Welcome back to another edition of Five Wide Fullbacks. This was supposed to be the time for a playoff opponent preview to drop, and well that’s not happening now is it? We’ve had plenty of time to have a good cry or two and now we’ll dust ourselves off to some regularly scheduled off-season programming. In today’s article we’ll discuss the quarterback transfer market, the dregs of Notre Dame’s 2026 schedule, Michigan’s rotten culture, the National Championship pick, and a goodbye to Jeremiyah Love.
1) The quarterback transfer carousel is in full swing just a few weeks before the portal opens up. Who are some of your favorite and least favorite options across the country?
Cincinnati’s Brendan Sorsby is the top quarterback transfer according to 247 and is rumored to be headed to Texas Tech. Or, maybe back to Indiana where he started his career. Either school would be a great fit and he’ll be a top quarterback in 2026.
Dylan Raiola is leaving Nebraska and will be coming off a broken leg injury. No more hype, he’s been okay-to-good through 2 years of his career and probably can’t be viewed as a Dude at the college level. He’s a complete stay away for me but the same may not be said for a school like Miami.
DJ Lagway has offered brief glimpses of excellence, only very brief though! His passing skills just have not been up to snuff and he’s still too much of a project. I expect more of the same at his next school–a couple really good games combined with long stretches of inconsistency.
23 interceptions in 328 career attempts for Lagway.
Kenny Minchey is 4th on the 247 quarterback transfer board at present! I’d make the case a school should take him over Raiola or Lagway, for sure. The ceiling is potentially way higher.
Some other names expected to or rumored to be entering the portal:
Drew Mestemaker – He led the nation in passing yardage at North Texas and would be an enticing get for many Power programs. Unfortunately, he appears to be following his coach to Oklahoma State and that reclamation project.
Darian Mensah – The Duke signal caller has that hefty NIL deal and is weighing up entering the NFL Draft in a weak quarterback class. Or, maybe he’ll shock and transfer to a top school in college?
Josh Hoover – TCU is reportedly having to open up the checkbook to keep Hoover in town. Whether he leaves isn’t determined yet.
CJ Bailey – Many seem to think Bailey is headed out of NC State and he’ll surely be receiving some big offers from other schools. He’s an intriguing option for a mid-tier SEC school.
Sam Leavitt – Word out of the desert is that Leavitt is long gone. He’s been a productive enough dual-threat at Arizona State that he’s going to be coveted by a lot of programs.
Byrum Brown – The USF quarterback is applying for a waiver to play in 2026 and it looks likely to be accepted, according to reports. He threw for over 3,000 yards and ran for over 1,000 yards this past season. That’s some Cam Newton stuff, and hey, he may be headed to Auburn where his USF head coach Alex Golesh is now in charge. He could make the Tigers a whole lot better next season.
2) Michigan?
Say no more, I’m on it. This program is just the absolute worst. First we had to deal with the nonsense of Jim Harbaugh being the head coach, then assistant Matt Weiss was hacking into student’s personal photos and data for years. Then along comes Connor Stalions and a vast cheating scandal. Say what you want about the pain of Notre Dame’s recent playoff snub, the fact that Michigan emerged through this and won a National Championship bugs me more than pretty much anything college football related in my life.
I was certain promoting Sherrone Moore was a mistake, both because he was a homeless man’s version of Marcus Freeman, and also because it signaled to the country that they were more interested in keeping things together in a post-Harbaugh era. And THEN, Moore goes and does some of the most detestable things possible, cheating on his wife and kids, and when the staffer admits to the affair, he grabs a bunch of knives and heads to her home with comments like “my blood is on your hands” and “you ruined my life.”
Moore recently.
Notre Dame isn’t scheduled to play Michigan again until a 2033 visit to Ann Arbor with a return game in South Bend the following season. That’s still a long time from now and many things will change. I know that some will argue this series needs to be reignited (maybe even annually again) to boost Notre Dame’s schedule strength. I’ll talk more about the Spartans below, but Michigan State is 18-30 since 2022 and have been in the dumps when their coach thought it would be a good idea to sexually harass the sexual assault speaker. Michigan is due a much worse fall from grace on the football field and I would love for it to happen for a very long time. That would be justice.
3) Looking ahead to the 2026 Notre Dame football schedule, eight of the upcoming opponents lost a mind-boggling combined 68 games this past season. Is there any hope for any of these teams?
It is looking pretty bleak out there, I can’t lie. For reference, here are the list of teams with their 2025 records (please if you are queasy, haven’t eaten properly, or need to sit down please be careful):
Wisconsin 4-8
Rice 5-7
Michigan State 4-8
Purdue 2-10
North Carolina 4-8
Boston College 2-10
Syracuse 3-9
Stanford 4-8
Three Big Ten teams, four ACC teams, and Rice from the AAC. None of these teams have very good purchasing power in the NIL era. Maybe the Badgers can finally get things turned around under Fickell but they’ve been so, so bad offensively (Wisconsin only scored 154 points all season!) and no one will respect a win over them in the opener. At best, perhaps Pat Fitzgerald quickly raises the floor at Michigan State, although he’s got his work cut out for him.
Is there any way they can be good?
I can’t believe I’m saying this but maybe Belichick finds something in year 2? He’s got a lot of new blood coming to the program, at least. The only other option I can see is Steve Angeli making a recovery quickly enough to drag Syracuse back into relevance. With an Achilles injury he’s unlikely to be healthy for the start of the season, unfortunately.
4) With the playoffs beginning on Friday, who is your pick to win it all?
I’m going to immediately scratch #12 James Madison, #11 Tulane, #9 Alabama, #8 Oklahoma, and #6 Ole Miss. The G5 teams are what they are, neither the Tide or Sooners have an offense nearly good enough to go the distance, and while the Rebels might come out with their hair on fire in the absence of Lane Kiffin, they are more likely to crumble quickly (plus their quarterback Trinidad Chambliss has been in the news leading up to this weekend for potentially entering the transfer portal which is smart on his part but not the best thing for a team preparing to win a title).
That leaves the following teams:
#1 Indiana
#2 Ohio State
#3 Georgia
#4 Texas Tech
#5 Oregon
#7 Texas A&M
#10 Miami
I kind of like the Aggies playing a home game against Miami. In another setting, I’d probably pick the Canes, though. But I don’t trust Miami on the road in a hostile environment when they’re going to get punched in the mouth. Either team is going to get strangled slowly by Ohio State’s defense in the next round.
I just can’t get there with Texas Tech and I’ve been have this suspicion Oregon is going to run through James Madison, Tech, and then Indiana in the Rose Bowl. There’s something about the Ducks’ grittiness that I’ve liked this year and I think they’ll end Indiana’s Cinderella season.
I like their draw.
So, Oregon vs. either Ohio State or Georgia in the National Championship?
I’m picking the Dawgs. This doesn’t look like anywhere near Kirby Smart’s best team but this field is full of flawed teams and I think Julian Sayin is going to throw up a big stink bomb in the semifinals. I should keep going with my Ducks pick (this would be a decent year for them to finally win their first title!) although a more boring SEC pick it’ll be.
5) Irish star running back Jeremiyah Love has decided to leave early for the NFL Draft. Where does he rank in the pantheon of Notre Dame running backs and where are some good landing spots for his talents at the next level?
I’m going to try and update the 18 Stripes Hall of Fame Pyramid this off-season so we can do a deep dive on Love’s career then. At the last update, we had 22 Notre Dame running backs in the 18S HOFP and I think Love clears nearly everyone.
The issue with a lot of players, especially outside of the program titans, is they never got the ball enough and/or weren’t the featured back for long enough. You can maybe argue something similar for Love (sub-3,000 career rushing yards) but his peak for 2 years just hasn’t been reached by many others to wear a gold helmet.
When you finish 3rd in the Heisman, win the Doak Walker, become an Unanimous All-American, and are talked about as maybe the best overall player for a season of college football–you’ve entered rarified air. To me, he’s well clear of modern backs like Autry Denson, Josh Adams, Allen Pinkett, Jerome Bettis, Jerome Heavens, Ricky Watters, Vagas Ferguson, and Reggie Brooks.
The better question is if he’s closer to the likes of George Gipp and Johnny Lattner, the top 2 running backs in the 18S HOFP, because if so then Love is then a debatable top 10 player in Notre Dame history and maybe comfortably top 20.
For the NFL, it doesn’t seem like Love is going to drop very far past the likes of Arizona, New Orleans, Washington, or Cincinnati in that early-to-mid 1st round area. The Cardinals probably have the biggest need in the NFL (their running back room looks horrid) and the Saints signed an extension with Alvin Kamara but that only runs through 2026.
Being able to slot in with Jayden Daniels or Joe Burrow would be great landing spots for Love. Let’s hope he finds a home with a lot more offensive upside–falling to either of those teams coming off quarterback injury-filled seasons could be a blessing.
A good way to get past all those damn sobs and tears, so yay, and here goes:
— Your sheer hate for the Skunkbears has always been a joy, and your curse is especially cogent. I only add, Amen!
— On the QB situation, you did not mention whether we ourselves might take a one year remaining grad student as a backup. I guess I’d roll with the frosh, but 2026 could shape up pretty well for us so we may want to insure, but….hard to imagine anybody good enough to help us win if CJ has an issue (Dieu interdit) coming in to play backup? I dunno, but suspect this could be a topic for discussion amongst us.
— I’ll take J-Love as top of the modern era backs. My granddad saw the Gipper play and behind all the hype, he was exceptional, and my $$ would be on Lattner as a comp. So yes, maybe J-Love is all time-y. Interested in others’ thoughts.
I wasn’t around for the late 80s/early 90s in real time, but since then Love is a clear #1 and the gap between him and #2 is probably wider than the gap between #2 and #10.
I’ve been around since the late 60’s. I loved so many of those guys through the years but ….J.Love is #1.
It kind of stinks for him that he is this good in this era of football where RB is so relatively devalued. 25+ years ago he would have been the #1 pick, probably!
So when does the ax fall on Michigan’s AD. It seems unbelievable that he and others didn’t know what Moore was up to. If he isn’t gone very soon, my guess not much is going to change with that culture.
CJ Carr might be the only QB from his Elite11 group that isn’t seriously looking at the portal. That’s about the top 17 QB’s in his class.
My opinion is if ND brings in a QB from the portal to be the backup, how good can he be? What does that say about Hebert? Jarrard reclassifying has to happen soon unless he’s waiting until summer. If he did that, it’d be for 2027 playing time, no? I think what UGA did this year might be the game plan. Knowing who your starter is, you have a young untested but talented QB as the backup, with the plan to keep your starter healthy. In UGAs case it was Puglisi and ND it’s Hebert. (Both Mass. kids BTW, similar styles too) I would ask doubters to remember Clemson had gotten Hebert’s commitment very early and when he left it was a huge blow to their class. Hebert had a drop in the rankings (top 10 – mid 20s) due to an injury junior year, not bad play. If ND stands pat, I think it bodes well for what they think of Hebert. I just watched his senior film again, he’s a big strong athlete, with a big arm. We shall see.
I feel bad that J. Love did not get the season rushing record he looked so sure to get pre Stanford. First he gets cheap shotted then ND season ends earlier than we expected. Where does he stand in ND history ? As a RB, there’s been no one better. If you want to argue someone, who none of us saw play was better, so be it. So many of his best plays, were when ND needed them most. Whether a 98 yd dash vs Ind. or the best 2 yd run in ND history vs PSU…Thanks J.Love, thanks so very much.
Hebert… sounds good. I’m really not a fan of bringing someone in this time around.
If Michigan’s AD isn’t toast, then it’s only because he was way more dirt on the program or the school then they could handle. Which I wouldn’t be surprised by. CNN had a good bulletpoint writeup of recent Michigan athletics scandals, going over the not just the football stuff, but Juwan Howard repeatedly punching people and the hockey coach getting fired. That’s not even brining up any non-athletics issues at the school, like having a Chinese spy ring busted there.
“Harbaugh ran a program that was largely dismissive of rules compliance,” the NCAA wrote in a damning section of its report.
The days of unknown walkon names appearing on the roster are over, right? On your official roster spreadsheet we’re currently at 123 players, that number must get to 105 for next season IIRC. Would that mean former walkons getting kicked off the roster if we’re too high? Also you still have Love listed 🙁
Love removed 🙁
The 2025 and older classes are all grandfathered in and don’t count towards the 105 so it’ll be a while until that number really matters.
At this point, I’m only hoping for Georgia to win it all. Screw every other team in the field, for various reasons: Indiana: Coach Cig is a chode and Mendoza is the most pedestrian Heisman winner in modern history. Ian Book had comparable stats. Ohio State: no one does less with more than Ryan Day. How do you score 17 points in your two losses with those receivers? Texas Tech: buying a roster and immediately winning a championship is not a good precedent to set. Oregon: screw Dan Lanning, the guy is a try hard who then acts too cool for it. Ole Miss: Holy distractions, Batman! It’s not their fault their coach decided to leave with the offensive staff before the postseason and essentially nuked the program. I can’t see them holding it together to go very far. If Florida State was kept out of the playoff because they weren’t the same team by the end of the season and didn’t have a real shot to win it, I on’t know why the same rationale wouldn’t apply here. Texas A&M: You weird paramilitary dog cultists, you had one job at the end of the season, just beat your rival. Oklahoma: How did this team win 10 games? This is basically an Iowa team from five years ago, somehow winning one score games in the least appealing way possible. A team that’s not going to stay lucky enough to keep doing this over four games. Alabama: I think we’ve all gone over how absolutely unworthy they are and how disgusting and perverted it was that they got in, thanks to the incestuous horror that is the modern melding of ESPN, the SEC, and the CFB, an unholy creation out of a Cronenberg film or certain Lovecraft stories. Here’s hoping they repeat the most recent performance and have fewer rushing yards than I will this weekend. Miami: I hate this program and this team so much. Also undeserving as long as they have Mario Cristobal coaching them, who should be worth at least three points on betting lines due to atrocious game day/playing style decisions. Carson Beck’s punchable alien face is going to throw a stupid interception, and then hopefully the camera will give us sad Michael Irvin. The ACC deserved to have zero teams in, just for the way they’ve structured their giant, stupid conference, how all of the teams are bad, and how the tiebreakers make no sense. Tulane: Honestly nothing against them, but what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to determine a champion for 1A college football using a playoff format to find the best team that can win it on the field? Or are we just making some kind of invitational tournament like it’s December college basketball? Because this is a team that everyone knows has no shot to win everything. If you’re trying to find the best teams, why use one of those spots on a tomato can? JMU: See above. tl;dr,… Read more »
Enjoyable writeup! Fun reading. The only area where we disagree is on Cignetti. We don’t know how good he is yet. To this point his work at Indiana has been outstanding. Really enjoyed your comments. Chode?
Uh let’s just say ‘chode’ is something you don’t want to run an internet search on.
And thanks, I needed somewhere to rant so my family a friends can take a break from hearing it.
Let’s go Tulane! My little bro went there and it’s a helluva good time.
The group of five inclusion has to do with carryover from the BCS days. It was an antitrust thing, when Boise had a legitimate argument to be included and ended up in the no-name bowl. However when the system is still set up to favor the Power 4 (5 highest ranked champions) and the ACC can’t provide one, such is the outcome.
Yeah. I love Tulane, but having them in the playoff is kind of a joke.
Crushed it. You write what i feel
The only thing I disagree with is Georgia winning it all. I want all the SEC teams to fail. The SEC needs to fail hard. 5 SEC teams in a 14 team playoff field is unbearable. 10-3 Alabama in and not dropping in the rankings with a loss is stupid. Every other conference championship game loser dropped. SEC bias needs to stop.
I wouldn’t really deny that all in all the SEC is the most talented and deepest conference but that gets massively overstated every year where someone (Mizzou, South Carolina) starts out ranked but actually sucks and so other programs get a bunch of ranked wins, or they swap wins, and it proves just how truly great they are. Then bowl season comes around and huh woops actually not that great.
It’s not just running backs, the only skill player I’ve seen (since about ’85) that can compare to Love is Rocket, the highest rated WR in the 18Stripes pyramid.
Thinking about Love’s ranking at ND All-Time is such an interesting thought process. I would assume that ND’s greatest player of all time at any position is also going to be one of the greatest College Football Player’s of all time at that position. But Love’s stats compared to the greats aren’t really there:
All-Time Rushing Leaders are at about 6,400 yards (Ron Dayne). Love is WELL under half that, at 2,882. He’s also a full yard per carry under Melvin Gordon’s career. 40 fewer touchdowns than Montee Ball.
With the stats he has, can we call him an all-time great? If not, can he really be the #1 RB in ND history? (Side note: goodness those Wisconsin teams really should have been much better with all of that RB talent)
Alternately, he had the greatest highlight plays I’ve seen in my lifetime, and he did that while consistently putting up fantastic efficiency as well. He beat the hell out of playoff teams last year while having 1 properly functioning knee, a QB who couldn’t throw downfield, and a stacked box on most plays. There was never a game he played where he didn’t feel like the most impressive player on the field.
I am admittedly not much of an ND historian, but I think RB is one of ND’s historically weakest positions relative to all of CFB, at least in the modern era (when do people consider modern era starting?). So I would say being the best RB at ND actually doesn’t necessarily make you one of the greatest CFB players of all time.
Autry Denson is #87 in total yards, and I tried Googling lists of top 100 RBs ever, while most are behind paywalls, I found one that didn’t list a single ND RB. I do generally think ND was ahead of the times in that we played many more RBs so never had guys going for 250-300 carries for 3-4 years in a row. But still, even just names and vibes wise, I don’t think we’ve got many top top RBs.
None of ND’s RBs are anywhere near like the top 5-10 Wisconsin RBs in total yards. Don’t forget Johnathan Taylor! He averaged over 2,000 yds per season. Would have destroyed the total rushing record if he came back as a senior. Also, I looked up Melvin Gordon’s stats after you mentioned him, and he almost has Barry Sanders type numbers. I did not realize he was that good. Just didn’t have the total carries those other guys got.
Also, something I found interesting. I was looking how many Wisc RBs were in the top 10 all time in yds (2 in the top 4, 3 in the top 20), and wikipedia says that Donnel Pumphrey of SDSU has the most ever from 2013-2016. I have never even heard that name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_FBS_rushing_leaders. SDSU shows up twice on that list!
Probably no one cares about this, but since I went down a Wisc RB hole, figured I’d post some of their numbers. It’s fascinating how freaking good they have been at one single thing, RB stats. They are seriously in a league of their own. Texas looks like a clear 2nd place for what it’s worth.
Wisc has 13 RBs over 3k career yards (ND has 6), 6 over 4k (ND has 2). Braelon Allen would be 3rd all time at ND.
They have 8 of the top 100 rushing seasons, next closest is NIU with 5 and SDSU/Texas/tOSU with 4, ND has 0. They have 2 of the top 8 seasons, and 5 of the top 40 seasons.
…and then Fickell decided it was a good idea to bring in an air raid guy to run the offense.
Also, the impenetrable fortress that used to be HS lineman from Wisconsin going to Wisconsin has been cracked, see billy shrauth. 10 years ago, theyre fielding 5 billys paving the way for all those RBs. Credit to the current staff for landing him and raiding the badgers pantry
I am not given to handwringing or whining about coulda-woulda-shoulda — HCMF is correct when he insists none of that helps. Like many of you, judging from the Discord traffic, I had no desire to watch the CFP, just get on with life as an ND fan, looking at portals, signing day, etc. But as Dec 20th woulda shoulda been our first CFP game, I decided to wear this year’s Shirt in sort of solidarity. And then by accident scrolling through the Armed Forces Network, I saw a A&M/Convict score of 0-0 in the 3rd. So I confess, I turned it on. Darn oh darn, to think of how we woulda absolutely smoked both of those teams…
OK, ok, I’m moving on. And maybe, even more motivated. Next season — leave no doubt!!!
Evidently Paul Finnebaum thinks Bama’s performance makes ND fans whiners. Does he think OU is a solid team ? Bama could spot ND 17 pts.? There were some takeaways from Fri & Sat but, not what he thinks they are.
Exactly. Bama’s performance against Oklahoma solidified them as one of the 7 teams in CFP that ND would likely beat by 10+…and i’m not certain that Oregon, TTech, and Georgia wouldn’t also be in that group.
Vegas has us at the third best odds to win it all before selection sunday. I wish selection would go back to the BCS model, plus the highest rated group of 5 (6, welcome new PAC 12) team.
Did we ever have the discussion on 18 Stripes about how Michigan got away with murder on this? ND had wins vacated under Kelly for academic shenanigans that the University was open about with the NCAA. MI obfuscates, deletes, misrepresents, and does everything they can to prevent the full scale of what they were doing from coming out. Where is the vacated national title?
We’ve known for years that telling the NCAA to shove it is the best way to avoid punishment. Playing nice just gives them incriminating evidence against you.
So are we worried about the HCMF to the Giants smoke?
I don’t think so. I think he is to invested right now to consider such offers. If Brian Kelly can turn down the allure of the NFL, hopefully so can HCMF.
The 2026 schedule does look brutally bad. Hopefully, we beat both SMU and Miami and those two teams end up playing in the ACC championship game.
Then you hope MI St, Fl st, Wiscy, and either Syracuse, NC, BC return to some type of form and all have 7-5 to 10-2 type seasons.
I prefer inflicting violence on everyone.