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"kids shouldn't be this big!" She had never met someone so huge.

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Also doubled at RT and LT

He lasted for 11+ years in the NFL as a part time starter / backup. Yes, he had a couple of really bad years due to injuries around 2011, but he picked himself up, recovered, and had some serviceable years.

I simply disagree with NEPA Irish's assessment. While he wasn't the big time NFL Pro Bowl player I thought he could be, to have survived that long in the NFL excludes one from being a bust.

On a side note, Ryan Harris started as a true freshman in 2003 about midway through the year.

Willingham mis-managed the OL so much, that Harris was the best man to step in, even though he was playing offensive tackle at 255 lbs (and that was being generous).

All of those since 2006

I remember being so excited to get DE Aaron Lynch and Ishaq Williams both 5 stars in one class... but Lynch transferred after a year and Ishaq took a while to get on the field and then never really lived up to the hype.

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He had some good years at BC (2020, 2021, 2022), until injuries cut short each season.

I'm not sure how he would have turned out, since Rees would have been his QB coach, and the Kelly factor of QB regression...

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both had their careers affected by injuries and/or poor coaching.

Dayne Christ came in as an excellent prospect as a drop back passer. He had one of the strongest arms I have seen. He also had the athletic ability to scramble away from trouble and to pick up yards with his legs. He looked very good as a freshman under Weis, up until a bad leg injury. Under Kelly, he was used in a way that did not maximize his talents, to say the least. Then a second serious leg injury doomed him again. When he came back, Kelly foolishly continued to try to use him poorly. He was never able to recover.

I think that Kiel saw how he was going to be used by Kelly, and that it didn't really play to his strengths either. He transferred and was a pretty good QB at Cincinnati before a serious injury pretty much ended it for him.

The miss wasn't due to the player, but in both of these cases it falls on the coaches for trying to use them in ways that did not put them in the best situation to be successful.

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Two serious leg injuries had taken away a lot of his mobility, and his psyche was fragile. He played timidly and without confidence. His first year as a starter at ND, he was looking very good for the first few games. Particularly against Michigan and Michigan State. Diaco's defense lost those games, as well as Navy. Then the leg injury against Tulsa, which led to Rees playing most of that game. We all know how that game went.

Kelly misplaying him and constantly getting purple faced with him. Yeah, he was a shell of himself by the time he went to Kansas.

A better debate is whether he should have been rated as highly as he was as a recruit.

But injuries aside, he really wasn't a good college quarterback. He was a sub-60% passer running pass-friendly spread offenses while averaging under 7 yards per attempt. Just way too many easy throws that he consistently missed. Good kid that I wished well, but he didn't live up to the Top-5 Q.B. rating he had as a recruit.

Yeah I guess if you go on just where he was ranked as a recruit and how his career played out, then the label unfortunately is there. I don't agree that he didn't deserve that ranking. His tools were about as good for a drop back prospect as there was. He and Andrew Luck were the top 2 rated drop back prospects in 2008. Luck went to a system that used his strengths, and Crist went to one that took away his strengths. I think it would be interesting to speculate what would have happened had Luck gone to ND and Crist to Stanford.

Dayne Crist was not a spread QB. He did not do well with the finesse dink and dunk passes. What he did do well was use his strong arm in a more vertical passing game. If Kelly had modified his approach to fit his personel, Crist still could have been really good. He showed it in that first season as a starter. Against Michigan, he had ND rolling until he took a hit that caused him to leave the game. Rees came in and threw an interception that allowed Michigan back in the game. Then it was Diaco's inability to harness Denard Robinson that lost that game. Against Michigan State, he was looking like a future Heismann candidate. Again, the D and special teams lost the game.

I will say that Crist had a fragile psyche that was not helped by Kelly's constant purple faced tirades against him. By the time he left ND and went to Kansas, he was a shell of what he was when he entered ND. His career was disappointing but to put a bust label on him is a little much when so much of what happened to him was out of his control. I also commend him on his love for ND and his willingness to stick with the school even though he had come here to play in Charlie Weis' system that fit him much better.

I will never forgive Kelly for making Dayne Crist run all of those designed QB runs in a spread-option manner, and not letting him use that strong arm to make use of a downfield passing game. We had Michael Floyd and TJ Jones as the top two receivers, along with Kyle Rudolph and Tyler Eifert as TE's, and that corps was all but perfect for a downfield passing attack.

In Kiel's case, it was more of a series of injuries that led to a terrible addiction to painkillers. He had a very fine year in 2014, but all of those injuries took their toll to the point where he couldn't get through normal day activities without the painkillers.

To his credit, he went to rehab, got clean, and is living a decent life as a sales rep for Riddell.