6 Thoughts on a Thursday
Culture can feel like a farcical term at times when talking about what it means for a team or a program because it gets mentioned by just about every coach whenever they take a new job.
It’s an easy thing to emphasize. It can be a hard thing to implement.
Texas is the perfect example of that as they’ve never seemed to get it quite right despite playing in a conference where they are far superior in talent to everyone outside of Oklahoma. All of that talent hasn’t led to enough wins. They’ve won 10 games once since 2009 and even that came in a season where they lost four times.
I guess you could say that senior defensive lineman Moro Ojomo has rightly had enough of losing. He even talked about some specific teammates who need to step up and mentioned former Notre Dame edge defender Ovie Oghoufo as a player who others should follow because he has been part of a program with a winning culture.
Texas has a roster filled with players who have NFL potential. What they don’t have is a roster that knows much more than disappointment.
Right now they are in the process of learning how to win and to put the team first. Again, that’s simple to bring up in a press conference, but more complicated when it requires buy-in from several individuals.
Notre Dame has that buy-in already because they have players on the team who know nothing but winning.
Back when I enrolled at Idaho State as a freshman football player, we had a sign freshly painted in the locker room that the coaches constantly mentioned. It read, “Expect to Win”. The program was rebuilding and none of the older players on the team had experienced a winning season before. They had to put up this sign just to remind players to not anticipate the worst was going to happen.
Notre Dame doesn’t need a slogan like that (although maybe some Irish fans could use it above their television). They don’t need that because the program is now at a point where players like Kurt Hinish and Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa have come and gone while the teams they played on won at least 10 games every year. The younger players have seen the examples set by the upperclassmen with what it takes to overcome adversity when it arrives. They’ve seen how a message like “For the Brotherhood” actually means something and want to build on that.
I know Notre Dame fans often look at things a certain way and can get caught up in all of the things that the program doesn’t have or hasn’t done recently. It’s easy to forget that many other programs are desperately searching for what Notre Dame has and should continue to have with Marcus Freeman’s player-friendly approach.
It’s the players that drive the culture. Freeman knows that and that he inherited that when he was promoted. Having that piece already in place is something that makes Notre Dame the envy of most programs in college football.
2. Texas A&M doesn’t have that. At least they haven’t proven they have under Jimbo Fisher. Maybe they won’t ever get there when they make decisions like hiring DJ Durkin as defensive coordinator, who is known as being the opposite of player-friendly.
It can’t be argued that they just put together a recruiting class that can help them compete with the top tier in college football, though.
I just wrote about how Notre Dame only signed four top-100 prospects who played defensive line, defensive back, or wide receiver in the previous eight recruiting cycles. A&M just signed 13 (!) of them in the 2022 class alone. Considering that their number was 18 in the previous seven cycles, it’s an obviously massive upgrade in that department.
A&M is at 31 total top-100 prospects signed at those three positions since 2015. I mentioned in the piece that Clemson signed 29 and Ohio State signed 36. Georgia also signed 29. Alabama signed (gulp) 51.
The culture part of program building is huge. Matching talent at critically important positions like this is also kind of a big deal, which is why landing studs like Keon Keeley, Brenan Vernon, and Peyton Bowen need to just be the start for the Irish.
3. I know there were many who were perplexed at the very least by Ed Orgeron showing up to Notre Dame’s practice. It’s probably even more strange when people see him taking questions after practice in front of a rubber leprechaun.
Some Notre Dame fans weren’t very happy to see him around the program for various reasons, but I bet Al Washington was. There aren’t that many coaches on the planet who are as passionate about defensive line play as Orgeron is and regardless of how people view him, he’s as knowledgeable about that part of the game as anyone.
This Bruce Feldman piece goes into great detail about the “O-line/D-line appreciation hour” at LSU and it’s obvious that even though Orgeron was the head of the program who was about to win a national championship, in his heart he is still a defensive line coach.
If he’s hanging around for the week, then Washington and the Notre Dame defensive line is going to be better for it.
4. ESPN’s Bill Connelly recently ranked the top-100 backs in college football over the last 60 years and not a single Notre Dame runner cracked the list.
I’m not going to pretend that I can make an argument that someone like Autry Denson deserved to make it and some back from the ‘60s that I have never even seen highlights should be taken off. I’m just amazed that there isn’t one single Notre Dame running back who was deemed good enough to be a slam dunk, but since there is no Irish back who is in the College Football Hall of Fame who played in the last six decades, I guess I shouldn’t be.
Maybe Notre Dame was too loaded in the backfield during the Lou Holtz years for one back to accumulate enough yards to make a list like this. Everyone who has seen the numbers Ricky Watters and Jerome Bettis put together in the NFL knows that they could have more prolific careers in college if they didn’t have other great backs as teammates.
There are a lot of guys who played for Notre Dame who very likely could have had a Troy Davis at Iowa State type of career if they went to a program just to be “the man”. They also would have lost a lot more games.
5. If there’s one spot on defense where Notre Dame needed to get some good news about young players emerging, it’s at cornerback.
Mike Mickens thoughts on early enrollee Jaden Mickey were not entirely unexpected given what I thought he might do this spring, but they were encouraging nonetheless. As Mickens communicated to ISD’s JOHN BRICE, Mickey has come in ready to work.
He’s a competitive guy. That’s what we’ve got to be at corner. That’s his zone he plays in, I love that about him that he has a fire about him that he wants to come to work every day. But he’s very mature, he meets a lot off the field, he’s a film junkie, he studies a whole bunch. So the reason why he makes plays on the field is because he understands what happens. He’s a mature kid.
I think Notre Dame fans would feel a lot better if one of Ryan Barnes, Chance Tucker, or Philip Riley also received praise like this, but he did say that all three have had nice moments this spring. They’ll need more than that if they want to play big roles this season because Mickey’s going to play this fall and he’s only going to get better.
6. I don’t think we’re going to learn a lot about Notre Dame as a team from the Blue-Gold game, which would make it like most other spring games.
The defense is going to play mostly vanilla looks and the offense isn’t going to give away too many secrets. I think there’s a better chance we see Isaiah Foskey catch a pass at tight end than us seeing Michael Mayer see more than a couple of targets thrown his way.
If that’s the direction things are headed next Saturday, then I hope a good chunk of the game involves early enrollees and players entering their second year.
I want to see a lot of snaps for the four young linebackers who should still be in high school. I want to see those young corners face a ton of targets all day long. I want to see 50/50 balls thrown in the direction of Deion Colzie and Jayden Thomas.
I want to see players like them featured because I know we aren’t going to see much (or any?) best on best. I understand why they don’t want to make this about the quarterback battle between Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne or make it about anything too serious on a day they just want to come out and have no one get injured. With that in mind, I hope the coaches give the fans what they want, which is mostly a chance to see players that they haven’t seen much of yet.
Let the young guys cook and everyone watching can walk away happy.
