I really like everything about Williams's game --

when asked about not seeing the field a lot last year he prophetically said "well, I have two first rounders ahead of me."

But what he showed in the playoffs in 2024-25 was pretty special. And when he got his chances last year he was great.

He doesn't appear to have the freaky speed of Love, but who does? He runs with excellent vision and pad level. He gets the extra three yards. He's a really gifted receiver. I like his attention to detail.

I know people are excited about James and so am I. But having a guy like Williams who's going into his third year in the system, has obviously strong leadership skills, etc. That's quite a luxury in today's college football. I think he's going to be really hard to get off the field.

--
"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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If ND doesn’t have an every play home run threat, will Carr and the WRs do enough to scare defenses out of the box? Or will ND be forced to slog it out bc the offense no longer has the Love/Price homerun threat?

Carr will need to be on the same page more consistently earlier in the games in 2026 than 2025. Not really a huge ask if you think about it, but it sounded like Denbrock (during his in game/blue gold game interview) recognized this thought.

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with Leonard and I think Denbrock and that unit answered the call. Now it's with the backs, and the response will be an explosive passing game and more consistent and sometimes dominant OL.

And next year the question will likely be asked again about CJ, and so on. It's what makes CFB fundamentally more compelling than its pro counterpart.

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To see 2 1st rounders and 2 3rd rounders walking out the door at the skill positions

Maybe even crazier, though, to see a Top 10 defense not have a single guy go into the draft (Rubio only partial credit I guess)

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We’re going to have a lot more drafted next year, including possibly the first DB selected.

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Our talent leaving was great, of course, but our talent replacing them is at worst a half-step back. Probably a better OL on the whole. Almost certainly a deeper receiving corps.

And we have a generational talent at QB, and continuity in offensive coaching with an OC that has fielded a Heisman Trophy winning QB previously. It's been a while since we've had that. We forget what a positive indicator that is.

I know the run-first crowd does not like Denbrock much, but commentary that we didn't trust Carr, or the Love rushing attack, enough in the Miami game suffers a fair bit from hindsight-is-20/20. At the end of the day, Denbrock's fielded top-5 offenses and run the ball plenty. With this defense, that's good enough to go all the way.

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were on the sidelines last year about as often as they were available. Might as well include Burnham too. Not much of an adjustment to play without.

We gave up 17.6 ppg in 2025. Anything above 14 this fall should be considered a disappointment IMO. That's how loaded for bear we are, even in garbage time.

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I think that's probably the biggest unknown on defense. Can we still be elite in a post-Mickens regime?

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..this situation.

I am convinced that Mickens and Ash were not on the same page in those first two games. I recall watching the aTm game and those 2 would just walk past each other on the sidelines and not even address each other.

Certainly, personnel changed over the course of the year. Stroman getting replaced by Tae Johnson and Karson Hobbs getting benched for the season. Who knows whose responsibility the personnel falls, I think we usually assume the position coaches decide that. Regardless, I think it's clear that Mickens and Ash weren't in concert with each other.

If nothing else, I think the turnover in coaches is a going to be a net positive. We can certainly quibble about the caliber of coach Mickens was, especially when it came to development. But the bodies we have in the secondary have never been better. I mean we're talking about a 2-year starter in Christian Gray playing nickel or maybe not even having a starting spot. The talent alone might overcome the secondary coach replacement. And don't get me started on the DL. Almost all of the ND pods are saying that Partridge was by far and away the biggest off season target we landed. The staff having some cohesion and chemistry should make a difference.

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I don't think we can forecast the loss of Mickens just yet. I tend to believe that what played out last year after the first 2.5 games was Mickens going over Ash's head to Freeman to tell Ash to get his head out of his ass and get back to true ND pass defense. I am not sure how Ash is going to operate without that sort of counterweight influence on staff. Will he revert to his former ways? We won't know until game 1.

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And I can't recall where I'd heard it, guessing it was Irish Illustrated, but the question was something to the effect of who decides personnel. I think it largely came up prior to Sieder (or due to Sieder) because he only likes to go 2 RBs deep and folks were bringing this up as a potential concern.

Whoever it was between Prister, Sampson, or O'Malley basically chimed in and said that the position coaches largely dictated who played. They said of course there were times when coordinators might overrule it, or had certain plays/coverages designed for certain guys but that the position coaches were the ones responsible for who was on the field.

In hindsight, that would make sense with the secondary.

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good bit different. We ran so much 1-Robber in 2024 and I don't think we were running anywhere near as much of it by the end of the year. WE also ran a good amount of match-3 as I'm recalling.

Generally speaking, we ended up being a lot more sound in the run game in 2025 (ypc improved by almost a full yard). We were less upfront in our run defense in 2024 because Golden was moving guys around all over the place to confuse the QB's post-snap read as the number one priority. Ash's defense last year had guys in a lot more regular and recurring positioning even if their responsibilities would shift post-snap.

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what, in basic terms, are these defenses?

--
"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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Cover 1 Robber plays man coverage on the outside and a single high safety. The second safety moves towards the line of scrimmage and plays a zone against short/intermediate crossing routes. A lot of times this will look like a two high safety look pre-snap and at snap they'll roll the deep safety while the second collapses.

Match 3 is a bit more complicated. With a traditional cover 3, you'd have specific zones that each player is responsible for. It's easy to teach, you know where your strengths are, you know where your gaps are, etc. The Bob Diaco of defenses. If you execute it well, it's stout, but a good offense and smart OC can pick it apart.

Match 3 starts fundamentally with that idea, but adds pattern matching. In this, the DBs have a rule set that they follow (i.e., if the receiver does X, you do Y) which tells them when to attach to a receiver or ignore them. Harder to teach, kinda high risk/high reward from a mistake perspective.

I'm sure one of the other people here can go in more deeply on exactly how the pattern matching works.

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I think you got the gist but just to go on a little farther:

- Golden's 1-Robber schemes really let him be creative. He'd have most cover players in man, usually a safety deep, and another guy with either a typical robber role or else something specific. He could shuffle those responsibilities around as well - he ended up having a ton of success with 4 or 5 man pressures with relatively circumspect defense behind it, especially because he'd mess with the QB's key reads so the ball very rarely came out quickly. Here's an illustrative example from Louisville 2024: https://bluegraysky.com/forum/index.php?id=543336

The weakness of an approach like this is you aren't exactly presenting a wall at the point of attack. Golden's bet was always that the offense would get impatient (due to being behind the sticks or whatever) and not be able to hit you for 4 yard carries down the field. It also requires a lot of trust in and coordination from your back end players. We could likely pull it off this year but in general it's a hard thing to count on.

Ash's defense is a lot more straightforward. He made his bones as a match quarters guy (the safeties play at shallow depth and go deep with any vertical route run right at them) and, if they don't have a pass read they are aggressively coming down into the run fit/short area (the corners are (usually) coached to let any in breaking route go and trigger into man coverage mode on vertical stemming routes or else hold their zone drops. That structure got too predictable and was essentially vaporized by RPOs but Cover 3 versions (ie Sabans rip/liz match) has matured particularly by using hybrid body types and moving safeties around and in doing so and absorbed a lot of the route distributions common to spread passing and you can wind up with defensive backfields that really know the rules and know route distributions super well and can play very aggressively. There's a lot less disguise and schematic design with something like what Ash is trying to do, but it can be pretty foolproof if you've got the horses and the know how on the field

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my observation of years of football is that if you have better athletes (esp. on defense) most of what you do will work. And if you don't, it won't.

But the explanations are very helpful.

I remember 2002 where Davie left a team where he had put most of the good athletes on defense and Kent Baer was a genius. Duff, Walton, Courtney Watson, Cedrick Hilliard, and on and on made pretty much everything work.

The next year, when Preston Jackson was our "lockdown" corner not much worked. And they were trying to turn an option QB (Holiday) into a pocket passer.

Then with most of the good athletes on offense, in 2005 Weis was an offensive genius.

To give Kelly his due, while he might not have recruited elite talent at every spot he recruited at least good talent across the board. And he took some what appeared to be "OK" talent (like Book) and put them in a position to be very successful.

--
"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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I worry less given that two of the three have a lot of experience working with Ash previously, while the third has been in this situation many times throughout his career. Should be about as smooth as one could expect when replacing all the position coaches.

"Can a Chris Ash defense lock down a top offense?" may be the more pertinent Q given that there weren't many opportunities in 2025 (thanks a lot, Hunter).

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That would be roughly top 5 & definitely where we should set the bar.

--
"F--- everyone who isn't us."
#Team128

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next season.

Who will lead ND in explosive plays for the 2026 season?

and

Will ND’s 2026 team be more or less explosive than ND’s 2025 team?

And FWIW, I’m ok if neither of these questions matter, bc ND’s defense is so good they set records for least amount of points allowed in a season. BRING THE VIOLENCE.

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are more chunks than home runs.

For "true" explosives, I think it's gotta be Faison and Graham.

And "Healthy Greathouse," but that guy might be a mythical character like Bigfoot at this point.

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And went to the playoffs with Tony Jones Jr as the primary (and probably only) running back. Jones had a nice NFL career, and no slight to him. But I expect Aneyas to be better than him, and much closer to Kyren by comparison. If the offense doesn't fire on all cylinders this season, I doubt it will be because of the RBs.

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But wasn’t Dexter Williams the primary RB in 2018?

Jones was the rb1 in 2019 but we lost to Georgia and Michigan

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Got those two mixed up, thinking about Jones taking in the winning TD against USC because he was the dude that year. Mea maxima culpa.

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Jagusah might well be Nessie.

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Mothman is too small (and a bit too obscure maybe)

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Even not being tackled, he still gets to daylight better than James.

I think folks don’t realize how good he is. Not a homerun guy but he is going to be a great college back barring injury.

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He's going to do all the jobs credibly well. You can't put a linebacker on him out side, you won't get free runs at the QB when he's in pass protection, and if you mess up a run fit it's going to result in an explosive.

He's not a game changer by any means but I certainly buy him as a starter in an elite offense.

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Which is why he was back sometimes on kickoffs two years ago. I think with his ability to catch out of the backfield, it’s not a stretch to say he will be an upgrade from Price. And think about what that could mean.

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Love is the rare guy who has legit track speed and football speed. He's the first guy since the Rocket we've had who was a legit sub 4.4 and it translated to the field.

Price ran 4.49 and he played fast. Kyren ran 4.65 at the combine and then 4.54 at the ND pro day. But watching him juke the Clemson defender out of his jock and then go 65 on the opening play in 2020 told you all you needed to know. He fell to the 5th round because scouts got their panties in a bunch about his combine time.

These guy are all fast backs. They just don't have the insane upper gear that Love has.

But how often do backs run 40 yards in a straight line? It happens, especially with Love. Or it happened with Price.

Williams sees the field and follows his blocks.

One of my favorite ND backs of all time was Lee Becton who hammered FSU's defense in 1993 and hammered pretty much everybody else that year. Maybe he ran in the 4.6's. Maybe.

But catching him wasn't the same thing as tackling him.

Williams isn't going to replace Love. Love is legitimately one of the best players in ND history and the consensus was that he probably was the best player regardless of position in the draft. But Williams sure as heck can help make this offense motor.

--
"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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the Polo Grounds

I really like everything about Williams's game --

The question is

We had the "How will we replace?" question a year ago

It is a little sobering

The defense was young last year

That’s the point. Unusual for a young unit to perform well

Also crazy: I think the O will be better

The biggest pieces we lost to the draft on D

thought you were going to talk about the D coaches

Call me a Polly but I think there's an Occam's Razor view of

hope so!

That could be

I think the 2024 and 2025 pass defenses ended up being a

Explain it to me like I'm 5 --

I'll defer to those who know more if they correct me.

Those are really good basics

Thanks guys --

Sure, there's that.

12.6 PPG the last 9

But it also leads to a few interesting questions for this

I think Williams can deliver "Riddick explosives." But those

We had an undefeated season

Not to “well actually” too hard

You're right

If Greathouse is Bigfoot,

Well, he ain't Slenderman.

Ha, I just changed that.

Agree

He seems like a great "No Cheat" guy

I’ve noted before, his 40 time is the same as Price

He and Price both have football speed --