-Coming out of the 2024 NCG run, I thought Williams and Greathouse were going to be dudes. I wanted to see ND highlight them (as much as they could have with Williams) both more in 2025. There is a reason they didn’t. Hate to say it but it seems like those ships just are not coming to port.
-Carr is a dude. I think Denbrock might need to get plays in more quickly and sometimes tell CJ to just run the play called. Sometimes it seems like the—I assume—audibles don’t work out well.
-ND has good tight ends. Where are they? 12 personnel is failing because ND is not making treams respect TEs. I realize you are going to run out of 12 most of the time but at least make the TEs a threat.
-It is great to feel like a game in which they won by three scores was a let down. Also, never in doubt. In the Kelly era and early in the Freeman era, coming out of HT, it would just seem inevitable that MSU would have scored a TD to tie it up and turn it into a nail chewing rock fight: never felt like that was going to happen tonight, even if MSU would have scored.
-Defense is incredibly athletic, big and strong. No more having one elite position group, one sufficient and one that is a liability. That used to be a staple of ND defenses. This defense is just good all over. Really awesome.
-Back to Carr: as others have said, he needs to be let loose. Love and Price are gone: Denbrock needs to embrace that while ND still has fine RBs, the skill position strengths on this team are QB and WR.
-Kind of wondering if the offensive philosophy is not more Freeman driven with the thinking that if they don’t turn the ball over and have negative plays, they will score plenty for this defense to create convincing wins.