Like all of you, I'm excited about the upcoming ND football season! ND has been generating a lot of positive buzz this offseason and there are good reasons for that. We have a potentially elite defense, a returning starter at QB, a talented roster, a reasonable schedule and a coaching staff that seems to be humming on many, if not all cylinders.

Although there are plenty of reasons to be excited, I do think the conversation (on social media, the traditional media and the ND beats) around the offense has been a little too optimistic. While it is exciting to have a very talented starting QB coming back and many key members of the coaching staff returning, there are significant questions to be answered at each of level of the offense. In my experience the more questions you have going into the season, the more difficult it is to have sustained success during the season. In my view, here are a few of the key questions:

QB - The obvious one, who is going to be the backup? Hopefully this never actually becomes an important question. I think the under the radar question is: how long will it take for CJ Carr to adjust to having to do more to move the offense?

OL - There is a tendency to assume the ND OL will be good coming into every season because we've had a lot of success at the position and typically recruit well. This year is no exception to that. I think there is reason to be optimistic, but I think we need to wait and see. When you step back and look at it, there is actually very little experience on this Oline. While Knapp has a lot of starts, none of them are at guard, I believe Lambert has the second most starts but none of them at tackle. All the other projected starters have limited starts and experience (A. Craig's return could change this). I think it is really good that coming out of spring, most of the OL is in place for the upcoming year as they need as many reps as possible to come together as a unit. Given the lack of experience and position changes on the line, I think the key question for this group is: how long will it take them to gel as a unit?

TE - Outside of Washington, there is very limited playing experience in this group and thus far Washington has struggled as both a blocker and a receiver, which is less than ideal for a TE. The biggest question is who is going to catch the ball from his group? To date, no one on the roster has shown the ability to consistently get open and catch the ball at the P4 level.

RB - Pretty obvious here, we lost two first round RB's. While Williams has shown promise, there are a lot of unproven players here and they have done little to nothing as college football RB's.

WR - I think the biggest questions on offense and the entire team reside with the WR group. For the record, I hope they do well, but I am skeptical. I hope they can turn into a productive group, I'm just not convinced at this time and need to see it before I believe it. We can reasonably expect Jordan Faison will have good year (and maybe even a very good year), he's been a productive player consistently at this level for the past few years. After that, there is no one even close. I know people will say Greathouse, but in my view he hasn't produced consistently, even when healthy. From there, no one has produced at this level of football. In 2025 we had at least three players who had already been productive college WRs (Faison, Fields, Pauling - you could include Greathouse, but I wouldn't). This year we have 1.Unless he turns into Curt Henning overnight (obscure reference alert), CJ Carr is going to need someone to throw the ball to as he can't throw it to himself. I think there should be far more concern about this group. I hope they end up doing well and if they do you can post this later and say, see Larz you didn't have a clue! I think there is an assumption right now that we will have a productive, explosive group of WR's. I would caution buying into that narrative until we see what they do on the field. On a bit of a side note, I think Graham has more work to do before he meets the expectations people currently have for him. I'll save the reasons why for another post if anyone is interested, I would just say in spring he looked to me like he has a lot of work to do to refine his game.

I'm still excited about the season, I think the defense could be exceptional and I think the offense really has the potential to grow. Fortunately, the schedule will provide some time for the offense to gel and I think we have a really good offensive coaching staff. But man there are a lot of questions that need to be answered on that side of the ball. I know we will have some answers, just not sure how many answers we will have and how long it will take for those answers to emerge.

Regardless, looking forward to the season and despite this little bit of pessimism, hope everyone enjoys the excitement that comes with a new season of college football. Go Irish!