[Farm93]

My biggest beef with Shaw's recruiting is his inability to recruit redshirt seniors to return for their 5th year.  Last season, we had almost no 5th year seniors with guys like Barton et al retiring or transferring. This year, we have 11 former starters who are either playing for other teams (Eboh, Hattis, Costello, Hamilton, Powell, Williams, Swann) or not playing this season (Little, Adeebo, Pryts, Head). This doesn't count the non-starters who transferred out (Stewart, Speights, et al).  We didn't need or want all of those guys back and you can't fault Costello, Adeebo and Little who made NFL decisions, but this team would sure look different if we had 6 more 5th year seniors with 2 more experienced OL, 2 more DL, a ILB and starting CB. Those are positions of precarious depth that for various reasons our program wasn't attractive enough to retain those players. It bums me out and in my opinion not a good reflection of the state of the program.  Other programs don't have that kind of inability to retain 5th year seniors.  People will respond that we didn't have scholarships for them all and that they didn't get into grad school at Stanford, but the reality is most of them made football decisions and decided they were better off elsewhere and we had room for Swann, Williams, Hattis, Hamilton, Eboh, Pryts and Head who all would have seen playing time and most of them would have been starters.

 

Is it really Shaw's fault or is it that maybe Stanford's grad programs are the hardest to get into out of any other FBS school?

The grad transfer is going to be a long term challenge.

Players come for a Stanford degree, and they get that degree.  
If they have NFL aspirations there can be a lot of reasons to go somewhere else for a year.  
Easier academic load, better CFP prospects, opportunity to show an ability to thrive, or thrive in a different system, play a year closer to home.   The list goes on and on.

Getting a player into Stanford for one year feels like a tough deal.   The coaching staff may need to spend a lot of time to potentially get a non-starter from another program for a single year.   There are probably some times it makes sense and it might be easier than JuCos.   Still, would think most Stanford programs will need to get and succeed by finding qualified incoming freshmen.  

I think Shaw has done the right thing by publicly supporting those that want to test the waters in other places because that approach probably reassures....potential incoming freshmen.

[Farm93]

My biggest beef with Shaw's recruiting is his inability to recruit redshirt seniors to return for their 5th year.  Last season, we had almost no 5th year seniors with guys like Barton et al retiring or transferring. This year, we have 11 former starters who are either playing for other teams (Eboh, Hattis, Costello, Hamilton, Powell, Williams, Swann) or not playing this season (Little, Adeebo, Pryts, Head). This doesn't count the non-starters who transferred out (Stewart, Speights, et al).  We didn't need or want all of those guys back and you can't fault Costello, Adeebo and Little who made NFL decisions, but this team would sure look different if we had 6 more 5th year seniors with 2 more experienced OL, 2 more DL, a ILB and starting CB. Those are positions of precarious depth that for various reasons our program wasn't attractive enough to retain those players. It bums me out and in my opinion not a good reflection of the state of the program.  Other programs don't have that kind of inability to retain 5th year seniors.  People will respond that we didn't have scholarships for them all and that they didn't get into grad school at Stanford, but the reality is most of them made football decisions and decided they were better off elsewhere and we had room for Swann, Williams, Hattis, Hamilton, Eboh, Pryts and Head who all would have seen playing time and most of them would have been starters.

 

Is it really Shaw's fault or is it that maybe Stanford's grad programs are the hardest to get into out of any other FBS school?

The grad transfer is going to be a long term challenge.

Players come for a Stanford degree, and they get that degree.  
If they have NFL aspirations there can be a lot of reasons to go somewhere else for a year.  
Easier academic load, better CFP prospects, opportunity to show an ability to thrive, or thrive in a different system, play a year closer to home.   The list goes on and on.

Getting a player into Stanford for one year feels like a tough deal.   The coaching staff may need to spend a lot of time to potentially get a non-starter from another program for a single year.   There are probably some times it makes sense and it might be easier than JuCos.   Still, would think most Stanford programs will need to get and succeed by finding qualified incoming freshmen.  

I think Shaw has done the right thing by publicly supporting those that want to test the waters in other places because that approach probably reassures....potential incoming freshmen.