In Taylor's first year we were the #101 team in the country. In his second we are currently #101 again, though possible to go down given the abysmal ACC bowl season performance (perhaps Syracuse handling a Washington State team lacking their QB and coach and more could put some misleading lipstick on the pig). We are not yet seeing any sign we are on a path to success. To my mind this sets 2025 up as pretty crucial. I think if we are going to have hope in this staff getting anything going 2025 has to be a breakthrough. As far as I can tell, there are four leading theories for how that could happen:
(1) Comprehensive Improvement: The immediate hope when we hired Taylor was that we were reviving a moribund program with a coaching staff that would reverse the profound atrophy and enervation of the program. The idea was that we would see comprehensive improvement due to a fresher, more credible, and more fit for purpose culture, strength and conditioning regime, approach to roster management, position coaching, scheme.....everything. Hopes for this vision have declined each year the staff has been here as presumably if this were the case there would have been evidence of it, especially inheriting a program at the depths they did. But I am sure there are still some out there holding out hope that the first two years were the equivalent of a flush and a courtesy flush and the real test starts now.
(2) Roster Replacement: Things got so bleak at the end of the Shaw era that many of us felt like the best thing that could happen would be to get his players out of the program and new players in. No offense to the Stanford Men of recent vintage, but if you've never won it's hard to know good habits, model good habits for incoming players, inculcate a winning culture, and so forth. And to the extent that the theory of the case for a new staff was about culture, you want players identified by and nurtured by the purveyors of said culture. The idea went that the quicker the program could have Taylor's imprint on it the better. There is some hope that next year could take a decisive step in this direction. Looking at our current "winter roster" and adding the 19 incoming scholarship freshmen and five public transfer commitments and we will be looking looking at 67 (more if a couple of the transfers I think of as walk-ons should be counted differently) of approximately 86 scholarship players having only played for the current regime at Stanford. Approaching 80 percent of the roster never even played for Shaw, and with more transfers in the coming weeks we will likely move past that mark even more. As far as I can tell 100 percent of the roster will have played as much for Taylor as for Shaw. The roster replacement is almost complete and to the extent we thought that would be transformative we should see that manifest next year. This is potentially attenuated by the aforementioned lack of comprehensive improvement and by the lackluster recruiting we've seen from this staff. In other words, it's good we are cycling out the players of a failed program but are we replacing them with something better? On paper, I don't believe the 2025 roster will look better than any roster of recent vintage as we continue to hemorrhage former 4-star talent without recruiting incoming guys reputed to be as blue chip. The harm of subpar recruiting like Taylor has had while at Stanford is that you don't get to benefit from roster replacement anywhere close to how you should. If we do benefit from roster replacement it will have to be about evaluation and development, which is speculative and yet to be proven.
(3) Offensive Line Improvement: Football starting in the trenches is a truism for a reason and we've all seen enough football to know what a difference the offensive line makes. It's very easy to imagine Stanford looking fundamentally different if the offensive line can be even mediocre and not even like the same team if the line could somehow be good. Heading into the offseason it seemed like the program's - coaches and fans alike - mind was fixated on transforming the line via the transfer portal. This briefly looked promising with the Ruffins and Prongos news and hopes for more to come, but as of August 28 things are looking sobering, with Ruffins committing to Cal and a number of the others we had hoped for being connected elsewhere. We can assess the OL landscape more fully at a later point in the offseason but if we are going to head into 2025 with a line with zero guys who have ever been above-average Power Four linemen (Maikkula being top 62 percent in 2023 is the closest any of our guys have come) there should probably be somewhat measured expectations. On the other hand, I have ranted (and voluminously provided evidence for) for years about the overriding importance of age at the offensive line and if we go into 2025 with a starting line of Prongos, Leyrer, Maikkula, Pale, and House that would be a three guys in their fourth or fifth years (Leyrer in his fifth), a third year multi-year starter, and a second year guy. That might be ok. I think much here depends on the quality of the strength and conditioning and coaching. I was a lot more optimistic earlier in the Taylor tenure but I haven't given up on next year's line. Sheer age should make it better.
(4) Quarterback Improvement: The most straightforward path to improvement is if the most important position ceases being a liability. Total QBR judged Daniels to be 58th of 66 qualifying power conference QBs. PFF was more positive, 47th of 66 (when filtered to be the same number as the Total QBR qualifiers, filtered differently it was, for instance, 51st of 80). Either way that's a liability. Troy Taylor is a lifelong QB/QB coach who played in the NFL and has been the the college coach of numerous college superstars as well as a future NFL Pro Bowler (albeit a quirky/comical selection) plus the most dominant high school QB of all time (who was also prolific in college and is still in the NFL all these years later). In the time it took Shaw to coach one all-conference QB, Taylor coached the Big Sky Co-Offensive Player of the Year, a guy who became first team all Pac-12 the first year post-Taylor, another Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year, and a third Big Sky all-conference guy. In short, when we hired Taylor we had legitimate reason to think he was a bona fide great QB coach (or at least architect of offenses in which a QB can excel) and we shouldn't give up on that after two seasons, especially considering that the raw material Taylor had to deal with in that period (Daniels, Lamson, injured first year Brown) was not something anybody objective would consider Power Four material. IMHO the most logical hope we can have for a light switch to go on for this program in Taylor's third season is that Taylor can turn a non-Daniels QB into something mediocre or even good. The offense would look a lot better if that can happen. We don't know yet whether a transfer QB may be brought in to the competition but even if it's just Brown and Bachmeier there's a reasonable hope we can do better than the 58th (or more charitably 47th) best Power Four QB. There's also a good chance the level of QB play could be comparable or even worse. But for my money this is the path to success we can put the most stock in for 2025.
How do others think I've pegged this? If you have hope for 2025 (I hope you do but would understand if not), where is your hope coming from?
(1) Comprehensive Improvement: The immediate hope when we hired Taylor was that we were reviving a moribund program with a coaching staff that would reverse the profound atrophy and enervation of the program. The idea was that we would see comprehensive improvement due to a fresher, more credible, and more fit for purpose culture, strength and conditioning regime, approach to roster management, position coaching, scheme.....everything. Hopes for this vision have declined each year the staff has been here as presumably if this were the case there would have been evidence of it, especially inheriting a program at the depths they did. But I am sure there are still some out there holding out hope that the first two years were the equivalent of a flush and a courtesy flush and the real test starts now.
(2) Roster Replacement: Things got so bleak at the end of the Shaw era that many of us felt like the best thing that could happen would be to get his players out of the program and new players in. No offense to the Stanford Men of recent vintage, but if you've never won it's hard to know good habits, model good habits for incoming players, inculcate a winning culture, and so forth. And to the extent that the theory of the case for a new staff was about culture, you want players identified by and nurtured by the purveyors of said culture. The idea went that the quicker the program could have Taylor's imprint on it the better. There is some hope that next year could take a decisive step in this direction. Looking at our current "winter roster" and adding the 19 incoming scholarship freshmen and five public transfer commitments and we will be looking looking at 67 (more if a couple of the transfers I think of as walk-ons should be counted differently) of approximately 86 scholarship players having only played for the current regime at Stanford. Approaching 80 percent of the roster never even played for Shaw, and with more transfers in the coming weeks we will likely move past that mark even more. As far as I can tell 100 percent of the roster will have played as much for Taylor as for Shaw. The roster replacement is almost complete and to the extent we thought that would be transformative we should see that manifest next year. This is potentially attenuated by the aforementioned lack of comprehensive improvement and by the lackluster recruiting we've seen from this staff. In other words, it's good we are cycling out the players of a failed program but are we replacing them with something better? On paper, I don't believe the 2025 roster will look better than any roster of recent vintage as we continue to hemorrhage former 4-star talent without recruiting incoming guys reputed to be as blue chip. The harm of subpar recruiting like Taylor has had while at Stanford is that you don't get to benefit from roster replacement anywhere close to how you should. If we do benefit from roster replacement it will have to be about evaluation and development, which is speculative and yet to be proven.
(3) Offensive Line Improvement: Football starting in the trenches is a truism for a reason and we've all seen enough football to know what a difference the offensive line makes. It's very easy to imagine Stanford looking fundamentally different if the offensive line can be even mediocre and not even like the same team if the line could somehow be good. Heading into the offseason it seemed like the program's - coaches and fans alike - mind was fixated on transforming the line via the transfer portal. This briefly looked promising with the Ruffins and Prongos news and hopes for more to come, but as of August 28 things are looking sobering, with Ruffins committing to Cal and a number of the others we had hoped for being connected elsewhere. We can assess the OL landscape more fully at a later point in the offseason but if we are going to head into 2025 with a line with zero guys who have ever been above-average Power Four linemen (Maikkula being top 62 percent in 2023 is the closest any of our guys have come) there should probably be somewhat measured expectations. On the other hand, I have ranted (and voluminously provided evidence for) for years about the overriding importance of age at the offensive line and if we go into 2025 with a starting line of Prongos, Leyrer, Maikkula, Pale, and House that would be a three guys in their fourth or fifth years (Leyrer in his fifth), a third year multi-year starter, and a second year guy. That might be ok. I think much here depends on the quality of the strength and conditioning and coaching. I was a lot more optimistic earlier in the Taylor tenure but I haven't given up on next year's line. Sheer age should make it better.
(4) Quarterback Improvement: The most straightforward path to improvement is if the most important position ceases being a liability. Total QBR judged Daniels to be 58th of 66 qualifying power conference QBs. PFF was more positive, 47th of 66 (when filtered to be the same number as the Total QBR qualifiers, filtered differently it was, for instance, 51st of 80). Either way that's a liability. Troy Taylor is a lifelong QB/QB coach who played in the NFL and has been the the college coach of numerous college superstars as well as a future NFL Pro Bowler (albeit a quirky/comical selection) plus the most dominant high school QB of all time (who was also prolific in college and is still in the NFL all these years later). In the time it took Shaw to coach one all-conference QB, Taylor coached the Big Sky Co-Offensive Player of the Year, a guy who became first team all Pac-12 the first year post-Taylor, another Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year, and a third Big Sky all-conference guy. In short, when we hired Taylor we had legitimate reason to think he was a bona fide great QB coach (or at least architect of offenses in which a QB can excel) and we shouldn't give up on that after two seasons, especially considering that the raw material Taylor had to deal with in that period (Daniels, Lamson, injured first year Brown) was not something anybody objective would consider Power Four material. IMHO the most logical hope we can have for a light switch to go on for this program in Taylor's third season is that Taylor can turn a non-Daniels QB into something mediocre or even good. The offense would look a lot better if that can happen. We don't know yet whether a transfer QB may be brought in to the competition but even if it's just Brown and Bachmeier there's a reasonable hope we can do better than the 58th (or more charitably 47th) best Power Four QB. There's also a good chance the level of QB play could be comparable or even worse. But for my money this is the path to success we can put the most stock in for 2025.
How do others think I've pegged this? If you have hope for 2025 (I hope you do but would understand if not), where is your hope coming from?
