It’s pretty evident
- Thread starter huff60
- Start date
First off NDs best players are young. Judging just by this year's combine group just isn't accurate.
Notre Dame Football wasn't hurting this season in the CFB talent department, whether the players were old or young; with the exception being Ohio St, who, IMO, out talented Notre Dame.
I think 8 or 9 players were invited this year to the NFL combine.
How would you describe that pool of players ?
How so? They were flat out out coached down 31-7. Bad schemes, lack of fits. 31-7 was due to being out coached, not out manned. Did ND out talent Oh St to make the come back?
Bad schemes how ? Defense struggled on 3rd down and couldn't get off the field. After the first drive the offense only had two possessions in the 1st half. The better team won plain and simple. Coaching wasn't going to change that. They finally got some stops in the 2nd half and the offense got some points. If you think coaching was the biggest difference in the game you're sadly mistaken.
its been this way for almost 20 years now. Notre Dame is completely out classed by the top teams in the country every year--never good enough to be the best team in the country themselves--and based on their recruiting results in the 2025 class, it is only going to continue going forward.
Somehow ND has convinced themselves that finishing the football season ranked somewhere between the 5th and 15th best teams most years is some accomplishment worthy of reverence like national titles used to be viewed as at ND
Ohio State took their foot off the gas or this was another Bama type beat down.
Yes. If you look at the espn "win probability percentage" (a feature on ESPNs gamecast and a number that changes over the course of the game based on the performance of both teams during the game), OSUs win probability skyrocketed to 95% by halftime and never dipped below that the rest of the game.
OSU started to pull away drastically in the 2nd quarter and game was essentially over by half time. The 2nd half was basically garbage time.
You see all that red from the 2nd quarter on? All that red represents how much OSU kicked our ass. I'm not saying this to disparage ND but to call it for what it is.
Guess how ND responded? By doing nothing to fundamentally change their outlook going forward yet again in 2025. No 5 star commits (Will Black being the only exception), no tier 1 prospects from the transfer portal .. just crickets. Notre Dame is doing the same shit they've been doing since the Swarbrick & Jenkins era started from a football operations standpoint
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Yeah, OK.......of course Chase agreed with you........that's when you know you have made a bad post.
Look at the latest team talent composite rankings at 247: https://247sports.com/season/2024-football/collegeteamtalentcomposite/
Notre Dame ranked 9th in team talent. Notre Dame out produced their talent ranking by about 5 spots with a 4th ranked F+ though. In large majority of cases a team's production is hard capped by their level of talent. What the coaching staff was able to get out of this 9th ranked team in talent (finishing 2nd place in the national title picture) is pretty impressive. Now can you imagine what they could do with a NIL budget on the level of OSU, of Texas, of Oregon, of Alabama, of Georgia, etc. ?
I continue to use this motorsport analogy because the problems ND is having is not unlike that of your typical non-championship-winning-motorsport team. We might have the best driver in the country right now (head coach Marcus Freeman) but operationally we can't supply him with the best car (the best talent) so we are limiting his potential which sucks in two ways: 1. we risk losing our driver to teams with better cars (the best drivers always end up driving the best cars) and/or 2. we squander away a rare golden opportunity to win national championships with one of the best head coaches in the game under contract at ND
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Were they this year? I think you'll see a decline in combine invites next year from ND, maybe next few years.
The young top talent I see is on the oline, that's about it. LB possibly as well, but not quite as obvious it's NFL talent.
Yeah I agree, we did not fix obvious run game fit issues from Penn state, and that was very disappointing. Also, it was obvious to everyone but our coaches that gray wasn't mentally ready to challenge and play vs OSU.
Coaching wasn't the biggest difference, Gray was. They didn't adjust for his poor play.
But i was really disappointed in our LBs run fits and our coaches lack of adjustments to OSU clearly picking on gray.
2:11 in the first quarter doesn’t look like good scheme by the ND defense to me. What are your thoughts on the play? Was that good scheme?
I don’t at all accept the mantra that the better team won “plain and simple”. That’s an overly simplistic mindset/explanation IMO.
With regard to OSU’s offense vs ND’s defense, I thought OSU performed really well while ND’s defense definitely played subpar football. Both things can be true at the same time. Lots of mistakes by ND that have little to do with the opponent.
Thoughts?
I think most critics, pundits, podcasts, etc, were saying in the aftermath, that tOSU had a particularly effective, and rather deliberate offensive game plan that really hurt us, exactly due to not so much superior talent, but pushing the right buttons. And that was sort of the consensus. So the bad coaching would be that we were unable to somehow counteract or offset their approach with suitable scheming and such to stymie them better. While it may have been a masterstroke on Chip Kelly's part, it's not as if they were literally impossible to slow or stop, but it would have required some sort of effective tactical adjustment on our part which we seemingly failed to do.
That's where the bad coaching would come in. So to speak. Offensively, I'm sure we could have done better but that was always going to be a tall task. But our defense seemingly had the wherewithal to not allow tOSU to score 31 unanswered and put the game away, unless Al Golden in fact did have and employ a brilliant tactical response and our players simply couldn't deliver on it.
Did you email Chris Ash asking to interview to be a defensive analyst for Notre Dame?
Yeah bad schemes and lack of fits but the guy running them was selected as the Country's outstanding Assistant Coach.
Tell us more Mr Wizard.
Not to mention the head coach who won his fair share of C of the Y hardware this year as well.
I agree with this, but the CB duo of Gray & Moore (both still with several years of eligibility left) might be the best one-two in the game next year so that position deserves some love too
It sounds like you guys are agreeing with each other. It's true, AG won the Broyles award, but we managed to somehow still get outcoached. Or that would be the critique, or the allegation. Is the fact that he won the Broyles make it impossible for us to have been outcoached? Obviously we had a great coach, he was the best DC in the country, so a priori it couldn't have been the coaching?
I think great coaches can get outcoached just like great players can get outplayed. But it's really hard to evaluate the quality of the game day coaching performance with any degree of accuracy because we just dont have enough insight to evaluate accurately IMO
I do feel pretty certain about this though: If we took OSUs $25M 5-star & 4.5-star laden roster and exchanged it with NDs $5M 3-star & 4-star laden 85-man roster, Marcus Freeman and his staff would beat OSU just the same way Ryan Day and his staff beat ND.
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Well ya ..adjustments? Oh St scored how many points in the last 20 minutes? ND had two trips inside the 10 with 0 points. The talent advantage wasn’t as deep as many say, so tell me how else ND got down 31-7, yet our scored them 16-0 + 2 red zone trips with 0 points in the last 20 min. Coaching got them in a hole. That was clear as day.
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Exactly, they out prepared ND. Coach’s plan was awful to start and on their heels. Made adjustments to fight back but 31-7 is a might climb.
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Same dude that lost to Marshal and NIU right? Look, the second best team in the country doesn’t get down 31-7 in the natty in the first 33 minutes due to a lack of talent..then all of a sudden that talent wakes up and dominates the remaining 27 minutes and out talents them. They were out coached early and dug too big of a hole.
Not to mention 1/ cover 0 against the best WR in the game, 2/ Best RB duo in the country combining for 7 carries.
Come on big fella, do the math, watch the tape.
Come on sleepy Joe! I can’t talk about the natty game and the short comings to why I believe we lost? Go sit on a carrot commie.
No shit? Isn’t that what a message board is composed of? A bunch of dudes far away from the situation voicing opinions, being couch critics?
You add 0 value, rather than voicing opinion you just harp on those that do. Spineless coward lefty
Have people already forgotten that we were battered and limping along? We would beat the Ohio St 2nd string by much more.
Yes, the great scheme by Chip Kelly was often not so great on 1st&2nd. I don't see how that could have been built into the system.
And if we took the Philadelphia Eagles roster, I’d bet that we’d do even better !
