From upset hero to head coach: Tavita Pritchard's mission to revive Stanford football

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Tavita Pritchard's college playing career took off when he helped lead Stanford to one of the most stunning upsets in college football history against Southern California, a win that helped lay the foundation for the Cardinal becoming a West Coast powerhouse.

Pritchard returns to The Farm as head coach, looking to get a school that hasn't had a winning record in seven years back to the heights it reached a decade ago.

Rebuilding an entire program is not quite like pulling off an upset against No. 2 USC as a 41-point underdog the way Pritchard did as quarterback in 2007, but the lessons he learned under coach Jim Harbaugh back then still resonate.

“There was no ostensible reason we should have believed we could beat anybody at that time,” Pritchard said Tuesday at his introductory news conference. “What Coach Harbaugh and that whole staff instilled in us was, with this brotherhood, with this team, we can work ourselves to be able to play and go toe-to-toe with anybody. You can call it naivete, you can call it overconfidence, audacity, whatever the word you want to use is. Our belief will be shaped and is already being shaped by the connection and brotherhood in there.”

The program Pritchard inherits is in better shape than the one-win team Harbaugh took over 19 years ago thanks to building blocks put in place by general manager Andrew Luck in his first year in the role and a stronger commitment to football from the university, including $100 million in fundraising this past year.

Luck said he interviewed about 30 candidates since firing Troy Taylor in the spring and putting Frank Reich in place as interim coach. While he wasn't committed to hiring someone with ties to Stanford, Luck called Pritchard's knowledge of how things work at a school that balances high academics with athletics was a bonus.

Luck knows the task of rebuilding won't be easy, but he believes he and Pritchard are the right team to get the Cardinal going back in the right direction. Stanford is coming off a 4-8 season under Reich following four straight years with a 3-9 record.

“Look, we’re going to stub our toes,” Luck said. “There is a lot of work ahead of us, a lot of work ahead of us. I certainly feel like I’ve stubbed my toe every day in this job. But I know we as leadership will continue to get better in our jobs and orient this around serving our young men and building championship culture and process. That’s all we can do.”

Pritchard spent much of the 2007-08 seasons as Stanford's starting quarterback before losing that job to Luck in 2009. After spending one year as Luck's backup, Pritchard then began a coaching career with the Cardinal, starting as a defensive assistant under coordinator Vic Fangio.

Pritchard then spent extensive time as an offensive assistant under coach David Shaw when he was part of a program that went to five BCS bowl games in a six-year span from 2010-15 before hitting a decline that has featured a .308 winning percentage the past seven seasons — the worst among any power conference school.

Pritchard was the offensive coordinator under Shaw during the first four years of that downswing before leaving in 2023 to take a job as quarterbacks coach for Washington in the NFL.

Luck said Pritchard's role on those struggling Cardinal offenses was a “massive portion” of the interview process.

“It’s certainly something he showed a lot of humility around, a lot of growth,” Luck said. “Without getting into the details, he was one person on a staff. He wasn’t in charge of the program. But he showed growth, showed learning, showed humility, showed honesty about what was going on that was good and what wasn’t frankly so good.”

Pritchard has been able to broaden his coaching career by spending the last two seasons in the NFL under head coach Dan Quinn in Washington and offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, who comes from an Air Raid background that is far different than the run-focused offenses Stanford employed under Harbaugh and Shaw.

Pritchard said his offenses will cater to the “super powers” of his players but believes the success will come from once again being strong in the trenches.

“I know we’ll be built up front,” he said. “I know there’s always five offensive linemen on the field. We’re bringing that. We’re going to make sure that position room is right. That was a common thread through all the great Stanford teams, was the offensive line. That’s a place we know we will recruit. We will make that kind of the heart and soul of the offense.”

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