They are the "old" guys. The mature ones, who completely buy into the dietary regimen and practice demands. It's as if they've been around forever. They're the football team's fifth-year seniors, and the defense has six of them, almost all in spotlight roles.
"What they've done," says Derek Mason, the coaching staff's director of defense, "is that they've seen exactly what the program is, and they're invested. Not just in the X's and O's, but they're invested in what this place is."
An array of personal and career considerations makes it anything but automatic that players use a fifth year of eligibility when they have it. This season, the result is a tight-knit last hurrah for an imposing group: defensive linemen Ben Gardner and Josh Mauro, linebackers Shayne Skov, Trent Murphy and Jarek Lancaster and defensive back Usua Amanam.
"All the guys I came here with were coming back for a fifth year," says Murphy, "so it was like, all right, let's all come back and kind of have one more great season."
And maybe not "kind of." Recognized in preseason polls as a national championship contender, Stanford got off to a 5-0 start. At that point, the defense had limited opponents to 20 or fewer points in 13 of the last 17 games.
Gardner had made his decision to return for another season after close discussion with Skov and Murphy, and he believes there's at least a smidgen of destiny involved. "We really felt like we could be as special a defensive unit as we've had around here at Stanford."
Two games into the season, Amanam was acutely aware of the extra motivation. "This is truly my last go-around as a Stanford Cardinal," he notes, "so it makes everything a little different. You want to push yourself just a little bit harder, just a little bit longer. You want to make this season really memorable."
Making that happen depends in part on how the fifth-year seniors assert themselves as leaders. "I remember looking up to the fifth-year guys when I was a freshman," adds Murphy, "and they just seemed like they were 10 years older than me. It was unbelievable."
Now it's Murphy's turn, and he understands the implications in all their detail.
When the younger players don't recognize the value of every drill and exercise, he says, "they see the older guys grinding down, doing it hard and hitting each other, popping pads and things like that, and they go, 'Well, I have to do this.'
"And then they just know that's our style, and if that's your style and that's what you do every day in practice, then it's going to be easy to do that on Saturday."
Mason talks about a culture of success. In football clichés, he's more architect than commander. The fifth-year players—there also are three on offense—are described in clumps of near synonyms: "the foundation, the cornerstones, the mortar." And "the integrity," meaning both character and glue.
"Those guys can actually tell the story better than I can," he declares. "With that being the case, I feel like I learn just as much from them as they from us."
