The new roster is out. What we've learned:
* The only fifth year players back are Tristan Sinclair, Spencer Jorgensen, Bradley Archer, and big news I'll get to in a moment. We knew this would be the case but shockingly young to have so few grown men on the team. Major order of business for Taylor to build a culture where it's attractive for players to play fifth and sixth years at Stanford. I don't know how you compete in the trenches otherwise. Some had been holding out hope (despite the total lack of evidence and even existence of evidence he was gone) that Ethan Bonner might return, but he didn't.
* But we arguably made up for that with the return of a familiar face: Zahran Manley is back! I don't know whether the year absence was academic, personal, or beef with Akina but regardless we now have a guy with several career starts under his belt at a position (corner) that just lost its four key contributors. In 2021, Manley's PFF grade was only a tick behind Kelly and Toomer. In 2020 it was at about the same level, which was the best of any corner on the roster that year. He didn't play a significant amount of snaps in 2019 but graded at a comparable level. The bottom line is that a position at which we feared we returned nothing at all we're getting an extremely proven average Pac-12 corner (18th of 40 corners in 2020, 29th of 61 in 2021). Huge news. Coupled with Gaethan Bernadel at ILB we have two plug and play "newcomers" on defense.
* I wanted to celebrate the good news before the bad. Those who read above the fifth year players who are back may have read between the lines to see that Barrett Miller is gone. This is devastating. He legitimately could have been the favorite to start at four if not all five of the offensive line positions. The OL rebuild is now even more daunting.
* In addition to the exodus of upperclassmen, we've lost Brandon Jones, Kenji Swanson, Jason Amsler (walk on), Will Gibson (walk on), Donovan Jones (walk on), Jacob Katona (walk on), Connor McFadden (walk on), Caleb Robinson (walk on). It's disappointing Jones never did more after appearing like an attractive recruit, but he was small and always injured and not a significant loss at all. I'm happy to see corner manned by Manley and a youth movement. Swanson is big news just because he was in his first year and that's a big change to the expected OL pipeline going forward, but I've expected since before we signed him that he could be an early medical retirement. Dude was never healthy and when he was he looked like a giant playing football rather than any sort of athlete. It's probably for the best that we can plan out the OL pipeline without a delusion that we can count on him. Nonetheless, that leaves the three most recent classes with eight scholarship OL, which is disturbingly light. We're getting somewhat healthier - last two classes account for seven of those (still too light but better) - but have a lot of work to do in OL recruiting in 2024. Walk on attrition is never news, but we should note McFadden and especially Robinson given the horrid running back depth. Robinson in particular is a surprise to me.
* Walk on Anson Pulsipher is back after a two year church mission.
* RIP to the short-lived "EDGE" position designation. We are back to listing those players as outside linebackers. At least for now it's a one-for-one switchover at the scholarship level, so for now we can't read anything into it other than nomenclature. I am sure there will be major differences between the Anderson defense and the April defense but the roster doesn't really point the way. Notably, I was wondering whether anybody among Aaron Armitage, Lance Keneley, and Wilfredo Aybar would convert to defensive line. Not so far. By the way, I had to add the scholarship level caveat because walk-on Aristotle Taylor put on six pounds and is now a DL.
* More interesting than that nomenclature change is that we've done away with offensive line sub-positions entirely on the roster. Everybody is just "offensive line." To me this is a nod to reality. The competition is totally wide open and it would have been utterly misleading to list many of these players by position.
* The true freshmen on the roster are Tiger Bachmeier (as expected) and a mystery running back named Kenaj Washington. I assume he's a walk-on and his high school stats certainly don't suggest more. He's just about the tiniest player to ever play at Stanford.
* I read the tea leaves correctly and Caleb Ellis is now a corner rather than a safety. And of course Mitch Leigber is back at safety as the running back move was sheer emergency and never his true position.
* Also as predicted, fullback does not exist on Troy Taylor teams. Shield Taylor is now a tight end and walk-on Jacob Lowe is a running back (though I'm surprised he's no longer listed as a long snapper as well) and has lost ten pounds to try to keep up better with the small guys.
* I or somebody else could do a separate post just on weight gains/losses. One thing that has to be mentioned is Zach Buckey. He was troublingly light last year at 265....and now he's listed at 260! What the hell is this guy doing? Don't want to judge too rashly based just on roster weights, but this guy might be a worthless steak eater (or in this case not eating enough steak). We know the April defense requires DL to have dozens upon dozens of more pounds than Buckey brings to the table and yet we see a weight decrease. Doesn't seem like a good sign. In contrast, Jaxson Moi put on 21 pounds (!!!) to now tip the scales at 303, Anthony Franklin put on 14 pounds to be in a totally different weight class at 281, Zach Rowell is also at that weight after a 9 pound gain, and Pat Caughey put on 19 pounds to surpass Buckey's weight by a few pounds. This is the off-season work on paper one would expect. On balance it seems very welcome, but Buckey is disappointing. For what it's worth, Tobin Phillips stayed exactly even at 295, which is perhaps somewhat disappointing but he started from a higher baseline than the others. Still, it's interesting for Moi to pass him as our largest defensive trench dog. Austin Uke also stayed stable at 290. On the other side of the trenches, Jake Maikkula put on 11 pounds, which I think is significant to make him a contender in the competition. In other news, the weight losses for John Humphreys and Bradley Archer seem significant enough that it probably points to a purposeful attempt to gain speed (same may be true for walk-on David Kasemervisz but that's harder to know with walk ons). Our non-Ese Dubre ILBs are very small compared to recent Stanford standards, but that's potentially consistent with the Wisconsin M.O. and something I welcome. That being said, Matt Rose put on some significant weight. I wonder if tight end is another position the new regime would like lighter as weights across the board indicate a preference around 240. I keep waiting every year for Benjamin Yurosek to put on weight and become a better blocker and he never does. Maybe he's found a staff that doesn't care as much about that (or maybe he is a bad off-season guy). Joshua Thompson's 12 pound weight gain to 207 startled me. Terian Williams gained 9 pounds to get to 184. Also, I know he's a back-up kicker so not really relevant but Emmet Kenney had a shocking 18 pound weight gain.
* The only fifth year players back are Tristan Sinclair, Spencer Jorgensen, Bradley Archer, and big news I'll get to in a moment. We knew this would be the case but shockingly young to have so few grown men on the team. Major order of business for Taylor to build a culture where it's attractive for players to play fifth and sixth years at Stanford. I don't know how you compete in the trenches otherwise. Some had been holding out hope (despite the total lack of evidence and even existence of evidence he was gone) that Ethan Bonner might return, but he didn't.
* But we arguably made up for that with the return of a familiar face: Zahran Manley is back! I don't know whether the year absence was academic, personal, or beef with Akina but regardless we now have a guy with several career starts under his belt at a position (corner) that just lost its four key contributors. In 2021, Manley's PFF grade was only a tick behind Kelly and Toomer. In 2020 it was at about the same level, which was the best of any corner on the roster that year. He didn't play a significant amount of snaps in 2019 but graded at a comparable level. The bottom line is that a position at which we feared we returned nothing at all we're getting an extremely proven average Pac-12 corner (18th of 40 corners in 2020, 29th of 61 in 2021). Huge news. Coupled with Gaethan Bernadel at ILB we have two plug and play "newcomers" on defense.
* I wanted to celebrate the good news before the bad. Those who read above the fifth year players who are back may have read between the lines to see that Barrett Miller is gone. This is devastating. He legitimately could have been the favorite to start at four if not all five of the offensive line positions. The OL rebuild is now even more daunting.
* In addition to the exodus of upperclassmen, we've lost Brandon Jones, Kenji Swanson, Jason Amsler (walk on), Will Gibson (walk on), Donovan Jones (walk on), Jacob Katona (walk on), Connor McFadden (walk on), Caleb Robinson (walk on). It's disappointing Jones never did more after appearing like an attractive recruit, but he was small and always injured and not a significant loss at all. I'm happy to see corner manned by Manley and a youth movement. Swanson is big news just because he was in his first year and that's a big change to the expected OL pipeline going forward, but I've expected since before we signed him that he could be an early medical retirement. Dude was never healthy and when he was he looked like a giant playing football rather than any sort of athlete. It's probably for the best that we can plan out the OL pipeline without a delusion that we can count on him. Nonetheless, that leaves the three most recent classes with eight scholarship OL, which is disturbingly light. We're getting somewhat healthier - last two classes account for seven of those (still too light but better) - but have a lot of work to do in OL recruiting in 2024. Walk on attrition is never news, but we should note McFadden and especially Robinson given the horrid running back depth. Robinson in particular is a surprise to me.
* Walk on Anson Pulsipher is back after a two year church mission.
* RIP to the short-lived "EDGE" position designation. We are back to listing those players as outside linebackers. At least for now it's a one-for-one switchover at the scholarship level, so for now we can't read anything into it other than nomenclature. I am sure there will be major differences between the Anderson defense and the April defense but the roster doesn't really point the way. Notably, I was wondering whether anybody among Aaron Armitage, Lance Keneley, and Wilfredo Aybar would convert to defensive line. Not so far. By the way, I had to add the scholarship level caveat because walk-on Aristotle Taylor put on six pounds and is now a DL.
* More interesting than that nomenclature change is that we've done away with offensive line sub-positions entirely on the roster. Everybody is just "offensive line." To me this is a nod to reality. The competition is totally wide open and it would have been utterly misleading to list many of these players by position.
* The true freshmen on the roster are Tiger Bachmeier (as expected) and a mystery running back named Kenaj Washington. I assume he's a walk-on and his high school stats certainly don't suggest more. He's just about the tiniest player to ever play at Stanford.
* I read the tea leaves correctly and Caleb Ellis is now a corner rather than a safety. And of course Mitch Leigber is back at safety as the running back move was sheer emergency and never his true position.
* Also as predicted, fullback does not exist on Troy Taylor teams. Shield Taylor is now a tight end and walk-on Jacob Lowe is a running back (though I'm surprised he's no longer listed as a long snapper as well) and has lost ten pounds to try to keep up better with the small guys.
* I or somebody else could do a separate post just on weight gains/losses. One thing that has to be mentioned is Zach Buckey. He was troublingly light last year at 265....and now he's listed at 260! What the hell is this guy doing? Don't want to judge too rashly based just on roster weights, but this guy might be a worthless steak eater (or in this case not eating enough steak). We know the April defense requires DL to have dozens upon dozens of more pounds than Buckey brings to the table and yet we see a weight decrease. Doesn't seem like a good sign. In contrast, Jaxson Moi put on 21 pounds (!!!) to now tip the scales at 303, Anthony Franklin put on 14 pounds to be in a totally different weight class at 281, Zach Rowell is also at that weight after a 9 pound gain, and Pat Caughey put on 19 pounds to surpass Buckey's weight by a few pounds. This is the off-season work on paper one would expect. On balance it seems very welcome, but Buckey is disappointing. For what it's worth, Tobin Phillips stayed exactly even at 295, which is perhaps somewhat disappointing but he started from a higher baseline than the others. Still, it's interesting for Moi to pass him as our largest defensive trench dog. Austin Uke also stayed stable at 290. On the other side of the trenches, Jake Maikkula put on 11 pounds, which I think is significant to make him a contender in the competition. In other news, the weight losses for John Humphreys and Bradley Archer seem significant enough that it probably points to a purposeful attempt to gain speed (same may be true for walk-on David Kasemervisz but that's harder to know with walk ons). Our non-Ese Dubre ILBs are very small compared to recent Stanford standards, but that's potentially consistent with the Wisconsin M.O. and something I welcome. That being said, Matt Rose put on some significant weight. I wonder if tight end is another position the new regime would like lighter as weights across the board indicate a preference around 240. I keep waiting every year for Benjamin Yurosek to put on weight and become a better blocker and he never does. Maybe he's found a staff that doesn't care as much about that (or maybe he is a bad off-season guy). Joshua Thompson's 12 pound weight gain to 207 startled me. Terian Williams gained 9 pounds to get to 184. Also, I know he's a back-up kicker so not really relevant but Emmet Kenney had a shocking 18 pound weight gain.
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