And Notre Dame still has more proven production returning at the position than anyone else in the sport.

No other unit can save both those things at once. And that's exactly what Marcus Freeman has built.

Hello and welcome in. It's always college football. Glad to have you here with us today in June as we continue along with

our ranking. Before we get into today's ranking, I want to kind of go through what it took to

actually put it together because this is not the episode that I thought it was going to be.

We took datasets and we took stats and we took production and then we watched tape and we kind

were able to eliminate some teams based on data and then you look at the teams that had guys

transfer out and then you're like all right well you can remove that team and then you go back to it

you're like well hang on a second they still have two really good players coming back so it's been

very difficult to put this thing together.

But this is one of the first put out this year by any publication that is a unit by unit

outlook. And we've done defensive line. We've done running back individually. We did quarterback

and wide receiver individually. But now it's time to move to the linebacker unit.

And this is what's very difficult because we went through and looked at pretty much every meaningful linebacker group in the FBS.

We looked at what they did from a production standpoint.

Then we go through and we look at the breakdown as it relates to the rest of college football.

And you put in some roster

research you look at some guys that departed from the draft you look at some portal transactions

you look at some spring practice reports and the list is a little different than what I anticipated

it was going to be I mean one that I've had really high hopes for you go back and reference what

they were last year and they were not productive whatsoever. And then some people would say, oh, it's the top team

returning in the FBS and now they're barely cracking the top 10. Perception is not necessarily

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