I'm Brian and part two of today's show here on the Irish Breakdown podcast, brought to you by our friends over at Fandoul.

We are talking about Notre Dame's kind of big picture, one of Marcus Freeman's biggest philosophical beliefs when building a football program.

He has said since day one, he wants to be a line-driven program.

What does that mean?

Strong on the offensive line, strong on the defensive line. And we're going to kind of break this down into two separate segments. But before we do that, we wanted to talk a big picture of just a simple question of, are they? How close are they? What do they need to do to get there? And I think all of those are extremely valid questions. And some of it's a little bit more

interesting than what you would think. That's for sure. Yeah. I mean, look, this all stems from

what Marcus Freeman has been saying since he was hired at Notre Dame's head coach, right? And that is,

we're going to be a line-driven program. And every year we kind of evaluate, are they a line-driven program?

And what I think we can honestly say is that they are clearly aspiring to be a line-driven

program, but they're not yet.

And what does that mean?

Does that mean that names, both of their lines are bad? No, I think

their defensive line this year, and for big chunks of last year, prove that they are playing

at a level that you can say defensively, their D-line has been a huge reason for their success,

especially this year. I think their defensive line was outstanding this

year. You don't finish, you don't hold teams of less than 100 yards per game rushing and then

also lead the nation in pressures if your D-line's not really good. And I think their D-line led all

D-lines and pressures as well as what is the stat that I was given. So I think that side of the ball is. Now, we'll talk later. It can, is it on pace to continue? That's a different story, but at least it played like it. I don't think you can argue that the offensive line has played like that. Now, you can use all the excuses you want. They've had a lot of injuries last couple years, and they have, and that's a valid thing to say. What would last year's

offensive line had looked like at Charles Jagassol not got injured? Would they have slid Billy

or Anthony Knapp into the starting lineup after Craig and Shrath went down? And then now you

got Jagassault left tackle and Shrout inside where he should be. What would we feel about this offensive line right now if Shroth, if Jagasaw didn't get hurt the last two years, and Anthony Knapp stepped into the lineup when Billy Shroth got hurt or when Ashton Craig got hurt instead of either Rocco or Coogan? You know, what would we be thinking here? What would the line look like?

What would have Jagassau didn't get hurt this year? What if Billy Shrout didn't get hurt the last

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