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Would you like to know how many current Duke upperclassmen were ranked in the top 600 by the 247Sports composite rankings coming out of high school?

One.

Trevon Lee was ranked #431 coming out of high school. Trevon Lee has played 24 snaps for Duke, and none of them came today.

Less than half of the ND players in any given recruiting class rank below where Lee did.

Okay, recruiting rankings don’t tell the whole story. Well, how about the fact that Duke lost to Northwestern and Wake Forest the last two weeks, and scored 27 combined points while doing it?

ND gave up 498 yards to that same team, 38 points, 9.1 yards per pass attempt to a freshman backup quarterback, missed 2 billion tackles (est.), and just looked like a bad football team. Probably because they are one. (But hey, at least they finally recorded a sack.)

ND supposedly aspires to be a good football team. I can only assume they do, what with the face value of tickets now in the triple digits for most games, a $400 million renovation centered around the football stadium, and the fact that they pay seven digits to a defensive coordinator (yep, that one). Well, this is 5 of 7 seasons that have been outright failures if that’s your objective. I think it’s fair to say all of us would place 9-3 as the minimum benchmark for a successful season for a program that has the standards ND appears to. And this is 5 of 7 that will fall short of that. 2 of those fell two games short, which is a lot more than it seems.

I don’t think you can defend the Brian Kelly regime anymore. He had a great year in 2012, and a good year made more impressive by what he overcame to get there in 2015. But 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, and now 2016 have been bad. And this year looks like it will be the worst yet.

As ND alum and former SI writer George Dohrmann said on Twitter, referring to the train wreck that USC’s program looks like so far this year:

I just don’t think there’s any recourse left. ND is young. ND is inexperienced. And ND has been hit by some injuries yet again. But as the recruiting rankings above make clear, none of that excuses committing 3 turnovers, giving up 500 yards, and losing to a very bad Duke team.

I feel very bad for DeShone Kizer, who was far from perfect but was plenty good enough to win. (Kelly said postgame he was “well below standard” and even floated the idea of Brandon Wimbush playing, which seems ridiculous and grab-baggy to me.) I feel bad for guys like CJ Sanders, Josh Adams, Dexter Williams,  and others that are clearly busting their humps out there. I feel bad that I hate the defense so much even though some of them are probably good football players trapped in a horrifyingly awful Groundhog Day of terrible schemes. I feel bad for the latest group of talented freshmen that came here thinking they would be getting, at least, a 2015-level team. I would feel bad for the currently #6 ranked recruiting class, except those guys can get out if they want. God, I don’t want them to. But are you looking at this? How could you blame them?

I have nothing more to add, really. I think I’ll be back next week. I hope I have something more interesting to say.