Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2021 inductee Toby Gerhart '10, MBA '20 led the nation in rushing in 2009, won Unanimous All-America honors and the Doak Walker Award, wrote his name all over the Stanford record books and changed the course/brand/perception of the Cardinal football program. He did all of this while also starring at Sunken Diamond as a two-sport athlete.
Before his Hall of Fame induction, former teammates recounted some of their favorite Toby Gerhart qualities, memories and impacts on the Farm.
Andrew Phillips '10: "The first thing that comes to mind is the way he showed up as a freshman [in 2006]. Most of us were getting ready on scout team for the first game at Oregon, and I think he was one of two or three guys who made the trip. I have this memory of him coming back from Oregon, and it was a pretty big loss. He got back, and we were like little kids asking about the plane, the food, hotel, how loud Autzen Stadium was—it all sounded unreal. But he wasn't describing it as somebody who thought it was too big for them. For all of us, it would have been too big for us. We didn't travel because we weren't ready to play. It struck me in that moment that this guy was ready the moment he showed up at Stanford to be a contributor at a Pac-10 level. As a running back in particular, to be asked to carry the rock [16 carries, 55 yards] against a top-ranked Oregon team and really strong unit that year, it really dawned on me how impressive it was for Toby to be called on as a true freshman."
Bo McNally '09: "Toby is one of the few people who could accomplish what he did in two sports because he was an absolute physical specimen, and he also had the work ethic. Nobody ever questioned him. There were even summers where he didn't even come for a few weeks because he was so burnt out from going from football straight into competitive baseball season. Rightfully so, he usually took a few weeks off in the summer just to get his body back. There was never a question or a doubt from anyone on the team that he was going to come back in phenomenal shape. There was almost a feeling like, 'How is it possible that he's able to come back in this kind of shape and form that he does, without having gone through the same rigorous full-time offseason program that the rest of the players went through?' He not only came back and looked & was in great shape conditioning-wise, but he also came back and performed the way that he did in that 2009 season. Everyone was in awe a little bit of what Toby did—how much he could improve and how great of shape he could be in after spending six months playing baseball instead of preparing for the season like the rest of us."
Tavita Pritchard '09: "He was a little bit of an enigma in the locker room. He is not one of the more boisterous people, as we all know, but he was never separate. He was just quiet. I think that made his play that much more incredible because he played very loud. He would rip off a huge run and truck three people, and then he would get back up and walk back nonchalantly to the huddle. That was kind of who he is. He wasn't an in-your-face person. That was the way he was with everything—conditioning, the weight room and everywhere. That was how he operated."
Jim Dray '09: "Toby was that quiet guy. It's like that old adage: 'Empty barrels make the most noise.' The guys that talk a lot are usually the guys that don't have much to offer. Toby was the other end of the spectrum—really quiet and had a lot to offer."
Phillips: "Toby was never a guy to use words to motivate people. He just showed up and worked. I think we tried to embody that on the O-line, and a lot of that came from him. A lot of the demeanor of the Tunnel Workers Union started with him. He would bowl guys over, get six more yards falling forward, and never say a word. Other guys got fired up and intense, and 'Let's go.' Toby never said a word in games. He would just completely wear people down, and that was what we tried to do on the offensive line. I think we mirrored each other in a lot of ways."
Erik Lorig '09, MA '11: "Toby was a quieter guy, and he was on multiple teams between football and baseball. It wasn't his way to be the loudest guy in the room. He would work with the team and blend in. But he spoke with his playing ability. The best players in football speak with their play on the field. They could be quiet or loud, but the language on the field for Toby was his quiet focus. That's how he was in the NFL, too. I remember we faced each other a few times in the NFL. Toby still was always quiet, never tired and moved smoothly."
McNally: "Toby spent the least amount of time of anyone with the team in the offseason because he was playing baseball. We didn't get the same kind of actual hours with Toby that a lot of us would have liked because he was really well liked and really well respected. I think it actually speaks volumes to what kind of impact he had on the team when he was there, given the fact that he was voted captain, even though he wasn't with the team through all of winter conditioning and spring practices. I think part of that was because people respected him so much because of the way he carried himself when he was around the team. He was not a vocal leader or a rah-rah guy, somebody who was going to be bouncing off the walls with energy. But he worked as hard if not harder than anybody and played as hard if not harder than anybody. He really earned the respect of his teammates in much less time than other people would need to earn enough to be voted captain. I think that's just an example of how unique he was in the impact he was able to have. He probably spent 30 or 40 percent of the time with the team in the offseason but was still able to earn enough respect to be voted captain. Honestly, I don't think anybody else could achieve that like he did."
Chris Marinelli '09: "One of the magical traits that Toby had was his ability to always be available, especially those last couple years. Despite how much we gave him the ball, how much we featured him and how many hits he took, he was always out there. Toby found a way to perform at an extremely high level, even though he was just being worn down—both by us and by the hits he was taking constantly. He was available for practice. He was always around the team. Then he would show up on game day, and he was magically 100 percent in performance, even though I knew he was not 100 percent in how he felt.
"That is an odd skill set. As things have shifted in the college game to a focus down the line for NFL careers, that was never an issue for Toby, which was crazy considering the level of star that he was. He held the ball a ton. He played four years. We featured him every play in some capacity, and he just always performed. He never complained. Just, 'Feed me the ball and watch what I do.'"
Pritchard: "He took a beating, but he delivered a beating, too. Toby was black & blue after games, but it's like the old saying, 'You should see the other guy.' You see him beat up, but then you turn on the tape and see how he takes those bruises because he is dealing the blows. Seeing each week how he recovered just in time for game time to go out and do it again was definitely impressive.
Lorig: "He was resilient. People ask what it means to be tough. He could take hits, work with them and move off of them. That kind of player who is resilient on the football field doesn't take a hit and then go down. He is able to take a hit, absorb the force or work with it.
"He had unlimited energy. He never looked tired, which was mindboggling to me. I used to also play hard, too, and so many Stanford players play hard. We would get tired. I see Toby, and he is going for 200 yards while we're running the same Power play over and over again, and he looks the same. That energy and ability to maintain was unique."
Richard Sherman '09: "He was a workhorse on offense who would torment defenses. On the offensive side of the ball, you knew that if you were blocking, he could pop at any time. You would do your best to stay on your block because he could always make it into a big run. From the defensive perspective in practice, you had to bring your big boy pads to play against Toby."
McNally: "I was fortunate that in team drills, I only found myself in a one-on-one tackling situation with Toby once. Toby used to complain that because of his reputation as a bruiser, people would try to tackle him low and take out his legs and not take him head-up. We were talking about this one meal during fall camp, and I said, 'Hey man, I'll tell you what. If I ever get a chance to tackle you, I won't go low. I'll take you high and give your legs a rest.' Unfortunately for Toby, I was not a man of my word, and when the opportunity presented itself, just instinctually when I met him in the hole, I went low and took out his legs. It worked. I got him on the ground for a one- or two-yard gain instead of what I'm sure would have been five or six yards, or longer, if I had actually tried to take him up high."
Dray: "In my mind, it was like watching guys try to tackle a fire hydrant. I've never seen people bounce off someone so viciously. It wasn't like he always ran guys over and sustained multiple hits and broke tackles. Guys bounced off him violently, and that always stuck with me."
Lorig: "I remember how smooth Toby was. The way he played football was very efficient. He played really hard and with intent and knowledge where to go. That's step one as a football player to be great. Toby had smoothness: playing hard and knowing where to go. Toby always looked like that. Even in practice or when he was jogging in walk-throughs. We did a lot to take care of Toby's body in practices, but even when he was walking, in his mind he was playing at 100 percent or higher. That's why I think he looked smooth."
McNally: "Part of what makes Toby such an impressive back is that he obviously has the size, strength and power. But what really separated him was the body control and balance. You have a lot of backs who are big and strong but don't have the ability to transfer all of that power into contact. The way he could shift his balance and shift his weight, and absorb contact or deliver contact—you saw that all the time, tacklers bouncing off of him. He would take their momentum and use it against them. Then he would use that to bounce outside.
"The other thing that Toby surprised people with was his top-end speed. He was big, strong and powerful, but if he got to the edge, he could take it to the house. There are very few backs with that kind of size and strength who have the actual ability to turn on the jets and score on a long run. He wasn't just a short-yardage back. He was an every-down back and a big play potential back, for sure."
Marinelli: "As a lineman, you felt like he was always going to finish forward and do something positive. If you could get him a clear run at the second level, it was going to be pretty fun to watch. There were a lot of those memories in my head of him hitting the hole and getting by me or someone else, and then putting those devastating should blows on safeties down in the box or even a lot of linebackers. We knew that he was going to run for a bunch of extra yards, if we could just get him to the second level. It wasn't one of those things where we had to have perfect combinations to get him through. If we could just get him free of the D-linemen and into some of the skill guys, he was going to really have magical highlight runs."
Dray: "You always have a pride in your work and in executing your job. Every football player has that individually and collectively. But when you have a guy like that behind you running the ball, you always go that extra little bit to finish your block and hopefully peel that one guy off Toby."
Nov. 7, 2009 · Stanford 51, #7 Oregon 42
Marinelli: "The Oregon game that year was his coming out party. He destroyed them. He ran all over them. We expected that because Oregon was a flashy team, and we knew we could run on them."
Nov. 14, 2009 · Stanford 55, #11 USC 21
Lorig: "The USC game stood out because we were both from Southern California. I always played harder and cared more when we played SC. We just bullied USC that game. Toby would run that Power and that 'U' offense so hard. That game, SC called out what we were running and knew exactly where he was coming. We would run it anyway, and we made them hurt. Toby kept going and going. Smooth, efficient, energy. That game made SC look like we were bullying them pretty bad."
Dray: "I remember at USC seeing guys tap out. I've never seen guys tap out before, literally, because they wanted to get off the field and couldn't take any more of this. It felt like the program was turning a corner. It all led up to that one moment, and that was when I felt the program finally took a turn. We weren't as good as the teams that followed us—the Orange Bowl team and the teams that won the Pac-12 title and Rose Bowls—but that year with Toby was when it was turning."
Phillips: "At USC, we ran 96-Power like 12 times in a row, and people always ask me, 'Is that story true about the nose guard saying, 'If you run power one more time, I'm taking myself out'?' It's 100 percent true. The guy was joking. He didn't say it like he was on his dying breath; it was a tone he used. But he said it. Everybody on the field knew it was true because we ran Power 12 times in a row or 16 times in a row, whatever it was.
"I remember Erik Lorig was hurt and not playing that game, so he came out early in pregame. He ran up and down our sideline saying, 'This is not the same team!' USC was ranked No. 11 at the time, and we were unranked. Erik said, 'Guys, this isn't them. I know this program. I know this team, and they're not ready to play. They don't feel it. They don't want it. Something is going on, and they are not ready to play.' We came out and absolutely bullied them. To go down there and physically dominate the team that had been the alpha-dog of the Pac-10 for so long, that again is a big part of Toby's role in the program and what he meant to Stanford Football."
Lorig: "Yeah, it's possible that I put blood into the water."
Sherman: "I remember the game at USC, and the Taylor Mays matchup was huge. There were maybe three pivotal moments in the game, and Toby won all three of them against Taylor Mays in the open field or at the point of attack. Tobin Bo ran through him. I think he jumped over him one time. It was pure abuse. I think that was the game that people began to understand that Toby was just a different beast."
Nov. 28, 2009 · Stanford 45, Notre Dame 38
Marinelli: "The Notre Dame game stands out the most to me. Last game of the regular season. We are playing for a better bowl game, and they had a lot at stake. That rivalry always exists. And he went off on those guys. He had a couple of those bone crushing runs… He was doing that in the last game of the year, when the spotlight is the largest and he is up for Heisman contention, in a game that was outside Pac-10 play with a big TV audience. He blew it out of the water in that game. We were all feeling terrible by that game, and he had to be feeling 10x worse than the rest of us."
Phillips: "Obviously the Notre Dame game stands out. The game that put him on the map nationally. If we had won a few more games that year, he probably would have been on the map a little sooner. To watch a guy completely take over a game—I don't know where he got the energy for those last few drives, and then throw a touchdown to Ryan Whalen. As if he hadn't already taken over the game completely, he then goes and throws a big 4th & 4 conversion to score a touchdown and win the game ultimately. If that's not a Heisman Trophy performance, then I don't know what is. The fact that he didn't win it is an absolute travesty. I'll never forget that game. I'll never forget him running over Gary Gray. I'll never forget them folding and giving us a touchdown, so that they could have a chance to come back. I don't think I'll ever see a more dominant, physical performance than Toby Gerhart put on that night against Notre Dame. It was just astounding."
Sherman: "You felt like you always had a chance with Toby out there. I remember the game where he ran through Notre Dame, and we should have lost that game. We definitely should have lost that game. Golden Tate went off and won the Biletnikoff [Award] that day with 200 yards. I had a rough game. But you could not stop Tobin Bo Gunnar. That's how it felt every week. It was kind of like a security blanket. Usually, you get that from a quarterback. You got that from Andrew [Luck] the next year and the year after, but you don't usually get that from a running back. It's like what Derrick Henry is to the Titans at this point. You feel like, 'As long as we have him, we have a chance.'"
Pritchard: "The Notre Dame game was so late in the season, and everyone was pretty beat up by that point. But nobody was more than Toby. To go out and put on the show that he did was just incredible. By that time, it was also no secret what we were going to do: hand the ball off to him 30 times a game. You still couldn't stop him."
Dray: "I remember thinking how insane it was that he lost the Heisman Trophy to Mark Ingram that year, when how unbelievably he produced in the biggest games. It's one thing to rush for a lot of yards against a horrible Division I opponent, but against Notre Dame [205 yds, 3 TD], USC [178 yds, 3 TD] and Oregon [223 yds, 3 TD], he was carrying the team on his back. You can see how his biggest production was in his biggest games against the biggest opponents. 'Holy s--t, this guy is the real deal.'
Phillips: "I remember this strength coach, and he was only with us for a year. We were at an early morning session. The freshmen had to do something extra, and I forget why. This coach is going down the line saying, 'You're not going to do anything. You think you're going to contribute? You think you're going to help this team win a Pac-10 Championship?' Toby looks this guy square in the eye and says, "I'm going to win the Heisman Trophy.' He replies, 'You're going to win the Heisman Trophy?' 'Yes sir.' It rubbed the guy the wrong way because Toby was dead-on convinced. I never saw Toby brag about anything. I never saw him flip a bat after he hit a home run in baseball. I never saw him give an emphatic first down signal after a big run. I never saw him do any kind of crazy celebration after scoring a touchdown. But he looked this dude square in the eye as a true freshman and said, 'I'm going to win the Heisman Trophy.' Which he was robbed of, by the way. It was an amazing thing to watch. The fact that it should have come true and lived on in the Heisman lexicon is a f---ing shame.
Sherman: "It was devastating and frustrating when Toby didn't win the Heisman. It felt like he was cheated. It felt like we let him down a little bit because if we had more team success, it would have showcased how he had more success. I felt like he did everything he could to put himself in that position, and we didn't have enough success as a team and have his back enough to put him in the spotlight where he should have been.
"During recruiting, we had many conversations about how we were going to do our best to change the culture. Every young guy thinks they are going to be the next coming and turn things around for the program. He was really the guy who turned things around for the Stanford program. I'd like to think I had a part in it, but Toby's part was a lot bigger. Especially the year he should have won the Heisman, he changed the perspective in how people saw the program around the country. When we were figuring out jersey numbers, there were only two single digits left when we came in: 7 and 9. I didn't know what number he wore in high school, but he said, 'I've got to have 7.' Okay, so I had 9. It worked out for both of us pretty well."
Lorig: "I think Toby really cared about Stanford Football. I think he really cared about it. He really cared about running the way that he and Harbaugh wanted him to run: hard, smart and consistent."
McNally: "Toby was the embodiment of what we wanted Stanford to be in the early years. We wanted to be tough and physical, and we did not have that reputation. If you asked any team how would you describe Stanford, they would say, 'Oh yeah, they're smart but they're pretty soft.' I think Toby's entire presence on the field in 2009, and his ability to pound the rock, is really what helped Stanford's brand and identity to turn the corner from smart & scrappy and not a tough football team to running Power like 11 times in a row against USC, score 55 points and now we're the bully of the conference. Without Toby, I don't think that would have happened, or at least not as quickly as it did.
"You can point to the next decade of success, in recruiting and the type of O-linemen we got—obviously a lot of people factor into that success—but it started with those kids in high school watching Toby Gerhart truck the kid against Notre Dame and keep running in the fourth quarter on the game-winning touchdown drive. 'Wow, Stanford is the real deal. Stanford is tough. Stanford is a bully. I want to go play for a team like that.' And I think Toby is the one who set those wheels in motion from a product brand perspective. [Jim] Harbaugh obviously had a ton to do with it. Shannon Turley behind the scenes. All the folks in recruiting and all those assistants who did a great job. Vic Fangio and those great defenses. All of that played a great role. But I think if you trace it back to one season and one moment in time that shifted the narrative of what Stanford Football was, it was Toby Gerhart's bruising, bullying Heisman run in 2009."