Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

How much of the playbook was available to the OC? 
Ya think maybe ND was focused on stopping RB Etienne?

Don't express 2-dimensional thinking just to disagree with me. 

Dude,

You're a bit sensative

wasn't necessarily disagreeing with you.

I stated, "I'm not sure"
then stated, we will possibly find out in the inevitable rematch
If Clemson with the starting QB blows out the Irish by 28 points in the rematch, I'll certainly agree with you.
heck, the Irish might be missing a few starters for that game

What would be more 2020 than ND winning a conference title during the only year they will ever be in a conference?

I just threw up in my mouth.

Gotta pull for Mack Brown and his orange slice brigade to upset the domers in a couple of weeks then.

I definitely think they're good.  Many of my aggie inlaws and friends have complained about Mond for the past couple of years, but all I ever saw was a good QB with a terrible o-line.  This year the o-line seems to be much improved and, unsurprisingly, a QB with time to make decisions, looks a lot better.

I still think they’re more top-15 in actual quality. But this year is weird and things are opening up. 

I still think they’re more top-15 in actual quality. But this year is weird and things are opening up.

It's a weird year for sure.

It's easy to say "they're no better than Top 15ish" but the actual question is, who's better than them?

In the B1G, the only team I see that's likely better, is Ohio State.  The other helmets in the B1G are a dumpster fire and Wisconsin, who is usually quite solid, hasn't been playing football games.

In the PAC, well, no way to know right now but I wouldn't put any PAC team ahead of the ags right now.

In the B12... errr... yeah they're better than anyone in the B12 to date, although OU is looking a lot better now than they did early on.

In the ACC... well, I'm comfortable saying Clemson is better when they have Lawrence, and Notre Dame is MAYBE better?

In the SEC... this is going to sort itself due to the 10-game schedule.  Alabama is demonstrably better, as they've already proven it on the field.  But the ags have already beaten Florida.  And Georgia lost to Florida so although I don't believe in the transitive property, it's tough to say that Georgia is definitely better than A&M, and it's reasonable to think that A&M should be ranked ahead of the Bulldogs. And then there's LSU who is... not good. 

So above, in all five P5 conferences, I've listed 4 teams that I'm pretty sure are better, and a couple more who might be equal.  That puts the ags in the 5-7 range. 

The truly one bright spot on that hire is that he gave us Dave Aranda, who changed the defense from a bend-don't-break 4-3 to a very aggressive 3-4. Wilcox and now Leonhard embraced it.

The second best bright spot is he left after only 2 years. He'd have run the program into the ground. Barry knew this, and would have let him go anyway. This way, no buyout. It worked very well for UW.

This is the fascinating thing, because his tenure was one where the good was actually pretty good, but the bad was deeply weird. 

The good
-The aforementioned 3-4
-The offenses at the time felt kinda underwhelming, but in retrospect, that might've sold them short. UW wast 32nd in offensive points per drive in 2013, and had maybe the most consistent Joel Stave (he had good play-makers). The next year's offense was a mess passing and ended up 17th in points per drive despite the third-best offensive play-maker being a RB who was injured late in the year, and the fourth-best being a change of pace QB.
And the OC, a journeyman with a weird rep, turned around and got Vandy kinda spicy on offense and now Utah. And he was a compromise hire because Barry wanted pro-style, and there's like six total OCs that fit that bill. And that went better than it should have.
-He was a breath of fresh air from Bert who was a party boy early, oft-standoffish and abrasive and even when he was nice kind of a weirdo. I'd been told Anderson seemed like a much more normal chatty guy, at least in public settings. 
-His recruiting has a bad rap, but looking back, those two-ish classes he had produced a pretty good set of players

The bad
-He turned out to be a weirdo. He insisted on a QB who couldn't throw, which managed to piss off everyone on the roster. Kids always love the backup, and in this case, they were fighting for the limited game manager starter. That led to a fight with Melvin Gordon mid-LSU game, a de facto benching and an inability to explain it. Then of course he quit suddenly after a terrible game, which wasn't even like a planned Barry push out (it was coming, but the timing was weird)
-He had that insistence on wanting JUCO kids and kids with troubled backgrounds. Not even superstars. To a degree I get it, but I never got picking it as a hill to die on.
-His staff had issues with recruiting injured linemen and not developing the batch he was left. That staff actually recruiting some good ones, but they also left a not super group for Chryst.
-The RB acquisition was poor and the WR acquisition was just OK, though the late Bert staff had the latter problem. QB additions were a BIG issue as well. 

At the time, I didn’t necessarily think he was gonna run the program into a ditch because I think Barry’s stewardship is big. But now, with how things blew up in his last two spots, I’m notably less certain. He feuded with his boss (I heard the new guy is often not thrilled, but he knows how the world works), and while his last two lost jobs have been at super hard to win places, they’ve come in weird and ugly ways. In general, I’m happy with what UW got from him long term and a little sad he couldn’t keep things together to be the coach I hoped he could be

It's a weird year for sure.

It's easy to say "they're no better than Top 15ish" but the actual question is, who's better than them?

In the B1G, the only team I see that's likely better, is Ohio State.  The other helmets in the B1G are a dumpster fire and Wisconsin, who is usually quite solid, hasn't been playing football games.

In the PAC, well, no way to know right now but I wouldn't put any PAC team ahead of the ags right now.

In the B12... errr... yeah they're better than anyone in the B12 to date, although OU is looking a lot better now than they did early on.

In the ACC... well, I'm comfortable saying Clemson is better when they have Lawrence, and Notre Dame is MAYBE better?

In the SEC... this is going to take sort itself due to the 10-game schedule.  Alabama is demonstrably better, as they've already proven it on the field.  But the ags have already beaten Florida.  And Georgia lost to Florida so although I don't believe in the transitive property, it's tough to say that Georgia is definitely better than A&M, and it's reasonable to think that A&M should be ranked ahead of the Bulldogs. And then there's LSU who is... not good. 

So above, in all five P5 conferences, I've listed 4 teams that I'm pretty sure are better, and a couple more who might be equal.  That puts the ags in the 5-7 range. 

Maybe it's just a consistency thing. They've been really good on offense three times and better than the final score output once, kinda not great twice. They've been really good on defense three times, pretty not good three times. 

But they've won one bad defense game and always managed to match the bad offense or defense games with one another. Maybe when the stats flatten out (their so noisy with so many teams at like two games), I'll get a better feel. If it were last year, they'd have been 34th in scoring and 47th in scoring D, and that feels unlike a team that might be on the verge of being top 10 (and that's after a 48-3 win).

I guess it's a little like how they were much better than the 7-5 regular season record, they project to be 8-2 or 9-1 and they just likely won't be quite that imposing. 

Maybe it's just a consistency thing. They've been really good on offense three times and better than the final score output once, kinda not great twice. They've been really good on defense three times, pretty not good three times.

But they've won one bad defense game and always managed to match the bad offense or defense games with one another. Maybe when the stats flatten out (their so noisy with so many teams at like two games), I'll get a better feel. If it were last year, they'd have been 34th in scoring and 47th in scoring D, and that feels unlike a team that might be on the verge of being top 10 (and that's after a 48-3 win).

I guess it's a little like how they were much better than the 7-5 regular season record, they project to be 8-2 or 9-1 and they just likely won't be quite that imposing.

I'm not comparing them to past history or some hypothetical idea of what "good" is, especially not this year.  I'm just comparing them across the college football landscape, to the other teams that are playing football right now.

I think overall this is sort of a "down year" in college football, which is to be expected given all of the external factors.  But in this "down year" I don't see 10-14 teams that are better than the ags so far this season.  I might not even see 5 teams that are better.

As always, it's easy to say so-and-so doesn't look like a Top 10 team-- until you try to rank the teams that are better, and then you have to judge THOSE teams for all their flaws and warts, as well.