1. Hope. We have hope. That's the bottom line for me. After a joyless and enervating stretch that lasted far too long (opinions differ on how many years but most of the last half decade certainly), Stanford football fans, players, and parents finally get to look forward to something. It may take some time for wins to return but the first steps are joy (or at least making Stanford football something that is fun to participate in and watch), energy, and optimism. This hire gives us all three.
2. Troy Taylor will transform Stanford football, for good or for ill. Given how far the program has fallen, the possibility the transformation is for the worse strikes me as vanishingly small. The program had become so uncompetitive, joyless, and hopeless under Shaw that the bar to clear is set very low. The chance remains that Taylor is a dud or the damage is too great or the systems and culture Taylor brings can't graft on to the Stanford patient. But the hire gives us a chance to find out if salvaging the patient is possible, which we wouldn't have had with Shaw. Where I don't have much uncertainty is that Taylor will transform Stanford football one way or another. This is a clean break from Shaw and even from Harbaugh. Stanford declined to opt for continuity with prior regimes or even styles and went in a different direction. I think that's prudent. There are multiple ways to skin a cat and competence and culture need to be the areas of focus over any particular approach.
3. While stylistic differences abound, Taylor does represent a clear attempt to replicate the Harbaugh magic in terms of reaching way down to FCS to find an uber-competent offensive wizard (and even a former quarterback who played high school football in Northern California and made it to the NFL before becoming a QB/offensive specialist coach). The obvious similarities create both promise and peril in my mind. While FCS to Power Five success stories are few and far between, one of the most spectacular being at Stanford with a similar resume coach inspires some confidence. I also like that Taylor offers similarities not just to Harbaugh but to Art Briles. Looking at the sweep of FCS to Power Five hires, what Stanford aims to do with Taylor and Colorado aims to do with Coach Prime follows Kansas State (Klieman), Stanford (Harbaugh), Virginia (London), Washington State (Wulff), and Vanderbilt (Johnson) making similar gambits. It's failed slightly more often than not (obligatory small sample size caveat) as far as I can tell, but Harbaugh and Klieman are encouraging cases, and it's further encouraging to peel back the history to understand that the spectacular and immediate nature of Taylor's success stands apart from the FCS to Power Five failures. Wulff wasn't even close to as successful at Eastern Washington. Johnson took much longer to excel at Furman, inherited a prouder program than Sacramento State, and didn't reach the heights Taylor did. London inherited a powerhouse at Richmond from Dave Clawson and parlayed an even smaller sample size than Taylor (two years, compared to Taylor's three seasons over four years) into the Power Five job. I think when you look at the details of what Taylor did compared to other FCS to Power Five jumps it starts to get super exciting. He feels a lot like Harbaugh and Klieman.
4. By now folks are probably very familiar with how impressive those details are but it bears emphasizing, as "FCS coach" doesn't come close to doing him justice. Miracle worker nonpareil is more like it. Taylor finished his Sacramento State career with a .789 winning percentage. For context, among the other ten coaches in school history only one ever won more than half his games (.535 win percentage). The Hornets in all their history had never been to the FCS playoffs and had only made playoffs at all once, in 1988 in Division II. Taylor took them to the playoffs in each of his three seasons. All three Hornets teams he coached were top ten in the nation. This would be like taking Kansas or Vanderbilt to multiple New Year's Six bowls. It's extraordinary.
5. That track record is the reason to be excited. All the talk of offensive wizardry misses the forest for the trees in my view. Whether a team excels because of offense, defense, balance, or whatever may be important in speaking to fan biases/preferences, but it's not what's fundamental: a head coach bringing the requisite overall culture, structure, management to lead a winning program. The reason to be excited about Troy Taylor is that he wins with overwhelming frequency in an environment that had never been conducive to winning before him. That's the story. That's the appeal. We need somebody who can create and sustain a healthy culture out of a bombed out crater. Taylor's track record provides reason to believe he can do it. There are no guarantees as a coach moves to a new level with new people around him and new challenges to confront. No man ever steps into the same river twice for he's not the same man and it's not the same river. All of that. But the best way to have confidence in his ability to do what we need is he's done something like it before.
2. Troy Taylor will transform Stanford football, for good or for ill. Given how far the program has fallen, the possibility the transformation is for the worse strikes me as vanishingly small. The program had become so uncompetitive, joyless, and hopeless under Shaw that the bar to clear is set very low. The chance remains that Taylor is a dud or the damage is too great or the systems and culture Taylor brings can't graft on to the Stanford patient. But the hire gives us a chance to find out if salvaging the patient is possible, which we wouldn't have had with Shaw. Where I don't have much uncertainty is that Taylor will transform Stanford football one way or another. This is a clean break from Shaw and even from Harbaugh. Stanford declined to opt for continuity with prior regimes or even styles and went in a different direction. I think that's prudent. There are multiple ways to skin a cat and competence and culture need to be the areas of focus over any particular approach.
3. While stylistic differences abound, Taylor does represent a clear attempt to replicate the Harbaugh magic in terms of reaching way down to FCS to find an uber-competent offensive wizard (and even a former quarterback who played high school football in Northern California and made it to the NFL before becoming a QB/offensive specialist coach). The obvious similarities create both promise and peril in my mind. While FCS to Power Five success stories are few and far between, one of the most spectacular being at Stanford with a similar resume coach inspires some confidence. I also like that Taylor offers similarities not just to Harbaugh but to Art Briles. Looking at the sweep of FCS to Power Five hires, what Stanford aims to do with Taylor and Colorado aims to do with Coach Prime follows Kansas State (Klieman), Stanford (Harbaugh), Virginia (London), Washington State (Wulff), and Vanderbilt (Johnson) making similar gambits. It's failed slightly more often than not (obligatory small sample size caveat) as far as I can tell, but Harbaugh and Klieman are encouraging cases, and it's further encouraging to peel back the history to understand that the spectacular and immediate nature of Taylor's success stands apart from the FCS to Power Five failures. Wulff wasn't even close to as successful at Eastern Washington. Johnson took much longer to excel at Furman, inherited a prouder program than Sacramento State, and didn't reach the heights Taylor did. London inherited a powerhouse at Richmond from Dave Clawson and parlayed an even smaller sample size than Taylor (two years, compared to Taylor's three seasons over four years) into the Power Five job. I think when you look at the details of what Taylor did compared to other FCS to Power Five jumps it starts to get super exciting. He feels a lot like Harbaugh and Klieman.
4. By now folks are probably very familiar with how impressive those details are but it bears emphasizing, as "FCS coach" doesn't come close to doing him justice. Miracle worker nonpareil is more like it. Taylor finished his Sacramento State career with a .789 winning percentage. For context, among the other ten coaches in school history only one ever won more than half his games (.535 win percentage). The Hornets in all their history had never been to the FCS playoffs and had only made playoffs at all once, in 1988 in Division II. Taylor took them to the playoffs in each of his three seasons. All three Hornets teams he coached were top ten in the nation. This would be like taking Kansas or Vanderbilt to multiple New Year's Six bowls. It's extraordinary.
5. That track record is the reason to be excited. All the talk of offensive wizardry misses the forest for the trees in my view. Whether a team excels because of offense, defense, balance, or whatever may be important in speaking to fan biases/preferences, but it's not what's fundamental: a head coach bringing the requisite overall culture, structure, management to lead a winning program. The reason to be excited about Troy Taylor is that he wins with overwhelming frequency in an environment that had never been conducive to winning before him. That's the story. That's the appeal. We need somebody who can create and sustain a healthy culture out of a bombed out crater. Taylor's track record provides reason to believe he can do it. There are no guarantees as a coach moves to a new level with new people around him and new challenges to confront. No man ever steps into the same river twice for he's not the same man and it's not the same river. All of that. But the best way to have confidence in his ability to do what we need is he's done something like it before.
