All reasonable concerns

by KGB, Belly o. the Beast, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 02:24 (1 day, 4 hours, 42 min. ago) @ Larz
edited by KGB, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 02:44

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.