One aspect of Saturday’s game against Temple (7-0) that has me intrigued is the superficial similarity it has to Notre Dame’s (6-1) National Championship Game against Alabama in 2013. The Temple Owls come into Saturday’s game without a loss and College GameDay is comin’ to their citayyyyy. They’re ranked in the Top Twenty-Five for the first time since 1979. They’re a program returned to relevance.
And they’re running into a buzz saw.
For those of you who lived through, and still remember, that frightful night in January when Alabama overwhelmed the Irish, you will recall the biggest difference between the teams was depth. Down the line and across the board, Alabama was deeper. While Notre Dame may have had a better player at a given position, Alabama was simply deeper than Notre Dame. Deeper in talent. Alabama had more stars.
https://youtu.be/joWpYsKere8
To compare Temple to Notre Dame, I took the projected two-deep rosters for both teams and went through the process of tallying up the Rivals rankings for each player. While there are some differences between the two schemes, I think the similarities make the comparison fair across the position groups. In gross terms, each team has three receivers positions, five offensive linemen, a tight end, a quarterback, a running back, four defensive linemen, three linebackers, two cornerbacks, two safeties, a punter, and a placekicker.
Receivers: of the six receivers on Notre Dame’s two-deep, five (Fuller, St. Brown, Carlisle, Hunter, Jr., Robinson) were four star recruits. One (Brown) was three. Of the six Temple receivers, only one (Adonis Jennings) was a four star recruit. He is a transfer from Pitt. One (Romond Deloatch) was three stars and three (Robby Anderson, Samuel Benjamin, Brodrick Yancy) were two star recruits. To his credit, starter John Christopher was unranked. Notre Dame: 23, Temple: 13
Running Back: for the Irish, both Prosise and Adams were three star recruits. For Temple, the starter, Jahad Thomas was a two star recruit and backup Ryquell Armstead was a three star. Notre Dame: 6, Temple: 5
Quarterback: Notre Dame’s quarterbacks, Kizer and Wimbush were both four star recruits. Temple’s starter, P.J. Walker, was two stars. His backup, Frank Nutile, was three. Notre Dame: 8, Temple: 5
O-Line: the Irish have one five star (Nelson), six (Stanley, Bivin, Bars, Mustipher, Elmer, McGlinchey) four star, and two (Martin, McGovern) three star recruits. Temple have one (James McHale) three star on the line. For what it’s worth, he’s the backup left tackle. The rest, nine players (Dion Dawkins, Shahbaz Ahmed, Jovahn Fair, Kyle Friend, Brendan McGowan, Brian Carter, Semaj Reed, Eric Lofton, Leon Johnson) were two star recruits. Notre Dame: 35, Temple: 21
Tight End: Notre Dame’s starter (Luatua) is three stars and backup (Weishar) is four. Temple’s are a four (Colin Thompson) and a two (Kip Patton). Notre Dame: 7, Temple: 6
D-Line: Notre Dame has four (Day, Hayes, Tillery, Rochell) four stars and three (Okwara, Trumbetti, Cage) three stars. Temple has one (Freddie Booth-Lloyd) three star, six (Nate Smith, Sharif Finch, Matt Ioannidis, Averee Robinson, Hershey Walton, Jacob Martin) two star, and one (Haason Reddick) no star. Notre Dame: 25, Temple: 15
LB: Notre Dame has one (Smith) five star, three (Onwualu, Morgtan, Coney) four star, one (Martini) three star, and one (Schmidt) no stars. Temple has two (Chapelle Russell, Jarred Alwan) three star, three (Tyler Matakevich, Avery Williams, Stephaun Marshall) two star and one (Nick Sharga) no star. Notre Dame: 21, Temple: 6
CB: the Irish have two (Russell, Luke) four star, one (Butler) three star and one (Coleman) two star recruits. Temple have one (Jean Chandler) three star and three (Artel Foster, Tavon Young, Nate Hairston) two star recruits. Notre Dame: 13, Temple: 9
S: Notre Dame has one (Redfield) five star, one (Shumate) four star, and two (Baratti, Farley) three star recruits. Temple have two (Adeboye Aromire, Alex Wells) three star, one (Nate L. Smith) two star, and one (Will Hayes) no star recruits. Notre Dame: 15, Temple: 8
P: Notre Dame has one (Newsome) three star and one (Riney) no star at punter. Temple has two (Alex Starzyk, Tyler Mayes) no star punters. Notre Dame: 3, Temple: 0
PK: the Irish have one (Yoon) three star and one (Cheveson) no star placekicker. Temple have two (Austin Jones, Tyler Mayes) no star placekickers. Notre Dame 3: Temple: 0
If you’re counting, that’s 159 stars to the Irish versus 88 to the Owls. That’s an enormous gap between the two programs. Is it a perfect comparison? Not at all. For starters, no weight is given to experience: a five star pure freshman rates higher than a fifth-year, no star phenom. It doesn’t measure performance versus potential: Ishaaq Williams, anyone? And Jerry Tillery’s stars came as an offensive lineman. So it’s flawed. But, as a measure of talent across the board, it’s fair and objective. It helps explain the Vegas line as of the date of my research (Sunday): ND -10.5. Interestingly, ‘bama was a 9.5 favorite over Notre Dame in 2013.
Looking at wins, as another comparison, Temple’s 7-0 is more an argument that they’re better than some really bad teams than anything else. In wins over Penn State (5-2), Cincinnati (4-3), UMass (1-6), Charlotte (2-5), Tulane (2-5), UCF (0-8) and East Carolina (4-4), Temple has only impressed against Penn State. They squeaked by UMass 25-23 while the Irish beat them 62-27. Terry, no doubt, will argue in the comments that Temple’s defense must be better than ours.
So, despite the hype, I’m not too worried about Saturday night. Temple doesn’t have the talent to go four quarters against the Irish.
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
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I never think this is a good way to compare teams. The stars are only valid for freshmen coming into college. Once here, ND has a world class program to improve the value of every player and Temple has never developed top-flight talent. Take for example, Prosise. Would you argue he’s not on par with many 5-star RBs who came in during his class? The ability for ND to develop talent is insurmountable if you compare it to Temple. ND plays a MUCH tougher schedule and they are battle tested where Temple has played some god-awful competition.
This game is nothing like ND/Bama. In 2012, we had to defeat Stanford at it’s height, USC(albeit in a down year), and OU at a high level of skill, Sparty just starting their rise, and Meatchicken. Temple doesnt even have a SINGLE game of that magnitude this year. No, this game is more comparable to, say, ND/Hawaii in 2008.
I don’t mind much whether the comparison is ND-Bama or ND-Hawaii as long as the point differential is similar on Saturday…
Hi Trey and thanks for reading and commenting. I think I laced enough disclaimers about the “star system” that your criticism is not only unfair, but one that I share. I actually said that stars don’t measure performance. Instead of Prosise, I used Williams as an example. My bad, I guess. Further, I ended the piece by looking at the teams Temple has defeated.
The real point is that Temple is running into a buzzsaw. I fully expect the Irish to win by at least three scores, and I’m really inclined to think that at least two will be TDs.
This game, however, has all the feel, to Temple fan, that the NCG had to Notre Dame two years ago. Their program is “back” now. One could argue that if you haven’t been ranked since 1979 and your last ranking wasn’t #1, you’re not really returning to anything, but that would be mean-spirited of me. ND has been dominant, mostly, in its wins. Even the loss to Clemson comes with so many caveats that I believe it to be the “best” loss of any one-loss team out there. I mean, should Stanford really get the pass they are getting for losing to NWU?
I must have missed that disclaimer. Your post is titled “Counting the stars” and the only comparison I read was about the count of star ratings for each unit. Overall, though, I dont think this matchup is at all like we were against Bama because at the time that game was played(regardless of the outcome) we had actually earned the right to be in the same talent conversation as they were. Temple has not. Not only are they not in our league THIS year(#21 vs #9) they never HAVE and never will be. You’re critique is correct…they have “Returned” to no sort of glory. They’ve just been ranked again, finally. That’s really nothing to hang your hat on.
“I never think this is a good way to compare teams.”
Team recruiting rankings in the aggregate absolutely matter and are an excellent piece of information in comparing teams. This has pretty much been shown over and over and over again…the best, most successful programs don’t just take whoever and develop them, they get better talent. http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-college-football-preview-reverse-engineering-a-champion-ohio-state-tcu-ucla/
Are they perfect? Nope. And on that point, it’s fair to mention there are outliers like CJ Prosise who for half a season has performed above his recruiting value. That said, ND does not have some quantifiably better track record at “developing stars” from lesser talent. Ronnie Stanley and Jaylon Smith were both highly touted players. Aggregate team rankings particularly over time, and particularly when doing what Bayou’s done by considering who will actually play is an important piece of information. Temple’s current coaches could be decidedly better player developers than ND’s current coaches and it might not matter with that large a gap to start from.