ESPN quote
'Of the 48 remaining undefeated or one-loss teams in college football, Notre Dame ranks 30th in offensive efficiency, 40th in offensive EPA per game, 42nd in offensive success rate and 44th in passing EPA per game. It's not a death knell for Riley Leonard to be more of a playmaker with his legs than his arm, but the Irish definitely need more balance if they want to make a real run in 2024.' -- Hale
Replies to: ESPN quote
Tells you all you need to know. Can’t be a playoff contender with those numbers. They are also
hard to watch getting stuffed at the line play after play, or a bad short throw that’s incomplete, or a 2 yard gain.
The OLine is the main problem
I know most people disagree and want to blame Leonard for everything under the sun that is wrong with ND football, but the line is not even good right now. All of you want to see 4 verts for TDs like you're playing a video game, but fail to notice that even on a quick WR screen that was thrown right after the snap Leonard was still blown up right after throwing the ball.
Could he be more accurate? Sure. Could the offense use a little more play action? I would love that. The biggest limiting factor to the offense is the line, not the QB. With the amount of injuries piling up people need to forget about the dream of a championship in year 3. We will be lucky to make the playoffs, luckier yet to host and win a first game, and unless the draw is favorable I don't see going past the second round with this line. They are too depleted and struggling mightily.
50-50 between Leonard and the line, but your point is valid.
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RL will not cause anyone any sleepless nights with his arm -- other than Notre Dame.
Which is why we all know that, whether one wants to admit it or not, another day of reckoning is coming.
The bigger concern is why RL was the primary focus of Freeman. He's a RB who happens to throw some
passes. There was nothing he did at Duke that differs greatly from what we are seeing now. Is RL Freeman's model quarterback? If so, it doesn't bode well for the future.
He threw for nearly 3000 yards at Duke as a sophomore, and more than Quinn or Book in Yr 2 starts
He doesn't look great throwing this year, but let's not pretend he is Carlyle Holiday. He has done it before, hopefully the light went off this week.
Lets not pretend he's either Quinn or Book. He's not
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Love both QBs. Interesting fact, Brady Quinn only beat 1 team that finished Top 25 his last 2 years
2006 Penn State, who creeped in at 24/25 in final AP/Coaches polls.
He beat 2 teams in the final Top 20 his sophomore year, which was Tyrone Willingham's last at ND, including the bowl-eligibility clinching win at Tennessee.
I bet playing under ty and Weis had nothing to do with that.
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a foreshadowing of his NFL career. An equal athlete to RL but with a better arm. He would have
been great in a spread offense, but that wasn't really a thing when he was in college.
Playing for the Cleveland Browns killed his career
Had he gone to a reasonably good team that didn't gut its roster, things would have been a lot different.
He could get in? It’s a mystery on several QB recruits why we offer them and why he can’t keep them.
Looking at the overall game performance do we look like a O that really shines? Even Indiana can find one!
He's entirely correct.
We can only rely on this defense to bail us out so many times before luck runs out.
This was a similar situation in 2002, where that excellent (and very, very lucky) defense pulled out 7 wins for us before luck ran out against USC. That castrated version of the West Coast Offense that Tyrone Willingham insisted on running, using a triple option quarterback was an exercise in futility, and the 7-14 loss to BC the week before that blowout by USC, was a glaring sign of the offense's terrible weakness.
Surprised to hear it’s not worse than 30 or 40. Wonder what it is if we take out Purdue
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Good point. Use the geometric rather than arithmetic mean in calculing performance metric averages.
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Yes. Let's cherry pick just Riley's performances to support our argument. What if we take out NIU?
Riley Leonard, a paragon of efficiency. He hasn't thrown any picks this year and is undefeated for the 3rd ranked Irish. He's only been sacked 3 times and has rushed over 50 yards each of his four starts, with 6 rushing and 3 passing touchdowns to show for it.
Should he be a throwback Heisman contender?
Are u suggesting NIU was our only ‘off’ game?
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I'm suggesting that removing 20% of a sample size to bolster an agenda is poor form
If Purdue was an outlier then so was NIU per the data. I'm of the view that both games reflect the journey of the 2024 ND offense.
I believe there is a better-than-even chance that we see at least one more Purdue performance from ND and no more NIU ones.
I think ND wins out.
I think ND hosts Rd1.
I think ND makes the semis.
I think Mike Denbrock coaches Riley Leonard up.
I will hope u r right but to me the Purdue game was an outlier. NIU looked a lot like CMU offensive
I have not done a statistical analysis so I don’t know.
The 1st half of the CMU game was just as bad as the NIU game.
But statistics can be used anyway u want