u/Automatic_Release_92

I'm running a bit behind on these, illness and family life has consumed a lot of my last week or two, so it's going to be 3 of these a week to get caught up, and up today is Michigan State.

Just to introduce things overall, I'm going to use FEI (ND's own Brian Fremeau's analytical efficiency rankings) rankings when discussing this year's projections, and F+ rankings (a combination of FEI and Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings) when discussing last year's. UPDATE: F+ rankings are now out for 2026! So I'll be using them across the board now.

Returning production is Bill Connelly's formula and it does take into account transfers.

For win totals and Monte Carlo simulations, I'm using ESPN's FPI rankings and 100k simulations.

So for example:

Notre Dame:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 3^(rd) Defensive ranking (DF+): 8^(th) Overall (F+): 4^(th)

This year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 3^(rd) Defensive ranking (DF+): 2^(nd) Overall (F+): 4^(th)

Returning production: OFF: 19^(th) DEF: 2^(nd) Overall: 1^(st)

Portal Activity: 7 transfers in, 14 transfers out (11^(th) ranked portal class)

ND has an expected win total of 11.0 wins, with a 99% chance of getting 9 or better wins, 94% chance of 10+, 73% chance of 11+, and a 33% chance of running the table.

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Michigan State:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 64^(th) Defensive ranking (DF+): 76^(th) Overall (F+): 78^(th)

This year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 61^(st) Defensive ranking (DF+): 69^(th) Overall (F+): 61^(st)

Returning production: OFF: 88^(th) DEF: 91^(st) Overall: 97^(th)

Portal Activity: 29 transfers in, 44 transfers out (55^(th) ranked portal class)

Rice has an expected win total of 4.4 wins, with a 91% chance of getting 3 or better wins, 72% chance of 4+, 45% chance of 5+, and a 21% chance of bowl eligibility at 6+ wins.

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Notre Dame vs. MSU: FPI prediction: 96.8% ND; Vegas spread: NA (might be out there somewhere)

Offense:
This offense is completely re-tooled from last year. Losing Nick Marsh was a massive blow for them. They've pretty much lost all their pass catchers from last year, in fact, including a couple of good tight ends. Running backs are gone too. This team had LOADS of offensive talent that just went out there to high paying P4 programs from Indiana to Texas, Ole Miss, etc. They stunk on offense last year apparently due to coaching and not from a lack of talent.

Now they have Nick Sheridan, Bama's former OC. So the dude has experience at a high level, but their offense has been the main thing holding the Tide back the last couple of years, so I hesitate to state they've upgraded in terms of OC. At the very least, they could have done far worse.

They did not bring in much at WR through the portal, which would alarm me if I was a Sparty fan. But one of their top portal acquisitions was KK Smith, who I think can be a quality number 2 WR for most P4 programs. They brought in numbers at RB, and Cam Edwards might be good, perhaps even an upgrade over the guys that left?

After completely screwing the pooch at QB for most of the season, they finally seem to have settled in on Milivojevic (I wonder how many announcers will mess that one up?) who made their final 4 games of the season competitive at least (Penn State won by double digits, but it was a 1 score game until late in the 4th Q).

But I suspect most of their talent skill left because their OL stinks. And it looks like most of those dudes are coming back. I'm reminded of that season a few years ago where everyone hyped up UNC's offensive line because they were returning all of their starters... from a terrible offensive line. And sure enough, the OL was bad. I'm guessing next year will be more of the same from MSU, they bring in a really big dude from UConn to go with their RB, so maybe run blocking will be better for them. Milivojevic managed to keep his INT's down, despite getting pressured a lot, but a runner he is not... I think this game could be a high water mark for ND getting TFL's and sacks. Interestingly Milivojevic (starting to get the spelling down lol) did 3 punts last year, with one of them going for 49 yards, so I expect them to do a fake out or two on 4th and 2 or something with him. But I doubt Biagi will be caught too off guard.

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Defense:

If Michigan State is going to make a big jump anywhere, I would expect it to happen on defense. Fitzgerald usually had good defenses at NW. We all know co-DC Max Bollough is a great coach, I'm actually going to make a bold prediction that he will be Michigan State's next head coach in 3-5 years. The other DC, Joe Rossi, is the main hold over from the previous administration. So the defense might not have too big of a learning curve to go through as well.

Overall I would say the defense has some good pieces: a DT transfer from Oregon a couple years ago who is massive, got his feet wet last year, their leading tackler (by a mile) and cause of Havoc plays in Jordan Hall, a really good safety (Nikai Martinez) who missed most of last season. But they lost a ton across the board on defense, as they got utterly raided there in the portal as well, particularly along the DL. They need a high hit rate in the portal to be good on defense by week 3, and I just don't see it.

Prior to this write up, I thought they would have a decent front 7 at least, but I think there's going to be some gaping holes on their defense, perhaps literally. It should be a good game for the OL to really start building some confidence, IMO. Just double their big DT (Knapp and Otting/Craig can handle him) and run some 12 personnel so the Flans (my new trademark for our TE duo) can pick up Hall and I think free access throws will be there all day.

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Prediction:

I'm glad this game is at night. It greatly reduces the chances of another sleepy start that turns into panic mode. I could see a world in which MSU's OL is much better than anticipated, and Sparty's QB might actually be pretty good this year (dare I say someone we could get in the portal for 2027 if our QB room behind Carr disappoints?). Bullough doesn't have enough to work with to truly stop ND's offense, but some heads up scouting and a timely turnover could keep it close.

But since it is a night game, and ND is going to be in full "LND" mode, I think the Irish will really handle this game and then some. Like Wisconsin, I will be rooting for MSU down the stretch, particularly against Michigan. The problem is that they are only favored outright (per FPI at least) in just 2 games this year, the ones right before ND. Now there's 7 other games that FPI gives them a 30-45% chance of winning, so if they're just slightly better than expected, they could definitely go bowling.

52-10, Irish. Carr puts up low yards as ND gets favorable field position most of the game, but he throws for 4 TD's and we get to see the backup QB take some reps with the 1st string midway through the 3rd quarter.

I'm going to run 2-3 of these per week until the season kicks off, and up today is Rice.

Just to introduce things overall, I'm going to use FEI (ND's own Brian Fremeau's analytical efficiency rankings) rankings when discussing this year's projections, and F+ rankings (a combination of FEI and Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings) when discussing last year's.

Returning production is Bill Connelly's formula and it does take into account transfers.

For win totals and Monte Carlo simulations, I'm using ESPN's FPI rankings and 100k simulations.

So for example:

Notre Dame:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 3^(rd) Defensive ranking (DF+): 8^(th) Overall (F+): 4^(th)

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 6^(th) Defensive ranking (DFEI): 3^(rd) Overall (FEI): 4^(th)

Returning production: OFF: 19^(th) DEF: 2^(nd) Overall: 1^(st)

Portal Activity: 7 transfers in, 14 transfers out (11^(th) ranked portal class)

ND has an expected win total of 11.0 wins, with a 99% chance of getting 9 or better wins, 94% chance of 10+, 73% chance of 11+, and a 33% chance of running the table.

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Rice:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 125^(th) Defensive ranking (DF+): 109^(th) Overall (F+): 126^(th)

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 126^(th) Defensive ranking (DFEI): 107^(th) Overall (FEI): 127^(st)

Returning production: OFF: 113^(th) DEF: 113^(th) Overall: 120^(th)

Portal Activity: 20 transfers in, 22 transfers out (123^(rd) ranked portal class)

Rice has an expected win total of 3.7 wins, with a 96% chance of getting 2 or better wins, 81% chance of 3+, 54% chance of 4+, and just a 10% chance of bowl eligibility at 6+ wins.

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Notre Dame vs. Rice: FPI prediction: 99.0% ND; Vegas spread: NA (might be out there somewhere)

Offense:
Unfortunately for ND, for the second week in a row, they might be facing an absolute dude picked up through the transfer portal at QB. But fortunately for ND, also for the second week in a row, there is virtually no talent surrounding that guy that might scare you.

Jacurri Brown is 6'4" tall, 227 lbs. He actually started games for Miami back in the day. His arm definitely won't scare anyone though, through 4 years (2 at Miami, 2 at UCF) he's only got 906 yards total passing, with a 57% completion rate. With an abysmal 6 TD to 9 interception ratio. If he's attempting 15 or more passes this game (which with a healthy lead I would hope would be the case), that will be a very good thing for ND's secondary padding some stats.

But I'm not sure Rice will be looking to throw that often. Scott Abell is running a triple option at Rice. They were near the bottom of all of college football because they didn't really have the personnel for running that system, but appear to have addressed that in the portal in a big way, bringing in 3 dual threat QB's (seems like one of them is converting to WR or RB though). Interestingly some of their smaller OL have been run off for 300+ lb guys, and they're also returning their top rusher, who is a slippery little guy, 5'7" Quinton Jackson who also has house called a punt and caught a couple TD passes for Rice.

It should be interesting to see how a triple option looks at Rice, who can bring in through the portal the kind of guys Navy could only dream of, from more massive OL, to this huge QB they'll have running the show. But unlike Navy, I'm guessing they will not be as polished running the offense.

ND's got experience defending the option and this should be a good primer for facing Navy later in the year. The only time Navy has even remotely put a scare into a Freeman team was in his first season and it was caused more by Drew Pyne pooping the bed the entire second half as the defense more or less got tired.

Rice brought in a lot of bodies at WR, but nobody with real size and I'd be surprised if many had real speed either. Just like with Navy, blanket their QB and RB and force them into 3rd and long and they'll be ok.

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Defense:

It's tough to find much about Rice's defense. I also believe it's very difficult for a team that primarily runs a gimmicky kind of offense to prep well for more traditional offenses. Which is why you rarely see lockdown defenses at Navy, for instance, and defense is somewhat optional at Air Raid schools.

Rice's top two portal acquisitions are EDGE guys though, one of whom is very familiar to ND in Preston Zinter. It would be ideal if ND could contain him and Auburn transfer Tariq May. That's probably about the only hope they have of any kind of success against ND's offense.

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Prediction:

It's possible we have a slow start to this one. Rice has an easy warm up game the week before and an extra day of rest. ND will be coming off of a hyped up game, with some travel, and it wouldn't be the first time a really bad team has been a pain in the ass under those circumstances. ND will always be the Super Bowl for this kind of team, I don't think enough fans (inside and outside of ND) really understand that concept.

The reason I would not anticipate ND having problems though is that Marshall in 2022 had the 17th ranked defense in the country (probably helped our offense was crappy that year too), and NIU had the 35th ranked defense in 2024 (their rush defense was top 10). I would be surprised if Rice has a defense that cracks 100.

Furthermore, you'd never have seen the disaster that was ND's 2nd and 3rd down defense against NIU under Chris Ash, who is MUCH more focused on stopping the run.

ND fans will grumble as we end the first quarter just up by 7, but we starting really wearing down Rice on both sides of the ball in the 2nd quarter and cruise to a comfortable win, 59-3 Irish.

I'm going to run 2-3 of these per week until the season kicks off, and up today is Wisconsin.

Just to introduce things overall, I'm going to use FEI (ND's own Brian Fremeau's analytical efficiency rankings) rankings when discussing this year's projections, and F+ rankings (a combination of FEI and Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings) when discussing last year's.

Returning production is Bill Connelly's formula and it does take into account transfers.

For win totals and Monte Carlo simulations, I'm using ESPN's FPI rankings and 100k simulations.

So for example:

Notre Dame:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 3^(rd) Defensive ranking (DF+): 8^(th) Overall (F+): 4^(th)

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 6^(th) Defensive ranking (DFEI): 3^(rd) Overall (FEI): 4^(th)

Returning production: OFF: 19^(th) DEF: 2^(nd) Overall: 1^(st)

Portal Activity: 7 transfers in, 14 transfers out (11^(th) ranked portal class)

ND has an expected win total of 11.0 wins, with a 99% chance of getting 9 or better wins, 94% chance of 10+, 73% chance of 11+, and a 33% chance of running the table.

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Wisconsin:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 115^(th) Defensive ranking (DF+): 28^(th) Overall (F+): 74^(th)

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 90^(th) Defensive ranking (DFEI): 20^(th) Overall (FEI): 41^(st)

Returning production: OFF: 45^(th) DEF: 46^(th) Overall: 35^(th)

Portal Activity: 33 transfers in, 23 transfers out (38^(th) ranked portal class)

Wisconsin has an expected win total of 6.5 wins, with a 92% chance of getting 5 or better wins, 76% chance of 6+, 51% chance of 7+, and a 25% chance of 8+ wins.

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Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin: FPI prediction: 93.0% ND; Vegas spread: ND -20.5

Offense:
Wisconsin has been floundering on offense pretty much from the moment Fickell arrived. They weren't great on offense when last they met ND (2021 was just one year prior to Fickell's hire), checking in at 67th on OF+, but since then, they've gone backwards, going from 59th in year 1 under Fickell, to 80th, then to 75th before Fickell finally decided to hit the reset button on that silly air raid decision.

Last year, Fickell hired Jeff Grimes to try and bring the offense back to its roots. His uphill battle got worse as the injuries at QB piled up, a position they seemingly weren't great at to begin with...

Offense is a bit of an unknown here. They went into the portal not only for a new QB, but also to replace a bunch of OL as well. They lost their starting RB, but got some nice pickups in the portal (IMO) and should be better there overall. Lots of bodies came in at WR, but not a lot of production.

Their biggest hope for rapid improvement on offense next year lies in incoming transfer Colton Joseph. Can he be the next Diego Pavia? I think that's what Wisconsin will need if they want to get to 9 wins. Loads and loads of QB's flame out going from a G5 level up to P5 level, but a few, like Pavia, can break out right away to jump start an anemic offense.

In 2023, Clark Lea was on the hot seat with a 90th ranked offense, and he brought in NMSU's entire system, from OC to Pavia and it was a shot in the arm as they jumped all the way up to 45th in OF+ the following year, en route to beating Alabama and going toe to toe with other ranked teams on the schedule like Tennessee and Texas.

The good news for ND if Joseph can be such a star is that we face them in game 1. For all that Pavia was able to beat Bama in game 5, he lost to Georgia State in game 3 in kind of a crappy game.

I think Ash is up for the challenge of taking on more mobile QB's. His gameplan against A&M was actually pretty solid last year, Marcel Reed was bottled up for only 37 yards rushing and he completed just 46% of his passes with 3 turnover worthy throws. The problem was that ND dropped 2 of those INT's and Hobbs and Stroman still featured heavily in the rotation as 11 of Reed's 17 completions went for 10 or more yards. Needless to say, Wisconsin has no Mario Craver or KC Concepcion on the roster, and even if they did, ND is in much better shape in the secondary.

ND's defense just needs to contain Joseph and force him into 3rd and long situations. He threw 10 INT's last year, with 3 of those coming against Indiana. Crazily enough, they might have had a shot at beating IU without those turnovers, those turnovers led to 10 points for IU and another one game within FG range, as ODU only lost by 13 in Bloomington. He ran for 179 yards and 2 TD's against the Hoosiers. If Ash can limit him to under 50 yards, it's going to be a long night on offense for the Badgers.

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Defense:

Wisconsin has always been solid on defense under Fickell, and this year looks to be their best one at least since year 1. They have a few good players up front (IMO). Recruiting junkies might remember Sebastian Cheeks, 4 star Illinois LB ND was in on pretty heavily in Freeman's DC year. He spurned ND for UNC then transferred to Wisconsin where he played EDGE the last couple of years. Cheeks has some real explosiveness and speed and Wisconsin's beat feels pretty confident he'll make another jump in year 5. They have a couple of interior guys that they seem to like, but depth along the DL should be a concern overall, especially if anyone goes down.

LB is probably their deepest position, as a couple of freshman LB's emerged last year (Posa and Catalano) with some real playmaking ability. Posa, Catalano and Cheeks are their main sourced of Havoc and disruption behind the line of scrimmage, and they're all likely to be better versions of themselves in 2026.

The Badger's secondary is a bit of a question mark to me, they got completely overhauled there with 6 players coming onto the team from the portal, with 3 of them being P4 guys with a decent amount of experience. Wisconsin's beat seemed oddly confident about their secondary play this year because, well, they made plays against their WR's in the spring. Which probably doesn't say much about anything if we're being honest.

I think we'll be in good shape if we can force Wisconsin to have to send their LB's home to generate pressure, which should open up lots of playmaking ability for guys like Aneyas Williams and Faison in the intermediate passing game. Last year they got carved up in the passing game against OSU and IU, but the rain saved them against Oregon. The revamped secondary is unlikely to clean that up in game 1, IMO. Hopefully we get some nice weather.

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Prediction:

I think it will play out a bit similar to the 2021 game, as Denbrock feels out Jim Tressell's defense and probes for weaknesses while not trying to take too big of risks. Carr comes out a bit too excited and tries to force the ball a couple of times, but eventually settles in as the game marches onward and the OL finds a rhythm. ND fans are still feeling a little nervous with a 14 point lead going into "Jump Around", but Joseph starts feeling the pressure a bit (literally as ND's DL stays fresh with more and more bodies to throw at their OL) and turnovers start piling up as ND racks up a win that looks better than it felt for 3 quarters. Carr finishes with 3 TD and just 1 INT, as Aneyas gets 75 all purpose yards in the 4th quarter and rushes for 2 TD's of his own, 41-10 Irish.

Take our starting depth chart from week 1 of 2024:

>We had 27 total players listed on that depth chart, and 28 games later, 12 of those players are still here. Of the 15 who are gone, I count a full 6 of them that flat out got passed up by better players on the roster. And that was a defense that finished 2nd in the country.

Factor in the emergence of players like Brauntae Johnson, DL additions since then that include Hughes, Keeley, Brewu, Gray, portal additions shoring up an elite secondary (McKinney and Sanders would be surefire starters and preseason all conference players with literally any other team in the country and one of them might start next year) and this is going to be an all time defense.

Our defensive rankings went off a cliff last year to start the season. I'm having a hard time finding rankings that are not weighted from the season before, but take FEI for example, we started off the season ranked 2nd (weighted from 2024 results) and fell to 10th by week 5. By the time we finished the season and all the previous year's rankings were wiped away, we finished 6th in FEI.

>Notre Dame is returning 77% of their returning production on defense from last year, which is 2nd in the whole country. We are bringing back 49% of our snaps along the interior DL, 51% at DE, 99.8% at LB, 80% at safety and 80% at CB.

I remember in 2012, Notre Dame had the #1 scoring defense in the country by a wide margin. Teams could move the ball on us pretty well, because our secondary wasn't good (Matthias Farley is the only guy from that unit who would even make the press release depth chart this year and even that might be a stretch with Ethan Long...), but once we got to goal line defense, that team was money. And people talked about that defense at the time (before the Bama debacle) as being one of the best ever at ND. We'll have a much better offense than the 42nd one in the country next year, to put it mildly.

This defense is elite at multiple position groups across the board, has ridiculous depth across the board everywhere and should be getting buzz along the lines of it not only being one of the best defenses in the country next year, but one of the best defenses in the last 20 years.

We're all scarred by Chris Ash to start last season, I get it. But defensive coordinators rarely start out hitting the ground running. People didn't like Golden that much at first and I remember people cheering on him flirting with returning to the NFL after just one year. Marcus Freeman in his first game as DC at Notre Dame gave up 38 points to FSU's 60th ranked offense... a game the defense would have blown if not for a missed PAT in regulation and a missed FG in OT.

When Ash was DC at Ohio State, they went from being the 14th ranked defense in year 1 to the 2nd ranked defense in year 2. He came in last year unable to bring in any defensive staff with him, and now the entire defensive staff is hand picked by him, some of them very highly respected guys too.

The three best offenses in the country, per 2026 SP+, that we will face next year are ranked 12th, 16th and 25th... and we'll get two of those teams at home in night games. The next best offense is Navy, checking in at 58th. Michigan State is next at 61st. Most of the rest of the schedule checks in worse than the mid 80's. All of this to say I do believe the defense will get their flowers (and then some) as the season wears on...

Buckle up boys, we're in for a hell of a ride next year. Carr is getting a lot of good pub lately, and rightfully so, but don't forget just how monstrous this defense is going to be next year. It's not only sleeping under the radar nationally, but within the fan base. We could be a playoff semifinal team with the 2022 QB situation next year with this defense.

https://x.com/mattfreeman05_/status/2066970536912039953?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2066970536912039953%7Ctwgr%5Eca8ce08c893993db98791be1077701da78d0205a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Firishsportsdaily.com%2Fforums%2F1%2Ftopics%2F116298

Can this guy just stop yelling at callers with extremely legitimate criticisms? Holy cow.