A peek into the future of Notre Dame football
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A peek into the future of Notre Dame football COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAMEDAY
By ERIC HANSEN
Tribune Staff Writer
Somewhere Miss Cleo is smiling, maybe not even from behind prison bars or a pile of legal bills.
Maybe the former psychic-infomercial queen with the fake Jamaican accent and the real legal troubles actually was the one person who would have seen this implosion coming, the lull in Notre Dame third-year head football coach Charlie Weis' coronation.
The surprise of it, the depth of it, make it equally difficult to discern, logically or ethereally, just what kind of catalytic powers this season will have on future seasons. Apocalyptic or transformational?
The safe guess is that it won't be somewhere in between. Nothing Weis ever does comes in shades of gray. Either 2008 will be the season the former New England Patriots offensive guru flames out or it becomes the season where the flame is relit at Notre Dame for another long renaissance.
The team's current 1-7 record at this season's open date, the statistical atrocities, the drivel that comes from cursory looks at the program and flimsy conclusions are unreliable indicators of which way the pendulum spikes in 2008.
Weis himself will be the most powerful and reliable indicator, although much of what he does or doesn't do in the offseason toward that end will be out of public view. Yet his open-mindedness to evolve may be the best news at Notre Dame since the notion to expand the stadium was announced.
Here then is a look at some of the measurables in the 2008 equation:
The Talent Base
The most fair comparison for 2008 would be the 2005 season, Weis' first. That was the year he bullied the college football world into taking Notre Dame seriously again. That is what he would like to do again in 2008.
The 2005 squad also is, realistically, the best of the three Weis-coached Irish teams, so it seems reasonable to set the bar there.
Offensively, Notre Dame figures to be more talented and deeper at running back, wide receiver and tight end in 2008 than in '05. Remember, in 2005, Weis lost his one proven commodity at wideout, Rhema McKnight, early in the season to injury. Jeff Samardzija had been a rumor up to that point, Maurice Stovall a bust.
At running back Darius Walker's backup was Travis Thomas, who is now technically the fifth option. Anthony Fasano was a budding star at tight end, but the Irish are loaded with potential at that position.
Among incoming freshmen, Lemming said the most likely to see extensive playing time out of the box on offense are Michael Floyd at wide receiver, Kyle Rudolph at tight end and Lane Clelland at offensive tackle, maybe even Penn High's Braxston Cave at center or guard. Lemming even predicts Floyd, the highest-rated prospect in the class, will start.
The one area that talent and certainly development on offense is questionable will be offensive line. The starters in the 2005 group, from left tackle to right tackle were Ryan Harris, Dan Santucci, John Sullivan/Bob Morton, Dan Stevenson, Mark LeVoir.
That line had seasoning, talent and unsung heroes (Stevenson and LeVoir). Everyone in the mix was a junior or a senior -- save two unheralded freshmen -- Paul Duncan and Mike Turkovich. If you looked closely, you could see the troubles this 2007 offensive line is having brewing in 2005 -- that personnel turnover was going to create some challenges. Now the depth of problems is another issue.
The 2008 line won't lack pedigree or depth, but it needs cohesiveness, stars and an approach to blocking that befits college football. Whatever 2008 looks like offensively, it will start right here, not at quarterback.
Defensively, the 2005 Irish were stronger in the front seven, especially from an experience standpoint -- Victor Abiamiri, Derek Landri and Trevor Laws were all defensive line standouts. Corey Mays, Brandon Hoyte and Maurice Crum were solid at linebacker.
The secondary, however, was porous and lacked enough depth to allow the Irish to play anything but base defense. In other words, very little nickel, and no six-DB sets.
In time, the newcomers in 2008 will be much better than the 2005 group in the front seven, Lemming projects, but Notre Dame will be vulnerable up front in '08 because of its youth. The good news about 2008 is there is plenty of talent, just young.
Lemming sees defensive linemen Omar Hunter, Brandon Newman and injured end Ethan Johnson (if healthy) being good enough to rise into the two-deeps next year. Steven Filer and Darius Fleming are game-ready linebackers.
The secondary will be loaded, yet Lemming sees Dan McCarthy, Jamoris Slaughter and Robert Blanton all gifted enough to push for playing time in 2008.
The schedule
This is the last Irish slate before the 7-4-1 format goes into effect (seven home games, four road games and an off-site game that acts as a home game from a revenue and TV standpoint). The only real icky part of the 2008 schedule is that it has six road games.
But the rhythm of the schedule is much more conducive to building a team than the 2007 slate. Four of the first five games are at home. San Diego State figures to offer a less abrupt entry into the season that a blitz-happy and blitz-adept Georgia Tech team did.
Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Washington and Syracuse are a palatable switch from Penn State, UCLA, Air Force and Duke. The open date splits road games at North Carolina and Washington. And that's good news for the "Perception Bowl" in Seattle with former Irish coach Tyrone Willingham leading the Huskies, because since 1984 the Irish are 28-4 following an open date.
USC looms as the season finale in Los Angeles, but it is preceded by Syracuse -- a much better precursor than Boston College this year.
There is just one service academy (Navy), a perceptual boost for the Irish when it comes to people who vote in the top 25 polls.
Recruiting
The commitments of top 60 players Floyd and running back Jonas Gray after the 38-0 waxing from USC, when some observers were expecting defections in what is currently the nation's top recruiting class, may be one of the subtle turning points of the 2008 season and those to follow.
"Everybody was shocked," Lemming said. "The perception of Charlie is still that he's an outstanding coach and a former NFL guy that can get you to the NFL. The 1-7 season has not hurt his image with high school kids. It may have hurt his ego, but not his image.
"Perception is the key word in recruiting. The arrow is still pointing north, as opposed to Nebraska and Arkansas, where it seems like it's going south. As soon as that happens, you see guys jumping ship. Look at Nebraska. They had the No. 5 class, as of a couple of weeks ago. Now all their top guys are looking around. (Coach) Bill Callahan didn't have the support from his administration that Charlie had. The fans turned on him, too.
"What continues to work for Charlie too is that he opens up his heart and he's truthful. He speaks his mind, which gets him in trouble with the media sometimes, but with kids, they like to hear that. He's not a phony. He doesn't try to act like he's one of the kids, like some coaches do. He speaks to them as an authoritative figure coming from the NFL. And the kids eat that up."
Lemming said he does expect that Weis will lose as many as five of his current players this offseason, and it won't necessarily be a bad thing.
"It will open up five more spots in their class of 2009," Lemming said. "When you're losing, people make more of the transfers. These will be players who perceive that that can't play here. It won't cause the stir it did this season. It will be a good thing."
Lemming said Weis and his staff can turn the lack of a bowl into a positive by pounding recruiting in December when other teams are having their bowl practices. That will help Weis shore up his 2008 class and keep his strong position for 2009.
"They're going to outwork the other guys in recruiting," Lemming said, "so they never have to sit in December again."
Putting it all together
The three winningest coaches in Division 1-A history -- Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno and Bear Bryant -- all had hiccups during their careers, sometimes more than once, when impatience from their respective administrations might have changed the pitch of their greatness. Ohio State icon Woody Hayes, just outside the 300-win club, had a similar glitch in 1966, deep into his tenure with the Buckeyes two years before winning a national title.
Of the three current college coaches who are benchmarks for the industry -- USC's Pete Carroll, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and Florida's Urban Meyer -- two of them lost to Bob Davie and Meyer coached with Davie. They also come from three very different coaching templates, meaning an offensive mind from the NFL seems just as likely to rise to that level as he is not.
If...
The ifs are plentiful and mysterious. What puts them in a more promising context than not is that Weis doesn't see Willingham or the schedule or Notre Dame's academic profile as the problem. He sees it in his own body or work, but he also sees himself as still the catalyst for solutions.
"It's easy to second-guess yourself, in retrospect," Weis said. "But you do that on a weekly basis. You don't wait until the eight-game mark to sit there and say, 'God, I wish I would have done this.' That's why you start changing.
"I've probably adapted more this year than I have in my whole coaching career. Every week I keep on working on it, to try to get those fixed. Every week I've tried to do something different.
"If you had asked me would I ever have deferred (the opening kickoff) in a game, I would have said there's not a chance. And yet there it was (in the USC game). I'm sitting there Friday night saying, 'If we win the toss, we're going to defer.' And I said it to (co-captain John) Carlson, and he looked at me like, 'You're going to do what?' Because I've told him the same thing I've told you. I thought that gave us the best chance of winning.
"So even though it may have gone against some prior, preexisting belief, if you believe it will help give your team the best chance of winning, I think you have to be willing to do that.
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Related: A peek into the future of Notre Dame football
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