A little premature to proclaim Bennett jackson as great – judgment on that should not be kool-aid based, but reserved until he proves he knows which guy to defend.

As for Crist – was not given an adequate chance to see if had “it” or not. I will not be surprised if he shows he does have “it” at Kansas this year. Frthermore, Rees did nothing to show that he had “it”, but rather could argue his turnovers under pressure and in the red zone, proved he doesn’t.

On a random aside from your point on blitzing – you know what I’d love to see (in theory, not actually in a game)? Imagine our current front 7 running Tenuta’s blitzing scheme from 2008 that was at the time extremely pathetic but now could actually be exciting to watch. At the same time, I wouldn’t trust our secondary with that responsibility….but still fun to think about.

1. Our front seven
2. A trio of talented TE’s (one of which may be a 1st round NFL pick right now)
3. C. Wood returning, with Riddick and Atkinson behind him
4. Tons of experience and talent along the OL
5. A trio of QB’s to choose from, two of which with game experience, and one that was the scout team player of the year last year.
6. We return experienced receivers, and some rough talent is now being honed so they can contribute.
7. Lucky number seven…….Devonte Neal…….This kid has the goods, period.

There is no reason for pessimism.
I was in favour of Tommy starting last year, but conceded that Coach is probably a bit better at assessing the starters than me. And if Crist had marginally improved, he would have been very solid.
However, when it became clear that he just didn’t have “it” Kelly made the change. And I think that says a lot about Kelly’s character and abilities. He very quickly was acknowledging that he was wrong, and made a change.
I have faith in Kelly and it is not through rose coloured glasses.
So stop the whimpering about Lynch and lets see what we got.
BTW, I am on the Golson bandwagon for the positive reason that he is better than Tommy-not because Tommy can’t do it.
Did most of you watch the practice videos and see Golson glide up the middle a couple of times? Wow!

For a great example, look at how dominant our run defense was throughout the year up until KLM got hurt early on in the USC game. After that, our run defense went downhill, and I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Lynch hadn’t learned how to play the position the way the coaches wanted him too. By simply running running by guys (though its good he could do that…most people can’t) I think he somewhat disrupted the structure of the run defense, because if he didn’t make the play in the backfield by getting too deep, then the opposing offense had a free blocker to get a hat on Teo or a safety.

So I honestly think that in our base defense against the run, we not only won’t miss a beat by having KLM in there, we may actually be better off.

However, in passing situations losing Lynch obviously hurts us. Even at his young age, Lynch was the best pass rusher we have had at ND since Justin Tuck (I don’t think thats an exaggeration, and speaks to just how talented he was). Especially with our young and generally untested (and few) cornerbacks, his ability to cause pressure on the quarterback meant that our corners only had to cover for a short period of time. It gave them more leeway.

In passing situations, this defense likes to move the cat backer down to DE, leave the two ILBs in at LB, and remove the Dog backer from the field by replacing him with a 5th DB. Against teams with 3 talented receivers, Diaco has put a 3rd corner on the field to cover the 3rd WR, but more often lately he has been making our 5th DB play more of a Strong Safety role, by putting 3 safeties on the field. This is similar to a 4-2-5 defense run by TCU and others, and this has likely been dictated by personnel, as we have more talented safeties on the roster than true cover-corners.

In any event, the real big question is going to be this: in that 4-2-5 lineup, can we get pressure on the quarterback by rushing our four down lineman (3 DLs and the Cat) and putting the rest of the defense into coverage? With a lineup combination of Shembo-Ishaq Williams at the Cat spot and some combination or rotation of KLM-Tuitt-Nix-Schwenke and Lynch, I think this defense had been set to get a great pass rush with only rushing 4 people.

For that reason, I think an important factor in the success of this defense this year will be in seeing whether or not someone can step up and provide a true pass-rushing threat. Tuitt, Nix, KLM, and Schwenke can collapse a pocket from the front, get in the QBs face, and close up his passing windows. But this defense needs a guy like who can get around the tackles and attack the pockets flank. You can either do that, or you can’t, and Lynch was born to do it. In my opinion, we need Shembo AND Ishaq to really step up their games and provide that element to this defense. Rabasa and Utupo might be guys who can provide that for us as well.

If they can do that, then the loss of Lynch will be greatly minimized. If they can’t, then we are going to see a long season where we sit in coverage and give QBs too much time to pick on our corners, or we have to start blitzing like mad to create pressure in a high-risk, high-reward manner.