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Duranko’s Digest: Ranking ND’s Opponents, Degree of Difficulty

A look at Notre Dame’s 2013 schedule.

Post Spring ’13 – Notre Dame’s BCS Caliber Units

  Notre Dame’s best units, quelle surprise, are on defense. (3) CORNERBACK Two returning starters in Bennett Jackson, on a collision course with the 2014 NFL draft, and KeiVarae Russell, still several months away from his first anniversary of his conversion to cornerback. Jackson is rangy, with good speed and, providing his recovery goes well, positioned for an [...]

Post Spring ’13 – Notre Dame’s New Year’s Day Caliber Units

Last edition we rated the following as Bowl Caliber Units – (9) RB, (8) Safety, and (7) OL. There are three units that are New Year’s Day Bowl Caliber as we come out of Spring. (6) Wide Receivers Ah, Davaris Daniels. Since his arrival on campus, the upward arc of his increase in competence has [...]

Post Spring ’13 – Rating Notre Dame’s Position Units

With spring practice now behind us, we will rate the units according to a four tier rating system:  BCS Game Caliber, New Year’s Day Bowl Caliber, Bowl Game Caliber, Stay Home. While last year the secondary started out in the “Stay Home” category, the program has progressed so that none of the nine units (OL, TE, WR, RB, [...]

Duranko’s Digest: The Strange Saga of Notre Dame Quarterback Transfers

The fortcoming departure of Gunner Kiel triggers synapses of quarterbacks who left Notre Dame in the past.

Duranko’s Digest: Ara’s critical first spring practice

With spring practice little more than a fortnight away, we ought examine one of the most critical Spring practices ever conducted at Notre Dame.

Duranko’s Digest: The #3 Jersey at Notre Dame

It seems that the number “3,” that number of Ruthian power and strength, has always been the number of the “chosen one” at Notre Dame.

Duranko’s Digest: Beyond 12-1; What’s Next?

Chuck Martin, as usual, was correct. Upon arriving in South Bend from Grand Valley State he remarked, and this is a paraphrase, “It’s interesting and a challenge to come to a place where if you go 10-1, they ignore the “10″ and talk about the “1!”

Duranko’s Digest: Defensive Personnel 2013

Duranko takes a look at the 2013 Notre Dame defense.

Duranko’s Digest: 2013 Offensive Personnel Analysis

Duranko breaks down the 2013 Notre Dame offense.

Duranko’s Digest: 2013 Schedule – A Peek Ahead

On the 2013 schedule, we lose Miami, Wake Forest and Boston College and add Temple, Air Force and Arizona State.

Recruiting is not finished, player injuries and attrition will occur, players will rise and fall in Spring and pre-Fall practice, but we’ll give a good faith estimate of the relative strength as of press time. We have used the Rivals recruiting for January 20th as the 2013 recruiting ranking.

Duranko’s Digest: 42-14, The taste of ashes. What’s Next?

Alabama, the better team, won. A numbing, total defeat after twelve wondrous victories. But it was the correct football result. The fantasies, the possibilities began in Dublin: ” Your young men shall see visions and your old men will dream dreams.” And so we did, as the magic carpet ride began, survival against Purdue, ending the Michigan streak, a perfunctory romp over Miami in Soldier Field, rainy goal line glory against Stanford, vindication in Norman, a sweet November culminating in the Coliseum. We drank deeply of the goblets of kool-aid, believing we were all the way back.

Duranko’s Digest: ’66, ’73,’77, ’88 ND’s championship DNA

November, 1965 saw a lot of long faces in the Notre Dame football fan base. Ara had burst onto the scene, the unwashed phenomenon, in ’64.

Duranko’s Digest: Year End Outlook, State of the Irish

This is an evaluation of the long-term outlook of the Notre Dame football program. It attempts to answer the question “Was 2012 a one-hit wonder or are the Irish back?”

We will examine 5 major areas:

Recruiting 2) Assistant coaches 3) Player Development 4) Brian Kelly 5) Game Day performance At the end, we will reprise the Boise analogy.

Duranko’s Digest: Notre Dame – Alabama Preview

We’ll get into matchup elements below, but let’s first examine four significant data trends that will, largely, be ignored by the sports entertainment hype industry wearing the “journalism” mask. (1) An Inconvenient Tide Truth-The 2012 Bama defense is much more vulnerable than 2011′s. We will compare the three “big” games in each season. In 2011 Bama, with an easy SEC East rotation, looked to two divisional challengers in the SEC West, LSU and Arkansas.