Qb with coan should be steady...rb with williams -tyree should be fine...te mayer is elite ..wrs unknowns or injuries all over the place ...oline rebuild...the identity on o might be chuck and duck.hard to see a path where the o is championship caliber ...if that's the goal anymore..
I don't have a feel for this element among the underclassmen.
QB - IMHO it will be a upgrade. Offense can't be successful with a QB with Happy feet.
RB - will be much better.
TE - will be better
WR - don't think it will be worse but has a chance to be a major upgrade.
OL has 3 solid starters and we shall see on the development of the others.
Offense will have more explosive players on the field so it could balance the shortcomings at the OL (if they really are shortcomings).
I hope so, but Mayer is already so good I don't see how he could really get much better and I don't see any TE on the roster that can block like Tremble.
Especially with a QB willing and comfortable throwing seam passes.
If ND uses Mayer like they should he's a cheat code at the college level. Quite honestly, not throwing him out wide against Alabama and forcing them to make a decision of Surtain covering him or not was criminal lack of game planning.
Bill Belicheck 101
supposed to be pretty good pass catcher and Mitch Evans is a big athletic kid, supposedly 6'7"
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I expect the old Kelly special: 8-5.
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The young talent that rode the Kelly pine this season is highly regarded.
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Likely there will be a small step back when you lose as much talent on both sides of the ball as ND is losing, but ND has recruited well enough the last few years that it should be able to reload more than rebuild. The new OL will be the key to how it all goes down and ND that is still a position of strength although it won't be as experienced.
Patterson starts at center, Correll moves to tackle, Lugg mans the other tackle position. Filling in the guard positions shouldn't be much of a problem, given the higher level of talent that has come in, along with some of them having played meaningful minutes. I suspect Gibbons will man one of the guard spots.
Another possibility is that Blake Fisher is ready to start at RT from day one, we can move Correll to the other guard position.
It's a far different situation than 2007. There's plenty of talent ready to be played on the line, instead of having literally only 3 true juniors and seniors available.
Would help build for the future as well with Correll and those two forming a nice nucleus to prepare for 22 when we have Ohio State and Clemson. Along with the incoming freshmen we could have an Oline in a couple years that would would rival this year's line.
I'm simply going by what I saw during the season.
A off-season of coaching and conditioning can help anyone. Aaron Taylor, for example, went from a freshman who only played a handful of minutes, to being a pretty darn good starting guard after a single spring and summer time period.
Correll is a natural center and was recruited to play there. He did a decent enough job there in the couple games he played. His snaps were a little off at times but that can easily be corrected. His blocking was pretty good.
Patterson came to ND as a tackle and was moved to center to get him on the field. If he can prove to be as good at tackle then that seems the logical move.
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At the very least, they should both be contributors.
I think Spindler is ready. Fisher has higher upside, but probably needs at least a year to learn the technique needed at this level. He's still pretty raw and just dominated physically in HS.
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