As part of our 18 Stripes 5-year anniversary weekly special we wanted to give our readers a nice long roundtable discussion about Notre Dame football. It got so long we had to break it into 2 parts. But they are still 2 very long parts. Enjoy!

Which player surprised you the most based on your expectations for their career?

Eric: My top candidates would be White, MTA, Patterson, Tremble, Liufau, and Kiser. I’ll pick Patterson because that offensive line class as a whole was a hot mess and came together so late that I barely remember even having an opinion on Jarrett Patterson. That he’s grown into this really good veteran who we desperately need for 2021 and who can play different positions is something I absolutely did not anticipate ever happening.

Brendan: I’d have to separate when I formed those expectations. As far as guys who took a while to emerge, the easy choices are probably Te’Von Coney and Asmar Bilal. Both seemed like minor contributors before exploding in their senior seasons. As recruits, it’s Kurt Hinish in first by a mile. I was intrigued by him as a prospect but I wasn’t sold that he could be a difference maker. Fast forward a few years, and he was arguably the Irish’s best defensive lineman in the ACC championship game and the Rose Bowl. C’Bo Flemister deserves mention too; I thought he might end up a warm body but he’s proven to be a really tough short yardage runner and a reliable closeout guy.

Andy: I do not follow recruiting as closely as many in this writers’ room do, but for me there are two clear answers. One is Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah. We’ve been fortunate to follow three different Butkus Award winners in the past 10 years at Notre Dame, but unlike Jaylon Smith and Manti Te’o, at no point prior to when JOK started exploding in late 2019 would anyone in their right minds have said he was going to be among them.

Best 3-star ever?

The other would be Ian Book. I was prepared to dislike everything about Notre Dame starting Book right up until he made his first start in 2018, diagnosing him as a symptom of Brian Kelly’s inability to stick with a quarterback and the coaching staff’s refusal to play to Brandon Wimbush’s strengths. It took Book less than a half against Wake Forest to make all that look stupid, and by the time he’d beaten Stanford in the Irish’s next game, I officially was loud wrong. Never in a billion years would I have pegged Book as an indispensable part of any Notre Dame team, but he ended up piloting the Irish to two CFP berths and is the school’s all-time leader in wins by a starting QB.

Eric: Oh, Ian Book is a good one! I can’t believe I overlooked him. I was only looking at recruits from 2016 onward but of course players who saw the field from 2016 onward in earlier classes count, too!

Golden: I thought about picking Nyles Morgan after his disastrous start playing under BVG, but I’ll go with a different linebacker. Drue Tranquill’s career seemed dead in the water in 2015. He had played well in short stints the season before and was having a great game against Georgia Tech before tearing his ACL after already having torn the other one in 2014. I don’t think any Notre Dame fan expected him to have the borderline All-American career that he did once Mike Elko/Clark Lea came to town and then go on to be a productive NFL player. Even though he’s still struggling with injuries, this time I won’t be surprised when he overcomes them and continues to be a good football player.

Michael: This may be recency bias, but Tommy Tremble transforming into more H-back than receiving threat and becoming an insane run blocker was not on my radar at all. He was such a critical part of last year’s run, which wouldn’t have been a surprise on signing day, but it wasn’t at all in the way I expected.

ND-ATL 2.0: This will sound weird, but Kyle Hamilton. Even though he was from Atlanta, I don’t follow football recruiting much and hadn’t heard of him. I sort of assumed my dad and the people at 18S were exaggerating. Nope. Boy was I wrong.

Tyler: As one of the 18Stripes recruitniks, that does sound weird, ND-ATL 2.0.

I’m shocked nobody has mentioned Julian Love yet, though. A three-star recruit out of Illinois who ran a 4.7+ 40-yard-dash in high school ended up being the best cornerback I’ve ever watched at Notre Dame. I liked him as a recruit, figured he’d be a pretty good player, but he blew my expectations out of the water.

Brendan: I know, I know, I’m going to be that guy, but… I was all in on Love as a recruit. The testing numbers weren’t great but that’s not what showed up on film, where he was around the ball All. The. Time. Now do me a favor and don’t go back to review all my recruit grades over the years, because being right about an underrated prospect was definitely off trend.

Orlok: These are all good choices. I definitely never saw Wu coming and could not have told you he was on our roster until suddenly he was the cream of the roster. But my choice is Kyren Williams. After years of poor recruiting and performance that made good offensive lines look mediocre, running back was probably the position I was most desperate about. As a low four star, I had little expectations that Kyren Williams by himself would make the position a strength in 2020.

Which player disappointed you the most based on your expectations for their career?

Eric: I immediately thought of Studstill, Ewell, Allen, Rutherford, Ekwonu, and Abdur-Rahman. Of course, Ewell would be the obvious choice but too obvious now. I’ll go with KAR because I really thought he’d turn into something dangerous and has already transferred out.

Brendan: Going with the same separation, probably on the recruit side it would be Darnell Ewell. I was fully bought into the hype that we had just landed a dominant defensive tackle who would be a game wrecker in the middle of the defense. Uh… Not quite. Also, and I’m sure this will be quite controversial in some corners, I’d put Phil Jurkovec in this group. He underwhelmed and then peaced out. On the early performer side, it would have to be Jafar Armstrong and Jack Lamb. Both looked like potentially legit frontline guys as true freshmen and slid backwards from there.

Andy: Again, I don’t dive deep in the recruiting weeds, but I’d agree with Brendan that what happened with Jafar Armstrong’s career was pretty darn disappointing after his exciting debut season in 2018. Phil Jurkovec is a decent answer as well, but some of that is self-inflicted. I still don’t know what Kelly saw that made him call Jurkovec the best QB in the signing class of 2018 (which, of course, included Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields, among others.) For a guy a little earlier in the 18S era, Aliz’e Mack is a name I had high hopes for based on what we heard early on, and we didn’t end up seeing that much from him.

Golden: Jordan Johnson! Didn’t you know he was a five-star recruit?!

Okay my real answer would be Kevin Stepherson where his on-field production plays more of a factor than his recruiting rankings. ND’s offense got crazy production out of him in just 17 games with him averaging 18.3 yards per touch. We are all obsessed with having a guy who can take the top off a defense now and Stepherson fit that mold perfectly. The 2017 offense took off when KS returned to the lineup before Wimbush lost his confidence forever. I’m willing to posit that Braden Lenzy would have a great 2021 season if his stats approach what Stepherson did. It’s a shame he couldn’t stay out of trouble because I think his presence would have also helped the 2018 Irish immensely.

Whole lot of ‘what if’ for Stepherson.

Brendan: Stepherson is a great call. Around this past draft, some NFL reporter said an ND coach – maybe a former one? – told him anonymously that Stepherson was the most talented receiver he had ever worked with. In February Chris Finke tweeted that KJ was “actually one of the best football players I’ve ever been on a team with.” Not receivers, players. Dammit, Kevin.

Michael: I loved Brandon Wimbush as a leader and he had every physical trait you could hope for in a quarterback. I was always looking for reasons to believe things were about to click with his accuracy and decision-making, and it just never happened. The 2017 and 2018 teams were so fun but just needed a little bit more upside from somewhere, and in an alternate universe Wimbush is leading them to a massive UGA win and some frisky playoff games.

Tyler: I’m going to avoid the obvious answers and pick Parker Boudreaux. Despite his three-star ranking, there was a ton of hype surrounding him due to his unbelievable 70(!!) scholarship offers. He also pulled a whole dang bus in his commitment video! Sadly never saw the field at ND, transferred back home to UCF, and now he’s in the WWE — which is just so incredibly fitting considering the Brock Lesnar look-a-like jokes people made five years ago.

Orlok: Kevin Austin. Pete Sampson set my expectations pretty high when he promised me (well, a room full of alums) he would be the best receiver ND had brought in under Kelly, saying that he could do things no one on the team could do. But I still hold onto hope that Pete may yet prove right – this team needs a healthy, productive Kevin Austin and if he stays healthy he could be a focal point of the offense by the year’s end.

Which victory over the last 5 years made you feel the best about Notre Dame’s status in college football?

Eric: Clemson last year for me just because it felt like true vindication for the program but also for Ian Book’s career. I still don’t think we talk enough about his ending to that game. However, I think I’ll go with the 2017 NC State win at home. I don’t think that was a high water mark for the program in the Kelly era, and they’ve lost some brutal games since then of course, but to kick ranked NC State’s ass right after doing the same to ranked USC the week prior felt like Notre Dame turned a corner as a program, shed the 2016 debacle, and hasn’t really looked back at all over the last 4 seasons.

Andy: I think it has to be the Clemson game for everything Eric said, and I couldn’t agree more about the final drive in regulation by Book changing the entire narrative around his career. Even considering what happened later (see my answer to the next question), it was still a monumental night for the program to face down a member of the ruling class of college football and come out on top. One of the gratifying parts about that win was that ND didn’t come close to playing its best possible game (if not for two Michael Mayer miscues in the red zone and Book’s third-quarter fumble, the Irish might have won that game semi-comfortably), but was able to overcome it in the end anyway.

Although it wouldn’t be my pick, I’d toss out a nomination for North Carolina last year too. It’s ND’s best road win since Oklahoma in 2012, and the Irish made a really dynamic Heels offense look pretty freaking bad for the final three quarters of that one. There are not many categories of win as a college football fan more satisfying than ‘handily winning a potential trap game against a good team on the road that everyone in the world identifies as dangerous months in advance’.

PJ: The answers above all make sense, but the one I want to throw out there as a potential nominee is the Citrus Bowl win over LSU. After the disappointing losses at Miami and Stanford sandwiching a “closer than it needed to be” Navy win, the program was looking a little shaky. But, in this game, the defense stepped up against a solid LSU offense. While the game itself wasn’t great, we saw the glimpses of what was to come. Between Book and Boykin making plays in the fourth quarter, the defense holding LSU to a field goal late, then the final Book to Boykin connection, the future was looking bright for the program after the tumultuous (and to be frank disappointing) end of season.

Also a little outside of the box thinking here but seeing our CFP opponents trounce their Championship opponents makes me feel a tad bit better about losing to them like we did, since they ultimately rolled to titles.

Brendan: No question it was the Clemson win, whether Lawrence was there or not (nobody talked about us missing Austin and Lenzy in the first one, or also losing Patterson for the second, but whatevs). That was not only a huge win against a very talented opponent, but it was a punch-counterpunch game in which we finally came out on top. It said yes, we may need a few things to break right, but we can be competitive.

An overtime thriller over Clemson.

The other two games that stand out are 2017 USC, which is the one that made me believe in the turnaround, and 2018 Stanford, which got a very ornery monkey off our back in very dramatic fashion. The throwback to Alize Mack for the dagger touchdown in that one was one of my favorite plays of the entire Kelly era.

Golden: Eric stole my pick of 2017 NC State so I will go with the 2018 Stanford game which Brendan also mentioned. BK had lost three gut-punches in a row to David Shaw and it was the first top-10 matchup in Notre Dame Stadium since the Bush Push. For the Irish to pummel the Cardinal with the national spotlight to themselves was affirmation that the reinvention was capable of reaching higher. This was also the game that made all of us say “We’ve got something here” after Ian Book’s performance. I still can’t believe some of the stats from that game.

Total yards: ND 550, Stanford 229
Rushing yards: ND 272, Stanford 55.
First downs: ND 29, Stanford 10.

Just a total bludgeoning.

ND-ATL 2.0: The first Clemson game this year. FirstDownMoses and some of our friends dropped by to watch the game. We had a great time watching the game, and we were optimistic the whole time. What made it better was that the local Clemson fans were having a game watch down the street, and while they outnumbered us 5 to 1, our yells of excitement were far louder, and we enjoyed watching them depart in complete silence.

Michael: Forget what happened later, the Clemson win (and subsequent undefeated regular season) did two tremendous things:

  1. It made the “ND join a conference, you’d get destroyed” haters furious.
  2. Ultimately it dispelled the myth that the playoff committee would never take a 1-loss Irish team. Even better, Notre Dame became the rare team to lose a conference title game and still make the playoff.

Tyler: The first Clemson game of 2020 is a no-brainer. It’s probably the biggest Notre Dame win of my lifetime (I’m 27). I’d also agree with PJ in that the 2017 Citrus Bowl win over LSU is bigger than most people give it credit. Winning that game was just huge for the mindset of the program after a disappointing end to the regular season.

Orlok: Clemson by a mile. But it took a lot of building to that point – we only started complaining about not winning “the big games against the best teams” after 2018. I share a fondness for the Citrus Bowl against LSU, an ugly game where my wonderful dog was truly my best friend, sharing the slow moving, hideous roller coaster ride that we’ll call “a defensive struggle.” As a testament to how ugly that game was, I recall the halftime debate of the talking heads about whether to replace Brandon Wimbush at half time. Tim Tebow made this case for putting in Ian Book: “…but he got you that first down.” That was it. The end of the year 2017 ND offense, ladies and gentlemen.

Stanford 2018 was also beautiful, and is one of the few ND games I repeatedly watch.

Which loss during this time frame made you question Notre Dame’s status the most?

Andy: The ACC Championship Game last year. We’ve had other no-shows in the past 5 years, of course (Miami 2017, Michigan 2019), but those were single-day failures as opposed to being a referendum on the program; I thought both those opponents were pretty fraudulent coming in, and nothing that happened after ND’s no-shows swayed me from that opinion. Clemson round 2 in 2020 was the most disappointing because, while the Tigers obviously weren’t at full strength for round 1, DJ Uiagalelei had played plenty well enough to make it seem like Trevor Lawrence being back wouldn’t change that much. And, really, it didn’t; Clemson having the defensive players it was missing in round 1 – along with ND missing Jarrett Patterson on the O-line – ended up being the real difference. I didn’t think ND was better than full-strength Clemson, but I thought they’d proven they could play with them, and to have that thought blown up to that degree in one half was depressing.

Eric: Michigan 2019 for me, no doubt. I’m not sure I ever really thought Notre Dame was a legit top 3-type program on par with the likes of Alabama or Clemson. Losing in that fashion to Michigan was just terrible. It took the mantle from Miami 2017 as the most damaging defeat since the Kelly 2.0 rebuild and still leaves a bitter taste. Wipe that loss out and I think 2017-20 looks crazy better. 

Golden: 2020 Clemson and 2019 Michigan were both in my top-five, but let’s travel back to the halcyon days of 2016 for some perspective. Notre Dame had just lost to Texas and MSU before a wretched Duke team came into South Bend and rallied from a 14-point deficit to beat the Irish. Keep in mind that this was before the current run and that Kelly had not built up the goodwill that he has accumulated today. That loss temporarily made me give up hope not just for the Kelly era, but for Notre Dame football.

My mood at the time was “we just went through hell to rebuild the program and now we’re back to losing to teams like Duke at home? After being four-points away from a potential title last season?” Right now, we rightly view the eight losses since 2016 as frustrating referendums on whether Notre Dame can ever win a national championship in the modern era. However, the Duke loss in 2016 made a lot of us question whether ND football could even be fixed in the first place. Luckily the answer has proven to be a resounding “yes!”.

PJ: The 2016 Duke game definitely sticks out in my mind, especially since I was on campus, watching the game at Brothers on Eddy Street, just angry for three hours because of how that team just faceplanted against a clearly inferior opponent. My answer for this is 2019 Michigan. Between the rain storm (bringing back 2016 NC State flashbacks) and the game being in Ann Arbor, program morale had to be at a low not seen since the 2016 campaign. Earlier that season, we had given Georgia a fight for four quarters, ultimately coming up short but having some good things to take away from it. Then, we wasted it all away that night in October. Luckily for us fans and for the program as a whole, the staff and players knew how to rebound and bounced back with the winning streak over the next couple of seasons.

Brendan: Michigan 2019. Miami 2017 was a weirdly hype situation with a quarterback who was starting to fall apart. I’ll forever believe that Clemson 2018 would have been more competitive had we not lost Love and Okwara in the second quarter and Book seen guys running free deep (Boykin was open deep at least 3-4 times). Alabama 2020 was a juggernaut, as proven by their evisceration of Ohio State in the title game (did you know Devonta had more yards in a half against them than he did in the whole game against us?). Clemson 2020, like the guys said, should’ve been closer had the boys showed up, but even then, losing Patterson when they got back Tyler Davis was a very bad setup.

Michigan 2019…that just should never happen. Our own Larz had the best analogy for it – he said it looked like a bunch of puppies, in their blissful ignorance, had wandered into a junkyard and were happily frolicking with no idea that a snarling Rottie was waiting for them. That game made me wonder if we were ever going to put it together for an entire season.

ND-ATL 2.0: Navy 2016 in Jacksonville. It was a terrible feeling knowing that even when they were leading, they were still going to lose. It was very frustrating to know that Notre Dame was not going to get the ball back with 7 minutes left in the game. Uggh, I was at the game, but fortunately the Duval County Fair was going on in the parking lot and I got to do a lot of carny rides afterwards to feel less sad.

Michael: Michigan ‘19 for me as well, still the most inexplicable. Other losses could be chalked up to talent gaps, matchups, the environment – this one just flew in the face of what we knew about Clark Lea defenses and made very little sense. 

Tyler: I can’t even pick one. Sadly, we’ve had at least one embarrassing loss each of the last five years. Is it too much to ask for one year of Notre Dame football which doesn’t include a game that makes me wake up feeling disgusted the next morning?

Orlok: Michigan 2019.  We hadn’t won the big game against Clemson yet, so it felt extra damning.  It felt like not only could we not beat great teams, we couldn’t even beat above average teams if we were on the road.

What program-level decision would you make in the next five years to continue the climb towards a National Championship?

Eric: To me, the answer is simple and I’m sure it’ll be echoed here considerably. Notre Dame needs to do everything in its power to recruit better. Get right up to that line of being uncomfortable taking chances and take those chances more often than not. I also think there’s a possibility that the Rees decision at OC doesn’t work out at a high enough level and the program is forced to make some tough decisions about the offense in the coming years. We’ll see, though. I’m not sure firing Rees will ever happen, he’ll either move on to become the next Mike Sanford or he’ll be the real deal somewhere else as a young head coach.

Andy: Pretty simple: Recruiting, recruiting, recruiting. It needs to be emphasized at every turn by any means (consistent with the school’s mission) necessary. As long as ND has competent coaching, which they clearly do, nothing else matters that much. We have enough evidence by now to know Brian Kelly probably isn’t capable of pulling in the classes necessary to go mano a mano with the current Big 3 in college football, but if the Irish can step up their performance a little bit more (Marcus Freeman has already gone a long way in this department), that will make the ND job that much more desirable for whoever is next to sit in the office.

Brendan: Sign the good players. That’s it. Frank Leahy famously said that “prayers work better when your players are big.” It’s just as true in 2021 as it was in 1946, and for whatever way you choose to interpret “big.” Marcus Freeman, before he hit a signing day in an Irish shirt or even got to meet recruits in person, proved that it’s possible to get the elite kids interested. He – and Mike Elston – just landed a commitment from a five-star defensive lineman from Ohio, a day after landing a commitment from a potential five-star defensive lineman from Florida. It can be done.

I don’t think the staff fully conceded elite kids in the past, but I think maybe they were too quick to break off when their tools of persuasion weren’t working. I think Freeman has added some tools to the collective toolbox there. I think the shift of the recruiting coordinator title from Brian Polian back to Mike Elston is interesting here too. Elston oversaw those early-era elite classes – the 2013 class, which was Notre Dame’s last top five class, and the 2012 class, which is just behind for highest average 247 Composite score – and might be a bit better at the outside-the-box approach it takes to go big game hunting. I think he’s also a naturally aggressive guy and will want to chase the elite kids. Polian was excellent at making the trains run on time; Elston builds flashier trains.

Can Freeman’s recruiting change…everything?

Also, the university has to be willing to provide additional support to the recruiting mission. They need to connect the dots between better football performance and better football revenue, which will allow them to feed back even more into the university’s core mission.

ND-ATL 2.0: Football should embrace the transfer market like Coach Corrigan has with lacrosse. There are a lot of very good and physically developed players out there from small conferences looking to make a splash with a big program, and to have the benefit of a Notre Dame graduate degree as a backstop. Worries about transfers not fitting into the culture really haven’t been much of an issue in other sports. With college sports becoming more supportive of “free agents,” Notre Dame should get ahead of the curve.

Michael: Notre Dame needs to ace two massive upcoming milestones. The first is NIL compensation for players, and it’s great to see early signs (literally, with billboards) from the program and staff with regards to personal promotion and branding opportunities at a national program. The second is the NBC deal expiring in 2025. The program has the chance to be aggressive and innovative with the rights to future home games.

Tyler: Recruiting is key. Support recruiting operations as much as possible. Replace any outgoing staff with elite recruiters. And I agree with Mike’s first point. Notre Dame football’s brand is massive. NIL can be a huge selling point to recruits if the Irish can utilize that brand to maximize the benefit of its players.

Golden: ND-ATL stole my answer in that Notre Dame has to own the transfer market. Luckily, I think the program has done a good to great job of adding quality transfers since 2016. The change I would like to see is going after the really high-end transfers and getting them on campus. I want Notre Dame to be known as the place where transfers thrive and increase their draft stock. We’re on our way right now and no offense to Jack Coan who will be a capable starter, but I want ND to land the next D’Eriq King or Joe Burrow.

Orlok: I’ve been wondering from the beginning about how ND would handle the NIL. I was very worried that we never started a hedge fund to funnel “investment” money to our players. The early signs from ND – both the billboards and how they’ve discussed NIL with recruits – are encouraging. Of course, NIL is only important because recruiting matters more now than ever. There’s no parity in college football anymore, so if you’re not one of the elite recruiters, there’s a gaping chasm between them and you on the field.

PJ: Something a little out of the box here is to potentially be more flexible in scheduling. Obviously, with the ACC deal extending to 2037 (which hoo boy that’s a long time), along with the goal of being in California once a season, ND finds itself pretty limited despite its independence. Also, with the emergence of the 12 team playoff, Notre Dame’s path to getting to a National Championship just became much harder to do. I think having a schedule more suited to the goals of facing and knocking off good to great teams each season should be a priority. The idea of scheduling in advance was slightly exposed with the BYU vs Coastal game last season. I think opening up a weekend later in the season as a tune up for a potential playoff run could lead to success for the program.