His knee is sound, and Stanford’s Phillips is a happy man
How happy was Harrison Phillips to get back on the Stanford practice field after nearly a year on the sidelines?
The Cardinal lost their nose tackle in the 2015 opening loss at Northwestern.
After surgery, he spent the rest of the season watching road games on an iPad in his dorm room and helping graduate assistants break down game film.
“I was isolated a lot from the team because of the rehab and also because of the extra academic load I took” as a result of the injury, he said.
Back with his pals in spring football, he was in a much better frame of mind, although he wasn’t allowed to take part in full-contact drills.
[...] he’s fully involved in practice for a team that is counting on him and Solomon Thomas to anchor the line in a defensive unit that has plenty of speed but not a lot of bulk.
The redshirt sophomore packs 295 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame, a far cry from the 248 pounds he weighed after the Arizona State game his freshman year.
Nose tackle David Parry was hurt in that game, so Phillips was playing a lot more than he had anticipated as a freshman.
At Millard West High School in Omaha, Neb., he was a one-man wrecking crew.
Tom FitzGerald is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.