ESPN is already projecting 2027 first-round picks and I don't see a single Notre Dame name on that list. That's fine. We have never been the program that sends five guys in the first round every year and I refuse to apologize for it fr fr. Let me remind everybody that our 2025 team had guys like Xavier Watts playing at an All-American level and he. CJ Carr is about to change the entier narrative around our offense and people will be scrambling to p...
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How is nobody asking why our defense keeps getting overlooked in these under-the-radar player lists every single spring? ESPN drops their top 25 teams and picks one guy from each rsoter nobody is talking about yet and sure. But the whole conversation around us is always about the offense or the quarterback situation. Meanwhile our defensive staff keeps reloading without anyone noticing because the names change but the production stays the same. We lose guys to the draft every year and somehow the next man up hits the ground running. That is not luck. That is Al Golden building a system where the scheme makes players better. The portal class rankings never reflect that either because we are not bringing in five transfers at one position. We develop our own and by October everyone acts surprised.
Everyone complaining about refs needs to watch our film from the last three years. I've seen holding calls get swallowed on cirtical third downs more times than I can count while our D-line gets mugged every snap. The inconsistency is infuriating. We built a top-five defense through scheme and development, not flashy portal names. Yet somehow the whistle always goes quiet when an opponent's offensive tackle is literally hugging our edge rusher. It's not bias, it's just bad officiating that always seems to hurt disciplined programs. Marcus Freeman has our guys playing fundamentally sound football. But when you're getting held on every pass rush and the officials decide to "let them play" only against us, it changes games. I'm not saying we lost because of refs. I'm saying the standard changes depending on the jersey.
That ESPN piece about replacing first-round talent and our name is on the list again. We lost premium picks but nobody wants to talk about how we reloaded through the high school ranks instead of panic-portaling. Our 2026 class sitting at number four nationally with 18 top-300 prospects tells you everything about how Marcus Freeman builds for the long haul. CJ Carr has the tools to be the best QB we have had in a decade. The foundation is stronger than ever.
45,308 people showed up to a spring game with zero stakes. that's not a scrimmage croowd, that's a program statement. other fanbases talk about passion but they don't pack the house for a glorified practice in april. the energy around here is completely different from where we were even three years ago. this place believes again.
Give Marcus Freeman all the credit he deserves for keeping us at number four nationally in recruiting while everybody else is panic-swinging in the portal. We are stacking top-300 prospects the old-fashioned way, building a foundation that lasts longer than one sseason. Other programs are buying entire rosters and hoping it sticks, we are identifying the right guys and developing them into our system. By the time the 2027 class is fully formed with the three five-stars already locked in, peopl...
Renner's draft board vs the actual picks just proves again that our guys develop the right way. We consistently produce NFL talent that may not top every draft analyst's list but shows up ready to compete at the next level. That's not an accident, that's the culture.
everyone sitting here acting like the usc rivalry is the only thing that matters in our history and i'm tired of pretending that's true. usc is a program that has lived off the ghost of pete carroll for almost two decades now. they show up once every five years with a heisman quarterback and suddenly the media wants to crown them back. meanwhile we've been the most consistently winning program in the independent era and nobody wants to have that conversation. the real rivaalry that defines us is the one nobody talks about enough. michigan. and i don't care that we don't play them every year anymore because that just makes every meeting matter more. they ran away from the series when they saw us coming back. they knew we were closing the gap and they didn't want to deal with it. that's not a rivalry between equals. that's a program that knows they can't hang with us over the long haul ngl. stanford gets mentioned as this academic juggernaut matchup but let's be real. they had a nice little run under shaw and then reality hit them like a truck. we own that series historically and we own it now. they can't recruit with us, they can't develop with us, and they sure can't match our physicality in the trenches. the navy game gets dismissed by people who don't understand what it means. that's the rivalry that built this program. that's the game that reminds us who we are every single year. nobody else plays that game. nobody else understands what it takes to prepare for the option week after week while running a pro style offense. but the one that gets under my skin is when people try to compare our rivalries to what the sec has. auburn vs alabama is a great game i'll give you that. but half those programs rotate through scandals and coaching changes like clockwork. our rivalries have history. they have tradition. they have the golden dome and the legends of rockne and leahy and parseghian. you cannot manufacture that. usc fans love to bring up the bush push or the bush era in general like we're supposed to be. we don't need vacated wins to feel good about our history. our history stands on its own. we've got more consens...
why is everyone sleeping on how we stack up in that qb poll for 2026? cj carr got a mention among those 10 names and nobody wants to talk about it. meanwhile oregon has dante moore and dylan raiola both fighting for one spot while we're developing our guy in house with no dram...
Calling it now - that 5-star wide receiver we landed is gonna transfer out by year two. Great in shorts, invisible when the ball is in the air.
Calling it now , by the time this 2026 class finishes their sophomore year. ESPN can run all the lists they want about who has the most No.1 draft picks historically, and yeah USC owns that stat. But look at what we are building right now. We are sitting at no.4 nationally in recruiting with 18 top-300 prospects and we didn't have to bring in 43 transfers to do it. The difference between us and these programs that buy entire rosters trough the portal is we actually develop. You see Oregon grabbing five 5-stars and everybody loses their mind. Cool. Let me know how many of those guys are still on the roster in two years when the next bag comes calling. We build loyalty. We build men. That's why we had two first-round picks this year and why Mel Kiper's Big Board has our guys scattered all. Every single season people try to write us off because we don't have a conference championship game to pad our resume. Then January rolls around and we're the ones still standing while half the SEC is at home watching. The system is scared of what happens when we finally break through for that natty because it proves you don't. And it's coming. This roster, this staff, this culture. We are closer than anyone wants to admit.
Why is everyone acting like the only way to build a program now is to bring in fifty strangers from the portal every single year? I'm seeing these stories about Oklahoma State bringing in fifty guys and Colorado's forty-three-man class being treated like some genius master plan. That's not building a team, that's assembling a fantasy football roster with no soul. We just had a tailgate last season where three generations of the same family were there, telling stories about games from the '80s. That's culture. That's knowing the guy next to you has been through the same ups and downs for decades, not just since last semester. You can't buy that chemistry in a portal shopping spree. Our number four recruiting class is built on relationships and development, not just throwing the most NIL cash at the biggest name in the portal. How is a team with fifty new players even supposed to have an identity by September? They're going to spend the whole season just learning each other's names while we're already builidng on a foundation that actually lasts. When we roll into Camp Randall this fall, our guys will know what it means to wear that helmet. Can you say the same for a locker room full of mercenaries?
The absolute worst part of this entire offseeason is the constant, non-stop glorification of the portal mercenary. Every single story is about the team that brought in 50 guys, or the 43-man class. It's treated like the only legitimate way to build a winner now. And it makes me sick. What happened to building a program? What happened to developing a kid for four years, watching him grow from a freshman into a leader. That used to mean something. Now the narrative is that if you're not hitting the portal like a shopping spree, you're falling behind. It's a complete disrespect to everything that makes college football special. We are sitting here with a top-four recruiting class, a class built on identifying talent early, building relationships. And somehow, that's considered the "conservative" approach. No, it's the right approach. It's the approach that builds culture. It's the approach that means when we run out of that tunnel. You don't get that by assembling 50 strangers in May and hoping they figure it out by September. That's a fantasy. That's building a house on sand. Look at the teams getting all the hype right now. The ones with the massive portal numbers. They're being set up for the most spectacular crashes. You cannot create loyalty, you cannot instill genuine toughness, and you cannot forge an unbreakable bond in a few months of summer workouts. It's impossible. The moment adversity hits, and it will, that house of cards collapses because there's no foundation. There's no shared suffering. There's no legacy to protect. It's just a collection of hired guns looking for their next stop. Meanwhile, we're in spring practice right now with a core of guys who chose this place. That p...
stop pretending losing a star like jeremiyah love to the draft is some massive setback. we're reloading with the #4 recruiting class and a defense that's about to be elite. the program is built for this exact moment.
Stop prteending Indiana's one title run makes them a historical football power. They had a magical year, but we've been building NFL talent for decades. That's real history, not a flash in the pan.
everyone is obsessed with the portal and these massive transfer classes like colorado's 43 guys, but they're missing the entire point of buuilding a defense. you can't just throw fifty new bodies together in spring ball and expect them to communicate, trust each other. that's a recipe for busted coverages and missed assignments every single time. our entire defensive identity is built on development and continuity. look at the respect we're getting from the real evaluators right now. louis riddick puts jeremiyah love on his favorites list, and mel kiper shouts out eli raridon. that's not an accident. that's proof our system identifies talent and then molds it over years, not months. these guys learn the scheme inside and out, they grow together, and they play for each other. you can't portal that. while oklahoma state is trying to install a whole new program with 50 transfers and alabama is scrambling to rebuild. the core understands the standard. that's why our defense travels. that's why we'll be ready for a place like wisconsin. the foundation is set, and it's rock solid.
We have multiple guys on Louis Riddick's favorite prospects list for the 2026 draft just proves we're developing NFL talent at an elite level again. Everyone wants to talk about the flashy portal teams buying players, but we're building them from the ground up. Seeing our guys get that kind of national draft buzz in the spring is what this program is about. It's the ultimate validation of our process. While other schools are scrambling to patch holes with transfers every single year, we're consistently putting guys in the league. That's the sustainable model. That's how you stay relevant for championships, not by being a revolving door for mercenaries. Our culture producees professionals. This is the foundation for everything. When high school croots see that path from South Bend to the NFL, they listen. It's why we're sitting at number four in the 2026 class and already in the top group for 2027. The machine is humming, and the so-called experts who sleep on us every offseason are about to get another rude awakening.
