Top analysts: Irish losing on account of subpar veterans

 

 

By Tom Coyne

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – It’s easy to understand why Notre Dame is 0-3 for the second time in school history. The Fighting Irish are last in the nation in rushing offense and total offense, are among the worst teams at stopping the run and have nearly twice as many punts as they do points.

What isn’t so easy to understand is how a team went so quickly from receiving consecutive Bowl Championship Series berths to becoming the butt of late night talk show jokes.

After last week’s 38-0 loss to struggling Michigan, the question the media and fans were asking is: does this Irish squad have any talent?

The answer, experts say, is yes – but not enough in the junior and senior classes.

“I don’t think they have as much talent as the teams they’ve played – certainly not among the upper classmen,” Rivals.com recruiting analyst Bobby Burton said.

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Coach Charlie Weis said he understands why some people are questioning his team’s talent level.

“Right now if I were looking at them and watching how we’re playing, I can see how they can make statements like that,” he said. “But I obviously feel different about this team.”

NFL draft analyst Gil Brandt said he recalls a conversation with Weis at the Super Bowl in Detroit in 2006 when Weis said he was worried about the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

“Here’s a guy that was coming off a great year and he was really concerned about what was going to happen because of the fact he did not think they had the guys there that could make them competitive,” Brandt said.

Weis said he doesn’t recall the conversation.

The Irish do have some talent among their fifth-year seniors, Brandt said. He has fifth-year senior John Carlson rated as the top tight end in next year’s draft. He also has center John Sullivan and safety Tom Zbikowski highly rated and had praise for defensive end Trevor Laws.

“But they just don’t have the talent levels in the juniors and seniors in my estimation that you need to play against all these good teams,” he said.

The reason for that is two years of bad recruiting in Tyrone Willingham’s final full recruiting class and Weis’ first class when he was finishing up as the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator.

On the day Notre Dame signed 17 players in February 2004, CSTV recruiting analyst Tom Lemming called it worst class for the Irish in at least 20 years. He now says it was even worse than that. The next year’s class, which was a hybrid of Willingham and Weis recruiting, wasn’t much better, again finishing out of the top 20.

“One bad year is real bad, but it’s not disastrous. Two is disastrous,” Lemming said.