I completely agree, and LaMar Jackson is the kinda QB whom you or I could coach - from what I remember, some of the folks here thought Harbaugh may have been unfairly been on the hot seat before they clicked, but now they look very well set up for the next decade. As a slight follow up to your point, it is also mind-boggling to see Petrino bring in guys like Jackson and Bridgewater to a mid-major, especially when their powerhouse home-state schools have essentially been Tebow, Winston, and nothing else despite having an incredibly deep talent pool.
With that said and paraphrasing here, Saban had a comment to the effect of "at Miami, I get 1 first round pick a year. If I do my job correctly at Alabama, I get 20 (4-5 star recruits) and can stack the deck in my favor." As it relateds to ND and what I think the OP was inferring is that we have enough talent to simply overpower the derpy teams like Duke, and to our credit we aren't losing to the likes of them and Southern Florida or Tulsa recently, but we also don't have the firepower to take down Alabama and Ohio State back to back. Clemson is actually the intriguing one as I think our average recruiting classes were pretty close, but they had the dynamic difference makers like Lawrence, Ross, and the DL depth.
Related, I think the playoff system is going to be a bit of hindrance going forward. We've played good teams like UGA close twice (perhaps due to Kirby being overly cautious too?), but other than the LSU bowl win, we aren't winning the elite games, and the throttling by a middling Michigan team that I believe was handled easily not just by a very good OSU team but also by PSU/Wisconsin teams that we are competing with was a massive red flag. We theoretically should have had a small opening with our rival approaching Davie-Weis-Willingham levels and both OSU & OU replacing HOF coaches with kids who've literally never coached, but the latter look to be humming along and are firmly established in the playoff tier. In the near future, it looks like Alabama, Clemson, OSU are firmly established, OU and perhaps LSU/UGA just behind, and us in the batch with Florida, Oregon, PSU/Wisconsin. Barring having a Manti/Jaylon difference maker both on defense and QB, we aren't going to simply out-talent the first batch like we could a BC or NC State, so my guess is our best bet is to get a lucky draw with one of the latter ones or a rollercoaster like Texas and then hope OU/UGA/Florida take out one of the heavyweights in the other semi. We had awful luck with (a very good & deserved NC) Alabama backing into the 2012 game rather than K-State or Oregon, so I have no problem wishing for good luck.