A Season of Hope

I like that Charlie has strong beliefs. We needed someone to take a leadership role when he arrived. But Charlie was, to a certain extent, faking it. He’d never been a head coach and he didn’t fully get it, but I believe he was trying, is trying and has the ability and drive to succeed. I really like that he’s stepped back to evaluate his position. So it appears there could be some learning here that could pay huge dividends. This is a coach who took the Irish to back to back BCS games, the two best seasons since Lou. He's proven he can coach at a high level with the right players. Even so, I've felt a constant insecurity about Weis whose offense teams figured out in a year, who goes for it against all saneness on fourth down, who stubbornly refuses to put the defense on the field first on kickoffs when the offense is putrid, who... oh wait, you can just read my last article for this stuff.

Now as to why you should be positive about this season, I first have to take you back to last season's painful debacle. When there are so many things wrong at one time, there is no fix that works. You cover up one weakness and another breaks and last year was the perfect storm of weakness. We had a green offensive line, green quarterback, green wide receivers and ultimately a green running back. You want to wear green, not be green.

And if multiple parts of the whole are constantly breaking, it’s really impossible to fix the whole. And therein lies the hope for next year.

When things are as abysmally bad on offense as they were last season, it actually doesn’t take much to realize a great gain. Any one factor moving toward the positive has an exponential domino effect on the rest. For example, if the blocking improves even slightly, Clausen's performance improves measurably (and he really had a great year for the hand and the situation he was dealt.)

I expect the line to make marked improvement both because of physical maturity and coaching technique and scheme changes. I find it hard to believe we won't make a quantum leap in offensive line performance from last year (of course even a quantum leap only gets us to okay.)

With a better offensive line, our running game should be more productive. We have a very good backfield of talent with a mix bruisers and speedsters. Running Backs tend to hit their potential quicker than other positions and with Allen, Hughes and Aldridge we should find an effective mix. I'll withhold judgment on whether I think Weis will really commit to the run.

Jimmy Clausen should also be noticeably better this year as I expect Sharpley to be. Clausen's going to be a star and I expect he'll make better decisions, be able to withstand more hits (17 pounds heavier is the report with lumberjack beard,) and have much more comfort with the system and his receivers.

I also expect our receivers to be good to very good. Grimes, Parris and Kamara all have good potential and game experience under their belts. These three, along with Tate and West should form our core experienced group. Of the freshmen I expect Michael Floyd to play a lot early and that he could be our best receiver by midyear. As I've said before, he's an out of the box ready to play prospect.

Tight End, depending on Yeatman's eligibility shouldn't drop off too much considering we couldn't get the ball to Carlson last year. Ragone is the fastest tightend we've ever had and Rudolph brings size, speed and athleticism to the position.

So there's a lot of hope for our offense. Once we fix the major offensive line woes it will be much simpler to tweak the skill positions where we have more potential than any time since Lou roamed the sidelines.

The maturity of our best talent is still a year away, but I expect to see the potential of the younger players shining through early in 08 and a top 50 offense. The two most important offensive players this year IMO are Clausen and Wenger. Wenger has the toughness to set the tone for the Offensive Line. If our Offensive Line problems can be solved, I think Clausen (assuming he can stay focused and healthy) will have a better career than Quinn, which is saying something.

Defense is another story for another article. In sum, we have a chance to be better next year with a real linebacker coach, more experience and young talent coming up through the ranks.

See, I'm not a hater.

** As an ND aside. I recently worked with former Irish quarterback Tim Koegel and received incredibly positive feedback from our senior executives on his material. If you need to know more about effective presenting, I highly recommend his book both as part of the Irish family and for practical application.

You can find his website at http://www.presentationacademy.com and his book on Amazon.