ND Greg Bryant
- Thread starter utexfan5
- Start date
It makes a difference, remains to be seen how much. That said, respect to the coach for not being afraid to bench a potentially important player. You play with fire when you sacrifice consistency in team discipline by creating exceptions to the rules no matter how important the player.
Hook 'em
Hook 'em
It probably won't have much impact on the ND/Texas game unless Folston gets injured somehow. And that seems unlikely for a week 1 game.
Bryant was fighter for the #2 RB position, but it was clear from the bowl game and the spring that he was losing ground to hybrid RB/WR Prosise (led the team in rushing yards during the bowl game and led in both carries and yards during the spring game)
Bryant is very talented, and coukd develop into a real weapon at some point (hopefully) but he was never going to be a focal point of the ND offense for the 2015 Texas game and I'd be surprised if losing him for it affected the game much at all.
Honestly, it probably has a chance to help NDs chances against Texas, while risking/harming it in the long run. This coukd end up forcing the coaches to give Folston more burn than they otherwise would have. He's been nothing but super productive when given consistent carries, but that would be a real risk to a key player for the later part of the year.
Overall, Folston was going to get the lions share of the carries for this game no matter what, and that's just a little more true now. Prosise was likely going to back him up some during the game (and play some in the slot) and now he'll almost certainly be he primary backup.
However, an injury to either of them now would be a major problem for ND
Bryant was fighter for the #2 RB position, but it was clear from the bowl game and the spring that he was losing ground to hybrid RB/WR Prosise (led the team in rushing yards during the bowl game and led in both carries and yards during the spring game)
Bryant is very talented, and coukd develop into a real weapon at some point (hopefully) but he was never going to be a focal point of the ND offense for the 2015 Texas game and I'd be surprised if losing him for it affected the game much at all.
Honestly, it probably has a chance to help NDs chances against Texas, while risking/harming it in the long run. This coukd end up forcing the coaches to give Folston more burn than they otherwise would have. He's been nothing but super productive when given consistent carries, but that would be a real risk to a key player for the later part of the year.
Overall, Folston was going to get the lions share of the carries for this game no matter what, and that's just a little more true now. Prosise was likely going to back him up some during the game (and play some in the slot) and now he'll almost certainly be he primary backup.
However, an injury to either of them now would be a major problem for ND
Not sure who that is (though I don't really follow most reporters, too much "entertainment" and trolling there and not usually enough facts)
What were his thoughts on why it's a "significant" loss?
That just seems like an over-statement of the loss to me, as Bryant only had 1 game with 10+ carries last year (11 carries against Syracuse) and only 3 games with 50+ rushing yards (all of which were 2+ TD blowouts)
Bryant had a total of 10 carries over the last 6 games in 2014 (7 of which came in a blowout loss to USC, after we were down by 21+) and was 6th on the team in terms of carries and rushing yards over that stretch
Bryant has a MOUNTAIN of potential, but it hasn't been utilized of the college footabll field yet. His loss for the first 4 games seems to me to be more of a "loss" of additional improvement/potential much more so than a real loss of production that the team/coaches had banked on having early on in 2015
"Second year after taking over", not really sure what you meant there.
And when said 5* was averaging less than 1.5 carries per game for the 2nd half of the season and therad back is also returning after averaging over 100 yards per game over the same stretch...you really do need to explain that point
You're basically saying "he was a 5* on Rivals, therefore he must have been critical to your depth chart" and then using that as justification for your point
The reality is that Bryant was likely the tied for #2 RB duties at the end of the spring, and depth is FAR less important week 1
The real risk here is an injury to Folston is now devastating
Current depth chart updated a couple weeks ago...https://notredame.rivals.com/cdepthtext.asp?Year=2013&Team=NOTREDAME
I don't see this suspension as any concern for the Irish.
I don't see this suspension as any concern for the Irish.
To give an idea of the "impact" that I'd expect the loss of Bryant to have on the ND/Texas game, barring any major injuries, a blowout, etc. my expectation of the rushing distribution would have been something like:
Folston - 20 carries
Zaire - 15 carries
Bryant - 10 carries
Prosise - 5 carries
Instead I think we'll end up seeing something like
Folston - 25 caries
Zaire - 15 carries
Prosise - 10 carries
Right now, I'm expecting Bryant's carries to just get split up between Folston and Prosise (with Prosise taking a more RB centric role, instead of a more Slot centric role) but depending on how fall practice goes, I could see incoming frosh RB Dexter Williams also picking up some of those carries
Fwiw, I think ND is probably better served with the 2nd distribution early in the year.
In the 7 games where Folston got 15+ touches in 2014, he averaged:
135 total yards (from scrimmage)
6.3 yards/play (from scrimmage)
1+ TD
Prosise only average 3 touches (from scrimmage) per game in 2014...but he average 16.5 yards/touch (from scrimmage) on those and scored a TD on every 13th touch (on average)
Zaire (new starting QB) only got to rush the ball 33 times in 2014, but averaged 5.7 yards/carry and a TD every 16 carries on those touches
In all fairness Bryant showed similar potential (though in a smaller sample size) to the above players in the 5 games in 2014 where he got 7-8 touches or more, averaging:
8.2 touches (from scrimmage) per game
55 yards (from scrimmage) per game
6.8 yards (from scrimmage) per play
1 TD every 14 touches
Bryant has a lot of talent/potential to help this team, but the 3 guys mentioned above him are guys we REALLY NEED to feed the ball to (if 2014 is any kind of evidence) as getting them all the ball more often will REALLY help our offense.
