I’m actually excited for the young LB’s Ausberry and his sped along with ASA we should have a huge upgrade at LB, DL should be better and we will have Grey and Morrison and Mickey at Corner Safety watts and Carter
My opinion but the reason Freeman/Golden are playing Marist/Betrand so much and then 3rd backer is Kiser despite none of them being great is they are very assignment correct (almost all of the time, except for hendersons TD run). This allows ND to play nickel and stop teams run with 6 in the box. We might not make the splash plays, TFL/Sacks we all want, but we also don't have very many run fit mistakes, especially against mobile QBs this year. We had 6 in the box all night and stopped henderson other than obviously 1 run, and a second that betrand missed a tackle on. Very very few teams in the country can do that (georgia, bama, UM). Yes we have really good corner play, but we had 2 safeties helping almost every play preventing teams like OSU from easily just taking 1-1 shots with their Elite WRs.
As much as I want the younger more talented guys to be on the field, with the D we are running, you have to be so darn good in your fits because we are only stopping the run with 6 players instead of 7. It makes it very difficult to throw on us, except for when we go soft quarters zone on 3rd and 18.
The best option is a player like Sneed/Ausberry becomes good enough with their athleticism to cover most slot WRs, and then teams don't know if that LB is in coverage or blitzing, or playing the run. Wu was phenomenal at this. I'm not sure Sneed has the instincts.
ND is pretty much like, yep, we have a 190lb nickel back out there, go ahead, try and run on us, when you don't, you'll be in 2nd and 3rd and long.