Notre Dame Football: 10 Things You Need To Know About The 2016 Season

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Apr 16, 2016; South Bend, IN, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish wide receiver Corey Holmes (15) runs in the third quarter of the Blue-Gold Game at Notre Dame Stadium. The Blue team defeated the Gold team 17-7. Mandatory Credit: Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports /

A lot of holes need to be filled for Notre Dame to have a successful 2016.

Notre Dame lost a ton of talent to the NFL Draft. That’s great and all as it is a part of meausring the health of a program, but moving forward, it’s a lot to reload.

The last two big Draft years for the Irish were in 2014 with 8 draft picks, and in 2007 with 7 draft picks. In 2014, Notre Dame was making some serious noise in the first half of the season, but then they fell apart in the back half with some disastrous results. And speaking of “disastrous” that 2007 year… yeah, that was the 3-9 campaign.

Although one was way worse than the other, one thing outside of just losing talent hurt both squads and that was a lack of leadership which the Draft swallows up as well.

Next: Best Notre Dame Football Players Of All-Time

This year we saw Notre Dame lose 7 players to the Draft- and that was in the first four rounds. It remains to be seen what impact this will have on the 2016 team, but I guarantee it will be much bigger than what is being discussed right now.

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