Just watched the Nuño interview with the Irish sports guy. In his interview he talked about how A&M and the rest of the teams that ND plays this year are gonna have a hard time putting up serious amount of points against their ND defense, which is expected to be one of the best in the country this year.

It got me thinking, is our offense capable of proving this guy wrong on August 31st? I know Klein is a great new innovative offensive minded coach that can set us up for success but will the players on the field execute it? I know most of you will say it all depends on our o-line and how successful they are directly determines how successful our offense is as a whole. And I agree with that. But I'm talking about our athletes lined up against their athletes.

Can Noah, Cyrus, Moose, Jahdae, Micah get to the next level and give us explosive plays consistently? Can Lev hit the right holes and make some linebackers miss? Or run through some linebackers? Can Tre and Donovan create mismatches with linebackers and safetys and give us big chunk plays?

I ask all this because it really hasn't been talked about enough in my mind on TA and beyond. We have a great coach who I trust to call the right plays in Klein. We have a talented and poised QB in Wiggy. We have a (hopefully) improved o-line. We have a stellar and experienced defense with Elko at the helm. The only question mark I have for this team, and the difference in my mind between another 8-4 season or a great first year record of 10-2, is our offensive playmakers. Can our receivers, tight ends, and running backs win those matchups and provide a long awaited explosive offense that we have desperately been hopin and prayin for?

Tell me if I'm out of touch, if I'm too worrisome, if I'm right to be asking this, or if I simply just need to go to bed.

Jimbo, is that you? Come right out with execution lol…

All of those things listed above depend on the OL and being able to execute blocking schemes. If they don't then the playmakers wont have a chance. If you take that out of the equation (which is impossible) I absolutely think our QB and RB can make plays, our WR's can if they have a good day. We have to set up our passing game by successfully running the ball initially forcing ND to stack the box leaving CBs in man coverage.

My gut says this game being the first of the year and implementing a new system will be tough. I predict a low scoring game with the ags losing by a score.

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We have a great coach who I trust to call the right plays in Klein.

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It is way to early to know if this is true. If anything, Klein is the biggest question mark on the coaching staff

i believe that if we have a good year this year we have multiple draftable skill position players.

noah thomas,jahdae walker, moos muhammad could all be drafted if we have a good year. as could leveon moss at running back. i think our tight end room has draftable talent as well. so yes i think we have guys that can beat their guys purely from an athletic standpoint. we have guys that can go make a play. but as you postulated the ability to go make a play typically requires time in the pocket. if our offensive line can go from a D- to a B- which is doable i think tbis offense can be very good.

Nobody has any real idea what our offense is capable of. ND has a strong secondary that will be difficult to beat consistently. Can we do it? Yeah absolutely. But I can't sit here and suggest that we will because there are too many unknowns.

I think our success in this game is going to be determined by our ability to control the tempo with the run game. If we get down early and are forced to throw our way back into it, I don't love our odds.

We just don't have any elite players at WR. We have 3-4 that have shown a potential to be really good, but we don't have elite talent that can be trusted beat a good secondary. Combine that with a questionable O line, and this guy is probably right. It's possible we can get by with a good running game and good TE play so we don't have to rely on our WRs, but that will depend on the O line playing well. I think our offense will have to play and produce way above expectations to win this game.

21-24 pts scored probably wins this game imo. 2 good defenses and both with lots of questions on the OL. Turnovers and field position will be key.

It's going to be a low scoring defensive slugfest. Both teams are projected to have great defenses.

Look at the Vegas betting line of the over / under on total points scored as an indicator. The line opened at 50.5 and has been bet down to 46.5

What we need to realize about this is who's making those bets driving the line down? This early, preseason? The more astute bettors are. The professionals, the betting consortiums. Armchair Joe just looking for some Saturday action isn't doing that. The recreational bettors won't be moving the line if at all until Friday before or actual Gameday.

our O is a crap shoot atthis point. ND could make us look real bad. yeah, 20 pts could win this one.