Notre Dame football

As much as I know I'm setting myself up for failure this season, I'm quite excited about Notre Dame's prospects for this year. I have visions of a BCS bowl dancing in my head.

The obvious reason for this is the schedule. It used to be that Notre Dame would put a few tough opponents on their schedule besides the usual suspects (Michigan, Michigan St., Purdue, Stanford, USC, Boston College). I can remember home-and-homes with Tennessee and Georgia Tech. Now they play home-and-homes with Washington, and these aren't Steve Emtman's Huskies. I'm not even sure how many home-and-homes they can do with their currently scheduling philosophy of 7-4-1 (7 home games, 4 away, 1 neutral site). It all seems very cheap and unfair, but you know what? There are a lot of teams across the country who don't challenge themselves. Pac-10 teams do (you've got to respect USC for scheduling Texas a couple years ago and Ohio State these past two years) and that's about it. Besides, an easy schedule now could be a tough schedule tomorrow. I can remember 2005, Charlie Weis' first year, when Notre Dame was playing Pitt, Michigan, Purdue, Tennessee and it all seemed disastrous. All of those teams underachieved and the schedule actually played out very nicely. Still, I would be shocked if this schedule ends up being difficult.

But even moreso than the schedule, what really gets me excited is the talent on this roster. Am I overrating it? Probably, but hey that's what fans do. I may be in the minority but I like Jimmy Clausen a lot. I saw Brady Quinn play as a freshman and sophomore as well, and Clausen is better at this point than he was. Clausen has a great arm, and I love his targets. Golden Tate and Michael Floyd are dynamic receivers, and Kyle Rudolph should continue a nice string of Notre Dame TEs (Anthony Fasano and John Carlson, both NFL 2nd round picks).

This should be the most talented defense Charlie Weis has had. When Weis took over his stated goal was to improve team speed defensively, and he's succeeded. The secondary looks loaded, with Robert Blanton, Raeshon McNeil and Darrin Walls all capable of starting at corner, Harrison Smith and Kyle McCarthy starting at safety, and players like Sergio Brown and Gary Gray sitting on the bench but also capable of playing. Linebacker Brian Smith is my favorite player on this defense. He's a good player and by all accounts is the leader of the defense. The question mark here is the defensive line, where some highly-regarded prospects reside but not a lot of proven production. Kapron Lewis-Moore will be starting at DE, and I don't recall him playing at all on defense last year. Kerry Neal and Ian Williams haven't developed yet, and they'll be juniors. This is a bit of a question mark, but the talent should be there. These kids were highly regarded coming in.

The main question mark with this team is the offensive line. I would say running game, but I think the running backs are just fine. Armando Allen is the speed guy and Robert Hughes is the power back. This should work. So why hasn't it? Because the offensive line has underperformed. These players were also highly regarded coming into Notre Dame, but they haven't played up to it. Sam Young was the high school player of the year in the state of Florida when he was in high school. He beat out a guy, you may have heard of him, Tim Tebow, for that honor. Young has been a decent player but not great, and being decent qualifies him as the best, most accomplished lineman on the team. The interior blocking last year basically sucked, and the short yardage running sucked, but it looks like Charlie is making a change at center, sliding over Eric Olsen and benching Dan Wenger. I don't know if it was all Wenger's fault, but I do know nose tackles from Boston College and Syracuse dominated him. Sure, B.J. Raji was one of those players, but come on.

All of that said...I'm excited. I believe the running game will be better. I believe the defensive line will develop. I believe this passing game can be just as good as the Quinn-Samardzija-Stovall-Fasano days, which was the best passing game in school history. And this schedule is so manageable that quite frankly, I'd be disappointed in anything less than 10 wins. And I haven't said that often about Notre Dame football.