Stanford taps Taylor to revive struggling football team
STANFORD — The last time Stanford’s football program was searching for a coach to get it out of a rut, tapping the FCS ranks proved to be the right path.
Sixteen years after Jim Harbaugh arrived and helped build the Cardinal from a one-win team into a national power, Troy Taylor will try to do the same.
Stanford officially introduced Taylor as the replacement for David Shaw on Monday, hoping an innovative offensive coach with infectious energy can revive a program coming off back-to-back nineloss seasons for the first time in school history.
“The potential here at Stanford is huge,” Taylor said. “They’ve done it. They’ve had great success here. I think you got to adapt and adjust.”
The job for Taylor is perhaps more challenging than the one Harbaugh faced when he took over for the 2007 season.
After a six-year run under Harbaugh and Shaw from 2010-15 that included three Rose Bowl trips and two other major bowl bids, the Cardinal have fallen off dramatically.
Stanford went 4-8 in 2019 and then had back-to-back 3-9 records the last two years after the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
The recent downfall coincides with the loosening of transfer rules across major college football. The elite academic school has not been able to add to its roster through transfers as easily as most of its competition in the Pac-12 and nationally.
Taylor said he’s been given assurances that Stanford will loosen its restrictions on transfers and he will be able to supplement his roster with a handful of transfers each season as long as they are academically qualified.
“There’s players out there that fit that bill,” Taylor said. “You just got to reach out a little bit further and travel a little bit more miles and all those things. I’ve been assured that they’re open to bringing players in through the transfer portal as long as they fit the identity of Stanford.”
Taylor spent the last four seasons as head coach at Sacramento State, leading the Hornets to the FCS playoffs three times. Sacramento State did not field a team during 2020 because of the pandemic.