Rob has been doing a tremendous job with the site over the last few weeks while I skirt around the edges, throwing up a random note here and there.  My main problem with finding something to write about is that right now, with the team Notre Dame will be fielding in the fall, is that everything is purely speculative.  I hate it when "expert analysts" talk just for the sake of talking, whether it be ESPN trying to play out an entire college football season or NFL playoffs months in advance or some jerk-off on a cable news channel trying to explain to me how the primaries are going to shake out.

Right now all sorts of sites - the kind of sites that actually provide you with content on a daily basis, and therefore make me extremely jealous and greedy for more free time - are trying to predict the Irish season, but it seems rather absurd to try and tell you how the Georgia Tech game is going to turn out, let alone trying to predict the amount of yards Mike Hart will run for or how many points we'll score on Boston College when we don't even know who the freaking quarterback is yet.  (And even if we did, we've seen exactly none of them in real action, unless you count Evan Sharpley's heroic run out-of-bounds versus Michigan)

But you know what?  Screw it.  I'm going to channel my inner Skip Bayless, with a dash of Bill O'Reilly and a hint of Kirk "Michigan is better than Florida because I saw them!" Herbstreit and get crazy with some predictions.  The worst case scenario?  I'm dead wrong, you come back and read this and think less of me, which probably isn't possible.

First, listen to the following to get pumped, and then we shall dance.

1) Demetrius Jones is our starting quarterback for the majority of the season

I know this goes completely against the grain of every other quarterback Charlie Weis has tutored, but can you imagine a man with the ego the size of Charlie's not wanting to completely retool his offense in the face of doubters and still be successful?  If the Irish appear to have a clear strength this year, you would think it's the running game, led by a fleet of tailbacks, a senior center and a giant polar bear roaming the right tackle position like a grassy tundra.  

If we are to trust parents who were perhaps close to the situation, Charlie doesn't want or need to throw it more than five yards or so.  If that's the case, why not add an extra dimension to the offense and let Demetrius get some run.  While Frazer was proclaiming himself number one back in the spring, Jones has been quietly working hard, with little bursts of confidence showing up here and there.  I feel that if Weis was that confident in Sharpley, he would have gotten some more burn last year, and if the Clausen elbow rumors are true, why waste a year of his eligibility so he can have a few starts in a run-heavy offense?  Granted, being protected by play-action passing and not having to Rex Grossman-it-deep could only help his development, but with everything Jones adds to the offense, why not give him a chance to utilize all the new talent coming in with him?

Rain is the great environment equalizer, and if I had to pick a single player to build my defense around it would be a big play safety, but few factors can turn a decent team into one capable of competing against anyone more than a mobile quarterback.

2) Tom Zbikowski will become the big play defender he's shown flashes of over his career

I wrote this about Tommy Z following week two of last season, where the Irish held down Penn State and Georgia Tech's offenses:

But the name I want to praise today is the unquestioned leader of a defense that has yielded six legitimate points in the last seven quarters of play.  Granted, Morelli and Ball might not exactly be Young and Leinart, but the Irish defense is most definitely improved, and no one signifies the attitude change infused by Charlie Weis onto this program better than Zibby.  The Mohawk.  The golden gloves.  The hard hits.  The ballsy punt returns.    He only has fifteen tackles, two for loss, on the season, but nearly all of those tackles are of the hard-hitting, bone-jarring, "ooing"-variety that brings a smile to a football fan's face.  On Saturday, he jarred loose a fumble from Tony Hunt that stunted one PSU drive early and then recovered another for a touchdown that blew the game open early in the third quarter.  His ability to stop the run cannot be extolled enough for a team that is still finding its identity at linebacker.  So Tommy Z goes, so the defense goes; and so the defense goes, so Notre Dame goes.

I turned on Tommy Z.  I turned on him in a quick and ugly manner.  Those bone-popping hits I praised now led not to "Ooo's" but screams of "Why don't you just wrap up and tackle instead of trying to shoulder block everyone?!".  There was a lot of talk of an injury to Zibby last year that affected his performance as the season went on, so I think that if he gets healthy physically and Corwin Brown can repair all the damage Rick Minter did to him schematically, we'll have an anchor to a secondary that's been the Achilles heel of the team since I arrived on campus in 2004.

(I hope Zibby pans out, because despite trying to put on rose-colored glasses, I can't imagine Wooden and Lambert making great leaps at the corners if they continue to play there.  Other than the end of the Michigan State game, there was little to be inspired by in our secondary play, unless you were Selwyn Lymon.)

3) Notre Dame will continue to succeed at recruiting

Irish Roundtable has an absolutely fantastic review of all the quotes about how Notre Dame couldn't recruit, and I'll admit that I was doubtful we'd ever have the power to draw players on a national level.  Well again, everyone from "experts" to novices like myself were completely wrong, and Weis has put together great recruiting classes since his arrival.  Even if this season is disappointing record-wise compared to the last two campaigns, I think the excitement around the program combined with the style of play and the slow bleeding of Irish players into the NFL will keep Notre Dame in the running for nearly every recruit they want to take a flier on while Charlie remains.

4) We're not going to the Gator Bowl

As much as I want to think we can slip into the Gator Bowl - or, by the grace of God, the college football gods and every witch doctor in the bayou - stumble our way back to New Orleans for another Sugar Bowl, it just seems unlikely.  Our schedule, despite the delicious cake walk through November, is tough.  Regardless of how bad Weis has spanked Joe Tiller in their first two meetings, Purdue returns a lot of starters, and few things are as important in sports as familiarity with the person playing next to you.  A lot of people have Michigan State circled as a win, but please remember that the Spartans, for whatever reason, have done very well in the House Rock Built and that they have just as many unknowns - granted, less talented unknowns - coming into this season as we do.

But let's say for the sake of punditry, we win all the November games, beat Purdue and Michigan State and manage to steal one from the GT/PSU/Michigan/UCLA/BC/USC clusterfuck of death.  That's still only seven wins, and I can't see the Gator Bowl - even with the annual Notre Dame bowl elevation - taking us over top of whoever's left from the Big East scrum, be that Louisville, WVU, Rutgers or a potentially tough South Florida team.  You also must remember that the Gator Bowl also gets to take a Big XII team so many times in the next few years, so while the depth of quality teams in the southwest is as big of a question mark as anything, there will be a lot of competition to see who gets to travel to Jacksonville for New Years.

If you twisted my arm, I say we end up in the Insight Bowl, but I'm hoping we move up a tier.

5) Penn State fans will probably whine about something

Even when we dominate them and let them score a couple touchdowns at the end to make it look respectable, they're still unhappy.  I realize they have a mild obsession with us, so I almost hope they win on September 8th just to avoid the mass suicides that would ripple across Central PA with an Irish upset in Beaver Stadium.

Since you've all been attentive readers - or at least skimmed this far - I'll give you one of my main reasons for avoiding prognostications that are devoid of evidence, fact and a clear sense of logic.  From the Penn State blog 50-Yard Lion, one disturbed, terribly troubled man's view of how the Notre Dame game would turn out:

Forget the hype. Quinn for Heisman? Please. The only tradition Notre Dame will uphold this year is that of being over-rated. After a few beers, you could probably convince me to drop them below Michigan State and Purdue on this list. They might not even get past Georgia Tech in their opener. Read my words and consider them prophesy. The Domers will not win this game without the luck of the Irish and some bad calls. Quinn will not pick our defense apart. Notre Lames defense was barely adequate last year. Weiss is an offensive guru who excels with a good quarterbackdo not expect the defense to be substantially better this season. I rank them here only because this game is on the road and so early in the seasonboth of which favor the leprechauns. They lost Stovall, but McKnight will be back from an injury. Jeff Samardzija will be back (yawn.) The offensive line will be okay. But defensively, the Irish were exposed in the Fiesta Bowl. Short of a miracle, I do not expect this unit to be any better by September 9th, when Morelli and company will lay to rest the questions on the Penn State offense. Minnesota was the break-out game of 2005. This will be the showcase in 2006.