Don't dive off the cliff. What I see is an extremely young team trying to find itself. Most of the impact players are very young. I doubt many of the top 25 teams have so many young players at key positions. This team is a year or two away from reaching its total promise. But I see a lot of bright spots.
Clausen, Tate, and Floyd are All-World players. Rarely do you see such concentration of talent at those positions. The backups are also very solid at both QB and WR.
The RBs are solid, but not game-breakers. That's ok except the offensive line underperforms. Since there was very little talent on the OL left by the previous coach, this is still a work in progress. Definately better than last year, but they need to learn to run block better. A big part of that is the TE situation, losing 2 starters to injury and personal issues. Plus there isn't a mauling, blocking TE on the roster. They are all pass catchers. This can have a huge impact on running the ball inside.
The defense is young and not explosive. The staff has not recruited enough of the players it needs for the 3-4. You can see that players have a learning curve since most played on 4-3 defenses in high school. Because our best players are fresh and sophs, I believe the defense is a year away from really being good. The DL is the major problem here, there simply is not enough talent. Some guys are undersized or playing out of their best position to make up for deficiencies in recruiting / availability of 3-4 players.
These types of problems sometimes get disguised when you have other programs that also recruit Jucos and have had solid recruiting classes and coaching staffs for 8-10 years. Fans of ND are going to have to be patient while CW builds up the pipelines, seniority of good players, team and program knowledge of the 3-4 defense, and history of winning. Remember ND has not won anything of significance in a LONG time. This fact cannot be discounted in a staff and players who are learning how win at the college level. It's not like ND seriously competed for a national championship in the last 5-10 years, and yes I am talking about the early BCS bowls in the Weis era. Those teams played above their heads.
It's coming, but it's going to take another couple of years before ND football reaches its zenith again.
