[ColoradoTree]

I have to say that I'm particularly impressed by the staff's perseverance in pursuing Plan B kids this year.  The decommits/dings were painful, coming as late in the process as they did, but it's simply crazy that we replaced a 4-star safety (Ulloa) with another (Pryts), and a 4-star CB (Edmonds) with another (Eboh).  Pryts isn't a classic Plan B kid since we offered him pretty early on, I believe, but stealing a 4-star CB from Texas that's a UT commit in January?  And flipping a Boston College legacy kid from CT like Scooter Harrington who's a 4-star TE (on ESPN at least, and high 3 stars on the others) and might be an even better OLB with a January offer?  That's delightfully absurd. (And if Ulloa had stuck, it's unclear that Pryts's offer would have been committable anyway, given the rest of the numbers in the class.  I understand that we continued to pursue him for a while, but it seems like he re-emerged for us after the Penn State DC moved to Tennessee, so we may have .) 

But including guys like Pryts, we ensured that there were enough quality players who did what they had to do to navigate admissions successfully, with no guarantee that there would be a spot for them in the class.  The dropoff from our Plan A guys to our Plan B guys this year seemed remarkably less severe than in past years.  (The possible exception, of course, is adding 2-star RB Maddox to offset the losses of 4-star RBs Brandon Stephens and Beau Bisharat, but you can't win them all.)

Recruiting at Stanford is really, really hard, and convincing guys already committed to great options to keep working harder than they have to just for the chance of an offer from us might be the hardest part.  And this staff just did as well as could possibly be expected at it. 

[ColoradoTree]

I have to say that I'm particularly impressed by the staff's perseverance in pursuing Plan B kids this year.  The decommits/dings were painful, coming as late in the process as they did, but it's simply crazy that we replaced a 4-star safety (Ulloa) with another (Pryts), and a 4-star CB (Edmonds) with another (Eboh).  Pryts isn't a classic Plan B kid since we offered him pretty early on, I believe, but stealing a 4-star CB from Texas that's a UT commit in January?  And flipping a Boston College legacy kid from CT like Scooter Harrington who's a 4-star TE (on ESPN at least, and high 3 stars on the others) and might be an even better OLB with a January offer?  That's delightfully absurd. (And if Ulloa had stuck, it's unclear that Pryts's offer would have been committable anyway, given the rest of the numbers in the class.  I understand that we continued to pursue him for a while, but it seems like he re-emerged for us after the Penn State DC moved to Tennessee, so we may have .) 

But including guys like Pryts, we ensured that there were enough quality players who did what they had to do to navigate admissions successfully, with no guarantee that there would be a spot for them in the class.  The dropoff from our Plan A guys to our Plan B guys this year seemed remarkably less severe than in past years.  (The possible exception, of course, is adding 2-star RB Maddox to offset the losses of 4-star RBs Brandon Stephens and Beau Bisharat, but you can't win them all.)

Recruiting at Stanford is really, really hard, and convincing guys already committed to great options to keep working harder than they have to just for the chance of an offer from us might be the hardest part.  And this staff just did as well as could possibly be expected at it.