extremely important since that room is so troubled)
3) DL volume (would love a stud of course)
4) OL volume (would love a stud of course)
5) Stud RB (but depth also important since that room is so troubled)
Order is arbitrary and not strongly felt. I could make a case it all starts in the trenches and that's where we most need to bolster.
Anyway, just wanted to order my thoughts beyond "top 400 players please" and would welcome any other thoughts.
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