At the end of his first summer conditioning period in July 2015, Stanford freshman running back Cameron Scarlett took his turn on one end of a 30-foot rope, desperately pulling hand over hand while a group of veteran players pulled back on the other end. He held on for 20 minutes, dropping it only after his teammates decided he’d put up a sufficient fight.
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Taking the Rope, as the drill was called, was an annual rite of passage for Cardinal players.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but once you did it, you felt so accomplished,” said Scarlett, now with the USFL’s Michigan Panthers. “That’s how Stanford got to the pinnacle. We pushed ourselves so hard in the offseason that the season was easy.”
That fall, Stanford won its third Pac-12 championship in four years under head coach David Shaw. After taking over for Jim Harbaugh in 2011, Shaw led Stanford to heights never before seen in the program’s history: 11 wins in four of his first five seasons, the school’s first Rose Bowl win since the 1971-72 season and two Heisman Trophy runner-ups in Christian McCaffrey and Bryce Love. Along the way, Stanford popularized the phrases “Intellectual Brutality” and “Party in the Backfield” for the rough, rugged way the Cardinal won games. First under Harbaugh, then under Shaw, Stanford had a clear, successful identity.
That feels like a long, long time ago now.
On Saturday night, in a two-thirds empty Stanford Stadium, the Cardinal lost 35-26 to BYU to finish a second consecutive season 3-9. At his postgame news conference, Shaw nonchalantly told a smattering of reporters: “I just informed the team that I just coached my last game at Stanford.” He said he’d arrived at his decision only in the previous days. “This one phrase just kept coming to me: ‘It’s time.’”
There was immediate speculation that Shaw was exiting before the school fired him, but The Athletic spoke with two top administrators in the days leading up to the BYU game and they insisted that the school’s all-time winningest coach was in no danger of being dismissed. Early last week, Shaw met with school president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and athletic director Bernard Muir about the future of the program. He came back from Thanksgiving and told them he’d decided to step down.
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Stanford lost at least eight games in three of Shaw’s last four seasons, fielding one of the nation’s worst rushing offenses and a defense ranked in the 100s for four straight seasons. Former players and staffers described a gradual deterioration of the identity that once made the Cardinal so successful.
There are valid questions as to whether any Stanford coach can be successful in college football’s new era of transfers and NIL. The entire university admits just 40-50 transfer students per year, and the administration is only now discussing how to help the football program adapt. But many within and around the program believe the bigger issue in recent years was Shaw’s complacency.
“He doesn’t fire anyone, and everyone also thinks that they can’t get fired, so what you get is an environment (that is) the exact opposite of insanely competitive,” a former starting player said. “Then over time that becomes the norm, and you fall out of being the best.”
In recent weeks, The Athletic spoke with 18 current and former Cardinal players, staff members and administrators about the factors underlying the program’s decline. Some were granted anonymity to speak freely about the state of the program and Shaw.
“Coach Shaw is everything that’s right about football,” one former staff member said. “But football is not about being right. It’s about winning.”
A small, elite private school in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford has long held its own in football. It produced stars like John Elway, Andrew Luck, McCaffrey, and only three schools — USC, Michigan and Ohio State — have been to more Rose Bowls.
But in 2006, the program had bottomed out at 1-11. At that low point, athletic director Bob Bowlsby hired Harbaugh from the University of San Diego. By 2009 Harbaugh had Stanford ranked in the AP Top 25.
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“Jim Harbaugh was very clear when we got there,” former director of performance Shannon Turley said. “We were going to build a bully. And that’s exactly what we did.”
After routing Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl to finish the 2010 season, Harbaugh left for the San Francisco 49ers. Bowlsby promoted Shaw, the team’s 38-year-old offensive coordinator and a Stanford alumnus.
In contrast to the intense Harbaugh, Shaw was a mild-mannered and cerebral protege of two West Coast offense aficionados: his college coach, Bill Walsh, and former Oakland Raiders boss Jon Gruden. Numerous NFL teams pursued Shaw early in his tenure, but in December 2012 he signed a contract extension that nearly doubled his salary. He would later sign a deal in 2021 that made him the highest-paid coach in the Pac-12 at the time with a salary of $6.6 million.
Those early Shaw teams carried on the “Intellectual Brutality” mantra, churning out NFL tight ends and offensive linemen like Coby Fleener, Zach Ertz and David DeCastro. Defensive coordinator Derek Mason produced dominant defenses. McCaffrey, the son of former Stanford star Ed McCaffrey, led Stanford to the Rose Bowl in 2015. Love, a year behind him, carried the Cardinal to the Pac-12 championship game in 2017.
Those who came through the program around that time say the further Stanford got from Harbaugh, the more the program strayed from its physical identity. Mason left to become Vanderbilt’s head coach in 2014. Mike Bloomgren, Shaw’s offensive line coach for his first seven seasons and offensive coordinator from 2013-17, was named Rice’s head coach. In their stead, Shaw promoted his former quarterback Tavita Pritchard as offensive coordinator and former Harbaugh assistant Lance Anderson as defensive coordinator.
The year after Bloomgren left, Stanford plummeted from 30th to 123rd nationally in yards per carry despite the presence of Love and three offensive linemen — Drew Dalman, Walker Little and Nate Herbig — who now play in the NFL. Last season, the Cardinal ranked 126th.
“Bloomgren was the diesel behind the program,” said one former player. “Bloomgren was one of the best recruiters, he was one of the smartest offensive line coaches I’ve been around, including in the NFL, and he brought a certain swagger and confidence.”
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In an interview last Friday, Shaw said he tailored the offense to the changing personnel post-McCaffrey and Love, reflecting their strengths at quarterback (K.J. Costello, Davis Mills) and receiver (J.J. Arcega-Whiteside, Trenton Irwin).
“You can be as big and strong as powerful as you want,” said Shaw. “If you don’t have that guy behind you, you’re not going to rush for as many yards. I can’t say it more simply.”
Defensively, Stanford ranked as high as No. 2 in the country in 2014, churning out NFL defenders like Solomon Thomas and Harrison Phillips. That pipeline dried up, and the Cardinal have fielded some of the nation’s worst defenses the past four years.
Shaw, who called his own plays, never made sweeping changes. The son of a longtime college and NFL assistant, Willie Shaw, told The Athletic last spring he doesn’t believe in what his father calls “firings of convenience.” And Muir gave him wide autonomy.
As recently as Nov. 18, the day before Stanford’s loss to rival California, Muir told The Athletic: “I’m going to let David evaluate the inner workings of his program, and I’ve got to evaluate how we support the program even further.”
One key figure from Shaw’s program, however, did get fired — and some believe it changed the program for the worse.
Taking the Rope was the brainchild of Turley, who Harbaugh brought with him from San Diego in 2007 to become the program’s then 29-year-old performance coach. Over the next 12 years, Turley would win two national strength coach of the year awards and become Stanford’s director of sports performance for all of the school’s 36 sports. In a 2014 Pac-12 Network feature on Turley, Shaw said, “I think our weight program has a 1:1 correlation with our success on the field.”
“You could still feel a lot of the culture from Coach Harbaugh, and Coach Turley was the conduit who kept it all alive,” a former player said. “To this day I am still totally fearful of that man, but I would totally invite him to my wedding. I have so much respect for him.”
Much of Turley’s work took place outside the weight room. At least once a year, players had to do the Gator Run, in which the whole team pushed a John Deere Gator filled with weights on a lap around the stadium or practice fields.
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“He was a very hard-line accountability guy, and you understood you had to hold up to that standard or he’d let it be known you were failing the team,” said Dylan Boles, a defensive lineman who transferred to Northern Iowa in 2020. “He’d be comfortable calling you out in front of the guys.”
By 2017, Turley’s approach was drawing scrutiny from school administrators. Taking the Rope was scaled back to a five-minute version due to complaints from players and parents and was eventually scrapped after at least one upperclassman passed out.
“That drill had its time,” said Shaw. “Over time, that was one of those things that collectively we looked at and said, ‘We need to find another way to do this.’”
Multiple former players noticed Turley’s increasing frustration at what he perceived were diminished expectations within the building. The early 2010 teams weren’t far off from competing for national championships. By 2018, Stanford was playing in its second Sun Bowl in three years.
“As things started to change at Stanford, and different players were coming into the program, they wanted to renegotiate the standards,” said Turley, currently at Colorado. “I felt like I was fighting to justify why those things were critically important to us.”
By the end of the 2018 season, Turley said he was “physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. I was burnt out and worn out.”
When players returned from winter break, Turley was gone. He had been placed on administrative leave as the university investigated an anonymous complaint brought against him, reportedly by a player. In April 2019, the university announced Turley had been dismissed. Turley said he could not discuss his exit from Stanford due to the terms of his termination agreement. Muir said he could not comment on a personnel matter.
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Shaw declined to talk about specifics from the investigation, but said: “There are things that we all have to do in our positions, and that ended up being one of them.” Asked whether he or the university decided to terminate Turley’s employment, Shaw said, “Everyone from my position and above was involved.”
Through the years Shaw frequently credited Turley’s training methods — emphasizing stretching and flexibility more than bench press numbers — for reducing injuries. According to a 2013 New York Times story, Stanford’s number of games missed due to injury dropped by 87 percent from 2006 (the year before his arrival) to 2012. In both 2017 and 2018, just two opening-day starters missed more than two games.
In the past four years, Stanford has been ravaged by injuries. In 2019, the Cardinal’s first losing season in 11 years, 27 players were unavailable by the final game against Notre Dame. Three Week 1 offensive line starters missed most of the season; freshmen replaced them. Last season, there were 49 missed games just on offense.
“We’ve done deep dives every year on our injuries, and the majority of our injuries (recently) have been broken bones,” said Shaw. “Broken bones have nothing to do with strength and conditioning.”
And this season, running backs have gone down like Spinal Tap drummers. E.J. Smith and Casey Filkins were lost for the season, and replacements Brendon Barrow and Caleb Robinson also went down. The only healthy running back the last four games was Mitch Leigber, a safety who moved over midseason.
But the crisis at that position began in the offseason, when Stanford’s top two returning rushers, Austin Jones (now at USC) and Nathaniel Peat (Missouri), entered the transfer portal.
Shaw said he believed this year’s team, led by returning quarterback Tanner McKee, could challenge for a conference title. A sobering reality check came Week 2 against USC, a team Stanford routed 42-28 the year before. Led by quarterback Caleb Williams and several other high-profile transfers, the Trojans won 41-28 in Palo Alto.
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“What I didn’t know until we started the season,” he said, “was how much the transfer portal had really bolstered our competition. … The ability in college football right now to put together an All-Star Team is daunting.”
Stanford has long dealt with the strictest admissions standards of any Power 5 school. Athletes go through the same admissions process as other students; the university’s acceptance rate last year was 4.3 percent. That hadn’t prevented Shaw from regularly signing top 25 recruiting classes.
But transfers are another story. The university’s acceptance rate for undergraduate transfers is barely 1 percent, and students must be a freshman or sophomore. Graduate transfers must apply to a specific academic program.
The average Pac-12 roster this season (excluding Stanford) had 26 transfers. The Cardinal had just one, former Oklahoma starting safety Patrick Fields, who applied to Stanford graduate school on his own and walked on to the football team. Meanwhile, 22 of Stanford’s scholarship players have entered the portal since 2020. Nearly all were grad transfers, until January, when Jones and Peat left as juniors.
“It’s a different world, and Stanford changes slower than other places,” Shaw said last week.
But two administrators indicated Shaw did not pursue transfer portal recruits, either, whereas the men’s and women’s basketball programs each recently signed their first recruited grad transfers.
Last week, Muir and Shaw said discussions with the administration were underway about devising a process by which the football program could sign more transfers. Muir believes football could soon be able to sign “four, perhaps five” transfers per class, provided they qualify academically.
“Stanford has very rigorous admissions criteria that must be met by anyone who applies to attend,” Tessier-Lavigne said in a statement to The Athletic. “While we cannot alter those standards, we are actively exploring other avenues that would allow our football team to be as competitive as possible in the new national college football landscape.”
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Stanford seems less keen on getting too involved in NIL. It does not have an online marketplace that connects athletes with potential business partners, and it is not encouraging boosters to launch a NIL collective to assist with recruiting.
“We’re not outwardly trying to recruit kids from current schools or at the high-school level to come for NIL opportunities,” said Muir. “It’s to come for a Stanford education first and foremost.”
Muir also acknowledged “there’s a gap to cover” when it comes to the university’s investment in football. Unlike most Power 5 schools, football does not have its own headquarters. It shares the 28-year-old Arrillaga Family Sports Center, and the weight room is open to all athletes.
Despite an endowment north of $700 million, the 36-sport athletic department operates at a deficit. In 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit, the school announced it was cutting 11 teams, only to reverse course a year later in response to backlash from alumni. And since the university is bound by an agreement with its county capping the amount of square footage for new buildings, academics generally get first priority.
If green-lighted, funding for new facilities would not likely be an issue.
Said longtime season-ticket holder and donor Scott Roth: “Some of the people on the message boards, they have buildings named after them.”
About an hour before kickoff of Saturday night’s Stanford home finale against BYU, Caroline Chang, class of 1983, her husband and some friends were hanging out with drinks in their hands in a mostly empty tailgate lot. The longtime season-ticket holders were enjoying themselves, despite the miserable four seasons of football they’ve endured.
“I said when we were in the height of all the winning that we were in the golden age of Stanford football, and that we probably wouldn’t see it again,” Chang said. “And I think I’m right.”
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A reporter’s question about the program’s future provoked a debate among the group. Chang suggested that Shaw be forced to replace his coordinators if he wanted to keep his job, to which her friend Jeremy Ware responded incredulously: “Where are you going to find anyone better than the current coach that Stanford has?”
Now he’ll find out.
Two coaching agents The Athletic spoke with Sunday were bewildered by the school allowing Shaw to keep his job for as long as it did. One expressed “relief” that the program will be able to turn the page and said the next coach should be able to win more because enough high-level recruits will still want a Stanford degree.
“Stanford is always going to be a prestigious position, even though it’s harder today than it was when David took over,” the agent said. “And they’ll probably get a really strong list of candidates that want to be involved.”
Former Boise State and Washington coach Chris Petersen, now with Fox Sports, sits atop many Stanford fans’ wishlists, but it’s unclear whether he’d return to coaching. One agent believes Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman will be interested. Roman was on Harbaugh’s Stanford staff in 2009 and 2010 when the program took off. So was former Denver Broncos head coach Vic Fangio, who was on the sidelines at several Stanford games this season.
As for Shaw, he said in his postgame news conference he’s not looking to take another coaching job next season. He has appeared on the NFL Network’s draft coverage for the past several years and could likely get more TV work. One agent said Shaw’s stock has fallen too far to be an NFL head coach but he “has a chance to land another Power 5 job.”
While he wouldn’t say it publicly, Shaw had presumably tired of losing, and much of the fan base had tired of him. Both parties will forever have the memories of those Rose Bowls and top-10 finishes. Time will tell whether they see that again.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: Ezra Shaw, Thearon W. Henderson, Harry How / Getty Images)
