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In the midst of one of the bleakest periods in Stanford football history, Tavita Pritchard delivered a signature moment that marked a turning point for the Cardinal program.
Nearly two decades later, a Stanford team that hasn’t won more than four games in any of the last seven seasons will again turn to Pritchard in a time of need.
General manager Andrew Luck is hiring Pritchard, another former Cardinal quarterback, as the team’s next head coach. Pritchard, who played at Stanford from 2006 to 2009 and engineered one of the biggest upsets in college football history with a 2007 victory over USC, will return to Palo Alto after a stint as the Washington Commanders quarterbacks coach.
Pritchard spent more than a decade as an assistant coach for the Cardinal, working under Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw after joining the program as a graduate assistant in 2010. He also served as a defensive assistant, quarterbacks and wide receiver coach, and ultimately as the offensive coordinator before departing for a job with the Commanders under former Washington head coach and current Cal general manager Ron Rivera.
Since arriving in Washington, Pritchard has worked with quarterbacks Sam Howell, Jayden Daniels, and Marcus Mariota. Daniels was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft out of LSU and won the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year Award. Daniels has been limited to just three games in 2025 due to injury, and Mariota has struggled as his backup as the team enters this weekend with a 3-8 record.
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Luck’s tenure as Stanford’s general manager will be judged in large part by how much success Pritchard enjoys as a head coach. The Cardinal have a wealthy donor base and the football program received a $50 million donation (opens in new tab) from alumnus Bradford M. Freeman that Luck said will provide a foundation to field “championship-caliber teams.”
“The ability to support our players through new scholarships and institutional NIL will reinforce Stanford as the preeminent place in the country to be a football scholar-athlete,” Luck said in an October statement.
Luck’s hiring of Pritchard marks the next step in the Cardinal’s desire to return to national prominence, as the program has faded from relevance in recent years after appearing in five New York’s Day bowl games over six seasons from 2010-2015.
Pritchard is best known in Palo Alto for leading Harbaugh’s Cardinal to a shocking upset over Pete Carroll’s Trojans in his first career start. Though Pritchard completed just 11-of-30 passes for 149 yards in the 24-23 win on Oct. 6, 2007 at the Coliseum, he threw the go-ahead touchdown to receiver Mark Bradford with less than 50 seconds on the clock to give Stanford its first lead of the game.
The Cardinal entered the matchup with the Trojans as a 41-point underdog, and their win marked the biggest point-spread upset in college football history until UNLV lost as 45-point favorites to Howard in 2017.
Pritchard retained the job as the Cardinal starting quarterback through the 2008 season, but was overtaken on the depth chart in 2009 by Luck, a redshirt freshman who would ultimately become the No. 1 pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.
Luck’s ascent to the starting job in 2009 coincided with Stanford making its first bowl appearance since the 2001 season, when Tyrone Willingham led the Cardinal to a 9-3 record.
Pritchard returns to Palo Alto with the Cardinal in the midst of a seven-year bowl drought as the team last won more than four games in 2018, when Shaw oversaw a 9-4 team that defeated Pittsburgh in the Sun Bowl.
Since Pritchard left Stanford, the Cardinal are 10-25. Shaw’s successor, Troy Taylor, was fired in March following multiple investigations (opens in new tab)into his workplace behavior. Luck, who was hired last November as Stanford’s first general manager, made the decision to fire Taylor and replaced him with interim head coach Frank Reich.
Reich coached Luck during the quarterback’s tenure in Indianapolis, but maintained that he was never interested in leading the Cardinal beyond the 2025 season. The former NFL head coach has led Stanford to a 4-7 record in his only season at the helm, and Saturday’s matchup with Notre Dame will mark his final appearance with the program.
Reich led Stanford to an upset over rival Cal in last Saturday’s Big Game, which prompted Rivera to fire ninth-year head coach Justin Wilcox on Sunday. Rivera said earlier this week that Wilcox may have retained his job if the outcome of last weekend’s matchup had been different.
It’s possible Rivera, who hired Pritchard in Washington, may have eyed the former Cardinal quarterback as a potential Wilcox successor, but in all likelihood, the Bears will pursue someone with West Coast roots and a much deeper connection to the Cal program.
Stanford, meanwhile, has its coach in place ahead of the start of the early signing period for college recruits, which begins Wednesday, Dec. 3, and the official opening of the transfer portal on Jan. 2, 2026.
The portal, of course, is extraordinarily active before players can officially commit to transferring programs, and Pritchard’s first orders of business will be ensuring Stanford can keep its best players in Palo Alto and pursue the type of talent elsewhere who can elevate the Cardinal roster.
