Speed Won't Be An Issue For Notre Dame's Offense Anymore
A lack of speed and explosiveness has been a handy excuse for Notre Dame not being an elite offense for years. We don't need to get into another debate about the lack of validity to that argument in recent years, but there can be no debating that it absolutely won't be an issue for the Irish on offense in 2022.
Notre Dame has a chance to put one of the most explosive group of skill athletes in the country on the field in the fall. At quarterback, wide receiver and running back the Irish will have speed and playmakers, and that list doesn't include arguably the best tight end in the country.
Junior running back Chris Tyree came to Notre Dame with the reputation of being the fastest back in his class. Tyree won the fastest man competition at The Opening for two straight summers during his prep career. He showed off that home run speed as a freshman and we saw flashes of it last season during an otherwise injury plagued season.
Sources close to the program have said Tyree is healthy and having an outstanding offseason. The expected improvement in run blocking should create the creases Tyree needs to emerge as one of the better home run hitters in the country, and the Irish back showed he is a weapon in the pass game last season, turning two different short throws into 50+ yard touchdowns.
Freshman Jadarian Price also arrives with the reputation as a big play back, and sophomore Logan Diggs is an athletic 200+ pound player as well.
On the outside, fifth-year senior Braden Lenzy brings a very dynamic skillset to the game. Lenzy was a high school track star and has shown off his speed in spurts during his career at Notre Dame. During his sophomore season, Lenzy had touchdowns of 70, 61 and 51 yards, and he also had gains of 52 and 43 yards on just 24 total touches that season.
Speed certainly isn't an issue for Lenzy. Developing his technical game and being a more consistent pass catcher are certainly areas where his game must grow, but Lenzy is without question an explosive football player and one of the fastest wideouts in the game.
Sophomore Lorenzo Styles caught just 24 passes last season, but he too showed big-plays kills. Styles can flat out run, and there is diversity to his impact speed. He can stretch the field vertically, he is a handful on chase routes (crosses, drags, etc.) and he can out-run defenses once he gets the ball in his hands.
Styles finished his freshman campaign with an 8-catch, 136-yard performance against an Oklahoma State defense that allowed just one player in its 13 previous games to top 100 yards. Styles and Tyree both topped 100 yards receiving in that contest as the Irish racked up 551 yards against a defense that had allowed just one previous opponent (Oklahoma) to even top 400 yards and just two (Iowa State) topped 350 yards.
Sixth-year senior Avery Davis also brings speed to the game, albeit in a different skillset. Davis showed he can be a home run hitter in big moments in 2020 when he torched Clemson for a 53-yard gain to set up the game-tying score with less than a minute left in the game. He also smoked Purdue for a 62-yard touchdown.
What we don't know is if Davis will have the same explosiveness this season as he did before due to the knee injury he suffered in November.
Notre Dame also has a couple of big guys that can run in the form of 6-5 rising sophomore Deion Colzie and 6-4 incoming freshman Tobias Merriweather, who won a district championship in the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints last spring.
Junior tight end Michael Mayer isn't a burner, but he's a dynamic player and arguably the best returning tight end in the country. Mayer set Notre Dame single season records for a tight end in catches (71), receiving yards (840) and receiving touchdowns (7).
Outside of the incoming freshmen, this group of players helped fuel an offense that averaged 492.3 yards per game, 7.2 yards per play and 37.8 points per game in the final six games of the season.
Then there is sophomore quarterback Tyler Buchner. He'll be battling junior Drew Pyne for the starting job, but if Buchner wins that job he'll immediately become one of the most dangerous athletes at quarterback in the country. We saw all season how much better the Notre Dame run game was when he was in the game, and that was with an overall poor offensive line. That won't be the case in 2022.
Buchner rushed for 336 yards and averaged an eye-popping 7.3 yards per carry last season in limited snaps. If he's the full-time quarterback that means he'll be used to drop back and throw it a lot more, which only makes his running ability even more dangerous.
Buchner is an outstanding athlete in his own right, and when he's on the field Notre Dame has a game-breaker at every skill position on the field. If the Irish can stay healthy, the new coaching is as good as advertised, there is no doubt offensive coordinator Tommy Rees will have one of the more explosive group of playmakers in the country to work with.
Considering what Rees did with the offense down the stretch last season, even with a below average line, the thought of what this group can do in 2022 should provide Irish fans with a great deal of optimism.
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