Just watched the 2004 Insight.com Bowl - ND -vs- Ore St. - wow, I forgot how bad ND sucked/lack of
overall talent during those Davie, Willingham, Weis years!!!
Replies to: Just watched the 2004 Insight.com Bowl - ND -vs- Ore St. - wow, I forgot how bad ND sucked/lack of
Davie brought in alot of Texas talent and Def guys, Weis brought talent just no OL
Willingham just acted like recruiting wasn't part of the job description.
Weis brought in decent OL talent, but had nothing to work with in 2007
2005's class: Paul Duncan, Mike Turkovich. Both ended up being starters.
2006's class: Sam Young, Eric Olsen, Chris Stewart, and even Dan Wenger. Young was a starter from day one, Olsen was a starter from 2007. Wenger was somewhat serviceable as a center, but got beaten out. Stewart took longer to get into the mix, but was a solid player for us in 2009 and 2010.
2007's class: Taylor Dever. Poor fellow died in 2020, and CTE was certainly a factor.
2008's class: Braxton Cave, Trevor Robinson, Mike Golic. Robinson and Cave ended up starting early on, Robinson starting as a true frosh. Golic took a while, but ended up as a starter.
2009's class: Zack Martin. 'nuff said
Charlie's problem was that there was nobody from the 2004 class, and only those two from the 2005 class, so when 2007 rolled around, the offensive line was in shambles. You're not going to beat solidly developed Michigan, USC, and Penn State teams with a line in shambles, and it certainly showed.
Tyrone Willingham only brought in *one* offensive lineman in the 2004 and 2005 classes, and that one guy ended up quitting on us.
I believe the quarterback from that Oregon State team
Is the coach they just had that did a great job and is now going to Michigan State
That was Derek Anderson
Jonathan Smith was from 2000, the year that Oregon State utterly crushed us in the Fiesta Bowl. He's the one who became the OSU coach, and now is at MSU. I really don't have anything against him, since he actually ran a pretty clean program at Oregon State.
2004's QB was Derek Anderson. He actually stumbled into a pretty good situation in the NFL, where the Cleveland Browns actually had some really good talent. Unfortunately, they decided to have a massive fire sale, and were left with a pretty pitiful roster, and that ended up killing both Derek Anderson's and Brady Quinn's careers.
Ocho, Cinco and Steve Smith I believe we’re on those teams
That was Dennis Erickson the thug from Miami who is their coach they were way better than us. That was an embarrassment time to kick their ass in two weeks.
That was 2000's Oregon State team
2004's team wasn't that good, going 7-5.
Was it Steve Smith or Houshmenzadah who played with Ocho Cinco in Cincinnati?
I'm still picturing his pony tail leaving our DBs in the dust...
TJ Houshmenzadah and Chad Johnson
Both of those guys were hauling in passes from Jonathan Smith all night long, and carving up our defense.
Just as a side note, our defense actually had some good players on it, and was an overall solid unit. Davie refused to change up the play calls, and kept doing the exact same thing on offense and defense.
The defense was doing OK for the first half, but got worn down badly in the 2nd half, and the rest is history.
The Oregon State guys knew exactly what play we were going to run on offense, even calling it out, and also knew what defense we had called, and utterly destroyed us. Smith wasn't even a 50% passer that year, and still blew us out.
I have to tip my cap to the sleazy one, Dennis Erickson... He knew exactly what mercenaries to get out of the junior college rosters just for that one year.
Davies was riding hi...after beating a downtrodden usc team with lovechio
Then boom...it was a fugazi..similar stuff been going on ever since.. bullet bob rode that season into an extension ...nd has pissed away lots of money with these extensions
Post-mortem on Willingham…who was a joke. It was a sad time…
Have never fully recovered…
Willingham once had to see a man about a dog in the middle of a game.
(no message)
Had to grow a tail.
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I put him just as much on white/Malloy, should have known better ,
Acted in haste to cover up oleary fiasco.
You’re absolutely right…but the panic was self -created.
Willingham only beat Davie every other year. He was no better…and Davie was not a good HC by any stretch.
Davie was better than Willingham
He brought in decent talent, although not nearly up to the standard that we were used to getting under Holtz.
Willingham brought in *one* decent class, simply because of the hype from 2002. After that, he took such a passive approach, that he wouldn't reach out to recruits unless they reached out first, resulting in the two worst recruiting classes of all time (2004, 2005). Out of that entire 2004 class, only about a half dozen of them got any kind of meaningful playing time.
2005's class would have been far worse, but Charlie Weis managed to snag two workable offensive linemen (Paul Duncan, Mike Turkovich) at the last second, and both of those guys became starters.
To put it mildly, we weren't competing with Florida State, Michigan, Texas, etc., for recruits. We were passively taking in recruits who were about Sun Belt or AAC level.
Some of them turned out to be serviceable players, but for the most part, the results spoke for themselves when 2007 rolled around. Even Nick Saban would have needed a lot of help from Lady Luck to get that team to .500.