Stanford coach David Shaw opens up on how he self evaluates

David Shaw is looking at himself in the mirror when it comes to the Stanford football program. The Cardinals were one of the best programs in the country when he took over in 2011. Stanford went 82-26 over Shaw’s first nine seasons with the school and were ranked in the AP Poll at some point in each of those seasons. Stanford has since gone 11-19 over the last three years.

Shaw joined ‘The Paul Finebaum Show’ to talk about how he’s reframing his mindset based on the recent falterings of his program. He says he and his staff have broken everything back down to basics in order to get back to where they want to be.

“I think it’s based on what you believe because, when I went back around to ground zero, I went back to philosophy. I pictured myself if I was applying for the head coaching job at Stanford, what would be my philosophy?,” said Shaw. “I sat with my coordinators and we built scheme and structure based on our philosophies. That wasn’t a cruel thing I was doing to myself. It was for me to be the best me because I always have to self evaluate what I can do better, what I did wrong, what I did well. Once you build a structure, then this starts to come together pretty naturally.”

To fall from such a high place has to have been a fairly tough pill to swallow for Shaw. After wining three Pac-12 titles in his first five seasons, they haven’t won another since 2015. Remove the pandemic season where they played only conference competition and Stanford hasn’t had a winning Pac-12 season since 2018 either.

For Shaw, he says it’s about removing himself in order to fairly evaluate where he and the program are. Stanford can reminisce all they want. In order to get back to that place, they’ll need to find what works in the present to better focus on the future.

“The hardest thing is you’ve got to take your ego out of it. That’s not the easiest thing to do for some football coaches. Take my ego out of it, take my past out of it. Sometimes it’s, ‘Well, I’ve done such a great job. I don’t have to change anything.’ Well that’s crap, right?,” said Shaw. “Where am I now? Where are we now and what’s going to work for us now?”

With UCLA and USC’s departure from the Pac-12, the field just got a little smaller and a little less competitive. If anything, that should help another California team in the Cardinals get back to the success they were used to. Overall, though, Shaw is excited about what this team do in the here and now. The evaluation has already shown results this fall and, if it translates to the season, could get Stanford back to their winning ways under Shaw.

“Take the past out of it and build for what you have right now. We were able to do that. We took off all the things that we used to do and we said, ‘Okay. What can we do now?’ And we built it from the ground up over the course of about a month. Spring went really well, training camp is going really well so we I like where we are.”