Admissions hurdle cleared, Stanford must close on linemen

Three of Stanford's priority recruits for the 2021 class have taken care of the student part of their responsibilities, now the Cardinal have to convince the athletes to join the program.

In the past couple days, Aaron Armitage, Derek Wilkins and Owen Prentice have received that special phone call from Stanford to let them know they were accepted into the university. (Football recruits have to go through the same application process as every other student.)

Armitage, Wilkins and Prentice occupy a special place on the recruiting board for this class: They play positions of need, are very talented, have visited and are admitted.

COVID-19 has reshaped the world and visits have not been allowed since early March, which is when all three of them took part in the only junior day Stanford has been able to host this cycle.

Stanford has struggled to win over the hearts and minds of recruits since then because COVID took away by far the most powerful tool in the program's recruiting tool box -- the university and all of the special people who typically are there to impress visitors.

That is not the case in these recruitments. Wilkins and Prentice have both visited multiple times and Armitage was able to see pretty much everything during the junior day weekend.

The Cardinal want at least three linemen on each side of the ball in the class and currently stand at zero commitments for both positions.

Depending on who you ask, Armitage, Wilkins and Prentice are all four stars. Armitage is No. 113 overall on Rivals. Prentice has a similar ranking on another site but is a three star just short of four star status on Rivals. Wilkins is also just outside the four star ranking on Rivals and is just above that dividing line on the other site.

Stanford under David Shaw doesn't lose many admitted recruits to other schools, but it's not the certainty that it used to be a few years ago.

It's likely a Stanford vs. USC battle for Armitage, with Florida recently making a charge as well. Cal reportedly inched ahead for Wilkins a couple months ago but Stanford was Wilkins' childhood dream school and his acceptance may push the Cardinal back ahead.

Prentice's recruitment went national and reached LSU just after he announced his list of top schools. Like any sane, competitive kid nowadays he immediately included the defending national champions on his list. That said, many believe that Stanford's top competition for the son of Harvard-educated parents is the hometown Huskies. (His sister, Emily, played rugby at Harvard.)

Stanford's performance at the line of scrimmage has been under a lot of scrutiny the past couple seasons for different reasons.

The offensive line has been rocked by injuries the past two seasons, which has made it nearly impossible to evaluate the job of two-year offensive line coach Kevin Carberry. Also the run game coordinator, Carberry had to use four freshmen over the course of last season and remake the run game on the fly.

The results were far below the standard set for most of the last 10 years.

However, the last two recruiting classes have been well regarded on paper and the performance of the first-year players last season was encouraging. Myles Hinton leads a talented group of five onto The Farm this summer.

There are high expectations for what veterans Walker Little, Drew Dalman and Foster Sarell can do leading the otherwise underclassmen-heavy group.

The 2021 class is viewed as an opportunity to add onto a repaired pipeline and take another step toward reestablishing Stanford's offensive line as a consistently elite unit. As of now, Prentice is the most realistic headliner of the unit in this class with offers in play with Nolan Rucci, Drew Kendall and Jack Leyrer.

The defensive line has been the subject of some criticism from Shaw, position coach Diron Reynolds and defensive coordinator Lance Anderson the past two years for failing to "Party in the Backfield". The mantra was established during the peak of Stanford's defensive dominance from 2010-2015 when the pass rush caused havoc for opponents.

During those seasons the Cardinal had future NFL players who could beat talented opposing offensive linemen one-on-one up front, allowing Anderson to only use four players to get to the quarterback.

Shaw, Anderson and Reynolds have not shied away from saying that the current group needs to step up in that regard.

Stanford only signed two defensive linemen in the 2020 class and might lose Thomas Booker to the NFL after this season. There is an urgent need to bring in players who have demonstrated the ability to make plays, Armitage and Wilkins fit the bill and have done so against elite competition.