I had fun in 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019 taking a stab at a top 35 for the Stanford football team and wouldn't miss giving it a go this year to see how I can do amidst lots of inexperience, new scheme, and general uncertainty. The exercise is meant to predict how good players will be this fall (so upperclassmen will tend to be higher than newcomers). The basic rule of it is I'm trying to predict the top 35 players by snap count at the end of the season and rank them in terms of quality (best understood in terms of things like quality in relation to Pac-12 peers, which can be approximated by year-end PFF grades). Specialists are not ranked here. The top 35 in snaps is essentially synonymous with the non-specialists who matter in a season, those with approximately 200 snaps over the course of a 12 game season give or take a dozen snaps or so.
You can see in the earlier threads that I did quite well at this the first two years before whiffing in 2021. Last year, I nailed the top two (as I did in 2020) and got 29 of the top 35 right (compared to 28 each of the two prior years, and would have had 30 if I knew the Bragg retirement news a few days earlier) but struggled with the top ten (getting four of ten for the second year in a row). Let's see how I can do with a new staff:
1. David Bailey
2. Collin Wright
3. Benjamin Yurosek
4. Gaethan Bernadel
5. Ernest "RJ" Cooper
6. Teva Tafiti
7. Justin Lamson
8. Ashton Daniels
9. Casey Filkins
10. Lance Keneley
11. EJ Smith
12. Jack Leyrer
13. Tristan Sinclair
14. Jimmy Wyrick
15. Joshua Thompson
16. John Humphreys
17. Zahran Manley
18. Levi Rogers
19. Mudia Reuben
20. Simi Pale
21. Elic Ayomanor
22. Aaron Armitage
23. Jaden Slocum
24. Fisher Anderson
25. Tiger Bachmeier
26. Jaxson Moi
27. Trevor Mayberry
28. Omari Porter
29. Connor McLaughlin
30. Sam Roush
31. Alaka'i Gilman
32. Anthony Franklin
33. Tobin Phillips
34. Scotty Edwards
35. Zach Buckey
Apologies to Spencer Jorgensen, Matt Rose, Wilfredo Aybar, Silas Star, Bryce Farrell, Alec Bank, James Pogorelc, Ryan Butler, Sedrick Irvin, and Spencer Lytle, among others. QB is enough of an uncertainty that it didn't feel right guessing and leaving QB2 off.
In general, my methodology is pretty self-explanatory and generally aligns with what other people would understand with a "top players" list but occasionally there are oddities. The one this year may be Armitage; I'm not even sure he's going to be a significant player for us, much less be better than his position mates, but the exercise I go through here is to forecast out our top 35 most relied on (snap count) guys and then forecast out how I foresee them grading. In Armitage's case I see spot duty asked to get after the QB, and I could see him grading better on his given plays than his mates who have less glamorous and more voluminous work. A similar rationale applies for why a guy I think a guy like Cooper who is facing a lot of competition just for playing time could nonetheless grade so high....his explosiveness and body just jump off the screen (and I did try to take into account trajectory and I think it's possible Cooper begins as OLB4 or so but talent wins out).
Obviously there are judgment calls galore here. Would love to hear others' thoughts.
You can see in the earlier threads that I did quite well at this the first two years before whiffing in 2021. Last year, I nailed the top two (as I did in 2020) and got 29 of the top 35 right (compared to 28 each of the two prior years, and would have had 30 if I knew the Bragg retirement news a few days earlier) but struggled with the top ten (getting four of ten for the second year in a row). Let's see how I can do with a new staff:
1. David Bailey
2. Collin Wright
3. Benjamin Yurosek
4. Gaethan Bernadel
5. Ernest "RJ" Cooper
6. Teva Tafiti
7. Justin Lamson
8. Ashton Daniels
9. Casey Filkins
10. Lance Keneley
11. EJ Smith
12. Jack Leyrer
13. Tristan Sinclair
14. Jimmy Wyrick
15. Joshua Thompson
16. John Humphreys
17. Zahran Manley
18. Levi Rogers
19. Mudia Reuben
20. Simi Pale
21. Elic Ayomanor
22. Aaron Armitage
23. Jaden Slocum
24. Fisher Anderson
25. Tiger Bachmeier
26. Jaxson Moi
27. Trevor Mayberry
28. Omari Porter
29. Connor McLaughlin
30. Sam Roush
31. Alaka'i Gilman
32. Anthony Franklin
33. Tobin Phillips
34. Scotty Edwards
35. Zach Buckey
Apologies to Spencer Jorgensen, Matt Rose, Wilfredo Aybar, Silas Star, Bryce Farrell, Alec Bank, James Pogorelc, Ryan Butler, Sedrick Irvin, and Spencer Lytle, among others. QB is enough of an uncertainty that it didn't feel right guessing and leaving QB2 off.
In general, my methodology is pretty self-explanatory and generally aligns with what other people would understand with a "top players" list but occasionally there are oddities. The one this year may be Armitage; I'm not even sure he's going to be a significant player for us, much less be better than his position mates, but the exercise I go through here is to forecast out our top 35 most relied on (snap count) guys and then forecast out how I foresee them grading. In Armitage's case I see spot duty asked to get after the QB, and I could see him grading better on his given plays than his mates who have less glamorous and more voluminous work. A similar rationale applies for why a guy I think a guy like Cooper who is facing a lot of competition just for playing time could nonetheless grade so high....his explosiveness and body just jump off the screen (and I did try to take into account trajectory and I think it's possible Cooper begins as OLB4 or so but talent wins out).
Obviously there are judgment calls galore here. Would love to hear others' thoughts.
