Quote:
Originally Posted by NMUCats
Trust me, you don't have to tell me how bad ND was last year. It's burned into my memory. However, you kind of made my point. That light schedule they had at the end is closer to what this year's schedule is like. It wouldn't take much improvement at all to get to 5-6 wins. Last year's team would have been good enough to beat SDSU, Syracuse, Navy, and Stanford this year, and they were in a close one with Purdue. Minor improvement wins 1-2 more this year.
But who knows. Maybe nobody on the team improves at all, Tenuta has no impact on defense, and Clausen gets moved to linebacker. We'll see.
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Notre Dame may have a better record this year than last year, but in all honesty, they won't be a better team. Sure Tenuta may come in and make the defense better. The problem is that the defense wasn't what was wrong with the team. In fact, last year's defense was actually pretty decent. However, since the offense couldn't move the ball or score points, by the 4th quarter, ND's defense had been on the field FOREVER!
Last year, on average, ND's opponent had the ball for 32 minutes during the course of the game. That means that ND's defense was on the field 4 minutes more per game than their offense. That is a LOT of extra time spent defending the ball. The defense was worn down by the 4th quarter in just about every game. If the offense can't move the ball again this year, it doesn't matter how good the defense is, ND will continue to struggle.