Troy Taylor planning to rebuild team foremost with high school players, not transfer portal

Stanford head coach Troy Taylor has a rebuilding job on his hands with the Cardinal. The storied program has had a losing season three of the past four seasons, winning only three games in each of the past two years.

Many new coaches when taking a normal job would have dove head first into the transfer portal to try and rebuild the roster.

But Stanford is not a normal job. It is one of the foremost academic institutions in the country with strict academic standards. It’s not easy to get into, both out of high school and out of the transfer portal.

Because of that, Taylor said he is going to base his team building around high school recruiting and doing their best to dominate on the recruiting trail.

“We’re not bringing in 30 transfers a year,” Taylor said. “We will use high school recruiting.”

The Cardinal added only four players from the transfer portal this offseason while losing 17. However, 16 of those 17 players graduated.

The four players who transferred in are former Syracuse quarterback Justin Lamson, former Penn offensive lineman Trevor Mayberry, former Harvard interior offensive lineman Alec Bank and former FIU linebacker Gaethan Bernadel.

“We had a number we had a number of guys leaving the transfer portal: 17 guys —16 of them that had already graduated,” Taylor said. “They had an extra year from the COVID year. They lost their coach, David Shaw, who is an unbelievable coach and man. They had a rough couple of years and maybe they wanted a different experience. Although we wanted all those guys to stay, I did get it.”

Taylor is having success on the recruiting trail in the 2024 cycle. The recruiting class ranks 22nd in the 2024 On3 Industry Team Recruiting Rankings with 28 commits, six of whom are four-star players. The class is headlined by Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei four-star quarterback Elijah Brown, Avon (Conn.) Avon Old Farms four-star defensive lineman Benedict Umeh and Miami Christopher Columbus four-star EDGE Dylan Stephenson.