Stanford Taking a Hit in Recruiting

Notre Dame fans are well aware of the effect the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the 2021 recruiting class. All 95 Stanford fans are surely aware as well.

Notoriously slow starters in recruiting, David Shaw’s staff is struggling to gain traction with top recruits this cycle. The Cardinal only have four commitments and none of them are considered blue-chip prospects. They are currently last in the Pac-12 in the recruiting rankings and are outside of the top-100 nationally.

If signing day was tomorrow, they’d finish dead last in recruiting out of all of the Power 5 teams.

Just like Notre Dame, getting kids on campus is huge for them. They haven’t been able to do that and the results have shown up. Perhaps if they did, we may have seen them land a few prospects that Notre Dame wanted like safety Kaleb Edwards‍ (Georgia Tech), receiver J Michael Sturdivant‍ (Cal), tight end Erik Olsen‍ (Colorado), and running back Will Shipley‍ (Clemson). They’ve been shut out with those guys and have missed at positions where they normally do well.

They have no offensive line prospects committed and the top guys they’ve offered like Tommy Brockermeyer‍, Nolan Rucci‍, and Donovan Jackson‍, have not closely considered Stanford. A lot of schools are going to swing and miss on prospects of that caliber, but the margin for error with Stanford is smaller because the amount of offers they hand out is a fraction of the number from most programs. 58 recruits from the 2021 class hold a Stanford offer. 27 of them also hold a Notre Dame offer, which might be surprising to some.

Out of those 27, Stanford landed safety Josh Moore‍ (Notre Dame liked him at Rover) and Notre Dame gained a commitment from guard Pat Coogan‍. There hasn’t been a lot of overlap in terms of head to head recruiting battles.

It’s difficult to say if Stanford can turn it around this cycle given the circumstances or if this is another indication that they are trending in the wrong direction. It could be both as well as the result of having a terrible season in 2019. Regardless of the why, this class will likely cost them in a few years because they are a program that relies on a high hit rate with their recruits.