You have to give it to Marcus Freeman. I can’t remember the last time a college football coach flushed so much goodwill down the toilet so quickly.
Notre Dame lost to Marshall 26-21. In his first game against an unranked team as coach, Freeman ended an Irish winning streak of 42 games against such teams, the longest in the country. He is the first Notre Dame coach in history to lose his first three games at the helm.
I have no idea what to put here, so here come some stream of consciousness thoughts.
– Tommy Rees is officially on notice. You could shrug off last week’s inept offensive effort against Ohio State as part of the game plan and the result of Jarrett Patterson being out. This week, Patterson was back and Rees sounded like he had full authority to do what he wanted. What he did was turn in one of the biggest steaming turds of offense you could imagine.
130 damn rushing yards, which would be fine if we’d attempted like 20 carries instead of 37. Five point eight yards per passing attempt. Three of the worst damn interceptions you could possibly imagine being thrown, and by two different quarterbacks no less. Absolutely no push or pass protection from a highly recruited offensive line coached by a supposed genius of the position.
Tyler Buchner looks no better than last year. Arguably worse. Drew Pyne looks like he got to campus two weeks ago and not over two years ago. Those guys were both recruited and have been coached by Tommy Rees.
It was an absolute disaster. There’s no other way to put it.
– The defense isn’t exactly off the hook either. This effort should have been good enough to win this game if the offense was even a whisker competent, but that doesn’t mean it was good. Key missed tackles. Not nearly enough pass rush. The Herd quarterbacks didn’t have much trouble creating space and making throws when they needed. The army of great linebackers Freeman either recruited or helped develop last year looked anything but. The secondary didn’t do nearly enough. Tariq Bracy seems pretty good. That’s about it.
The defensive line? Pushed around by freaking Marshall. A couple of flash plays by Isaiah Foskey doesn’t remotely cut it as the sum total of everything good produced by this position group.
– Either Braden Lenzy or Tyler Buchner is colossally inept in that receiver/QB relationship. I don’t know which one it is, but there’s no reason to target Lenzy if every pass is going to be 30 yards away from him due to some form of miscommunication.
– I’m hesitant to go too hard at any member of the coaching staff that wasn’t here prior to 2022, but it’s worth asking what exactly Notre Dame is good at. And what the plan is to both figure that out and scheme accordingly. Because honestly, this team sucks at all levels right now. There’s not a single positive I can point to except Michael Mayer and probably Lorenzo Styles, and the ineptitude around them minimizes how much they can help.
– Freeman needs to cool it on the going for it on fourth down until he has an offense capable of converting. Being unable to get a push against freaking Marshall. I can’t get over it. Marshall is a very good Sun Belt team. They might even push to be ranked at some point. There is no damn excuse in the world for Notre Dame failing get a yard against them when you need it.
– The reason to hire Freeman was that there was nothing to rebuild. This was a ready-made program that Brian Kelly (God knows what he’s thinking right now) left him, and it just needed some big-time recruits to push it over the top. Now it’s not clear if Notre Dame will win 6 games. My worst fear is that Freeman will panic and make too many changes trying to fix this. Actually I have many worst fears. I can’t help but have nightmares about having to fire this guy in two years because he proves to be in over his head and then we’re doing the “Notre Dame is racist” dance again. But if the recruiting momentum he built the last year-plus goes by the wayside and he continues serving up these pu-pu platters on Saturdays, this could go south really really quickly.
– A week from now, Notre Dame faces California. They’re wearing green jerseys, I guess. Let’s hope things go an awful lot better.
This was a program-wide and program-changing failure on the order of Duke 2016 or Syracuse 2008. No one should understate the meaning of this game. We lost to, and got shoved around by, a Sun Belt team at home. More than a decade of program-building got wiped out in one afternoon. We are going to have a very bad record this year and no credible way to sell it on the recruiting trail.
Rees needs to be fired or demoted tonight, September 10, 2022. I realize it’s week 2. This is a BVG in 2016 level emergency. This offense, as is, will cost us 9 or 10 games. Everyone needs to adjust their expectations for this team way, way down. 2019 LSU, we are not.
For months – more than a year now, actually – I have been begging people to be realistic about Freeman. I realize he’s handsome and nice and he says things we like to hear. But his qualifications do not match those of any successful ND head coach in almost a century; they never have and that was completely overlooked because we want him to be our friend. He was essentially elected head coach by the players. As a result, we’re already seeing many of the problems that accompany an overwhelmed first-time head coach. I really hope Swarbrick can be realistic about him if this is a 3-9 type disaster season. Realistic isn’t going to be pleasant and it’s not going to be what we all wanted to happen, but it’s really important to the long-term health of this program. It is possible, and looking increasingly likely, that Jack made some very bad hires in December 2021.
Hard decisions are ahead.
So, it’s my understanding that not only did Freeman bring the return of game day mass (fine) but, that there was also some kind of mini pep rally after it. If that’s so, that’s a coach worried about the wrong stuff the day of the game.
Tommy Rees is the new Alexander/Denson/Lyght – somebody who has stayed around too long despite poor recruiting for reasons. Our QB room is a disaster for a major program. We should have taken Slovis, but we didn’t because Rees is a horribad QB evaluator.
Just for a rundown of Tommy Rees’s QB recruiting:
Not good!
(Yes, BK is certainly responsible for some of this too, but the “no Rees is actually a good recruiter” takes we saw over the last six months were always totally delusional and I often felt like I was getting gaslighted.)
If you go on Wikipedia and look at the resumes of the best coaches in college football, what you see is that they spend the first ~10 years of their career bouncing around different schools, coaching different position groups, learning under different staffs. Most of them become coordinators about 15 years into their careers and P5 coordinators/head coaches 20+ years in.
Tommy completely bypassed that process and went GA –> QB coach –> OC in about 5 years. He not dumb or a bad person, but he’s missing decades of experience.
Also basically all under Kelly too with a brief exposure in the NFL. That was/is a back of my mind worry with him.
Freeman’s experience isn’t a ton better
The 3 QBs on the team, have little in common with each other. When there’s a substitution there needs to be a change in offensive philosophy. You are correct about Pyne. They should be getting Angeli ready right now. This position is in a very bad way.
What is Bryan Kelly thinking?
Maybe that he almost lost to Toledo last year with a similar team, except he had a legit top 25 QB/WR1/WR2 combo in Coan/Austin/Davis) and an RB1 who could get positive yards with a crap line.
And now the offense has none of those guys. I’ve been around long enough to remember Matt LoVecchio. This feels like where we are headed.
I think Freeman needs to make the team he wants on offense. I think he thought he’d make the best with Tommy if it was a precondition to get hired. That it would be ok to begin and that Tommy would move on after a year with all the NFL heat on him last year. A guy like Freeman who was on track for some head coaching job had to have more of a plan for the offense he’d want than he’s let on since being hired. I think he’s deferred some to Tommy because he was saddled with him.
Right, now, my only reason for thinking Freeman might end up working out is that the Defense has come to play these two games. I agree on the missed tackles amd that they’ve regressed some, but even mediocre offense wins Marshall and makes OSU a game the whole way with the way the defense played. The offense lost these games by being completely inept and that’s on Tommy right now. Freeman needs to make the team he wants, and now.
That’s a lot of excuses for Freeman. Great mind reading. Not.
What do you think he wants on offense?
The constant side line checking and fine tuning looked like either the offense entirely has no clue what it was doing or Rees got way into his own head and was waffling on calls
I think Rees doesn’t trust Buchner to audible based on what he sees, so Rees is trying to do it himself from the booth. Whatever it is, it’s a mess. Reminds me of the early Kelly years (unsurprisingly) when we had the world’s slowest hurry-up offense because they had to spend 25 seconds staring at the sideline each play.
This is relatively common thing to do in football. Things didn’t go well but it’s not because they were checking to the sideline about the playcalls.
No I know checking the sideline is normal, that’s been totally common for like a decade now. It was how long it took when checking the sideline and a lot of weird little adjustments that stood out to me
It’s common but ND’s version of it is not effective. It takes too long, prevents actual up-tempo, and takes away time from the QB being able to read the defense. And it doesn’t get us into favorable matchups anyway.
Thanks, I was curious. That sounds more or less right to me (but what the hell do I know either).
IMO Rees and Freeman are a bad combo. Just a huge dearth of experience on the offensive side of the football. They need to separate very soon or they’re going to wreck each other’s careers.
None of which explains the Oline completely sucking. The RBs were being hit behind the line of scrimmage repeatedly.
Looks like the same thing happened to A&M.
I invite you all to join us in the delight that is Formula 1. There’s still a half season left. The race is in Monza this week, a beautiful and storied track, the “Altar of Speed” and there are a ton of interesting storylines and technical engineering tweaks going on.
Plus, you can still comment here on 18s about what you see and we will love you for it. Set your DVRs to 7:30 ET tomorrow, ESPN2. It’s so much more than race cars!
Wow when I watch this offense I think, “this is just like having a more mobile, stronger armed Joe Burrow from 2019. It’s a real shame the Los Angeles Rams are going to poach Tommy Rees from us, his next level playcalling will surely be missed”
The “this offense can be a facsimile of the 2019 LSU offense” take is this board’s version of the “I want to get back to Chicago for a steak after the game.”
It’s “hire Jon Gruden” level delusional.
the scheme is one thing to me – squint enough and I guess sure – the Burrow comparisons were insane to me and I’m confident I’m 100% right based on these two games
and by “squint enough and I guess sure” I really mean “you in theory can run any scheme regardless of personnel, it just won’t work,” and I was always in the “it just won’t work” category for us
On the bright side, we’ll get to see better offensive design and execution during the Bears game tomorrow.
Healy wrote the Marshall preview too!
HEALY!!
The offensive play calling is offensive. Case and point – 3rd quarter and we start a drive with 2 very successful Estime runs (and a first down). Next play we go empty backfield? WTF? If you want to throw why wouldn’t you do play action? It defies logic. Then, you run a dive into the middle of the line out of a shotgun formation on 4th down in a jumbo set when you haven’t gotten a consistent push all game. Our execution is piss poor, but the playcalling is just a disaster.
I remember that empty look and thought WTF! when I saw it. It screams “I have no plan”.
Personally I think the biggest upset of the season so far is UNC over App State and the Sun Belt is actually the best conference in all of college football.
When Freeman was hired there were two obvious problems.
I said as much at the time. He was a feel good hire. Players loving a popular young dude isn’t a good reason to bump him up so fast.
Freeman combined with Tommy Rees might have helped if Rees were solid, but Rees is so overrated it’s not funny. I’ve never understood the wunderkind rep he’s had.
Lets hope this is the bottom of the abyss and the arrows turn up from here
Yeah, we’re stuck having to watch Freeman learn how to be a head coach, which means taking some serious lumps. Let’s hope he’s a fast learner. He’s not likely to be one of those coaches that wins a title in their 2nd or 3rd year. Most hopeful scenario is that he can be a Dabo Swinney type coach that starts as a stellar recruiter and becomes a great head coach over the course of a handful of years.
Think that will work for 10 years at ND?
It took Dabo 9 at clemson
Yeah, but Clemson was a far cry from an ND level brand or tradition.
That was my point Clemson could afford to do that, because they weren’t where we are.
Oh, got it. Good point
No. We know what happens when ND hires a head coach who has never been a college head coach before — they go about .550 and get fired in 3-5 years.
I find myself all over the place after that fiasco.
Short-term: the offense needs immediate improvement. There are 7 wins on the table if our offense can start scoring.
Longer-term: I honestly don’t know what to think. Our lack of effective offensive players is perhaps overdue. We’ve relied heavily on the transfer portal, and as mentioned above, I wonder if BK saw some of this coming. Cleary Freeman takes blame, but this fell apart pretty quickly to lay the blame solely on the current staff.
I’m really struggling to process how much of a time bomb our offensive roster turned out to be — it’s 2007 level. Almost every starter needs to be replaced and upgraded.
No one from Kelly’s offensive staff should have been retained.
Yea I think this is why Kelly was wise to leave. I think some of the recruiting misses are coming home to roost. That isn’t fixed overnight. More classes like Freeman has right now with 90% blue-chip rate will fix that in a hurry.
Right, the question is whether this class sticks together, particularly the offensive players. Why would any recruit want to come play for Tommy Rees, exactly?
I’m hoping very much he keeps it together, and I am optimistic some of the high-level talent will stay (e.g., Drayk Bowen)… but, like, man if I were a WR recruit I would be questioning my decision right now.
So is the answer firing Rees? Is that something you do this early in the season? Or let it play out looking for an OC to replace him at the end of the season? I think firing him now is basically giving up on the season, but trying to save your recruiting class. How fair is that to the current players?
I think the time to fire would be after the UNC game/during the bye week if the offense continues to look like this. That would give him 1/3 of the season to show something, plus would be the minimally disruptive in-season point to change coordinators. I hope it’s not necessary, and the ideal thing is that Tommy turns it around. That’s still possible, but in any case I kind of hope he goes and is an NFL QB coach or something next year.
Well, offensive playcalling needs to change immediately to have any hope of even a moderately successful season. Rees cannot do it. His playcalling is broken and illogical and has cost us three games in a row.
Maybe we don’t have to full-on fire him now, but he needs to be replaced as the playcaller. Tonight. I do not care who the replacement is.
Yea, it’s a question. Obviously, it’s going to matter a ton what happens going forward. If some big improvements are made on offense in the next few weeks and we finish 8-4/9-3 I think the class will be fine. 7-5 would probably be the baseline – and we might be able to sell those WR recruits as the “missing” pieces.
I think we may get a slight pass from recruits if Buchner is injured for a few games but the games he does play, he looks much improved.
Jamie U made a good point about how inexperienced Buchner is with football. He basically had one great high school season as a junior. Missed his senior year and so has barely played. He thought Buchner would improve a lot as the year goes on.
Buchner is a sophomore. Jamie U’s excuse would have made plenty of sense last year. Now it’s just cope.
It’s not like he got a ton of experience last year.
In context, I didn’t take it as an excuse but simply a point about how much better he should get throughout the year.
I don’t expect much improvement from him. He’s behind a terrible OL, in an illogical offense, with an inexperienced coach.
QBs don’t really improve under Rees. Book was what he was for three straight years.
My impression was that Book got better during his three starting years. He certainly improved from his first year as a starter to his second.
His PFF grade jumped from a 70 to a 77.9 from his first to 2nd year starting actually.
OK, that’s fair. If Buchner can get to something like Book 2.0, that would be a huge improvement.
Yea right now it seems like we need to play to his running strengths more until he develops more as a passer or until the WRs develop more into real threats (depending on whoever really is at fault in the passing game).
But right now, he’s a far better runner than thrower – or at least the offense succeeds more with him running it rather than him throwing it (again depending on whoever that is on).
So he’s kind of the opposite of Book who was a better thrower than runner. But it’s obviously possible to design an offense around that kind of talent – especially since Buchner can throw it downfield decent (if only a WR could do more with those kind of throws).
Fair enough. I’m sure he will improve over the course of the year if he stays healthy. But he’s not going to be *that* good – by the end of the year he might be an average P5 starter, maybe. Like I said above, we should have taken Kedon Slovis and let the chips fall where they may.
I won’t dispute that.
Honestly, at this point I’m not quite sure why Pyne is the backup. And given the poise and the throws Angeli made, I wouldn’t mind him getting those backup reps and getting a shot if Buchner misses time with injury.
The biggest piece to get right is QB and I think we know what we have in Pyne, and it’s not going to do it for us. So of course Buchner is most ready/most talented right now. But it seems like the next guy should be Angeli and we should give him a chance to show out (or not).
And I wasn’t sure about taking Slovis – but hindsight being 20/20 I think we should have. If I had to decide right now whether to look for a transfer at QB for next year, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Oh yes. They absolutely should hit the portal for *something* given our QB depth after Pyne leaves next year (which seems inevitable), and frankly I am not optimistic that Buchner will look good enough this year to not be forced to promise the starting job to a Slovis/Coan type in the offseason. This whole thing could get kinda ugly quick.
Man, whoever the QB coach is probably on the hot seat!
I wonder if the QB dysfunction would be something that would convince Carr to reclassify to 2023.
If I were him, I was probably thinking Buchner is the anointed next guy with 2 years left (if Carr showed up in 2023) so I’m not in a hurry to start my eligibility clock. But now… maybe I’m thinking hmm he’s not that solid and maybe I’d have a chance to unseat him by the 4th game of my freshmen year (a la Lawrence or probably what will probably happen with Kublick this year).
That would be a big deal.
I do think Kelly has hamstrung the QB recruiting more than normal but if Rees really has chosen the wrong guys to go after early on that’s a problem. It’s also something he can/(perhaps) has gotten better at.
If Carr reclassified to 2023 that would solve a huge problem and would give Rees/Freeman an opportunity for another top 100 QB for the 2024 class.
Without doing a deep dive, it seems most of the teams talent is in the 1st/2nd years and so every year that Freeman stays will likely include a large increase in talent – which is necessary. Though he is going to have to couple that with improved coaching. We see that even teams with top talent (think A&M, LSU, etc.) can lose games against inferior talent. Hopefully Freeman can keep the talent pipeline coming while he learns quickly enough in the head-coaching department.
From what I can tell, seems like most kids don’t want to be or don’t buy the missing piece story coaches sell. WRs would rather commit to Ohio State by the dozen
They might rather go to OSU but OSU can only take so many WR. Getting their 2nd hands is still better than what we got (well our best is already someone who would have preferred to go to OSU I bet, but they didn’t want him = Styles).
right but it’s not just OSU, it’ll be a bunch of schools that already put up big passing yards with flashy offense
I scratched my head at his recruitment at the time. As I recall he was playing vs pretty weak talent in hs and hadn’t played much football.
gotta recruit much better than that at qb.
I mean he was ranked a top 10 QB and top 100 – those are the guys we should be recruiting. So if it was the wrong guy then basically everyone was wrong. (I mean yes, we’d all prefer the top 50 guys or better but top 100 guys are not something to sneeze at. We just need to continually bring in top 100 QBs because not all of them will be top players.)
That’s right. We need two Buchner+’s every 3 years. With Rees, we’ve gotten two in six. The QB recruiting that has gone on while he has been QB coach has just been legitimately bad, and it might end up being responsible for this program falling off a cliff.
Yea in a way we’ve had pretty good injury luck at QB the last handful of years with Book only missing a game here or there and so the lack of talent/depth at QB hasn’t been exposed earlier.
I still put a lot of the QB recruiting on Kelly but whoever is to blame exactly it’s a real hole for us to dig out of and waiting until 2024 to start digging is really setting us back. With this injury we especially need Carr to reclassify.
Sure, assuming Buchner is done for the year, at this point the way forward for this program (assuming Angeli isn’t a hero) is Carr reclassifies into 2023, we get the Coan/Slovis bridge equivalent for next year who takes us to 10 wins, then Carr is ready to go in 2024. If Buchner wants to stay as the backup for next year, wonderful.
The worst case scenario is they play Pyne and try to shove Buchner down the program’s throat for next year. Can you imagine the awful vibes around the program if they tried to sell that all offseason?
I said this in the slack chat earlier but man am I really afraid of the wheels completely coming off after today.
What a potentially disastrous game today could turn out to be in more ways than just the L.
I’m afraid of that too, but I’d rather fail quickly and move on.
I would be less worried about it with a healthy Buchner. Teams have bad games – even against weaker opponents. Saban lost against Lousianna tech in game 11 of his first year at Bama. It happens.
But without a viable QB going forward – that scares me the most because the ceiling on the season just went down the tubes so to speak.
Oh yea I’m with you. If he’s out (I’ll leave it as an if for now), then yes that’s a huge problem moving forward.
I think I’m just mostly disappointed in the fact that over the last 5 or so years we’d have these games, but still win them. But these types of games were probably always on the table with a first time head coach. Comes with the territory I guess.
Yea it’s why Kelly was an “A” coach even if he was a B+ recruiter. To win at the highest levels you need to be an “A” coach and an “A” recruiter.
Right now Freeman seems to be an “A” recruiter, but a “C” (maybe???) or worse coach? The question will be how quickly he can improve that to at least a B to keep up with his recruiting prowess.
Let’s wait and see on that A recruiter stuff. Unproven at this point.
lol
That Saban loss is really moot to this discussion. Saban’s resume, at the time, being quite different than Freeman’s.
But Saban won a natty the next year.
Yea I’m definitely worried that that has a high probability of happening. And maybe add to that some kind of graduate transfer who comes in to be a backup and Carr doesn’t come in until 2024. Or instead of the graduate transfer QB, they’ll add some mid-3 star to the mix.
But it’s hard to see that that is not in play for 2023:
Buchner
Angeli
mid-3 star Freshmen.
Haha or worse, Pyne sticks around because he thinks he has a shot at being the starter (again?)! And so we don’t bother bringing in a grad transfer to compete for the starting job.
I wonder sometimes if Rees recruits the underdog QB. After all he was definitely the underdog, and started most of three seasons, inherited Book who was supposed to be a career backup and became ND’s winningest QB. Maybe Rees just has a soft spot for flawed QB’s?
I think he falls in love with a young QB and that’s it. Look at the Moore situation this year. Word is he could have landed other very highly ranked guys but he stuck to Moore and now we have a big zero in this class. And a QB is/was a very big need.
Hilariously one of the QBs he fell in love with is Drew Pyne, who does not appear to have any particular skills as a college-level quarterback *and* is teeny. Tommy is truly quite bad at HS recruiting evals.
Buchner ended up #71 in the 247 composite but after slipping from #28. That’s still a very good ranking and the slip is pretty excusable given the senior season in 2020 and all, but idk, I have the same feeling about say Drayk Bowen and Vernon this year – guys who kinda keep slipping despite their high rankings and the reports are always “yeah he’s really good buuuut…” set off big alarms to me
EDIT: clarified I meant LB not S Bowen
Buchner also looked bad at the camps he went to. He maybe shouldn’t have even been #71.
Right, that’s my instinct but for the most parts the composite, while I think big picture help, is also subject to a lot of inertia
Bowen??? He’s going the other way isn’t he? – rising, not slipping. Are you thinking of someone else?
It’s hard to say any kind of slipping itself is a bad sign. Vernon for example I think didn’t go to any summer camps. Ausberry slipped too but people think he looked better than the top LB at certain camps. It may be a red-flag or it may not be. So by itself it really doesn’t mean a whole lot it seems because there are so many factors involved.
Yea Buchner I think was injured his senior year so didn’t play.
No ball in California his Sr. year.
O wait there are two Bowens. Right one has slipped a bit and the other is rising.
Hah yeah I had to edit the post to clarify that, I forgot both Peyton and Drayk are Bowen
The one who will be in the class is falling, and the one who will not be in the class is rising.
🙁
Define “heavily” as in relying on the transfer portal, please.
we are barely in that game.
Skowronek and Coan. Only 2, but we relied heavily on them and then somehow didn’t replace with viable recruits.
Rumors on the internets is Buchner injury is a broken clavicle. We might not win 7 games this year.
RIP the 3000 passing yards he was going to get, per the over/under.
Yea, that is basically worst case scenario. Lose the only viable QB to a long-term injury — would that be for the year then???
I do wonder whether in some sense that might give Freeman a pass. Well you lost your starting QB what else could you do? Not too many teams could handle losing their top QB and come anywhere close to original expectations (some could for sure – no argument there, but not many I would think).
It’s also bad because Buchner is very inexperienced. Now he’d go into NEXT year with again basically no experience. We’d take our lumps this year and still be no better at QB next year. Ouch. (One begins to remember the “bad luck” Kelly had with QBs at the beginning of his tenure.)
We definitely need Carr reclassifying and/or get a relatively top graduate transfer at QB for next year.
Freeman, maybe, but everyone needs to remember why our QB depth chart looks like it does.
It’s terrible considering his inexperience. Not just bad for the team, but bad for him. He’s basically going to have very little experience and potentially miss significant time.
Yes, definitely bad for him. He might not even end up starting much at ND depending on what happens with bringing other guys in next year.
Really tough pill to swallow. Feel bad for him.
It didn’t look like they had him in a sling or anything did they? Not that that means much, could just be a non displaced fracture
I don’t remember seeing much of him on the sideline after the injury so it’s hard to say. But yea really tough pill to swallow.
If Buchner is done for this season, I think he’s probably done as ND’s QB. Either Angeli is a revelation and Buchner’s done, or they recruit a Coan/Slovis type next year and Buchner’s done. Pretty narrow window for Buchner to be the starter again in either scenario. Main question would likely be whether he’s willing to stay as a backup/waiting in the wings next year or if he transfers immediately.
Yea I agree. It’s tough to see him starting much for ND if he’s out for the year.
Another option is Carr comes and he’s a revelation and he starts. Buchner could always be the backup who gets extended action due to injury and then turns out well but one can never count on that.
If Carr wasn’t thinking of coming early, I can’t see why he would now. I’d want to see how things settle in a year or so before actually coming to ND. I’d want to make sure I wasn’t walking into a mess, with the hopes that I’d be the savior. BTW by the looks of things he’s playing well but not setting the world on fire so far this season.
That’s a good point. If he plans on coming in ‘24, he wouldn’t have to sign until December of ‘23 at the earliest right? I would think the best decision for him would be to wait it out at this point. Things could get much worse before they get better. I’d also want to see which verbal commits stick and actually sign.
Yep, that’s where I am too
That’s what it looked like when it happened.
And honestly, Angeli better buckle up because he’s going to get a chance sooner than later. I would rather bet on him saving the season (I would consider the season saved with getting to a bowl game).
I was wondering how long it would take to replace the dashing Starbucks man-crush photo … got my answer. These are the days when I get existential about my participation in this fanaticism over a team of young men at a school I didn’t attend (my younger brother is a 94 grad).