The Irish will definitely be in rebuilding mode. On Offense, both McKnight and Samardizja will be gone, at least 3 of our 5 starting OL's will be gone a 4th guy, our center , will graduate and could opt for the NFL. I think our TE will be back, and we have top rated young guys who should be ready. Darius Walker will be back and we'll have our starting FB. The big thing is that we will lose Brady Quinn and the WR's. Nobody knows how Jimmy Clausen will adjust to college football, even exceptional HS QB's struggle as freshmen if they are forced to play full time. Our current #2 QB is a nice kid, maybe he's good enough, I don't know, and we have a couple of freshmen QB's who were good in HS as well. Right now we don't have any WR's who have shown anything on the college level. Our 3rd guy, David Grimes, has not caught that many balls and is a smurff type kid. So we'll be green at QB and at WR. Could be a rough start. But the big thing is the OL will be made up of mostly sophmores who haven't played all that much. That is not good, and a inexperienced QB who ever he is. On defense, we lose our most of our DL, only Trevor Laws has eligibity left hopefully he comes back. Our LB's will all be back, and in the DB's we lose Mike Richardson (CB) and Ndukwe (SS). Zibby can come back. and we have 2 young CBs who should be ready along with Lambert and I think Ambrose Wooden. So if Charley can figure out the DL then we should have no dropoff on defense...problem is the defense has been pretty ordinary. I could see next year being a 3 loss year. We have a lot of teams who we beat this year that we will have to go to their place and they will all have a lot of starters returning. Purdue, Penn State and UCLA will all be road trips and those teams will all be returning a lot of starters. We go to Michigan as well and they should be very good again. Then throw in Boston College and USC and Ga.Tech and we have a lot of tough games in the first 8 games of the season. We should cruise in the final 4 games with Duke,Stanford, Air Force, and Navy. If we go 5-3 in the first 8 then I think we go 4-0 in the final 4 games and end up 9-3. I don't see us being worse than 4-4 in the first 8. We have a lot to look forward to in terms of who will be Quinns successor and if it is Jimmy Clausen how fast will he get up to speed. His brother started as a freshman at Tenn and I think the Vols still had a good year. But I don't remember how much talent the Vols had around him that year either. Rick Minter is a much criticised DCoord and there are more than a few ND fans who want him fired at the end of the year. If he is retained, he'll need to not just have a decent defense, the defense is going to have to carry the team in the early part of the season. 9-3 would be a great record.
I actually think that Alabama is looking pretty good next year. Young OL grows up, Soph qb matures, young RB and WR's return. We do lose some in our secondary, but I think we were close this year and next year is the blossom year.
On offense the Gators bring back all but one of the offensive line, lose one running back, the fullback, several recievers and of course our QB Chris Leak. But on offense we have played a lot of true freshmen who have really contributed and will be even better next year. Most Gator fans believe that Tebow will be better than Leak, maybe not next year but eventually. All in all on offense we should be just fine. On defense it's according to how many juniors go to the NFL, but we lose 3/4 Dl, 3/3 LB and at least 2 DB's. There are lot of talented young players, but that kind of loss of seniors will be hard to replace. At linebacker though we have 2 very talented freshmen who have played a lot this year and the losses at linebacker will probably not be as bad as the losses on the DL. However though my orange and blue glasses I see us at least competing for the SEC.
Our best players will be upperclassmen, and we've got some good talent. Unfortunately, Mr McGoo will will still be driving, and our sched becomes much more arduous (@Miami, @Tech, @Mizzou, @NU, @OU...). Hopefully it will be my last campaign praying for a coaching change!
Penn State loses it's 2 starting DT's, a big blow considering they put a lot of pressure on the QB and I beleive lead the NCAA in sacks as a DT tandem. They also lose a starting DE of no significance and their biggest loss on D is MLB Pozlusny. On O they lose RB Hunt and the LT and they lose their punter. 6 starters and 1 punter. On paper that is supposed to be good, but : after watching QB Morelli and the Penn State offense fail to improve from game one to the last game, I would say that Notre Dame's chances of winning in HV are very good.