[calvin]

Originally Posted by mentalstate

You started a senior, two juniors and two sophs on the OL.

No disrespect but I'm always amazed by how people talk in definitive terms about ND yet manage to get most of their details wrong.

ND's starting OL was:

So. Young RT (returning starter)
So. Stewart RG (1st time starter)
5th Yr. Sr. Sullivan C (2 year starter)
So. Olsen LG (1st time starter)
Jr. Turkovich (1st time starter)

Thus 3/5 of ND OL were first time starters who didn't have to beat out anyone experienced because there was no one with more experience ahead of them.

Charlie had three recruiting classes, who's fault is it that a frosh lead you in receiving or that your TBs were both freshman?

Wrong, Weis had two classes.

2005 Willingham's class - Weis was with NE through the Super Bowl. NLOID was the Wed before the Super Bowl was played. Thus Weis almost couldn't recruit after he was hired on Dec 12th 2004.

2006 - Weis first full class. They were sophomores last year.

2007 - Weis' second class. They were true freshmen last year.

Thus Weis had almost no choice but to have sophomores and freshmen leading his team because Ty left no upperclassmen and he only was about to recruit the bottom two classes in his program.

Another thing that amazes me is how people just skip over the fact that Ty effectively left no upperclassmen at ND. They act as if they's no big deal and Weis should have just managed to skip over what are the core classes of any program.

[quote]What was Quinn's record his first year? And again, if he's already got two QBs with more experience, thus a better "grasp," then why Clausen?[\QUOTE]

ROFLMAO, Brady had a 5-7 record as a true freshman.

But you can't compare that to what surrounded Clausen.

Quinn was surrounded with a cast that included only one underclassman.

RB - Jones/Grant (JR's - both NFL starters)
FB - Powers-Neal (JR)
WR's - Jenkins (SR), McKnight (So)
TE - Godsey (Sr)
OL - LeVoir (Sr), Stevenson (Jr), Giles (Jr), Milligan (5th yr Sr), Molinaro (5th yr Sr)

Quinn had nothing but experienced upperclassmen surrounding him as a Freshman. In contrast Clausen had only 3 players on his offense who had been in the program for more than 2 years!

Big difference.

Also Quinn's 2004 ND team featured a defense which didn't have a single underclassman starting and only had 3 sophomores on the two deep.

To sum it up Bob Davie left Ty a program that had no gaping holes at critical positions. Ty left Weis with a program that many of us said in 2004 the bottom would fall out of in 2007 when the Sr's left.

Pete Carroll said the same thing.

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Carroll says he foresaw Irish's fall

USC coach Pete Carroll said he isn't completely surprised the Irish are struggling.

"Three years ago, you could see it coming," Carroll said. "They had all the juniors that played and started, and they had a really good team. Then they were seniors the next year, and they were fortunate to keep a few of those seniors around.

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We saw it because we follow our program and know it inside and out. For obviously reasons, outsiders like yourself don't follow our progam and when ND fired Willingham you folks leapt to the easy opinion that 'they must have just realized that he was black, and fired him'.

[quote]And you dare call another coach arrogant?[\QUOTE]

You may want to also take this up with the Washington fans, Stanford fans, and Seattle media who all state that Ty is supremely arrogant.

[quote]Hey, look at our roster, Dantonio got playmakers in his first year. In fact, one of our starting WRs was a freshman. And this year, 2 of our 4 TBs are RS freshman. And a RS freshman may end up starting on our OL. [\QUOTE]

That's good but that doesn't begin to compare to the youth that ND threw out last year.

First off the critical positions on offense are QB and OL. Those are the positions that take the longest to develop. Sam Young started as a true freshman at ND in 2006 and made the freshman all american team. Of course that had something to do with the fact that ND had 4 other Sr's on the OL to help him.

RB is the easiest position to play a young guy at because they don't have to know much about the offense to function in it. WR is a little harder but nowhere near as hard as QB and OL.

TyTyTyTyTyTyTyTy. Never, EVER reached he lows Jabba has, so EAT IT.

Oh, we'll happily eat it because we know football and understand our program and we see what Weis is building. 2007 was hard but we'll be looking back and laughing about it from 2009 onward.