Frankus

SMU’s QB is so dangerous. He’s escaping pressure all the time and turning it into big gains. Not mch you can do when your D collapses the pocket and the QB makes a play anyway. Really impressed by him.

Louisville on the other hand would have a great offense but they drop a ton of catchable balls.

I agree. SMU’s Jennings looks really good. He’s fast as hell, accurate and everything about their offense is quicker hitting than ours.

SMU’s QB looks really good.

I'm conncerned about the high amount of injuries.

I'd dump Leonard for any of the 3 QB's who is the most accurate and consistent. Yeah, Faison's been hurt but Harrison is plenty fast and- had Leonard not underthrown him- he was wide open for a TD instead of a 34 yard gain. We have the weapons. Worse, Leonard is a one and done on a team that can't win a NC. I'd rather see what the other guys can develop into.

I don’t think our offensive coordinator should need a Heisman Trophy winner - who is looking like an elite level NFL QB - to run a successful offense. Notre Dame has two breakaway threats at Rb and enough talent in Faison, Beaux and Greathouse to be a good offense by getting them the ball in space. Instead, we have an incredibly boring offense with a limited number of plays that doesn’t maximize our best playmakers enough. And no, Riley Leonard is not anywher near an athletic talent as any of the guys I mentioned, but he’s the guy whose name is being called more than anybody else.

I wrote this earlier, but Marcus Freeman is from the Jim Tressell coaching tree and Tressellball was notoriously boring. Google it. The thing that bugs me is that Denbrock did not design an offense around the best talent he has: His running back room. I would like to see an offense with both Love and Price in the same backfield, but what we've gotten instead is an even less octane version, conservative version of Brian Kelly's one back offense, which is all Denbrock knows.

I want to see a consistent offense execution with no self inflicted wounds like missed blocking assignments that lead to unblocked defenders, passes to wide open receivers that are uncatchable, and interception or fumbles.

I think it’s very difficult to be a wide receiver who runs a route and never can trust that the ball is delivered accurately. This receiving corps is running their routes knowing that the ball could be low, behind them, underthrown, overthrown etc. etc. Having a good passing game depends on consistency, and RL simply doesn’t have it. He said one thing in the Miami postgame that I’ve never heard a QB say. He said he’d gained confidence that he can underthrow a deep route and know that his receivers can adjust and make a play despite his poor pass. That tells me even he knows he can’t be consistent, particularly on deep throws, and needs his WR corps to bail him out. I hope he doesn’t throw up a bunch of jump balls hoping his WR makes a play. It’s an absurd (and desperate) way to approach QB play.

I think because he isn't experienced enough to be a psychological motivator like Holtz, Freeman should be a physical motivator every game like he was coming out of the tunnel at A&M. He should do that every game no matter who the opponent is, and I believe the players would feed off of it. Unfortunately, because Freeman is of the "don't get too high or too low" school, I doubt we'll see more of his A&M tunnel demeanor. I hope I'm wrong.

Just to put your analysis into historical perspective: By year 3 Ara P had Terry Hanratty, Lou Holtz had Tony Rice, Charlie Weis had Jimmy Clausen.... even Tyrone Willingham had Brady Quinn. The fact that according to you MF doesn't have the perfect fit QB recruited for his offense that is no better than RL is an indictment of him as a head coach.

Yep. Derek Brown #86. Interestingly, he was from Florida, recruited by Miami and chose ND. A golden age of ND recruiting.

Yes, the big TE was Derek Brown. Rocket, Watters and Brown were all elite players, and Holtz's running attack was so relentless that it opened up the long bomb passing game as an additional threat that made the offense very difficult to defend and very good.

I didn't see a TE pass. The crossing route to #40 was running back Tony Brooks. The second play in this highlight is the kind of pass Rice did complete. He had a strong arm. https://youtu.be/6nwIe-trahs?si=E1PvfqN9q_fP1IbM