College Football 2015 Preview No. 16: Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Regular Season Records: 7-5, 8-4, 12-0, 7-5

SRS Rankings: 31, 27, 6, 20

Talking Point: Playoff? Notre Dame beat an SEC team in a bowl game. They have a number of returning starters, a couple of whom may be top 10 draft picks. After a dominant performance during talking season, SI picked the Irish as their No. 4 overall team. Bruce Feldman suggested they may be national title material. TV networks are interested. Behold the power of bowl hype paired with a well-timed vacation goatee.

Why To Like Them: The Irish return a quality, veteran offensive line. They have depth at receiver and tight end. Tarean Folston is a decent running back. Everything is present for Malik Zaire to have success. On the other side, the Irish should be very strong on the defensive line and at linebacker, even with the Jarron Jones loss.

Why Not To Like Them: Malik Zaire has upside, but very little experience. Brian Kelly’s track record bringing Notre Dame QBs through smoothly is not the greatest. Safety play should improve after last year’s troubles. That does not mean it will be effective.

Schedule: It’s not brutal. Notre Dame plays three Top 25 teams, (at) Clemson, USC, (at) Stanford. Maybe Georgia Tech sneaks in there as a fourth. What they face is a number of trap games. Four different media members in our 2015 college football media survey had the Irish suffering the biggest upset of the season. Each chose a different game. Navy sandwiched between Clemson and USC won’t be fun. They also have a late November night game in Boston against perennial giant challenger B.C. Pitt tends to be frisky.

Throwing Darts: There’s the playoff camp. There’s the 8-9 win camp. We’re in the latter. There are too many pitfalls on that schedule. Kelly has managed fewer than four losses in a regular season once in five years at Notre Dame. That one team (2012) went 5-0 in one-score games at home with two overtime wins. We’re still in the “need to see empirical evidence” stage with the Irish.

Random Alum: Phil Donahue