is significant and sufficient to dampen the enthusiasm. I also agree that several of the O-line players/pieces will be at new positions. Another significant question is if perhaps the most talented OL (Jagusah) will even play this season.

All the above being stated, there are 6 players on the O-line (including Jagusah) with starting experience. The total # of previous starts = 64. Perhaps more importantly, there are approximately, 4,000 career snaps returning on the o-line. That's significant. Similarly, there are 3 TEs returning with previous playing experience. FlanAgan has 26 career starts and over 400 career snaps, Wash has 33 previous starts and approx. 250 career snaps and FlanIgan has over 50 career snaps. The total returning snaps at TE is > 700. Again, that's significant.

I agree we are losing some superior players from last year's squad: Love, Price, Fields, Pauling, and Raridon were all really great players.

My feeling on 2025 was that we had a big play offense that played off the strengths of those big time players. However, it bogged down because Denbrock and company struggled to assemble schemes and concepts with natural constraints. My hope is that in 2026 we'll have a lot more confidence in the QB to execute those types of things and despite perhaps reduced overall talent, we'll have a more productive offense particularly in "gotta have it" type situations.

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian

CHOO CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian

but the shape of the schedule works in that unit's favor this season, and Denbrock has a long history of figuring things out in situations where he was almost never working with the same set of chess pieces.

The OL in particular is an interesting case, bc as you noted, "returning starts" is somewhat deceiving when two of your most experienced players are shifting to new roles. Feels like a "one step back to take three forward" situation. A lot hinges on just how much of a prodigy Will Black actually proves to be at LT. The speed & decisiveness with which Rudolph moved a multi-year starter off that spot in the spring suggests Alt-level potential. And based on how his first season played out (true frosh vs. redshirt for Black, it should be noted), I don't anticipate immediate dominance. But I do think we'll be locked in and really moving people by the time the team travels to Provo in October.

At receiver, I have to push back on Greathouse bc a lot of his inconsistency in '24 boiled down to QB play and how slowly Denbrock brought Leonard along as the season unfolded. If you look back at Greathouse's numbers, a strong case could be made that he was woefully underutilized within the offense. His contested catch rate was stellar -- over 80%, one of the highest of any receiver nationally -- and he dropped only one pass all season. He was limited by lack of need due to the dominance of the defense, but when ND fell behind multiple times in the playoffs against better competition and the offense suddenly had to get more aggressive, Greathouse stepped up in a major way. If healthy (significant qualifier, I know), he's looking at a bounceback very similar to the one enjoyed by Faison in 2025, who also was slept on coming off a season largely lost to injury.

At TE, Cooper Flanagan is in the Greathouse boat of being somewhat overlooked now, but he got a lot of high-value snaps during the long championship run of 2024. He won't make anyone forget Mike Mayer in the receiving game, but I think that his absence last season as a stallworth (h/t Diaco) on the blocking front was underrated even among those who follow the team closely.

There are two other points I want to make in support of the offense, which interlock to a certain extent. On the recruiting front, ND has clearly leveled up in a way that makes comparing the current situation to recent history dubious, IMO. We can say that there's not a TE on the roster who has yet proven the ability to get open, but we can also say that ND has not had unproven players at the position quite like Ian Premer. Even James Flanigan is of a higher caliber than basically anyone we've landed over the last decade outside of Mayer. The potential for one of them to carve out a significant role as a first-year player with a QB as gifted as Carr is favorable. At that position and the rest, the talent that Freeman has accumulated across the roster since his arrival implicitly demands a higher level of play from everyone who takes the field, one snap at a time.

The other point is the old saw about iron sharpening iron. If everyone agrees that our defense will land somewhere between great and flat-out dominant, then the unit which has already battled them in the spring and will continue going H2H throughout the fall will ultimately benefit from facing that caliber of play at all three levels every week. It is highly doubtful that anyone in the offensive group will match off against better players outside their own roster until the CFP, with the possible exception of Miami (and only then at certain spots). This sort of stress testing will serve both to expose any weaknesses and force the players and sub-units on offense to raise their level of play to meet that standard of competition.

First off, generally agree that the picture on offense actually feels quite murky.

The bulk of that feeling is driven by the unknowns at WR along with what you point out as a new paradigm for Carr. The rightful terror defenses had of the RBs along with athletic excellence of Fields (and to a lesser extent Rairdon) helped create some very straightforward reads for Carr. He would be choosing between either single coverage on quite athletic receivers (or a really fair technical guy like Pauling) or, reading a three-deep scheme (which, to be fair, he did a great job of with regularity), or being able to hand the ball off to a 1st Round RB against a two high shell

USC had a terrible game plan against us, but they did stymie Carr by constantly making him navigate 6 and 7 man coverages (in fairness it was raining). Those 6/7 man back ends are going to be the norm, now, and certainly with a less reliable/predictable defense against Faison in particular -- way fewer of those 10-12 yard free access pitches and catches to be had when the defense can actually put a safety on each hash. It's going to be a lot tougher on CJ this year

Further, given the backup QB situation, Carr is going to have to be very judicious about when he runs the ball. There just aren't going to be very many layups.

One area where I'd say I'm way more optimistic than you are, though, would be TE. I felt like Cooper Flanagan showed out really well as a blocker in 2024, especially against some good teams like Texas A&M, UGA, Louisville, etc. I'd have to go back but I think he may have been our best blocking TE in 2023 as well. Much, much better and more versatile blocker than Rairdon. To me, he's maybe the X factor of the entire offense aside from "#2 Receiver X." If you can't regularly even up numbers on the ground by running your QB (especially in critical situations), you need to be have a TE who really wins as a blocker, otherwise defenses can live in 2-high on every down and your life offensively is going to be very frustrating. Price and Love negated a lot of this problem via their explosiveness (and the threats thereof) but the irrational pit I would get in my stomach when we got to 2nd and 2? That was driven in no small part by the mismatch between Rairdon's skill set and our ability to run Carr.

Additionally, for as explosive as we were, there was a lot of less than ideal stuff going on last year when it came to our run blocking options. I remember us running counter or split zone with, like, Will Pauling coming across the formation. Flanagan's ability to both target as well as move people will create a lot of options for better play setups. Additionally, I think with Knapp moving inside you get opportunities for stuff like Power or Down G concepts that can create easier blocks for everyone else while taking advantage of Knapp's athleticism and power in the run game. We didn't really have a go to guy in the run game like that last year, and I think it showed at times

We just desperately need WR to not be a mess for the 6th year out of the last 7 or whatever. If we can find a really good #2 and #3, we have the pieces to be a complete offense by the time the playoffs roll around. In some ways an even more complete (if not as explosive) as what we had last year

Yes, I know we've had early season disasters, though they came after huge games.

We don't have to open with a rookie QB, on the road, against what turned out to be the national runner-up. So we'll presumably have more of a chance to assess personnel.

Carr was the right choice at QB, but I honestly think we might have beaten Miami with Minchey. They had the training wheels on Carr and Minchey could've made more off-schedule plays. So it goes.

QB: Yes, we need a true back-up and a true third-string guy. Somebody has to take reps with the 2nd team and somebody has to run the scout team. Fair enough.

OL: It's not like we have five returning starters, but in the portal era nobody of significance has 5 returning starters. I think we're deep enough and have enough position flexibility that the line will probably be a bit better than last year. Maybe a lot better. Get a rash of injuries, then maybe not as good.

RB: It's a fair point when you lose two first round picks. But I'm a big fan of Williams and watching that PSU game again I get to be a bigger fan. At least one of those guys behind him might be the next Love. But that's a legitimate concern.

TE: We haven't really had a TE who was a huge weapon since Mayer. Raridon was a good player. If we get major production out of that position it will be an upgrade.

WR: This is widely considered the weakest group on the offense but it was last year too. Fields and Pauling were nice players and Fields gave us a big bodied guy of the kind I like who can keep the chains moving. I think we'll get an upgrade here mostly because we're starting from a relatively low level and Carr can throw guys open like nobody probably since Clausen (and Carr has a much stronger arm).

I suspect we'll probably score at least as much as last year, in part due to the schedule. I think we'll see what we've really got when we play BYU and Miami.

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"Somewhere in Middle America"

The defense should be so good that it just needs the offense not to mess up. Despite how good we think CJ Carr will be.