in 2018 and 2017 combined. This led to a lower overall rating - they recruited plenty of top talent - unlike ND
I read an article about their 2018 class that focused on how all their top talent was coming back (surprisiginly) and how Swinney absolutely won’t cut kids ... hence two very small classes.
I think we should deputize Scott Malpass to find a way to bring Dabo here.
Dabo seems really good at:
* Player development (players generally get better from year 1 to year 4/5)
* Good roster management. Senior class leaves, next group is just as good. Look how many young guys they had this year perform at a high level.
* Mastering the mental - beating Bama helps add to their swagger and reinforces their coaching and belief.
* Lastly, based on Saban's stupid comment at halftime of the championship game (copycatting?), they appear to be smart enough to be able to make some tweaks and have their players execute an "off-script" game plan.
* I'm jealous...
If we're talking about how they're rated vs other schools.
If you're simply saying all recruits tend to be overrated, sure.
I've talked to people in the recruiting services who admit they inflate ratings of Notre Dame recruits in order to sell subscriptions and increase page views.
The linked article talks about preseason polls vs. actual performance, which is another aspect of the same issue. Various publications overrate Notre Dame in the preseason for the same rea$on$ that the recruiting services employ.
A while back, a poster looked at the bust rate of our five and high four star recruits, and determined that ND is particularly unlucky in getting them to live up to expectations. He concluded they were overrated to begin with. Most here agreed.
Does all of this constitute absolute proof? We're not in court here and it's not a criminal conspiracy to overrate recruits, so I'm not compelled to respond further to your chest puffing about proof. It walks, quacks, and looks like a duck, so I'll continue to say it's a duck.
I have to believe the rating services don't operate in a vacuum. Just as we posters wonder about a recruit that has a "weak cohort" offering and think we've hit gold if we beat a "strong cohort", I have to believe that the rating services consider which marquee schools are seriously interested in a prospect. Many schools besides us have this "problem" that our interest can often inflate a recruit's ratings.
Once they pick up an offer from those schools, their status immediately jumps.
but many of the Bama guys are very highly rated to begin with, I would think.
I might be wrong and I admit to not following this stuff as closely as others do.
I want to say it was around 2014. This myth was being floated around for ND and a number of other schools. Basically, there is no trend for any schools in terms of a post-commitment boost. Some go up, some go down. There is surprisingly little bias.
however, the lack of development once guys get here is also an issue.
Certain positions are worse than others, obviously.
Aspirations. Sans elite coaches pushing them we possibly have players that aren’t as motivated football wise. Tillery reportedly was an example of that for his early years. They get to ND and see possibilities beyond just the NFL.
IMO this affects a few of our star players each class. I had a roommate on the 1985-1986 teams that experienced that. 6’6” DE with elite speed. First team parade AA. Quit after two seasons because football wasn’t his top priority. In modern day ranking systems he would have been a high 4 star and possibly even a 5 star given his metrics - 40 time in particular.
avoid the tyranny of "or."
some cases are going to be one or the other, but when staffs consistently underperform after having highly ranked classes, it's usually going to be a bit of both.
I know that seemed to be the case, especially post-Holtz, with some of the Davie classes. Or, is it because in the Kelly era we are so hit and miss with development (e.g. Quinn maybe/most likely won't develop top talent like Harry did) and always seem to have some type of coaching hole?
at a variety of positions; Driver, Grant, LeVoir, Givens, Jabari, Battle, Faine, Holiday, Weaver, and a whole bunch of other guys.
I don't think we had an "overrated" problem, I think that especially with some pretty noteworthy guys (Weaver jumps out at me in his soph and junior years, and Driver as well) we had some "undercoached" guys.
Many recruits are overrated.
Their development at ND has been sub-standard since the Holtz era. As JT said, it varies from position to position.
Many talented ND players simply don't "want it" enough to make the effort.
A good example of that. Especially after he was injured freshman year and the effort level was increased to recover and excell from that point forward.
My other roommate was the opposite. Three year starter at DB and a leader on the 1988 title team. Both of them played for the same high school and the DE was the higher rated recruit.
are gathered to begin with.
Everyone's highlight tape looks really good. Sometimes, if you go to a particular camp you can look better than you are depending on who is on the other side (which is why most coaches want you at their camp). Much of the time, the guys on the recruitnik sites have no idea what they're actually evaluating; while they may see a pancake block, a coach might see a kid that has bad feet that dominates lesser competition and is slow to get off the ground after said block.
And some guys just don't make it even if they jump off the tape. I recall one coach talking to me about Chris Martin, who was a big time recruit in '09. He stopped by this particular school and nobody had heard of him yet. They slapped on his tape which was just some random game and within 3 plays the recruiting coordinator was on the phone to the DC to get his ass in there and meet the kid. I think that the kid ended up being one of the top recruits (if not the top recruit) in the nation. Long story short, he had all kinds of issues wherever he went (and there was a hint of that in high school), he transferred a bunch and I think he ended up at New Mexico Highlands University (bonus points to you if you had actually heard of that school before now).
Who was mature beyond his years and was ranked as the second highest QB recruit since they started ranking players.
Oh, and the best DL in CFB.
schemes.
Looks like something a qb would have come up with--"let's slide AWAY from their best DE! Let's have a TE pick that guy up! Let's have a running back do it!"
In fairness, those might have been checks by the players.
That's likely the easier swap out.
To win the big games on a regular basis you have to have top players *and* a top gameplan. Kelly gets by more often than not on having top players and occasionally coming up with a good complete gameplan.
Average game plans with above average talent should get ND 6 "easy" wins a year given the schedule. 3 more of the remaining games would probably be wins with the same efforts. Thus getting 7.5 to 9 wins at ND doesn't require superhuman effort in getting players, teaching fundamentals, game planning, or in game coaching.
Getting over the top and performing at "traditional" Notre Dame standards: i.e. winning big bowl games on a regular basis, winning a National Championship at least once a decade requires that a coach, his staff, and players perform at a much higher level than ND has put forth in the last 25 years. They've been somewhat close a few times, but multiple seasons of sustained success just haven't been there.
All of that being said, I believe that there are several coaches that if they traded jobs (and staffs) with Kelly would absolutely clean his clock with the players that ND has vs what they had. I would argue that just about every coach that has already beat Kelly could do so because there have been very few instances where Notre Dame hasn't had close to equal or better talent on the field as their opponents. The primary difference has been and will continue to be the guy who is in charge.