I'll throw in my opinion on this matter as well. If ND had an average-above average quarterback this past season, they would have lost to Michigan State & UCLA, and finished at 8-4 instead of 10-2. I'm pretty sure that last statement is unchallengable, but go ahead and try if you'd like. 8-4 makes for a fringe top 25 team, much less a top 10 team. So if you ask me, ND was a team with fringe top 25 talent that happened to have a great qb leading the way. To illustrate my point, let me show you the recruiting rankings for players that were on that team.
2003 - #12
2004 - #32
2005 - #40
2006 - #8
The 06 class was a very good one, but they were still true frosh and only one of them had a major impact. It was mainly the other 3 classes, which illustrates my point that this was a team with fringe top 25 talent. Now assuredly recruiting rankings are not scientific or perfect, but as a whole they do a pretty respectable job of illustrating a team's overall talent. Usually the recruiting rankings have a high correlation to the actual rankings during the following years.
This last ND team was a team with a handful of playmakers and a bunch of average players. Samardzija and Quinn are top notch players, and Carlson (TE), McKnight (WR), and Walker were "2nd tier" playmakers, meaning guys that did really well against the weaker teams, but often were invisible in the big games. I don't think they ever won the line of scrimmage battle against teams with equal or better talent, and as a result, the team relied on Quinn to bail them out and make plays.
Most people thought I was being a crazy homer when I said that Quinn deserved the Heisman as much as Troy Smith did, but if you watched the national championship game, Troy Smith went up against what Quinn had all year, and he completely folded (Obviously Florida's defense is very, very good, but my point is, ND's o-line made a lot of defenses look like Florida). Even in the Michigan game, Quinn hung in there and threw for 3 tds, and that was unanimously agreed upon to be his worst "big game". Switch Troy with Brady, and ND still would have gone 10-3 at best, if not a couple games worse.
But I'm just a crazy homer, what do I know :wink: