[Goose]

All very true Goose and hard to disagree.
Well except Bill Walsh comes to mind

There are a few parallels, but also massive differences. Pritchard spent lots of years as a David Shaw protegee and assistant. How much independence he had was unclear, but was assumed to be minimal. Even when he was OC, Shaw still called the plays. Walsh OTOH spent 5 years as a very active OC in the NFL for Paul Brown. He was clearly viewed already by his peers as definite head coaching material and other teams were actively looking at him. I am sure you already know about it, but https://davidharriswriter.com/home/sampl...l-dynasty/ is a good read anyway.
 
Pritchard has a ways to go before he could be considered a HC candidate. OTOH he is probably already an OC candidate and there is no reason that he can't be a "Bill Walsh" type story in like 5 or 6 years. That is why IMO he wouldn't accept a Stanford HC offer today. He knows he isn't prepared and failing would derail what is a pretty good career path ahead of him. Walsh had paid his dues. Pritchard has not yet, but he is on the way.

[Goose]

All very true Goose and hard to disagree.
Well except Bill Walsh comes to mind

There are a few parallels, but also massive differences. Pritchard spent lots of years as a David Shaw protegee and assistant. How much independence he had was unclear, but was assumed to be minimal. Even when he was OC, Shaw still called the plays. Walsh OTOH spent 5 years as a very active OC in the NFL for Paul Brown. He was clearly viewed already by his peers as definite head coaching material and other teams were actively looking at him. I am sure you already know about it, but https://davidharriswriter.com/home/sampl...l-dynasty/ is a good read anyway.
 
Pritchard has a ways to go before he could be considered a HC candidate. OTOH he is probably already an OC candidate and there is no reason that he can't be a "Bill Walsh" type story in like 5 or 6 years. That is why IMO he wouldn't accept a Stanford HC offer today. He knows he isn't prepared and failing would derail what is a pretty good career path ahead of him. Walsh had paid his dues. Pritchard has not yet, but he is on the way.