Ask any Notre Dame fan what their biggest fear in 2024 is, and you will likely get almost unanimous consent that it’s the offensive line. The starting line for the Irish on Saturday night in Kyle Field features a combined six career starts, with three of the four making their first career starts. Sounds scary, right? It is, but the last time that Notre Dame had an offensive line this inexperienced? 1988. Aka, the last time Notre Dame won the national championship.
Thanks to Holtz’s Heros Twitter account for pointing out the parallel to Notre Dame’s last national championship winner.
As Holtz’s Heros points out, the 1988 Notre Dame offensive line was just as inexperienced as the unit that will start on Saturday night. Like this year’s squad, that 1988 team also started the season against a marquee opponent—Michigan—under the lights. The lone difference there is that the ’88 opener was at home as opposed to the road. Given the atmosphere at Kyle Field, that is no small difference.
It’s no secret that almost everyone’s biggest fear with this year’s team is the offensive line, given how green the unit is. It was also just three years ago when a talented Notre Dame team with playoff hopes had their season derailed early because they couldn’t figure out the offensive line. It took until nearly midseason for Notre Dame to insert a true freshman at left tackle following an injury to a projected starter to stabilize the line, so perhaps this year, they are just getting out ahead of a problem.
While everyone is right to be concerned about the line – and for the record, so am I – there is another way to look at the youth movement along the offensive line as a positive. Ashton Craig did so well at center following the injury to Zeke Correll last year that Correll transferred to NC State since Craig was likely going to start over him this year. Freshman Anthonie Knapp beat out a 5th year senior, Tosh Baker, for the job in fall camp. Sophomore Sam Pendleton also beat out two players with starting experience – Rocco Spindler and Pat Coogan – in camp. While one could say that Baker didn’t live up to his recruiting hype, Coogan and Spindler are both known commodities.
Speaking of Coogan and Spindler, starting right guard Billy Schrauth assumed that role last year after Spindler got hurt and didn’t let go of it this spring—another case of a younger player seizing an opportunity for a starting position.
Young players beating out upperclassmen who have been in the program and played in big games doesn’t happen if the underclassmen aren’t very good at football. Anthonie Knapp and Sam Pendleton appear to be just that. That doesn’t mean they’ll be flawless in their first starts on the road against the Aggie defense, but it does mean that they earned their spots out there.
In an ideal world., Charles Jagusah would be preparing for his second career start this weekend – his first being the Sun Bowl win over Oregon State – but we don’t live in an ideal world. Notre Dame fans would feel much better about the offensive line had Jagusah not been lost for the year, but at the end of the day, he has one more career start than Knapp, so from an experience perspective, the Irish haven’t lost a ton. They have lost quite a bit of size going from Jagusah to Knapp, but if size alone were the determining factor, Baker would have gotten the nod over Knapp.
There will be bumps along the way, and it won’t always be pretty, but the Notre Dame coaching staff wouldn’t have made the decisions they did if they weren’t confident that they would raise this team’s ceiling without jeopardizing its floor.
Knowing that the Irish weren’t in too different of a position in 1988, the last year in which Notre Dame won it, should help ease fan’s fears – at least until Saturday when the Aggie defense throws everything that it can at the young Irish linemen. Let’s not forget that when the Irish opened that 1988 campaign, the Michigan team they faced was ranked 4th in the country. Texas A&M comes into this one ranked 20th. For those wondering, the Wolverines finished 1988 ranked 4th with a record of 9-2-1, so they lost just one game all season other than that opening week loss to the Irish.
I was born in Muncie in 1984 to a large extended family of Indiana Hoosier basketball fans and Notre Dame Fighting Irish football fans. So, of course, around age 4 or 5 I became a rabid fan of both programs myself. I turned 40 a couple weeks ago and for all of my blood, sweat and especially tears as a fan, I have never witnessed a National Championship by either team, being too young in 1987 for IU’s last win and in 1988 for ND’s last win.
Honestly, the odds are pretty good that I never will. The happy times of the year for me are April through September, when neither program is actually playing, and I can live in a fantasy world that maybe next year will be my year.
I’m okay with that, but stories like this one that implies a connection to 1988 because both teams had no experience on the O line are just torture to me. Even I can see that makes no sense.
Every year I hope this will be the year. I didn’t start following the Irish in depth until about the 2002 season and continue to wait for that elusive NC. I’m pretty cynical these days and no longer drink the Kool-aid. Oh, I still hope for an NC, that hasn’t changed. But I’m at the point I’m ‘put up or shut up’ when it comes to the Irish. I like Coach Freeman and would love to see them win an NC under his watch. I think he has a lot of potential as a coach. Time will tell if he gets it done.
There is no margin for error for ND now, especially since our schedule has been watered down with division II teams (or FCS I guess is the correct term nowadays). It’s still a tougher schedule that average, but it was always a point of pride in the past that ND did not play FCS teams. That’s gone now. And sadly I think one day ND will be dragged kicking and screaming into a football conference. Everything that made ND special at one time is slowly being eroded year after year. Perhaps that’s inevitable. It’s not even really ND’s fault in many ways. The landscape has changed so much across CFB. And not all the changes are bad. Upgrading the facilities, for instance. Legendary coaches like Rockne and Parseghian would have done the same if they thaught it would help the football program. The one thing ND has is its insistence on academic excellence. One thing they can control and have maintained through it all.
In any event I digress. Regarding the O-Line, the comparison is an interesting footnote. But I still think an experienced O-line is always preferable. They will certainly be tested right out of the gate. We should have a pretty good idea come this weekend if their skills overcome the lack of experience. At this point I’m reluctant to make any predictions.