Let's back up a couple of steps and see what comes into focus on defense. Depth. Maybe short on experience, but there's some depth. By mid-October, this might be a pretty solid group, especially if a freshman or two step up like Mitchell did last year and Freeman the year before. We might have a 4th qtr pass rush.
On offense, I've given up analyzing the OL. Two years ago, I thought we might have one solid player, Mason. Last year, I was sure we had 4. This year I think we have 1.5 solid and a couple of cage fighters. Give me a BBack that hits the hole as quick as Laskey or as hard as Days, and the offense begins to look OK because we should have some speed on the edge and we have a proven QB. We get back to converting those third and threes, and CPJ becomes a genius again.
I still can't decide if last year was a series of near misses or a dumpster fire. College football is all about momentum and confidence. We had neither by mid season because of the near misses. Then the dumpster caught fire, and the smoke made it hard to see anything. We were up 21-0 on UNC in the first half and up by 10 in the 4th qtr IIRC, and they won the division. A brain fart (again) cost us the VT game. Duke only got a couple of 1st downs after the first qtr. I swear I left South Bend and Clemson thinking that with a couple of breaks we could have stolen those games.
Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry. That might be the most important thing in a TO offense. That doesn't show up on a depth chart.