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Thoughts? (I love the look)

Time for one of my favorite posts of the year, giving a preseason prediction of our top players. This was a fun exercise for me in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. 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 ACC 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, doing a nice job in 2022 overall but struggling predicting who would be best, and then doing even better last year getting five of the top ten right (better than the four of the top ten the previous two years) and 28 of the top 35 (same as in 2021 and 2022). Let's see how I can do this year:

1. Elic Ayomanor
2. Collin Wright
3. Ashton Daniels
4. David Bailey
5. Scotty Edwards
6. Levi Rogers
7. Anthony Franklin
8. Elijah Brown
9. Micah Ford
10. Connor McLaughlin
11. Chris Davis Jr.
12. Wilfredo Aybar
13. Emmett Mosley V
14. Tobin Phillips
15. Zahran Manley
16. Tiger Bachmeier
17. Che Ojarikre
18. Jackson Harris
19. Sam Roush
20. Teva Tafiti
21. Jack Leyrer
22. Clay Patterson
23. Mitch Leigber
24. Gaethan Bernadel
25. Simione Pale
26. Tristan Sinclair
27. Brandon Nicholson
28. Zach Rowell
29. Luke Baklenko
30. Jake Maikkula
31. Fisher Anderson
32. Jay Green
33. Omari Porter
34. Benji Blackburn
35. Aaron Morris

Apologies to Ryan Butler, Justin Lamson, Zach Buckey, Braden Marceau-Olayinka, Bryce Farrell, Matt Rose, Zach Buckey, Jahsiah Galvan, Sedrick Irvin, Cole Tabb, Mudia Reuben, and others. Butler, Lamson, and Farrell were tough omissions for me as I think they are more likely to be top 35 in snaps than at least one or two guys I included, but this exercise is truly meant to be a prediction and as such I insist on trying to be realistic. While those guys have very good shots at 200+ snaps, it is almost certainly not happening that we'll have four key contributing RBs or three key contributing QBs and I do think Harris has definitively passed Farrell, so I made judgment calls on what I think will happen. As always, obviously many such subjective judgment calls in here and I look forward to hearing folks' thoughts.

P.S. For the longest time I had an audacious pick in here of Javion Randall bucking expectations (which for outsiders couldn't be lower considering he's one of our lowliest regarded recruits ever) and becoming a key contributor in his first year. Just have hunch on that. But I'm a coward and swapped him out for Morris at the last minute. Don't feel great about that but at some point I have to stop tinkering and submit my bid for the year.

Not that I'm expecting him to be QB1 but what do you guys think are the odds that we see him take the field in some capacity against TCU next week? Based on the tea leaves, it feels like a greater than 50/50 shot right now.

_

Hey, hey, hey. We're 32.


Thank goodness we don't have a top ten most difficult as it was when we were in the PAC12.

I wish our first game was a body bag one so we could cruise and work things out.

Notice how hard some of the former PAC12 teams schedules are.

With the disolution of the Pac-12 and the Pac-12 channel does anybody have a clue as to if Stanford games will be televised? If so by what network? (other than the possibility of the ACC Channel).

2025 3* Safety Omari Gaines has committed to Stanford per his X account. He was previously commited to Penn State but decommitted on March 1st. He recently visited Stanford with his parents.

Surprised nobody has pointed out that the premier telecast tonight is ESPN’s featuring of the North Alabama vs. Southeast Missouri State game. Stanford opponent and ACC darkhorse SMU (featuring Jonathan McGill) will be on CBSSN but I thought somebody here would mention Patu getting a stage on the most prime time of Week 0 stages.

Read and watch that here.

Many of you are quick to dump on our SID. That's futile since we don't have an SID.

Here's the staff: https://gostanford.com/staff-directory

If you can find an SID there I'd be surprised. I am unable to do so.

Gostanford has no stats for our WBB in Italy. I would really like to see them just to find out the playing time of our various team members.

Thoughts?

Read and watch that here.

Read that here.

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

We have long lamented (and in these last five years in the wilderness understood why) that Stanford is so utterly out of sight and out of mind in the college football landscape. We are totally irrelevant and nobody cares about us, at least right now. When stories get written we are almost always invisible, whether we have something salient to offer the conversation or not. I have kind of given up on posting mainstream stories in which this is obvious because it's almost always the case. Still, when ESPN ran their ranking of the top 100 players in college football for the 2024 season, I very much expected Elic Ayomanor to be on the list. Honestly did not occur to me somebody could publish a ranking with 13 college receivers and not include Ayomanor. Oh well. Anyway, for those interested in who the reputed big dogs are in the ACC and on our schedule, here you go:

12. CB Benjamin Morrison (Notre Dame)
15. LB Barrett Carter (Clemson)
27. RB Omarion Hampton (North Carolina)
39. DE Ashton Gillotte (Louisville)
42. RB Jaydn Ott (Cal)
43. DE Rueben Bain Jr. (Miami)
44. DE Patrick Payton (Florida State)
45. DT Howard Cross III (Notre Dame)
46. RB Damien Martinez (Miami)
48. WR Kevin Concepcion (NC State)
50. DT Peter Woods (Clemson)
52. S Xavier Watts (Notre Dame)
56. QB Cam Ward (Miami)
63. DE Antwaun Powell-Ryland (Virginia Tech)
66. WR Xavier Restrepo (Miami)
82. QB Riley Leonard (Notre Dame)
87. QB Preston Stone (SMU)
88. CB Dorian Strong (Virginia Tech)
90. CB Quincy Riley (Louisville)
96. TE Mitchell Evans (Notre Dame)
97. OL Jalen Rivers (Miami)
98. CB Aydan White (NC State)
100. CB Azareye'h Thomas (Florida State)

Observations:

* Obviously the upshot is that a group of mainstream college football experts (blame David Hale, Adam Rittenberg, Bill Connelly, Chris Low, and Paolo Uggetti) don't think Stanford has one of the 100 best players in the country or top 18 players in the ACC. There are some who may want to use that as bulletin board material (Collin Wright, David Bailey) but the one that jumps out, obviously, is Ayomanor. I think it's a mistake to exclude him. If there is anybody on the planet who I don't think needs more fuel or for whom this kind of snub is more irrelevant it's Ayomanor. I will look forward to him trying to prove he's as good as Concepcion and Restrepo (Louisville's Caullin Lacy is as big of a snub as Ayomanor but will probably not make ESPN look bad in the wake of yesterday's news that Lacy broke his collarbone and is out for a while). But I don't think Ayomanor will care or that this will affect him in the slightest. What I love about him is I think he will be pissed off for greatness whether touted or ignored or coming off a 1,000 yard season or medical redshirt.

* Speaking of Stanford being irrelevant in the national eye, this ESPN exercise on preseason top 100 players last had a Stanford player on it when Walker Little was #23 heading into the 2020 season (when he ended up skipping the season) and #34 heading into the 2019 season (when he ended up playing one game).

* Strong defensive flavor to this list, both in the ACC and nationally. Looks like an especially remarkable group of talent at DE and CB. Looks pretty weak at LB and extraordinarily weak at OL. Could not believe my eyes to see we don't play a single OL reputed to be among the top 100 players in the nation. This is not a function of the list being unbalanced by position as this list does a pretty good job of recognizing players across the field. Rather, the ACC has only one of the top 11 OL in the country, and he is #11 (and we don't play his team).

* By missing Florida State and Miami we miss a lot of the marquee individual talent, especially at DE and RB.

* All in all it seems like the place where we will be most challenged is by elite CBs....which go up against our best position. Ayomanor vs. Morrison/Strong/Riley/White will be some of the best subplots of our season (assuming health on both ends, and as injuries strike players away from the ball in greater incidence and as Ayomanor himself has a bad injury history, no guaranteee...fingers crossed though).

Read and watch that here.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/insider/story/_/id/40917654/ranking-134-fbs-teams-tiers-2024

Still hard to believe how far we've fallen in just a handful of years. Hoping the last few years were rock bottom...

No doubt this program should have a floor of being at lest top 75 teams in the country

FSU and Georgia Tech tied 14-14 at half in Dublin, Ireland. GT lead 14-11 until the final play of the 1st half when FSU kicked a 59 yard field goal.

Nothing new really.

900 athletes is more than I thought. In any event, that's a lot.

Shortly after decommiting from Princeton, 2025 kicker London Bironas has indeed committed to Stanford. He is on scholarship.

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Read and watch that here.

Read that here.

Read that here.

10 NCAA Team titles in 24 years at the helm. Played at Stanford, then was an assistant coach for 14 years. Big shoes to fill. (Timing feels a bit surprising, but hopefully it just took her a while to arrive at the decision.)