Rakes Report #168: Run it like a voice compelling, so right it can't be wrong
~optional musical accompaniment~
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Saturday was an important mile marker for the 2021 Notre Dame football season, as camp kicked off with media able to watch a bit and Brian Kelly answering some questions. It’s hard to fathom that four weeks from today we’ll already be either celebrating or bemoaning the result out of Tallahassee, but that’s where we stand as we embark on another August of reading too much into practice observations and clips released by the team.
With a month to go I’m starting to get excited, but I must admit I thought the overall situation in this great nation of ours might be a little better at this point considering the way things seemed to be trending earlier this summer. The actual season itself isn’t in peril — if they powered through last year, nothing is stopping them this time around, particularly with many teams and some universities having stellar vaccination rates — but it’s unlikely we’ll get to have any sort of full-throated bacchanalian return to normalcy in the autumn that was probably just a pipe dream to begin with. There could be some individual games forfeited and individual players held out, but it doesn’t seem like it will approach the chaos of last year, albeit admittedly with “seem” being the key word there.
While the relative certainty of the schedule versus last year’s rearranging and doubt does make it easier to look ahead and attempt to prognosticate, there’s still plenty of murkiness. As people have asked me how I think the Irish will do this year, I’ve been unable to provide a great answer. Not only was there a lot of roster turnover — particularly compared to so many teams that brought back gobs of players with the bonus COVID years — but we’ve had so little insight into who was impressing among the reserves. It’s all totally understandable due to You Know, Everything, but we had a single spring practice in 2020, closed off access that August and then clips plus the Blue-Gold Game this year. Thin gruel.
That’s why we have so much to learn over the next month and first couple games and also why I’m coming into August camp with a wide, cowardly answer on expectations: Nothing between 12-0 and 9-3 would surprise me, and there are unfortunate and very pessimistic scenarios where 8-4 wouldn’t seem like a huge shock come December. While this assessment is indeed a copout, it’s equally an attempt to balance a faith in this program with Vegas numbers that suggest some tricky seas to navigate.
Notre Dame’s path to zero losses stems from the fact they have more talent than any opponent they’re set to play and because they have a path to being a team with no weaknesses. “No weaknesses” doesn’t mean they’d necessarily have enough strengths to take down one of the elites, but it should be enough to get by everyone on their schedule if the Irish show up and play well.
Let’s quick tickly through the list of medium-case, not-hampering-the-team, no-weakness scenarios for each position group, ignoring potential downsides and upsides for the sake of brevity.
Quarterback: Jack Coan is 2019esque or better, Drew Pyne is as good as the staff thinks he is and/or Tyler Buchner fulfills the promise early. All signs point to Coan checking every box and being the starter for the opener, which works for me.
Running back: Check-plus.
Tight end: Potentially have the best one in the nation plus a bunch of giant dudes behind him.
Wide receiver: Being modest, we’ll say a dozen good and healthy games combined from Braden Lenzy and Kevin Austin, a dozen good and healthy games combined from Lawrence Keys and Joe Wilkins, Avery Davis is 10 percent better than he was last season and there’s a little juice from an underclassman of your choosing. Kelly was complimentary of this group in his post-practice press availability, so good start.
Offensive line: We know Jarrett Patterson is an excellent center, we know Josh Lugg and Zeke Correll are solid and we know if Cain Madden can translate ~80% of his production at Marshall to a tougher schedule then he’ll fit somewhere between those categories. From there you’re filling out with either two frosh phenoms or some Top 200 guys who’ve been developing for a few years.
Defensive line: There’s a question of whether an elite edge rusher emerges but this will be sturdy at the very worst.
Linebacker: Replacing the Butkus Award winner’s production is difficult but the guys behind him have all been coached by Clark Lea and Marcus Freeman, which seems like the equivalent of going to the Jedi Academy for linebackers. Additionally, Marist Liafau changed his number from 35 to 8 and while that shouldn’t make me feel better about his chances for a breakout season it absolutely does.
Corner: Clarence Lewis continues on a normal progression from his good work last season, TaRiq Bracy bounces back and Cam Hart justifies the offseason buzz. One of the youths — potentially Ramon Henderson, who Kelly said on Saturday was in the mix — helps out.
Safety: Maybe have the single best one in the nation, which is a good start. Patch something together next to him with Houston Griffith, D.J. Brown and the youths.
Brief interlude: Speaking of the secondary, Greg Flammang of UHND.com was kind enough to join me to talk defensive backs on the podcast. That episode should be available now on Spotify or Apple or wherever you listen.
Special teams: Jay Bramblett continues apace and Jonathan Doerer gets his smile back.
Zero weaknesses plus a staff that seems to be at the top of its game and a schedule without a true behemoth translates to another successful autumn, cruising to a New Year’s Six berth and maybe making some people mad by flirting with a third playoff bid in four years. Those are all perfectly plausible outcomes.
On the darker end, why do I think the losses can happen? There are ways for more than one of those position groups to disappoint, leaving weaknesses that the other areas of the team lack the strength to patch over. This would force the Irish into more close games and if you’re playing in one-score games you can easily lose them. Let’s take a look at Notre Dame’s record in such contests during Kelly’s tenure, with the understanding that some have cosmetic scores at the end that bump them into or out of this category:
2010: 2-3
2011: 3-3
2012: 5-0
2013: 5-2
2014: 3-3
2015: 4-2
2016: 1-7
2017: 2-1
2018: 5-0 (2-0 with Ian Book as starter)
2019: 2-1
2020: 2-0
What can we take from that? First off, always nice to see 2016 in there, serving as a sin eater that allowed 2012 and 2018 to thrive. Secondly and more importantly, despite double-digit victory totals the last four seasons, the Irish aren’t playing in a lot of one-score games. That’s great! Really good teams don’t play in many close games as they are winning comfortably and because despite whatever you want to get into about clutchness, Will To Win, grit, etc., once you’re playing in a one-score game with an oddly shaped bit of pigskin weird stuff happens. If someone did have The Will To Win Late, it was Ian Book, who despite his flaws as a quarterback was really good at putting games away. He was also really good at not turning the ball over, as the Irish were among the best in the nation at interceptions thrown in both 2019 and 2020, another thing you can start to take for granted until the winds change.
This is a potentially blasphemous comparison to make but writing about Book makes me think of the conversations around Giannis Antetokounmpo circa mid-June. The reigning Finals MVP is much better at his sport than Book or 99 percent of athletes, but there was always a tendency to focus on all the stuff the Greek Freak couldn’t do versus what he could do, right up until he put together one of the finest championship series in NBA history.
Book doesn’t have anywhere close to the abilities of Giannis and because of that he eventually hit a wall against the Tigers and Tide, but he did a lot of good in his career, including a 16-game winning streak in which all but a handful of games were comfortably put away by crunch time. His November was excellent, a run of football I hope future starters can emulate: He beat Clemson before going on the road to win two games where the Irish were on upset alert, one against a former teammate some said was better and another against a guy who’s considered the potential top quarterback in next year’s draft.
Tommy Rees knows he won’t have Book to bail the offense out with improvisation and will plan accordingly, but best-laid plans, etc., etc. It’s important to make sure we’re not falling victim to lazy college football narratives and check ourselves but sometimes a guy goes 30-5 as a starter and gets drafted in the fourth round by Sean Payton and you don’t have to overthink how important he was to your team all that much.
(The anti-Book counter-argument here probably goes something like “Notre Dame wouldn’t have needed Book to make so many plays in the fourth quarter if he was steadier earlier in the game, which the new starter will be. Also, this new starter will allow the Irish to not get toasted in their losses as they have in six of their last seven defeats.” Perhaps.)
Over the last three seasons, Notre Dame has lost a single one-score game (in Athens). They have not lost at home. They have not lost to an unranked team. This is a testament to the players and coaching staff and we should celebrate their success but there’s nothing about the Irish’s overall talent level, as assessed either by recruiting or the NFL draft, that says they should be this good in those situations. Other teams in the Irish’s talent neighborhood or above them lose these games: Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, Penn State, Texas A&M, and that’s before we even get to teams like Michigan, Texas and USC that have lost a lot of these games.
Ideally, the preceding paragraph will look silly and everyone can mock it come December, as Kelly and the staff keep everyone focused for a dozen games, maximizing the Irish talent that they’ve consistently developed since the nadir of 2016. That’s absolutely possible and my preferred outcome, I just don’t want us going into this season taking winning for granted or thinking it’s easy because it’s happened so so so often these past four seasons. Things are going really well right now for the program in a lot of ways, which makes the Irish that much more tantalizing as a potential trophy for some capable teams they’ll be playing in the coming months.
But I want to close on a rosier note: The upside is absolutely there for this team to click and do something special. I laid out the baseline for “No weaknesses” above but that’s selling things short as it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see a roster that could stake a claim to having the best safety, tight end, running back and center in the country. There’s potential explosivity at wide receiver and in the front seven, an ability to wreck the game and make sure the close contests I doomsaid about above never materialize. It’s all right there in front of this team, and I’m excited to join all of you in seeing if the Irish can pull it all together and take advantage.
Plans for this month: There will be some podcasts focusing in on a few position groups that are the murkiest, plus the annual Frosh O. I will incorporate those observations into some newsletters as we get a better feel, although how many will depend on how much is out there. I’ll also probably do an edition talking the Peacock stream for Toledo, conference realignment, playoff expansion and all that fun stuff, but we’ve gone long enough as it is at the moment.
Until then, please take care of yourselves and each other. Go Irish.
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