Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football: Stanford Cardinal Q&A with Channel Tree

Friends, it’s finally here — the regular season finale. It feels like just yesterday we were watching Sam Hartman debut in a huge way against some horrible teams to start the year, and now it’s the final game of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football season and our 8-3 Irish are about to take on the struggling Stanford Cardinal in the season finale on the road.

Stanford’s had a tough year, almost exclusively losing to any good teams they played but being feisty enough to challenge a few of them and even beat Coach Prime and his Buffaloes, which looks a bit less impressive now but for Stanford is still an impressive win in this first season under new head coach Troy Taylor.

So, how do the Cardinal stack up against ND for this matchup? To find out, I reached out to our good friends at Channel Tree Sports, my go-to destination for anything and everything Stanford athletics. I was lucky enough to get both David Ta and Sam Weyen answering our questions, and they provided some great insight into the Cardinal rebuild, how this season has gone, strengths and weaknesses of this team, and several other more…off the wall topics.

So, let’s not tarry any longer — time to dive into their answers and prepare ourselves for the final game until bowl season for our favorite frustrating football fellas.

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Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

1. It’s been a tough first season under new head coach Troy Taylor, but that was to be expected. What have you seen from him and his team so far that has Stanford fans excited for the future? How does he differ from David Shaw in how he’s approaching building and running the program?

Channel Tree Sports: Recruiting is much improved. The new staff has adopted a modern recruiting approach (modern: a word you’ll never hear associated with the Shaw regime). Embracing modernity in recruiting means a few things, including pursuing transfers. We used to get 1 every 3-5 years. This past year, Taylor scored 7. He’s aggressive and he’s lobbied Stanford to streamline a rather friction-laden process.

Embracing modernity also means clever playcalling. Troy Taylor’s offense is far more exciting and creative than Shaw’s 4-page playbook. There’s room for Taylor to grow, sure–his options are hamstrung by the personnel he inherited–but at the very least we’re not running it up the middle all the time. We’re all excited to see what Taylor can do once he has his guys.

In many ways Taylor is Shaw’s antithesis. Shaw’s staff was old, old school, unwilling to embrace the portal or NIL (to the extent that Stanford’s capable of doing so), and rather boring. Taylor’s staff is posting memes on Twitter. Shaw once described himself “as an NFL coach who adjusted to college because he loves Stanford” who preached duty and virtue. Taylor is a long-time high school coach who…