Rockne's Roundtable

If you already posted this 11 days ago, a discussion was had, and nothing has changed...why does it have to be posted again? It's basically the exact same thing your wrote last time.

These are the arguments I can't figure out. What about a #7 recruiting class with two 5-stars (only Bama has more than 2) says we don't get "top notch players"? Going on the average rating of our players, we're up to #5 and that's including a 2 star LS.

I believe your analysis is too myopic. First, I will concede that if we wanted to bring in 5
receivers and brought in only 3, that if we needed to bring in 4 linemen and got 2 and
needed to bring in 3 corners and got 1, that we could, and perhaps should, have done
better.

However, to call the addition of Stanley and Harrell a "whiff" is too strong----- we
have Carrico, Hegerty, Hanratty, N. Martin and Prestwood with 4 years of eligibility
to go with Stanley and Harrell. Basically, 7 offensive linemen;

We do have 5 receivers----Ferguson, Brown, Greenberry, Daniels and Farley;

We have 5 new safety-types joining us---Baratti, Prosise,Shumate, Turner, Badger;

At corner, we have Shepard and Brown to go with Atkinson and Wood. And, I
believe the fifth "new" corner will be E. Hardy with his four years of eligibility.

Looking at two years worth of recruiting, I disagree with your comment that
BK has done a poor job. In my view, in just two short years, he has assembled
the most talented group of recruits since the Holtz glory years.

Now, am I disappointed that we did not close with talents such as Agolhar,
Garnett, Neal, perhaps Redmond and that we lost Decker and Darby.
Absolutely. No question.And, I totally agree that our needs at corner have
not been filled. But, I don't know what else we could have done except
perhaps to bring in federal troops to get certain folks to come to ND.

Finally, let's face it---the staff didn't write the twitters, Yuri Wright did; the
current staff didn't go to Ohio State, Warriner did and Decker chose to
follow him and as for Darby, I have heard lots of speculation but no
concrete evidence that the staff dropped the ball with him.

My point really is that these days, you can not you look at any class in
isolation. The real question, even now at ND thank God, is the number
of years of eligibility you have with players at various position groups.
And, on that basis, assuming we sign everyone we expect to sign this
Wednesday, I am relatively pleased.

I am not about to down-vote you. I can see alot of your points, and they are valid. The only thing is, I see alot of them being the opposite. I won't hold them against Kelly for missing on some of these guys. Plus, he has built some good-will for his recruiting last year.

It wasn't awfully long ago where we were looking at a numbers crunch wondering how we'd take important 5th year guys or fit extra recruits in without having no room at the inn. The annual end of cycle merry-go-round has spun away from us, and that's the way it bounces sometimes. Darby was our first and most solid commit forever, until he decided at the end he would rather go to warm weather and a track school. Can't put a check in the "way to go Kelly box on that." Yuri Wright's loss is well documented and I think it would have been a major sign of Kelly's clout if he could convince Our Lady to let him bring such publicized vulgarity to town. Poole, seems like he wants to say ND would be nice but still doesn't want to do it. Same for Agholor, etc. Armstead seems like a completely indecisive kid that we just couldn't convince. Alot of schools are going to be left at the altar for him. We flipped Gunner Kiel in a similar situation so we can't point to Kelly's lack of skill in closing this kind of kid. Losing Decker hurts, but again, seems like he was married to Warriner not ND and it is tough to win those battles. We sewed up the needs on DL last year and this year we sewed up S but missed on OL. Corner, we got Tee so far so it remains to be seen if we can add anyone else solid.

It's been a funny recruiting cycle with people seemingly sold on ND until they are not sold on ND. Kelly also for some reason turned away Andrades and some other "slam-dunk" commits this past week so we'll have to see why. As long as he keeps developing talent, this recruiting class will turn out to be a great one. We have Kiel at QB. With Floyd gone, I could see a shift to Kelly's UC offense. Remember, he turned Mardy Gilyard from a homeless kid to a star. With that style, Greenberry, Ferguson, and Brown will do well. The guys with versatility like Russel, McDaniel, GA3, and Ridding mean all of a sudden we have both 6 RBs and 11 WRs. OL was tough this year, but hopefully Kelly can continue his ability to pull at a pos. of need each recruiting cycle. Already have 1 elite 2013 OL so far. It's hard to see ND not in the mix for this last week of guys, but much of this class was sold months ago. I'll take it compared to the years we lost 3 kids on NSD. Last year we won a tug of war for the flip-flop guys with Lynch, Tuitt, etc. This year, it swung the other way.

Wow OP. You stated so many misfacts I will no longer take anything you say seriously. Pathetic and out of touch post.

Mr.Rice I gave you an up vote also! If anyone calls this class a success then he/she is delusional!!! The staff makes a decision not to take Schutt even though he was a high rated kid that also impressed at the A.A. Game because we already had Jones and Day even though I think alot expect Jones to move to oline and now we probably won't fill the class.. Losing Decker and Darby was huge!! Two positions of need especially a corner and a possible kick and punt return stud! Everyone who looks at rankings look at rivals they have a much better track record and after all NSD signees we may not finish in the top 20. Whenever Miami/OSU/Ohio State out recruit us while they are under sanctions thats tough to take!!! And before anyone says anything about me being a free member I actually bought three memberships, two of which as presents...

But we didn't lose our recruiting class in the last month... We lost our class this year on the field! If we would have won in he regular season and won a bowl game I bet we would all be singing a different song!! Not to mention the egg we laid in front of a lot of recruits at home vs USC!! Btw we still have timeouts remaining!

I agree with you. Some people only want to give Kelly to credit and never any blame. Only one corner in this class is not enough. You now have next to know room for injuries.

beeds: If that happens, you can count on it:)

I don't down vote posters (other than LELLY), but if I did, Mr. Rice, I'd down vote this one, not because it's critical of Kelly, because I don't give a rat's ass about that, but because you commit the cardinal sin of making judgments on decisions made in July, September, November or whenever, with January 29th eyes. Yes, if the staff knew then what they do now, they might have pursued different courses of action, but they didn't, because obviously they couldn't know, unless they subcontracted with Miss Cleo. Recruiting is a very fluid process in which you make decisions (and offers) based on a set of hypotheses grounded in the best information at hand. As I said with your prior post, you focus entirely on those we didn't get, and nothing about those that we did, as if no other program brings in substantially less than 50% of their targets. You suggest losing recruits to Michigan, Stanford and USC is a failing. Well, evidently they also failed in losing recruits to us. If there's a good argument to be made against this year's recruiting effort, you didn't make it, but at least you are more articulate than most in your efforts to build a case.

beeds7 so you don't like know it alls but you are ranting about posters on this site and rivals? So do you think your always right? Other people can't have opinions or comments contrary to yours? Hey pot the kettle is calling...

Didn't you do the same thing, when you said everyone is "delusional" that doesn't agree with you?