After a nearly two-month hiatus, Stanford football returned to the gridiron on Monday, kicking off its first session of spring practices.
Following an underwhelming 8-5 record in the 2014 season, the Cardinal’s first without a BCS bowl appearance in five years, there’s a different mentality around the team this spring.
“There’s a hunger right now,” said head coach David Shaw. “As much as we try not to worry about what people say about us, it’s nice when people don’t talk about us. Our guys get upset.
“We’ll be underdogs early on more often than not early on…We lost a lot of guys, didn’t play that great for the first part of the season. Finished really strong, but there are going to be a lot of people have about us and our guys are eager to answer those.”
Positional battles have gotten underway on all sides of the ball: on the offensive line with the departure of Andrus Peat, a projected first-round prospect in the upcoming NFL Draft; on the defensive line, with the loss of all three starters; and even on special teams at both the punter and place kicking positions.
There were no major injuries to report, but a host of players will miss portions of spring ball. Rising senior defensive end Aziz Shittu will miss the first two-week session and is doubtful for the Cardinal’s post-finals two-week session, as he continues to recover from an injury that ended his season back in October.
Rising fifth-year senior defensive back Ronnie Harris will miss both sessions as he continues to recover from an injury, opening up some time for younger defensive backs throughout the spring practices.
Rising fifth-year senior running back Remound Wright will miss the first session for disciplinary reasons.
Other minor injuries affecting just this two-week session are as follows: Rising fifth-year senior fullback Patrick Skov (swollen knee) and rising sophomore center Jesse Burkett will likely miss the first session, and rising fifth-year senior linebacker Kevin Anderson will be limited.
Shaw also addressed some of the swirling rumors around the status of Stanford’s assistant coaches, who were linked to positions at other schools and some NFL jobs.
“It’s a great sign of success for people to want to come raid your staff,” he said. “There were multiple [attempts], some more publicized than others, some not publicized at all, but with our staff there’s always NFL sniffing around…there’s a lot of colleges that came by. Thankfully, all our guys stayed.”
The Cardinal will continue the first session through March 8, before taking a break for winter quarter finals.
Contact Jordan Wallach at jwallach ‘at’ stanford.edu.
Shaw’s post-practice audio: