Irish. Aggies. Elko. Freeman. Eagle. Blackledge. As the man said, sit back, relax, and strap it down because we are in for a fun one.

CONTEXT AND LEVEL SETTING

IRISH Enter With All Goals In Front of Them Despite Loss in Miami. I’ve watched that Miami game through a few times. I’m here to tell you a few things:

  1. The run blocking was actually pretty decent! Carr missed a couple of give looks on the RPO (especially on his INT) and Love misread a couple of plays but by and large ND got as good as it gave in the run blocking department. Pass blocking on the outside was bad, but had ok stretches
  2. The defense was out of sorts in ways that will hopefully be correctable.  Gray misses a call on a key 3rd and 8, Bowen biffed some key tackles, there was the Shuler play.  Carson Beck also just made some nice plays. There were also serious stretches of good! Most encouragingly, we had instance of getting to the QB with 3 (which somehow only ever seems to happen against one’s favorite team)
  3. There are different players than there were on last year’s team! We missed X. Watts plenty. Malachi Fields showed up! Micha Gilbert had a TD. We are in a new season now, let’s see where it goes.

AGGIES Roll Into South Bend Demanding Respect

Following a promising 7-1 start things unwound: blown out at South Carolina, gutsy losses to Auburn and USC. Outclassed by Texas. They’ve looked just OK in two body bag games so far (outrushed 1.5 ypc vs. UT-San Antonio!). Of their “Best Ever Recruiting Class” signed in 2022 (so, those players who should be the team leaders now) 0 5-stars remain. Startig Saturday, most of their remaining games are against ranked teams! “The Mike Elko Era” is at The Beginning of The End of The Beginning. This is a huge game for them.

 

Here are how I see the cases for each of the Four outcomes (R) :

 

GIG THIS! (ND Blowout) – 35% Chance

Some statistics and phenomenea. Stats: A&M has the 90th ranked YPC defense through two games. Reed is only the 33rd rated passer through two games despite a number of “overmatched team special” explosive tosses. Texas A&M is 72nd in passer rating allowed after playing UTSA and Utah State.

Phenomena: Texas A&M hasn’t beaten a ranked team on the road since 2014. Desmond Reed is ripe for falling into the “New QB Linsanity Trough” (i.e., that period in which a new QB’s strengths and weaknesses are known only by his own coaches, and DCs don’t yet know what tricks and crutches those offensive coaches are using to cover for the QB’s inexperience). Ian Boyd of America’s War Game wrote up Reed’s game this past spring thusly:

Here’s the deal on Reed, the dude is a basketball player trapped on the gridiron. Not a point guard either, more like a drive and kick “combo guard” of the sort who hunts his own shot and weaves through traffic but only passes when his own shot doesn’t materialize. Reed can do unreal things on the move with the ball in his hands…but is entirely unreliable at playing on time and delivering the ball in set piece offense.

The entire spring game we were repeatedly treated to variations on this theme.

Time and time again Reed revealed he doesn’t have a firm command of the Aggies’ passing game to make quick decisions and get the ball out while protecting it from harm. There were some plays he executed better than others, but asking him to make a quickly timed progression clearly drags him far away from his comfort zone, which is making impromptu decisions on the move amidst chaos

This should match up perfectly with the fast, disciplined defense Ash is supposed to be providing, and that Freeman assured us this week that we’d see. Match that to an even moderately better performance from the offensive tackles and Denbrock and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice 35-14 stew going.

GIG THEM! NOW! (ND Close) – 25% Chance

This is a scenario in which either a) the fundamentals of the above obtain but the bounces and whistles are decidedly against the good guys and/or b) we actually are in a great deal of trouble but are able to steal the game back by getting better bounces and/or whistles. Much angst heading into a 3rd game tilt with Purdue (which was good luck last year!)

HOW DID WE GET GIG’D?! (TAMU Close) – 25% Chance

Easy to see. Scenario 2 but without the favorable bounces and whistles. Add to this the idea that the Aggies truly might have one or two breakthrough dudes on the roster and it’s time to start seeing how well we can play and how much Carr can develop with the idea of making a deep run in 2026 and hopefully being able to accelerate that timeline to this year if we can win out and sneak in.

TOTALLY GIG’D – 15% Chance

This is the big boogeyman scenario. This likely only comes to pass in a world in which we are experiencing a 2013-like program regression. Guys getting self-satisfied over the summer, coaches enjoying their raised profiles and perhaps relaxing a bit; maybe throw in a bad hire or two and you suddenly are in a place where ND has dulled the honed edge it showed off to the world in 2024 (and that we’d been waiting/hoping for for decades). Of course it takes two to tango: this type of result would also denote a pretty badass season oncoming for Elko and the Wrecking Crew Part II: Electric Aggie-loo.  Really hope this one doesn’t happen!

 

MY BET 

As you can tell by the relative length of the ‘ND Blowout” section, I like the way this lines up for the Irish:

  • I have a lot of faith in Freeman
  • The odds of Ash being a van Gorder-level bozo are probably fairly low. A decent amount has changed about college football in the decade since he was smashing offenses in Columbus, but the RPO advent pales in comparison to the dislocation BVG felt coming from 2003 into the spread era.
  • Carr cleared a big hurdle last week. “Hostile Environment Meltdown Risk” is now off the table and the staff and the team can trust him a lot more. That’s worth a lot
  • Any reversions to the mean by Shuler, Bowen, Wagner, and/or Knapp will represent over-the-hump differentiators from an effort that almost beat Miami.
  • Reed has yet to prove himself and he is likely a long way away from processing a good college defense as quickly as Carson Beck
  • Elko has moved into the dread “Head coach who calls the plays” position. That is a lot to deal with, moreso than ever in the days of NIL budgets, unlimited transfers, and the like. This means Jay Bateman is being relid upon for a great deal of oversight/admin work and primary teaching within the defense

Arm twisted, I’m predicting a mostly fun night.

ND 34

TEXAS A & M 17