'19 OH OG Zeke Correll (Notre Dame Signee)

[PutuporShutup]

Probably, but I would still want him on the roster.
Tell him to come back for open competition in the spring.

What if Craig freaks out in front of 105,000 rowdy fans? Or gets hurt anytime during the season, or last game at USC with CFP spot on the line & goes down?
Wouldn’t it be nice to bring in a 3 year starter who started a CFP game & NY6 game who won’t get rattled?

I want experienced players as backups, not freshmen.

Craig came in unexpected vs clemson in a brutal situation for him and played really well in a crazy tough loud environment

 

[PutuporShutup]

On a sidenote, when Patterson was healthy in 2021, media, fans & sites, questioned iBK if he thought Patterson should be moved to OT or G so Correll could play Center to get your best 5 on the field.
BK answered, “No, you don’t move an All American Center away from Center.”

Some of the media got butthurt because they thought BK was talking down to them.

ND was 11-1, despite having the 3 different LTs before settling on Freshman Alt. Patterson a stud at Center.

Following year Freeman moves Patterson to G & Correll starts at Center & the OL was a trainwreck despite bringing back Patterson, Correll, Alt & Fisher.

Now media & fans are pissed Correll played Center as long as he did.

Maybe BK knew what he was doing after all?

This

 

[Bluto]

On a sidenote, when Patterson was healthy in 2021, media, fans & sites, questioned iBK if he thought Patterson should be moved to OT or G so Correll could play Center to get your best 5 on the field.
BK answered, “No, you don’t move an All American Center away from Center.”

Some of the media got butthurt because they thought BK was talking down to them.

ND was 11-1, despite having the 3 different LTs before settling on Freshman Alt. Patterson a stud at Center.

Following year Freeman moves Patterson to G & Correll starts at Center & the OL was a trainwreck despite bringing back Patterson, Correll, Alt & Fisher.

Now media & fans are pissed Correll played Center as long as he did.

Maybe BK knew what he was doing after all?

To the first bolded part, the only reason Alt eventually started was because everyone else at that position got injured.

Kind of runs counter to the point of the second bolded part.

If BK was some kind of genius wouldn’t he have started Alt from the jump? Seems like he just got lucky on that one.

 

[Crazy Balki]

On a sidenote, when Patterson was healthy in 2021, media, fans & sites, questioned iBK if he thought Patterson should be moved to OT or G so Correll could play Center to get your best 5 on the field.
BK answered, “No, you don’t move an All American Center away from Center.”

Some of the media got butthurt because they thought BK was talking down to them.

ND was 11-1, despite having the 3 different LTs before settling on Freshman Alt. Patterson a stud at Center.

Following year Freeman moves Patterson to G & Correll starts at Center & the OL was a trainwreck despite bringing back Patterson, Correll, Alt & Fisher.

Now media & fans are pissed Correll played Center as long as he did.

Maybe BK knew what he was doing after all?

Uh, I think we may be forgetting how bad the OL was in '21. It was an even bigger trainwreck than last year. The only reason it's probably remembered more fondly is that the OL's poor play only resulted in 1 loss. That's mainly due to heroics from Jack Coan, whereas in '22, you had Pyne and Buchner.

As bad as Correll played at center at times this year, he was even worse at guard. Lugg struggled immensely at RT. Madden was not good at guard. Alt and Patterson were the only above-average players on the line that year.

At least if you move Correll to center, his weaknesses are less exploitative.

So no, Kelly didn't know what he was doing. The '21 line sucked and while swapping Correll and Patterson doesn't totally fix it, I have little doubt it results in a better product.

 

[Irish#1]

Outperformed is an understatement… Craig has looked like a stud center

It's only been two games against inferior competition, but he has looked better than Zeke.

 

[Irish#1]

Uh, I think we may be forgetting how bad the OL was in '21. It was an even bigger trainwreck than last year. The only reason it's probably remembered more fondly is that the OL's poor play only resulted in 1 loss. That's mainly due to heroics from Jack Coan, whereas in '22, you had Pyne and Buchner.

As bad as Correll played at center at times this year, he was even worse at guard. Lugg struggled immensely at RT. Madden was not good at guard. Alt and Patterson were the only above-average players on the line that year.

At least if you move Correll to center, his weaknesses are less exploitative.

So no, Kelly didn't know what he was doing. The '21 line sucked and while swapping Correll and Patterson doesn't totally fix it, I have little doubt it results in a better product.

Not being argumentative, but the second half of the season Madden was much improved, especially in the run game.

 

[PutuporShutup]

Uh, I think we may be forgetting how bad the OL was in '21. It was an even bigger trainwreck than last year. The only reason it's probably remembered more fondly is that the OL's poor play only resulted in 1 loss. That's mainly due to heroics from Jack Coan, whereas in '22, you had Pyne and Buchner.

As bad as Correll played at center at times this year, he was even worse at guard. Lugg struggled immensely at RT. Madden was not good at guard. Alt and Patterson were the only above-average players on the line that year.

At least if you move Correll to center, his weaknesses are less exploitative.

So no, Kelly didn't know what he was doing. The '21 line sucked and while swapping Correll and Patterson doesn't totally fix it, I have little doubt it results in a better product.

kelly knew the line sucked, made some adjustments to it, and changed the entire scheme of the offense allowing ND to play really well the last 6-7 weeks. In 2021 kelly/rees wanted to run the ball and have a lot of downfield PA shots. The line struggled, and coan had poor pocket presence resulting in sacks and not getting the passes off, so they flipped to a quick pass offense with a lot of RPOs (not qb run rpos though). IMO it shouldn't have taken Kelly to the end of the vtech game to make these adjusments, it was clear vs toledo and purdue despite the wins.

This year, ND did not identify how bad zeke was playing and make a change, he got injured forcing one. ND did not change the offensive structure until it was too late after week 10 when it was obvious from week 4 on how teams were defending ND, and the weakness with Zeke, the guards inexperience, and wrs. This years game plan was to run run run, and be at worst in third and short allowing Hartman to disect the d and make simple passes or even run the ball with estime on 3rd and short. This scheme would also create some big runs in the run game. The issue, teams decided to load the box and take away our constant first down runs getting us into second and 10. Parker never ever adjusted and ND vs good teams lived in 2nd and 9 or 10. That's not a recipe to march down the field, a few times we did, but it's why we had so few tds vs Duke, louisville, OSU, Clemson. What should have happened is ND PA on first down more allowing for more crossers and passes over the middle due to all the congestion sucking the LBs and even safeties in. To parkers point, it's hard to PA on 2nd and 10 or 3rd and long, but he got us in that situation.

 

[bumpdaddy]

kelly knew the line sucked, made some adjustments to it, and changed the entire scheme of the offense allowing ND to play really well the last 6-7 weeks. In 2021 kelly/rees wanted to run the ball and have a lot of downfield PA shots. The line struggled, and coan had poor pocket presence resulting in sacks and not getting the passes off, so they flipped to a quick pass offense with a lot of RPOs (not qb run rpos though). IMO it shouldn't have taken Kelly to the end of the vtech game to make these adjusments, it was clear vs toledo and purdue despite the wins.

This year, ND did not identify how bad zeke was playing and make a change, he got injured forcing one. ND did not change the offensive structure until it was too late after week 10 when it was obvious from week 4 on how teams were defending ND, and the weakness with Zeke, the guards inexperience, and wrs. This years game plan was to run run run, and be at worst in third and short allowing Hartman to disect the d and make simple passes or even run the ball with estime on 3rd and short. This scheme would also create some big runs in the run game. The issue, teams decided to load the box and take away our constant first down runs getting us into second and 10. Parker never ever adjusted and ND vs good teams lived in 2nd and 9 or 10. That's not a recipe to march down the field, a few times we did, but it's why we had so few tds vs Duke, louisville, OSU, Clemson. What should have happened is ND PA on first down more allowing for more crossers and passes over the middle due to all the congestion sucking the LBs and even safeties in. To parkers point, it's hard to PA on 2nd and 10 or 3rd and long, but he got us in that situation.

The 2022 OL struggled to start the season but not nearly as badly as the 2021 OL. As the season progressed, the '22 OL was better than the '21 OL ever got. There were no weak links. Everyone, including Zeke, had a decent year last year. The OGs were better in '22 than in '21. The OTs were better in '22. Moving Zeke to OC and Patterson to OG actually produced better results even though Zeke wasn't quite the OC Patterson was and Patterson wasn't as good at OG as he was at OC (playing post-injury had something to do with that as well) but the overall result of the switch was a net positive. Credit should go to MF and HH for making those changes. It shouldn't be used as an example of how much smarter BK was with his OL personnel decisions in '21 in comparison to MF's OL personnel decisions in '22 because, again, the '21 OL underperformed the '22 OL and the '22 OL weren't nearly the same trainwreck to start the season as the '21 OL. That's the main point Balki and I were trying to make.

 

[ulukinatme]

The 2022 OL struggled to start the season but not nearly as badly as the 2021 OL. As the season progressed, the '22 OL was better than the '21 OL ever got. There were no weak links. Everyone, including Zeke, had a decent year last year. The OGs were better in '22 than in '21. The OTs were better in '22. Moving Zeke to OC and Patterson to OG actually produced better results even though Zeke wasn't quite the OC Patterson was and Patterson wasn't as good at OG as he was at OC (playing post-injury had something to do with that as well) but the overall result of the switch was a net positive. Credit should go to MF and HH for making those changes. It shouldn't be used as an example of how much smarter BK was with his OL personnel decisions in '21 in comparison to MF's OL personnel decisions in '22 because, again, the '21 OL underperformed the '22 OL and the '22 OL weren't nearly the same trainwreck to start the season as the '21 OL. That's the main point Balki and I were trying to make.

Pretty well said. Harry got the line turned around pretty quick last year. Quinn took half a season just to stop the bleeding, they were never really dominant in 2021.

 

[PutuporShutup]

The 2022 OL struggled to start the season but not nearly as badly as the 2021 OL. As the season progressed, the '22 OL was better than the '21 OL ever got. There were no weak links. Everyone, including Zeke, had a decent year last year. The OGs were better in '22 than in '21. The OTs were better in '22. Moving Zeke to OC and Patterson to OG actually produced better results even though Zeke wasn't quite the OC Patterson was and Patterson wasn't as good at OG as he was at OC (playing post-injury had something to do with that as well) but the overall result of the switch was a net positive. Credit should go to MF and HH for making those changes. It shouldn't be used as an example of how much smarter BK was with his OL personnel decisions in '21 in comparison to MF's OL personnel decisions in '22 because, again, the '21 OL underperformed the '22 OL and the '22 OL weren't nearly the same trainwreck to start the season as the '21 OL. That's the main point Balki and I were trying to make.

Makes sense. I was just somewhat agreeing but adding that kelly did a better job of identifying an issue and working with/around it to get the results needed. We didn't do that this year at all until it was too late.

 

[bumpdaddy]

Makes sense. I was just somewhat agreeing but adding that kelly did a better job of identifying an issue and working with/around it to get the results needed. We didn't do that this year at all until it was too late.

That's somewhat fair but I don't think the issues with this year's OL can be boiled down to personnel decisions. I think the OL's performance this year can be characterized as sporadic. They had moments of really good play - they played really well as a unit against OSU - interspersed with some really poor play (the entire UL game is an example). They also seemed to play better at home than they did on the road. I don't think the bad moments can be boiled down to Zeke being the weak link. The only OL who played consistently well all year was Alt. Fisher struggled at times. Both guards struggled at times. And, of course, Zeke struggled at times. Much more so than he ever did in '22.

If we try to pinpoint what most contributed to the poor OL moments from this year I think the most likely issue was coaching and preparation for each game. I don't think it was a personnel issue. I think the transition from HH to Rudolph and from Rees to Parker contributed the most to those inconsistent performances. I don't think we would have seen those same inconsistencies if Rees and HH had stayed and I think the personnel decisions would have been roughly the same.

And even with those inconsistencies this year, I think this year's OL performed better than the '21 OL. They weren't as good as last year's OL but they were better than '21. So again, I don't think BK's personnel decisions in '21, even late in that season, should be used as some sort of blueprint for addressing OL problems.

 

[dublinirish]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Giddyup]

That's somewhat fair but I don't think the issues with this year's OL can be boiled down to personnel decisions. I think the OL's performance this year can be characterized as sporadic. They had moments of really good play - they played really well as a unit against OSU - interspersed with some really poor play (the entire UL game is an example). They also seemed to play better at home than they did on the road. I don't think the bad moments can be boiled down to Zeke being the weak link. The only OL who played consistently well all year was Alt. Fisher struggled at times. Both guards struggled at times. And, of course, Zeke struggled at times. Much more so than he ever did in '22.

If we try to pinpoint what most contributed to the poor OL moments from this year I think the most likely issue was coaching and preparation for each game. I don't think it was a personnel issue. I think the transition from HH to Rudolph and from Rees to Parker contributed the most to those inconsistent performances. I don't think we would have seen those same inconsistencies if Rees and HH had stayed and I think the personnel decisions would have been roughly the same.

And even with those inconsistencies this year, I think this year's OL performed better than the '21 OL. They weren't as good as last year's OL but they were better than '21. So again, I don't think BK's personnel decisions in '21, even late in that season, should be used as some sort of blueprint for addressing OL problems.

We lost to Marshall and Stanford in ‘22. The schedule was definitely easier that year.

The numbers indicate we were better as an ol unit this year against tougher competition overall.

 

[bumpdaddy]

We lost to Marshall and Stanford in ‘22. The schedule was definitely easier that year.

The numbers indicate we were better as an ol unit this year against tougher competition overall.

I made the point that the '23 OL could be mainly characterized as sporadic, and yes, I think the OL was better in '22 than '23 despite what the overall offensive stats might indicate. If you just go position by position I think it's pretty clear across the board:

LT Joe Alt in '22 was better than Joe Alt in '23
LG Patterson in '22 was better than Coogan in '23
C Zeke in '22 was better than Zeke in '23
RG Lugg in '22 was better than Spindler in '23
RT Fisher in '22 was better than Fisher in '23

Some of the above issues - Alt's slight drop-off and Zeke's and Fisher's big drop-off - can be attributed to trying to gel with 2 inexperienced guards, but that explanation only helps back up my point. The '23 OL had some really good performances but they also had some duds. The '22 offense struggled at times mostly because of QB play. It wasn't because of the OL. The '22 OL had some subpar games but they were much more consistent than '23.

 

[DillonHall]

I made the point that the '23 OL could be mainly characterized as sporadic, and yes, I think the OL was better in '22 than '23 despite what the overall offensive stats might indicate. If you just go position by position I think it's pretty clear across the board:

LT Joe Alt in '22 was better than Joe Alt in '23
LG Patterson in '22 was better than Coogan in '23
C Zeke in '22 was better than Zeke in '23
RG Lugg in '22 was better than Spindler in '23
RT Fisher in '22 was better than Fisher in '23

Some of the above issues - Alt's slight drop-off and Zeke's and Fisher's big drop-off - can be attributed to trying to gel with 2 inexperienced guards, but that explanation only helps back up my point. The '23 OL had some really good performances but they also had some duds. The '22 offense struggled at times mostly because of QB play. It wasn't because of the OL. The '22 OL had some subpar games but they were much more consistent than '23.

I agree about the guards, but everything else is debatable

 

[Giddyup]

Agree to disagree with your assessment. We allowed 21 sacks in ‘22 to just 14 sacks in ‘23.

Ran for 5.3 ypa in ‘23
4.6 ypa in ‘22.

I would have liked to play a lot better against a couple of the big boys but overall our oline was clearly better this year.

 

[T-Boone]

I made the point that the '23 OL could be mainly characterized as sporadic, and yes, I think the OL was better in '22 than '23 despite what the overall offensive stats might indicate. If you just go position by position I think it's pretty clear across the board:

LT Joe Alt in '22 was better than Joe Alt in '23
LG Patterson in '22 was better than Coogan in '23
C Zeke in '22 was better than Zeke in '23
RG Lugg in '22 was better than Spindler in '23
RT Fisher in '22 was better than Fisher in '23

Some of the above issues - Alt's slight drop-off and Zeke's and Fisher's big drop-off - can be attributed to trying to gel with 2 inexperienced guards, but that explanation only helps back up my point. The '23 OL had some really good performances but they also had some duds. The '22 offense struggled at times mostly because of QB play. It wasn't because of the OL. The '22 OL had some subpar games but they were much more consistent than '23.

My opinion is this years oline was better just purely based on the fact there was no head scratching equivalent of the marshal oline performance.
ND ran/moved the ball well all year as I see it.

 

[bumpdaddy]

Agree to disagree with your assessment. We allowed 21 sacks in ‘22 to just 14 sacks in ‘23.

Ran for 5.3 ypa in ‘23
4.6 ypa in ‘22.

I would have liked to play a lot better against a couple of the big boys but overall our oline was clearly better this year.

So, because the offensive stats were better in '23 compared to '22, that means Parker was a better OC than Rees? Some of the '23 offensive stats are historically among the best of all time. Does that mean Parker is one of the best OC's of all time?

Stats don't tell the whole story. They don't tell the story of '22 vs. '23 OLs and they don't tell the story of Parker vs. Rees.

 

[bumpdaddy]

My opinion is this years oline was better just purely based on the fact there was no head scratching equivalent of the marshal oline performance.
ND ran/moved the ball well all year as I see it.

Citing 1 game in no way negates what happened during an entire season. Also, I would say the OL's performance against Louisville this year was worse than the OL performance against Marshall in '22 even after factoring in the fact Louisville had a stronger overall team - Marshall was weak overall but they had one of the top run defenses in '22. The big problems in the Marshall game were QB play and the overall game plan. Yes, the OL wasn't very good either, but I'd have them 3rd on the list.

Whether or not you agree with that assessment, it doesn't matter. I think most people would say that position by position the OL took a step back in '23 despite feasting on some of the weaker teams.

 

[Giddyup]

imo, we’ve advanced but still need to perform better on the o line against the elite top 25 teams with better defenses. We showed out against the mid teams this year and the running game carried us to wins often in those games.

 

[T-Boone]

We probably need to cheat like Michigan and whoever else.

 

[choo choo]

Another quitter. Bye

 

[Luckylucci]

Another quitter. Bye

I think it’s fair to say this wasn’t about quitting but getting passed up by Craig. Corell gave a lot to ND and very appreciative of that.

 

[dublinirish]

I think it’s fair to say this wasn’t about quitting but getting passed up by Craig. Corell gave a lot to ND and very appreciative of that.

yup theres no way he was being asked back

 

[Grahambo]

I think it’s fair to say this wasn’t about quitting but getting passed up by Craig. Corell gave a lot to ND and very appreciative of that.

Sometimes a change of scenery is good for both parties.

 

[stpeteirish]

When somebody gets worse between his 4th and 5th years you don't ask him back for a 6th

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

Another quitter. Bye

Really really bad take
Not the case here at all

 

[IA4irish]

Another quitter. Bye

if anything, ND quit on him. They were totally justified too. He was objectively pretty bad this year. Wish him well

 

[Irish#1]

Good luck to the young man. I appreciate what he gave to the university.

 

[IAIrish]

Absolutely appreciate his contribution to the team.

Seemed like he was banging his head pretty hard on his ceiling, due to size/ strength limitations. Even with that, seemed like he regressed a bit.