SWC75
Bored Historian
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Saturday November 7 in the Dome vs. BOSTON COLLEGE
Against Boston College, we’ve won 34-31 here, lost 7-28 at their place, beat them 20-17 on a last play field goal here in Scott Shafer’s finale, won there 28-20, a dismal 14-42 home loss, a 42-21 road win and last year’s disastrous second quarter leading to another one-sided home loss, 27-58. Who would guess that our coach would still have his job after that and that theirs would lose his at the end of the season? Steve Addazio went 7-6, 7-6, 7-5 and 6-7 with a bowl loss the last four years. It wasn’t enough so the Eagles have brought in Jeff Halfley, who had been co-defensive coordinator at Ohio State. (Do you get more co-ordination with two guys than you with one or is it the other way around?)
AJ Dillon, one of the nation’s best running backs, is in the NFL now and quarterback Anthony Brown transferred to Oregon. David Bailey, almost a clone of Dillon at 6-1 240 and who actually averaged more yards per carry (5.7), is back. SU could hardly tell the difference when Dillon went 51 for a score and then Bailey went 74 for another one less than 2 minutes later. Former preferred walk-on Dennis Grosel had 9TDs and 3 interceptions when he replaced the injured brown last year. To give him completion, BC brought in Phil Jurovec from Notre Dame, where he had been rated the #4 dual threat quarterback in the country as a recruit. They have their top three receivers back but the leading one was Kobay White with only 29 catches. Hunter Long had 28 and Zac Flowers 22. But they all averaged at least 15.5 yards per catch because the defense had to concentrate so much on Dillon and Bailey.
Linebacker Mark Richardson decided to stay in college and will be one of the team’s and league’s top players. He had 108 tackles, 14.5 for a loss. John Lamot (77T) and Isaiah McDuffie (50T) are veteran linebackers. Only one defensive lineman returns. Brothers Brandon and Bryce Sebastian are back in the secondary. Kicker Aaron Blumenthal is back but his career record of 43 for 61 field goals is less impressive these days than it once would have been.
Scoring Offense: 29.0 (7, 66) Defense: 32.2 (12, 101)
Rushing Offense: 253.2 (1, 8) Defense: 193.2 (11, 100)
Passing Offense: 176.0 (13, 113) Defense: 285.5 (14, 122)
Total Offense: 429.2 (5, 47) Defense: 478.7 (14, 125)
TO Margin +5 (5, 33) Average field position: 27.0-29.7 = -2.7 (11, 106)
With all those double figure conference and triple figure national rankings, I have to wonder how we let these guys blow us out.
Saturday November 14 – bye
Friday November 20 at LOUISVILLE (Cardinal Stadium)
Back in the 80’s we needed to lighten up the schedule so we scheduled a game with Louisville, which we won 48-0 and allowed us to turn a 1-2 start into a 7-4 bowl season, (when a bowl was a reward for a good season, not mediocrity). That seems like a long time ago….largely because it was. Since then, beginning with the hiring of Howard Schnellenger, (actually that was his first year: 1985), built up the program into the powerhouse they had the potential to be. Since then, beating the Cardinals in football has been as difficult as beating them in basketball. We beat them in Tokyo in 1989, 24-13 and pulled out a road win, 15-9 in 1992. Since then, they’ve won 10 of the 14 games Incredibly, G-Rob has two of the wins, a wild 38-35 upset in 2007 and a 28-21 win in the Dome in 2008. (How bad was Steve Kragthorpe? He was 0-2 vs. G-Rob). Doug Marrone won over a nationally ranked Teddy Bridgewater team in the Dome in 2012, 45-26, perhaps our best game of that era. Our 2018 team rolled, 54-23 over a Louisville team that was just playing out the string in the wake of the Bobby Petrino mess. It ended a streak of four straight losses by a combined 126 points. Last year, the Cardinals were back on their feet and ran right past us, 34-56. It was like 2018 had never happened. You have to be impressed with a program that can ‘rebuild’ in a single year. Scott Satterfield was named ACC coach of the year but again, this is a place where the potential is always there.
Satterfield loves the running game. Not a ponderous, push them up field running game but a quick, get to the edge running game. Under our new defensive coordinator, Steve Stanard, we’d shocked Duke 49-7, in part because of a stunt Stanard set up between the defensive ends and tackles in which the ends would move to the inside the tackles go around them to the outside. The Blue Devils were not prepared for it but the Cardinals, after seeing it on film, ate it up, running for 370 yards at a whopping 9.0 yards per carry. Steve is now the linebacker coach at Kansas State and we have still another DC, Tony White, who will try something else, (the 3-3-5).
Their top 5 rushers, top 3 passers and 4 of their top 5 receivers are all back. Their big threat is Javon Hawkins, not a big guy at 5-9 182, (a size which Jawar Jordan will likely wind up being: he’s gone form 5-9 167 to 172 for this year). But Hawkins became a star as a freshman, gaining 1,525 yards at 5.8 yards a crack and 9TD. QB Michale Cunningham completed 62% of his passes for 2,016 yards for 22TDs and 5 interceptions while running for 482 yards and 4 scores. TuTu Atwell caught 69 passes for 1,272 yards, at an impressive 18.4 yards per catch and 11TDs. The line lost man-mountain Mekhi Becton (6-7 364) but gets three other starters back.
The defense is still a work in progress. The Cardinals gave up 500 or more years in 6 games, (including us: we had 510 but they had 608 in an exciting, if frustrating game). They’ve got one guy back from a three man front but all the linebackers return, (must be nice). Rodjay Burns, an Ohio State transfer but a hometown Louisville kid, will be added to the mix. Two starters return to a secondary who gave up 31 TD passes last year, last in the ACC. They have a cornerback named Chandler Jones. Atwell and RB Hassan Hall are dynamic kick returners. Their kicker, Blanton Creque is coming back from an injury and they are looking for a punter.
Scoring Offense: 33.1 (2, 30) Defense: 33.4 (14, 109)
Rushing Offense: 212.8 (3, 24) Defense: 205.8 (13, 112)
Passing Offense: 234.5 (9, 65) Defense: 234.2 (9, 79)
Total Offense: 447.3 (4, 24) Defense: 439.9 (12, 102)
TO Margin -1 (7, 70) Average field position: 29.1-30.4 = -1.3 (9, 91)
Saturday November 28 in the Dome vs. NORTH CAROLINA STATE
Next up is our old friends, NC State. We first played them in 1972. Since then we’ve beaten them twice and lost 11 times: Syracuse vs North Carolina State 1869-2019
Our only wins were by Scott Shafer’s first team in a year when the pack’s offense got wiped out by injuries and by our 2018 team in a 51-41 Dome shoot-out, perhaps Eric Dungey’s finest game. In truth, most of those years they had a better team, (at least by record). But there were several times we lost to teams, that off the previous year, weren’t supposed to be very good. State was 3-8 in 1971 and beat us 20-43 in the second game of 1972, (under new coach Lou Holtz). They were 3-7 in 1976 and beat us 0-38 in Archbold in the second game of 1977. They were 3-8 in 1996 and won that excruciating 31-32 game in the Dome in the second game of 1997/ We’d beaten their 3-9 team on 2013 but lost in the Dome 17-24 the next year. Good things do not happen when we play this team.
Their Coach Dave Doeren, is starting to show up on some “coaches on the hot seat” lists, despite having a winning record, (47-42), and going to five straight bowls before last year’s 4-8 team that still managed to beat us 10-16. One wonders how long we can keep Dino Babers , (23-26, one bowl game), off that list, which can be the death knell of a coaching tenure. Like Babers, Doeren made some changes, hiring 5 new coaches, including new coordinators. But it may be the Johnnies and the Joes more than the X’s and the O’s.
Seven of State’s 8 losses were by two touchdowns or more. They couldn’t find an adequate replacement for Ryan Finley at quarterback. The incumbent is Devin Leary, who completed a dismal 48.1% of his passes. Zonovan ‘Bam’ Knight averaged 5.5 yards per carry as a freshman, alternating with Jordan Houston, who averaged 5.2. Six if the top 7 receivers are back. Emeka Emezie caught 56 passes for 576 yards but only 2 scores. He had a rep for dropping passes. Four starters come back on the line
The defense allowed 41 points a game in the last 6 games. Yes, folks, they beat us 16-10 and then lost six games in a row by 24-45, 10-44, 10-55, 20-34, 26-28 and 10-41. (Note: they used a 3-3-5 scheme.) They forced just 8 turnovers all year. They had one All-ACC player, (second team), tackle Larrell Murchison, who graduated. Linebacker Payton Wilson led in tackles with 69. Another linebacker Vi Jones, a transfer from USC, (the one on the west coast), is eligible. Like a lot of bad teams, they are good at kicking the ball. Place kicker Christopher Dunn and Punter Trenton Gill made the All-conference team. Dunn was 21/24 on field goals and made all 28PATs. Gill averaged a whopping 47.6 yards per 56 punts, third in the country.
I think we can take these guys. But I’ve thought that before.
Scoring Offense: 22.1 (12, 107) Defense: 30.1 (10, 82)
Rushing Offense: 151.2 (9, 75) Defense: 143.4 (6, 50)
Passing Offense: 229.1 (10, 67) Defense: 255.5 (11, 103)
Total Offense: 380.3 (11, 88) Defense: 398.9 (8, 72)
TO Margin -13 (14, 126) Average field position: 26.9-31.0 = --4.1 (13, 116)
(How do you lose the field positon battle that badly with excellent kickers? Go -13 on turnovers.)
Saturday December 5th at NOTRE DAME (Notre Dame Stadium)
Update: The Fighting Irish may be the fainting Irish this fall: like UNC the school has sent the students home because of too much partying during the pandemic, which has produced 147 positive tests among the students, 4 so far from football players.
It’s always an honor to play the most famous school in college football but it isn’t always a pleasure. Syracuse has done it 9 times and won 3 times: 14-7 in Yankee Stadium in 1963, the ‘revenge’ game of the 1961 miscarriage of justice, (or was it?), the surreal Walter Reyes, (5TDs), game of 2003 when we whomped ‘em 38-12 in the Dome and the improbable height of G-Rob’s career, a 24-23 win under the Golden Dome in 2008. We’ve kind of caught them at the right time for those wins: they had a combined record of 14-20 in those years. The other games have been 0-20 in 1914, the famous 15-17 of 1961, 10-34 in 2005, 15-31 in 2014, 33-50 in 2016 and the one real stumble of our 2018 team, 3-36 to a 12-0 Irish steamroller, (until they got steamrolled by Clemson in the playoffs). Actually, taken as a whole, we’ve competed fairly well against the most famous school in college football.
However Notre Dame hasn’t won a national title in 32 years. After Lou Holtz left, they went through a long fallow period until Brian Kelly showed up and while he’s made them a power again, he’s not been able to return them to their former glory in this southern-dominated era. They’ve twice had 12-0 regular seasons only to lose to Alabama and Clemson in the playoffs by a combined 17-72. However they are still well above SU in the college football food chain and should be heavy favorites to beat us again.
Kelly wants to move up to the top rung. After a three year 32-6 stretch he still changed his offensive coordinator to get better, elevating one of his old QB’s, Tommy Rees to that job at age 27, (which makes me think that Kelly might be calling the plays himself). Their running backs coach, Lance Taylor, is now the “running game coordinator”, (which sounds like a co-offensive coordinator to me).
Ian Book is back at quarterback. He put up Heisman-like numbers last year with 240/399 (60.2%) for 3,034 yards, 34TDs and 6 interceptions while running for 546 yards, (4.9 per carry) and 4 more scores. He’s 20-3 as the starter. He’s lost his top three targets from last year but by game 11, Kelly will have found someone to catch Ian’s passes. They also lost their leading rusher, Tony Jones but Kelly will come up with someone good there, too. Whoever plays will look good behind a line that returns all five players in the interior line and their tight end, Tommy Tremble, who is their leading returning receiver with 16 catches for 183 yards and four scores.
Charley Lea is the DC and off two straight top 15 in the country defensive finishes, he’s the sort of ‘hot’ assistant who could get a top job when one opens up. But he’s still under the Golden Dome for now. Not with him are six starters who are now in the NFL including his top three pass rushers from last year, (again Notre Dame will have 11 games to find new pass rushers and they are likely to succeed). Fifth year end Ade Ogundeji “looks promising” and tackle Mayron Tagovailoa-Amosa is a cousin on the Alabama QB. Drew White is a ‘blue collar’ MIKE and outside man Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah is “coming off a dominant performance” in 2019. They lost two star safeties and a cornerback. CB Shaun Crawford is the one returnee at the other spot. They wouldn’t be an ACC team without high-profile transfer, in this case Isaiah Pryor, a grad transfer from Ohio State – nope, not related to Terrelle. (Quotes from Athlon). They had to replace record setting kickers last year but did so Jonathan Doerer kicked 17 of 20 field goals and Jay Bramlett produced 63 fair catches and a 3.9 average return on the ones that were.
Scoring Offense: 36.8 (13 national) Defense: 17.9 (12)
Rushing Offense: 179.2 (45) Defense: 153.1 (60)
Passing Offense: 252.2 (49) Defense: 168.5 (3)
Total Offense: 431.4 (43) Defense: 321.6 (18)
TO Margin +17 (4) Average field position: 32.1-26.7 = +5.4 (8)
(Yes this revised schedule does not include a game against Florida State, a school we need to get at while they are still down.)
Summary: We are 89-105-2 all-time against these teams and 31-55 in this century. It will be a tough row to hoe.
Against Boston College, we’ve won 34-31 here, lost 7-28 at their place, beat them 20-17 on a last play field goal here in Scott Shafer’s finale, won there 28-20, a dismal 14-42 home loss, a 42-21 road win and last year’s disastrous second quarter leading to another one-sided home loss, 27-58. Who would guess that our coach would still have his job after that and that theirs would lose his at the end of the season? Steve Addazio went 7-6, 7-6, 7-5 and 6-7 with a bowl loss the last four years. It wasn’t enough so the Eagles have brought in Jeff Halfley, who had been co-defensive coordinator at Ohio State. (Do you get more co-ordination with two guys than you with one or is it the other way around?)
AJ Dillon, one of the nation’s best running backs, is in the NFL now and quarterback Anthony Brown transferred to Oregon. David Bailey, almost a clone of Dillon at 6-1 240 and who actually averaged more yards per carry (5.7), is back. SU could hardly tell the difference when Dillon went 51 for a score and then Bailey went 74 for another one less than 2 minutes later. Former preferred walk-on Dennis Grosel had 9TDs and 3 interceptions when he replaced the injured brown last year. To give him completion, BC brought in Phil Jurovec from Notre Dame, where he had been rated the #4 dual threat quarterback in the country as a recruit. They have their top three receivers back but the leading one was Kobay White with only 29 catches. Hunter Long had 28 and Zac Flowers 22. But they all averaged at least 15.5 yards per catch because the defense had to concentrate so much on Dillon and Bailey.
Linebacker Mark Richardson decided to stay in college and will be one of the team’s and league’s top players. He had 108 tackles, 14.5 for a loss. John Lamot (77T) and Isaiah McDuffie (50T) are veteran linebackers. Only one defensive lineman returns. Brothers Brandon and Bryce Sebastian are back in the secondary. Kicker Aaron Blumenthal is back but his career record of 43 for 61 field goals is less impressive these days than it once would have been.
Scoring Offense: 29.0 (7, 66) Defense: 32.2 (12, 101)
Rushing Offense: 253.2 (1, 8) Defense: 193.2 (11, 100)
Passing Offense: 176.0 (13, 113) Defense: 285.5 (14, 122)
Total Offense: 429.2 (5, 47) Defense: 478.7 (14, 125)
TO Margin +5 (5, 33) Average field position: 27.0-29.7 = -2.7 (11, 106)
With all those double figure conference and triple figure national rankings, I have to wonder how we let these guys blow us out.
Saturday November 14 – bye
Friday November 20 at LOUISVILLE (Cardinal Stadium)
Back in the 80’s we needed to lighten up the schedule so we scheduled a game with Louisville, which we won 48-0 and allowed us to turn a 1-2 start into a 7-4 bowl season, (when a bowl was a reward for a good season, not mediocrity). That seems like a long time ago….largely because it was. Since then, beginning with the hiring of Howard Schnellenger, (actually that was his first year: 1985), built up the program into the powerhouse they had the potential to be. Since then, beating the Cardinals in football has been as difficult as beating them in basketball. We beat them in Tokyo in 1989, 24-13 and pulled out a road win, 15-9 in 1992. Since then, they’ve won 10 of the 14 games Incredibly, G-Rob has two of the wins, a wild 38-35 upset in 2007 and a 28-21 win in the Dome in 2008. (How bad was Steve Kragthorpe? He was 0-2 vs. G-Rob). Doug Marrone won over a nationally ranked Teddy Bridgewater team in the Dome in 2012, 45-26, perhaps our best game of that era. Our 2018 team rolled, 54-23 over a Louisville team that was just playing out the string in the wake of the Bobby Petrino mess. It ended a streak of four straight losses by a combined 126 points. Last year, the Cardinals were back on their feet and ran right past us, 34-56. It was like 2018 had never happened. You have to be impressed with a program that can ‘rebuild’ in a single year. Scott Satterfield was named ACC coach of the year but again, this is a place where the potential is always there.
Satterfield loves the running game. Not a ponderous, push them up field running game but a quick, get to the edge running game. Under our new defensive coordinator, Steve Stanard, we’d shocked Duke 49-7, in part because of a stunt Stanard set up between the defensive ends and tackles in which the ends would move to the inside the tackles go around them to the outside. The Blue Devils were not prepared for it but the Cardinals, after seeing it on film, ate it up, running for 370 yards at a whopping 9.0 yards per carry. Steve is now the linebacker coach at Kansas State and we have still another DC, Tony White, who will try something else, (the 3-3-5).
Their top 5 rushers, top 3 passers and 4 of their top 5 receivers are all back. Their big threat is Javon Hawkins, not a big guy at 5-9 182, (a size which Jawar Jordan will likely wind up being: he’s gone form 5-9 167 to 172 for this year). But Hawkins became a star as a freshman, gaining 1,525 yards at 5.8 yards a crack and 9TD. QB Michale Cunningham completed 62% of his passes for 2,016 yards for 22TDs and 5 interceptions while running for 482 yards and 4 scores. TuTu Atwell caught 69 passes for 1,272 yards, at an impressive 18.4 yards per catch and 11TDs. The line lost man-mountain Mekhi Becton (6-7 364) but gets three other starters back.
The defense is still a work in progress. The Cardinals gave up 500 or more years in 6 games, (including us: we had 510 but they had 608 in an exciting, if frustrating game). They’ve got one guy back from a three man front but all the linebackers return, (must be nice). Rodjay Burns, an Ohio State transfer but a hometown Louisville kid, will be added to the mix. Two starters return to a secondary who gave up 31 TD passes last year, last in the ACC. They have a cornerback named Chandler Jones. Atwell and RB Hassan Hall are dynamic kick returners. Their kicker, Blanton Creque is coming back from an injury and they are looking for a punter.
Scoring Offense: 33.1 (2, 30) Defense: 33.4 (14, 109)
Rushing Offense: 212.8 (3, 24) Defense: 205.8 (13, 112)
Passing Offense: 234.5 (9, 65) Defense: 234.2 (9, 79)
Total Offense: 447.3 (4, 24) Defense: 439.9 (12, 102)
TO Margin -1 (7, 70) Average field position: 29.1-30.4 = -1.3 (9, 91)
Saturday November 28 in the Dome vs. NORTH CAROLINA STATE
Next up is our old friends, NC State. We first played them in 1972. Since then we’ve beaten them twice and lost 11 times: Syracuse vs North Carolina State 1869-2019
Our only wins were by Scott Shafer’s first team in a year when the pack’s offense got wiped out by injuries and by our 2018 team in a 51-41 Dome shoot-out, perhaps Eric Dungey’s finest game. In truth, most of those years they had a better team, (at least by record). But there were several times we lost to teams, that off the previous year, weren’t supposed to be very good. State was 3-8 in 1971 and beat us 20-43 in the second game of 1972, (under new coach Lou Holtz). They were 3-7 in 1976 and beat us 0-38 in Archbold in the second game of 1977. They were 3-8 in 1996 and won that excruciating 31-32 game in the Dome in the second game of 1997/ We’d beaten their 3-9 team on 2013 but lost in the Dome 17-24 the next year. Good things do not happen when we play this team.
Their Coach Dave Doeren, is starting to show up on some “coaches on the hot seat” lists, despite having a winning record, (47-42), and going to five straight bowls before last year’s 4-8 team that still managed to beat us 10-16. One wonders how long we can keep Dino Babers , (23-26, one bowl game), off that list, which can be the death knell of a coaching tenure. Like Babers, Doeren made some changes, hiring 5 new coaches, including new coordinators. But it may be the Johnnies and the Joes more than the X’s and the O’s.
Seven of State’s 8 losses were by two touchdowns or more. They couldn’t find an adequate replacement for Ryan Finley at quarterback. The incumbent is Devin Leary, who completed a dismal 48.1% of his passes. Zonovan ‘Bam’ Knight averaged 5.5 yards per carry as a freshman, alternating with Jordan Houston, who averaged 5.2. Six if the top 7 receivers are back. Emeka Emezie caught 56 passes for 576 yards but only 2 scores. He had a rep for dropping passes. Four starters come back on the line
The defense allowed 41 points a game in the last 6 games. Yes, folks, they beat us 16-10 and then lost six games in a row by 24-45, 10-44, 10-55, 20-34, 26-28 and 10-41. (Note: they used a 3-3-5 scheme.) They forced just 8 turnovers all year. They had one All-ACC player, (second team), tackle Larrell Murchison, who graduated. Linebacker Payton Wilson led in tackles with 69. Another linebacker Vi Jones, a transfer from USC, (the one on the west coast), is eligible. Like a lot of bad teams, they are good at kicking the ball. Place kicker Christopher Dunn and Punter Trenton Gill made the All-conference team. Dunn was 21/24 on field goals and made all 28PATs. Gill averaged a whopping 47.6 yards per 56 punts, third in the country.
I think we can take these guys. But I’ve thought that before.
Scoring Offense: 22.1 (12, 107) Defense: 30.1 (10, 82)
Rushing Offense: 151.2 (9, 75) Defense: 143.4 (6, 50)
Passing Offense: 229.1 (10, 67) Defense: 255.5 (11, 103)
Total Offense: 380.3 (11, 88) Defense: 398.9 (8, 72)
TO Margin -13 (14, 126) Average field position: 26.9-31.0 = --4.1 (13, 116)
(How do you lose the field positon battle that badly with excellent kickers? Go -13 on turnovers.)
Saturday December 5th at NOTRE DAME (Notre Dame Stadium)
Update: The Fighting Irish may be the fainting Irish this fall: like UNC the school has sent the students home because of too much partying during the pandemic, which has produced 147 positive tests among the students, 4 so far from football players.
It’s always an honor to play the most famous school in college football but it isn’t always a pleasure. Syracuse has done it 9 times and won 3 times: 14-7 in Yankee Stadium in 1963, the ‘revenge’ game of the 1961 miscarriage of justice, (or was it?), the surreal Walter Reyes, (5TDs), game of 2003 when we whomped ‘em 38-12 in the Dome and the improbable height of G-Rob’s career, a 24-23 win under the Golden Dome in 2008. We’ve kind of caught them at the right time for those wins: they had a combined record of 14-20 in those years. The other games have been 0-20 in 1914, the famous 15-17 of 1961, 10-34 in 2005, 15-31 in 2014, 33-50 in 2016 and the one real stumble of our 2018 team, 3-36 to a 12-0 Irish steamroller, (until they got steamrolled by Clemson in the playoffs). Actually, taken as a whole, we’ve competed fairly well against the most famous school in college football.
However Notre Dame hasn’t won a national title in 32 years. After Lou Holtz left, they went through a long fallow period until Brian Kelly showed up and while he’s made them a power again, he’s not been able to return them to their former glory in this southern-dominated era. They’ve twice had 12-0 regular seasons only to lose to Alabama and Clemson in the playoffs by a combined 17-72. However they are still well above SU in the college football food chain and should be heavy favorites to beat us again.
Kelly wants to move up to the top rung. After a three year 32-6 stretch he still changed his offensive coordinator to get better, elevating one of his old QB’s, Tommy Rees to that job at age 27, (which makes me think that Kelly might be calling the plays himself). Their running backs coach, Lance Taylor, is now the “running game coordinator”, (which sounds like a co-offensive coordinator to me).
Ian Book is back at quarterback. He put up Heisman-like numbers last year with 240/399 (60.2%) for 3,034 yards, 34TDs and 6 interceptions while running for 546 yards, (4.9 per carry) and 4 more scores. He’s 20-3 as the starter. He’s lost his top three targets from last year but by game 11, Kelly will have found someone to catch Ian’s passes. They also lost their leading rusher, Tony Jones but Kelly will come up with someone good there, too. Whoever plays will look good behind a line that returns all five players in the interior line and their tight end, Tommy Tremble, who is their leading returning receiver with 16 catches for 183 yards and four scores.
Charley Lea is the DC and off two straight top 15 in the country defensive finishes, he’s the sort of ‘hot’ assistant who could get a top job when one opens up. But he’s still under the Golden Dome for now. Not with him are six starters who are now in the NFL including his top three pass rushers from last year, (again Notre Dame will have 11 games to find new pass rushers and they are likely to succeed). Fifth year end Ade Ogundeji “looks promising” and tackle Mayron Tagovailoa-Amosa is a cousin on the Alabama QB. Drew White is a ‘blue collar’ MIKE and outside man Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah is “coming off a dominant performance” in 2019. They lost two star safeties and a cornerback. CB Shaun Crawford is the one returnee at the other spot. They wouldn’t be an ACC team without high-profile transfer, in this case Isaiah Pryor, a grad transfer from Ohio State – nope, not related to Terrelle. (Quotes from Athlon). They had to replace record setting kickers last year but did so Jonathan Doerer kicked 17 of 20 field goals and Jay Bramlett produced 63 fair catches and a 3.9 average return on the ones that were.
Scoring Offense: 36.8 (13 national) Defense: 17.9 (12)
Rushing Offense: 179.2 (45) Defense: 153.1 (60)
Passing Offense: 252.2 (49) Defense: 168.5 (3)
Total Offense: 431.4 (43) Defense: 321.6 (18)
TO Margin +17 (4) Average field position: 32.1-26.7 = +5.4 (8)
(Yes this revised schedule does not include a game against Florida State, a school we need to get at while they are still down.)
Summary: We are 89-105-2 all-time against these teams and 31-55 in this century. It will be a tough row to hoe.
