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I thought these were 2 decent articles to start the season off with:

"Notre Dame's Under-Anticipated Drop-Off? Look No Further than the Running Back Room"

One thing I think this article doesnt cover as well as I would expect was the explosiveness of Love and Price. Aneyas Williams may get good yards and be a good back, but will he be as devastating with big runs that stab a dagger in the heart of your opponent?

"CJ Carr 2026 Statline Projection: Will Notre Dame's QB Be in the Heisman Mix?"

I actually think his QB prediction is pretty solid. Seems about right to me.

Anyone got any additional commentary to add?

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We lost Reggie Brooks and Jerome Bettis after the 1992 season. And frosh phenom Ron Powlus went down requiring ND to turn to the relatively unheralded Kevin McDougal and Paul Faila. Becton wasn't fast, he wasn't a breakaway threat, he only had one move (a dead leg fake), blah, blah, blah. Ask FSU how much fun it was to try to tackle Becton. They quickly learned that catching up to him and getting him to the ground were vastly different tasks. Some of those fancy pants FSU boys still have cleat marks from trying to hang onto him.

Meanwhile, McDougal replacing first-round pick Mirer and Ron "Two Heismans" Powlus, averaged over 10 yards per ATTEMPT, which has to be an ND record.

When McDougal got hurt, we beat USC 31-13 with Faila passing a grand total of 10 times. Lee Becton had 12 carries for 154 yards. At the half.

About the last damn position I'm going to get worried about at N.D. is RB, particularly with this OL.

W.R. is a rational concern but we'll be fine there and Carr is going to make a lot of good players look really great.

--
"Somewhere in Middle America"

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Defense should be as good or better.

So it's about whether the passing game upgrades are enough to replace the explosives lost in the running game, assuming the running game remains at least competent. No guarantees, but feels like a reasonable bet. Particularly because its generally easier to generate those plays through the air anyway.

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We had . . .

28 plays of 30+ yards (Love 10, Rairdon 5, Price 4, Pauling 2), 75% of which iswalking out the door

76 plays of 20+ yards (Love 15, Fields 14, Rairdon 9, Pauling 8, Price 8), 71% of which is walking out the door

I know there are a bunch of stats speaking positively to our overall levels of returning production but we need a lot fo guys to step up and grab the reins

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playing with a QB who rarely threw deep. If healthy this fall (pretty please?), he could double that number.

The entire college game is predicated on replacing production, even moreso today given the explosion of the transfer portal. You don't need to squint too hard to find ways for ND to generate big plays on offense in 2026. They have the OC (third year), QB (second year) and surrounding skill talent to blow up real good.

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he had 6 30-yard catches in 2024 (and two long ones in 2025, he somehow accounts for 25% of our returning 30+ yard plays).

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It feels like a lot, but it feels like context vs. other front runners would be helpful.

I like the SP+ "returning production" metric, and not just because it makes ND looks good. The methodology heavily weights returning OL snaps, which potentially makes sense. You can return a great RB or QB/WR, but it's going to be a problem if your OL sucks. Counter example, Williams isn't as good as Love, but he's also going to be helped out running behind a more experienced OL.

Also, I think the idea of "pre-test probability" is important which is brought up in that article. We return a lot of production and we were already good last year. I wouldn't be as hopeful if we were expecting to make a jump from middling to great.

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Generally, I agree that RB has a very high "floor" for replacement. Love and Price were reallllllly good, though. This is as much a vibes-based concern as anything else - you watch games from last year and you can go whole 3-4 minute stretches only seeing big plays from Fields, Love, Price, Pauling and Rairdon

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Love and Price were both proven guys that opposing DCs had to scheme around.

I don't think we have a skill guy who is going to demand that kind of attention this year. Even if some of our receivers emerge as really good players, will any of them demand safety help?

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There's going to be a little bit of a fog of war for opposing DCs. Last year it was clear exactly how our "right handed" game was set up: we wanted to feed the RBs and defenses could load up against them and dare us to throw it on the premise that anything that kept the ball away from #4 and #24 was something of a schematic win.

You could see a world in which Williams is racking up 100 yard games without fail because teams don't fear his breakaway potential.

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Number of touchdowns? Sure, that will drop. We won't be running back 60-yarders as much.

But... there's an offset I think is underappreciated: first down yardage. Aneyas was a pretty reliable third-down back and our OL should be significantly improved.

Might see a lot more 20 yard runs to offset the long TD explosives.

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more important than it actually might be. Whether it's more or less than expected, it may be less meaningful than we think (especially if Williams is at least "pretty good"). From an emotion/sentiment standpoint, it feels impossible to seemingly shrug of the loss of an all-time great. Except from an outcome standpoint, it matters a lot less than if we lost an all-time great QB.

PFF has some numbers on this, for whatever its worth. And yes, it's NFL. But I suspect CFP would be similar. When you look at distribution of WAR within different positions, the spread on RBs is much less than other positions. In other words, the difference between the best RB and an average RB is less--in terms of wins--than the difference between the best WR/TE and an average WR/TE. So, to Mike's point, losing Fields and Pauling may actually hurt more than losing Love if we don't find a solution there. Fortunately for us, good DBs are incredibly valuable.

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I was trying to think about it in terms of EV per play, but WAR's more intuitive. That article asserts that players farther from the ball tend to exert higher leverage on the game.

That makes intuitive sense. Passes are higher variance than runs, so players that can make passing play work, or not, are going to have higher impact. And they tend to be more in 1:1 situations where a difference in ability can make a big difference in individual plays.

Means an improvement in WR (our weakest position last year, so the most room for improvement, and in a high-leverage area) could more than make up for a decline in RB. RB player vs. player there is a lot of room for decline, sure, but it's probably not as impactful since there's a lot more that has to go wrong/right for a run to score points, across many linemen and RB/LB. And our floor on RB performance is still probably relatively high, just not the superlative that Love and Price provided.

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Carr will be more seasoned, Williams a much better short yardage guy than Price especially, and having Flanagan (or two) back at TE should make the short yardage fight much easier

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- No text -

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ND wasn't quite good enough for the playoff and is now without their Heisman-caliber RB!

So-and-so won the offseason bc they landed some dudes from North Bumfuck A&M in the portal!

Watch out for Texas!

To each their own, but I've been getting forwarded junk content for weeks and they can miss me with all of their bullshit. I'd rather they just talk about baseball or NFL camps or whatever til Labor Day. Most of the noise is so woefully ill-informed.

(Not directed at you, Mark, but it's been wearing on me.)

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I actually thought that since there was a decent amount of looking at game data and making their projections with that information, that those articles were surprisingly more in line with the caliber of discussion we get here at BGS (as opposed to being just complete throw shit on the wall and see what clickbaits).

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I think the RB thing is simple. Williams is likely to be at least at Price’s level and will be a much more significant receiving threat. There is no replacing Love but you don’t need a generational RB to make the playoffs or even advance in them.

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