Watch that here. Really a great feature on Walter Rouse, who is a finalist for the Campbell Trophy.

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"Due to a lack of fun and a losing football team, I have decided to enter the imposter portal. I would like to thank Stanford for affording me the opportunity to pretend to attend Stanford. I look forward to many more years pretending to be in college and hope to pursue my dream of being a professional grifter." - William Curry

Alrighty, it's time for a new football recruiting notes thread as it is now October. The September thread is here.


First off, with the Oregon State game being this weekend, that means visitors. At least potentially. As of now, I have not listed any confirmed visitors for this weekend's game. But, I will be reaching out to recruits, so stay tuned for that. One recruit who did tell me they were thinking about visiting is Valley Christian (San Jose, CA) wide receiver Kia Haghighi. He is class of 2024. He doesn't have an offer, but the staff is looking at him. His MaxPreps profile is here as he currently doesn't have a Rivals profile. So, that's one possible visitor/recruit to keep an eye on for this week.


As far as how the 2023 class might be rounded out, the following targets are still in play: 3-star DT Elijah Hughes, 3-star OLB Tre Williams, 3-star OLB Asa Newsom, and 4-star ILB Leviticus Su'a. Hughes and Newsom have both given me the green light to share that they are admitted. I think of that group, Williams is the one who I'm getting the best vibes from at the moment. I'm liking Stanford's chances. Hughes, I'm kinda thinking he's looking to go elsewhere just because he was considered for a time to be a sure thing for Stanford if he got admitted. But he hasn't verbally committed elsewhere, so there's still a chance Stanford reels him in.

Newsom I haven't had as much contact/exchanges with, so he's been harder to read. The one thing Stanford does have going for them is they are the only school on his offers list that isn't in the Midwest. So if he wants to leave the Midwest, Stanford is really his only option right now. The big thing to look for is whether or not he comes out to visit for a game. That seems to be something he's wanting to do to help evaluate where he's going to go. He visited Iowa for their September 10th game and he visited Minnesota this past weekend for their game. So, I'll of course be checking in with him this weekend to see if he has an update on a game. Whether or not he visits for a game will be a good indicator of Stanford's chances, I think.

And then with Su'a, he's keeping things close to the vest. Adam Gorney feels like it's an Arizona/Stanford race. This is one where you have to hope Mater Dei teammate David Bailey helps to reel him in. On paper, if he gets admitted, between Stanford and Arizona, Stanford seems like the program that should win out. Closer to home, way better academics, and then even with Stanford being a down program right now, it's not like Arizona is a major destination for football players historically. So, those are reasons to have hope for Stanford and given how much they need help at inside linebacker, I believe this would be the biggest commit for Stanford in the 2023 class.


One possible visitor for 2024 is 3-star offensive tackle Ashton Funk. He recently caught up with Rivals' Nick Harris. The plan is to visit sometime after his Michigan visit on October 15th. I will check with him before the Oregon State game to confirm that's still the case and just see if he happens to have something lined up. Funk did visit back in July as well.



Another 2024 visitor is 3-star offensive tackle Gibson Pyle. He is planning on visiting for the Arizona State game on October 22nd. Also visited back in July.

And then as far as other guys who I would expect to visit but haven't yet confirmed, anyone who visited over the summer, I would expect to be in play for a visit to a game if they haven't already. Check that list out here.


Key names in 2024 that Stanford has offered:

4-star tight ends Christian Bentancur and Hogan Hansen. Stanford is on fire with landing tight ends right now, so those two obviously pop out.

4-star running back Anthony Carrie. He's been showing Stanford some love on social media and visited back in the spring the same weekend as one of their junior days.

A pair of St. John Bosco guys in 4-star ILB Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa and 4-star CB Marcelles Williams. Jshawn Frausto-Ramos is recruiting both of his teammates really hard. They both visited in June only one day apart. Might have been at the same time, but I have their visit dates one day apart.

4-star offensive tackle Fletcher Westphal. He visited Stanford back in July.

3-star cornerback Brandon Nicholson. Only five total offers right now and Stanford is the only posted visit he has in his profile at the moment.

3-star quarterback Austin Mack. Visited for the USC game. Might visit for more games as well. Also visited in the spring. I'm liking Stanford's chances a lot with him right now.

4-star quarterback Elijah Brown. Mater Dei kid. Gotta hope Stanford can start a bit of a pipeline from Mater Dei via Bailey, Su'a, and then Brown.

Couple of key names who they haven't offered, but have visited in the spring/summer:

4-star OLB Andrew Hines. Visited back in April along with Cal.

3-star OT Manasse Itete. He visited back in August.

There's other names as well, but those are the main ones in 2024.

Lastly, just real quick, click here to get caught up on dates that commits are visiting. E.g. Hunter Clegg and Zak Yamauchi are visiting for the BYU game and Jshawn Frausto-Ramos is visiting for ASU. At least at the moment that's the plan. Clegg also planning on visiting for the game at Utah. There's also a few other more minor visitors (non-commits) that you'll see as well. It would take too long for me to list every name!

The Pac-12 put out a release highlighting the fact that next Monday, all Pac-12 teams will be playing, so somebody had to play in the early window and Stanford got the lucky or unlucky end of the stick. Full schedule is here.

So it's a TV deal. They wanted an all-day Pac-12 hoops marathon event. Still kinda strange they didn't at least make it a later start time like 1:00 PM or 2:00 PM.

What’s happening at Stanford

I know of another article in the works that’s more in-depth.

Travis Graf, one of our national writers, has Harrison Ingram as one of the top five players in the Pac-12.

Read that here.

Forgive me if this has already been discussed at length, but Im seeing McKee as a top 10 pick in a few different '23 mock drafts

What do we think about this?

Personally, Im surprised he is up there that high, but will take all the positive Stanford Football pub that we can get at this point

‘In recognition of the 50th Anniversary of Title IX, members of the Cardinal program share their stories and reflect on the growth of the sport of volleyball’
For those missing Corbin on the sideline, she’s featured, along with Shaw, Rubiin, Hambly and Gearhart ‘73
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Adam Gorney has that here.

He has a comparison for Walker Lyons and also compares someone else to Dalton Schultz.

Updating this running project with the 2022 numbers because I thought about it in reacting to a recent interview. Here is the percentage of passing offense accounted for by every Stanford WR/TE as a freshman (rounded to the nearest percentage point, with 2022 additions bolded):

Richard Sherman - 29%
Mark Bradford - 29%
Benjamin Yurosek - 25% - tricky case because this would be 0% but for the COVID-19 mulligan
JJ Arcega-Whiteside - 18%
Simi Fehoko - 18%
Austin Hooper - 17%
Kaden Smith - 16%
Michael Rector - 16%
John Humphreys - 11% - tricky case because this would be 2% but for the COVID-19 mulligan
Ty Montgomery - 10%
Jim Dray - 9%
Connor Wedington - 9%
Austin Yancy - 8%
Evan Moore - 7%
Coby Fleener - 7%
Zach Ertz - 6%
Osiris St. Brown - 6%
Greg Taboada - 5%
Trent Irwin - 5%
Bryce Farrell - 5%
Doug Baldwin - 4%
Chris Owusu - 4%
Michael Wilson - 4%
Eric Cotton - 4%
Dalton Schultz - 4%
Colby Parkinson - 4%
Francis Owusu - 2%
Silas Starr - 2%
Mudia Reuben - 2%
Erik Lorig - 1%
Sam Roush - 1%
CJ Hawkins - 1%
David Lofton - less than 1%
Matt Traverso - less than 1%
Patrick Danahy - less than 1%
Michael Horgan - less than 1%
Corey Gatewood - less than 1%
Ryan Whalen - less than 1%
Drew Terrell - less than 1%
Ryan Hewitt - less than 1%
Levine Toilolo - less than 1%
Devon Cajuste - less than 1%
Luke Kaumatule - less than 1%
Kodi Whitfield - less than 1%
Donald Stewart - less than 1%
Scooter Harrington - less than 1%
Brycen Tremayne - less than 1%
Lukas Ungar - less than 1%
Bradley Archer - 0% - tricky case because under the rules his third year could be considered his freshman year, in which case he'd be at 12%
Marcus McCutcheon - 0%
Austin Gunder - 0%
Stephen Carr - 0%
Mark Mueller - 0%
Jemari Roberts - 0%
Elijah Higgins - 0%
Jordan Najvar - 0%
Davis Dudchock - 0%
Tucker Fisk - 0%
Keanu Nelson - 0%
Griff Whalen - 0%
Dontonio Jordan - 0%
Conner Crane - 0%
Isaiah Brandt-Sims - 0%
Jay Tyler - 0%
Jayson Raines - 0%
Colby Bowman - 0% - technically it's debatable what year is his freshman year but he was 0% each of his first three years so it doesn't matter
Marcus Graham - 0% - technically it's debatable what year is his freshman year but he was 0% each of his first three years so it doesn't matter
Jamal-Rashad Patterson - less than 0%

Read that here.

Stanford held its first fall scrimmage Monday against Cal Poly and as usual it was behind closed doors. All I think we know is that Carter Graham, Malcolm Moore and Braden Montgomery hit home runs — I assume the tweet yesterday with exit velocities was for HRs. (More information would be most welcome!)

Perfect Game made some of its 2022 recruit info free since the kids have matriculated to campus, so we can see their overall and state rankings. Apologies if these have been posted already. Also, I promise I'm not yelling; the site has its short evals in all caps and I don't want to retype them.

Moore (No. 27 overall): "HUGE LEFT-HANDED POWER WITH A MATCHING HIT TOOL. ADVANCED APPROACH AT THE PLATE AND HUGE RUN PRODUCING POTENTIAL."
Matt Scott, RHP (No. 132): "EXTRA BIG AND STRONG BUILD, UP TO 93 WITH EASY MECHANICS AND BIG EXTENSION, POWER SLIDER AND CHANGE UP."
Nick Dugan, RHP (No. 147): "BURST ONTO THE SCENE THIS FALL; DOMINANT PERFORMANCE AT 2020 WWBA UNDERCLASS; UP TO 95 MPH, FAST ARM W/ ADVANCED CONTROL; SHARP, DOWNER CB W/ ADVANCED CH."
Gabe Springer, shortstop (No. 372)
Toran O'Harran, RHP (No. 400)
Trevor Moore, RHP (No. 497)
Ethan Hott, OF (No. 500)
Cort McDonald (No. 500)

After 499 everyone is rated 500. Stanford has a good record under Esquer of guys in the 300-500 range developing into good/great players.

This has been posted plenty already, but a lineup with Graham, Montgomery, Bowser and Moore is the envy of many in college baseball. I know Tommy Troy is getting a lot of hype but he hasn't been good the first two months of the past two seasons so let's wait and see.

$HAW HATES FUN!

Just some banner ideas that the old tree might hold up as he fills in for the suspended tree.

I was considering having t-shirts made, but they likely wouldn’t be ready ahead of Saturday. And doubt there would be enough fans to wear them.

My write up is here. This was mentioned in the Media Day Hub last week.

Connor Letourneau's article on Kanaan Carlyle is here. He's also got one coming out on Stanford's hoops program as a whole where he interviewed me. So, I'll share that once it goes live.

Can’t say I disagree with any of his points! (Apologies if posted elsewhere).
He echoes the pac 12 arguments that this is a horrific move, has huge human and environmental costs, and was done exclusively for football money.

Read that here.

A fact that I've been highlighting in my summaries is that we haven't had a single FBS game that surpassed the national average for points per game since October 16, 2021. Not one single game that was even above average. Many fans have an image in their head that 30 points is the threshold for good offense. That is an antiquated notion. 30 points is exactly average in modern college football. If you're good you're scoring 38+ points per game. Stanford's offense is actually worse than many fans assume.

To me the way to meaningfully visualize this in an apples-to-apples way is to look at what percentile we rank in FBS. That way you're accounting for evolution in the game. Here is the major college football scoring offense percentile for every Stanford offense since 1960 (I realize I'm doing percentiles backwards here but doing it this way saved me A LOT of math and this is just a quick exercise):

1. 2011 (5.8)
2. 1969 (7.4)
3. 2010 (7.5)
4. 1999 (7.9)
5. 1980 (8.0)
6. 1975 (8.8)
7. 2009 (10.0)
8. 2001 (10.3)
9. 1982 (11.5)
10. 1981 (11.7)
11. 2015 (14.1)
12. 1978 (14.5)
13. 1970 (16.3)
14. 1991 (17.8)
15. 1968 (21.8)
16. 1994 (25.2)
17. 1972 (26.8)
18. 1979 (28.6)
19. 2017 (29.2)
20. 1995 (29.6)
21. 1977 (30.3)
22. 1993 (34.9)
23. 1976 (35.8)
24. 2013 (36.0)
25. 1971 (36.7)
26. 1992 (39.3)
27. 1987 (43.3)
28. 1973 (43.4)
29. 2020 (43.8)
30. 2008 (45.4)
31. 1990 (47.7)
32. 1964 (48.3)
33. 1985 (49.1)
34. 1986 (49.5)
35. 1963 (50.0)
35. 1984 (50.0)
37. 1997 (53.6)
38. 1998 (55.4)
39. 1988 (56.2)
39. 2018 (56.2)
41. 2012 (58.1)
42. 2005 (60.0)
43. 2000 (61.2)
44. 1965 (61.7)
45. 2014 (62.5)
46. 1966 (63.9)
47. 1974 (64.3)
48. 2016 (65.6)
49. 1967 (68.6)
50. 1996 (71.2)
51. 1962 (71.7)
52. 2004 (75.0)
53. 2022 (75.6)
54. 1960 (79.6)
55. 1961 (81.1)
56. 2002 (82.9)
57. 2019 (83.8)
58. 1989 (84.9)
59. 2021 (86.9)
60. 2007 (89.1)
61. 1983 (92.0)
62. 2003 (92.3)
63. 2006 (99.2)

Observations:

* Historically, the 1964 offense is our median scoring offense. To baseline the discussion, that means that middle of the road is scoring more than 51.7 percent of offenses nationally. In 2022, that would be scoring 30.1 points per game.

* Unsurprisingly, the all-time Stanford median is right around that 50 percent mid-point. The 50 percent mid-point in 2022 is 29.8/29.4 points per game.

* In terms of the sea level of Shawfense, across the last seven Stanford offenses we have five below the median, one right around the median, and a grand total of one good scoring offense in seven years.

* I'm the one who always talks about context and comparing apples-to-apples but even I was shocked to not see the 2015 Stanford offense crack the top ten. That's a testament to the evolution in college football. 37.8 points per game just doesn't mean what it used to.

* in terms of the immediate recent past, last year's Stanford offense and this year's Stanford offense are both in our historical bottom 16 percent. The 2021 offense was reminiscent of the Steve Smith/Brian Johnson 1989 offense and the TC Ostrander/Tavita Pritchard 2007 offense. The current offense is reminiscent of the 2004 offense that got Buddy Teevens fired and the Jack Curtice 1960 offense that went 0-10.

DSMG. QED.

Deion for head coach!

#DSMG

Rubin was named Freshman of the Week for the fifth time this year.


Baird was named Offensive Player of the Week for the first time this year and third time of her career.

Read that here.

1. Because I was on a flight from India last night, I watched the game today and am delayed in providing my thoughts. I rolled straight into watching this game after a 39 hour travel day.....for that? David Shaw doesn't deserve the fans who still remain. Still, I can't imagine not watching even bleary-eyed the morning after and am glad there are similarly afflicted souls who want to commiserate on these message boards. It would help though if we had something more interesting to analyze or if the team was fun to watch. Instead we get the re-run of joyless, un-competitive football we've seen so many times. Please make it stop.

2. While the game sucked and had damaging errors in most phases, it was clarifying in showing what is most keeping Stanford down these days: Shawfense. I know that won't feel like a groundbreaking observation for those who pay attention to Stanford football but past analyses showed pretty clearly that between 2016-2021 it was Stanford's defense that was an even weaker link than the offense. That is shockingly no longer the case (more on that below). Against UCLA, the defense had fatal flaws but was competitive, but the offense was pitiful, like it has been almost continuously since Dalman, Mills, and Fehoko departed. Something to bear in mind is that opponents get a vote in how we look, which makes the discrepancy between our units' performance more stark than folks might assume just from seeing futility on both sides of the ball. UCLA has a great offense. They came into the game with the #8 Offensive FEI, sandwiched between Alabama and Michigan. Against that backdrop, we should not be ashamed about giving up points and yards to them. If anything, we were reasonably competitive: we actually kept the Bruins a tick under both their points per drive and yards per play averages, and the one play touchdown "drive" should be blamed on McKee more than the defense. Yes, there were big failings on defense (more below) but this was reminiscent of Teevens-era frustrations where the defense battled but is in a hopeless situation having to play alongside an offense that can't do a damn thing.

3. As always, I'll go into some detail on things that went well and things that went poorly, but we cannot lose sight of the forest for the trees. We have to speak as plainly as possible about what we're seeing on offense: with a cast outside observers and program insiders alike thought would be poised for offensive success, we are one of the very worst offenses in the country. The stretch of games without even an average number of points scored has now reached 12. A full year of not once being average. Last night was a particularly appalling entry in the parade of horribles. We join Colorado as the only Pac-12 teams to gain less than 5 yards a play against UCLA. UCLA is the #76 FEI defense in the country and was playing without their defensive coordinator due to last minute illness and yet we didn't score a touchdown until our 11th drive. A defense that gives up 2.56 points per drive, 91st in the nation, didn't need a coordinator to hold us to only 1.08, which would be the #5 defense in the nation.

4. The predictable part of the ineptitude was that we couldn't establish the run. Starting a walk-on running back will do that to you. But honestly the passing game was a lot worse than the run game yesterday. At least the run game broke 4 yards a carry, the first time we've done that in six games and above both the median and the mean for opponent run games against UCLA. Ashton Daniels deserves the bulk of the credit for that, leading the team in rushing and first downs despite being only tied for third in touches. [This week's moving the chains (first down) leader board: Daniels (4), Barrow (4), Yurosek (2), Humphreys (2), Robinson (2), Reuben (2), Tremayne (plus drawing a pass interference)] The Daniels packages have come in for a lot of criticism but they were the best thing the offense had going yesterday. I can't say anything nice about the passing game, which has totally fallen apart without Mike Wilson. Bowling Green is the only team to struggle against UCLA like we did. Colorado has one of the worst passing offenses in the country and yet they mustered a whopping 2+ yards more and 30+ passer rating points more against UCLA than we did.

5. I've seen the very poor recent passing performances elicit some commentary about benching McKee. I think that's premature on the merits and unrealistic regardless but he's been bad. Yesterday was horrendous. He was #95 of 96 qualifying QBs in Total QBR this week. But it's the passing offense as a whole that stinks. Drops abounded. Rouse and Hinton (and then add injury to the insult) had a very rough night in protection. Shawfense never schemes guys open anyway. Higgins and Tremayne are contenders for the most overrated Stanford receivers of the Shaw era. Rodney Gilmore (sorry to any friends of his: for my money bar none the biggest idiot calling college football on a major network in America) can't bring himself to speak insightfully about Stanford football (if he's capable of that at all) but Todd McShay argued repeatedly that Stanford's offensive scheme and personnel circumstances (he emphasized both) put McKee in an almost impossible position. It sounded like an NFL scout complaining he doesn't get a fairer chance to evaluate McKee. In light of those factors, I don't want to suggest that problems are all at McKee's feet (my god are they slow). But yeah, he's been bad. On the season he's now 8th of 11 Pac-12 QBs in Total QBR, 10th of 11 in traditional passer rating, and 6th of 9 in PFF grades.

Read that here.