Boilernation

I agree. The current stadium holds 50% less than what they're building. Noblesville does have a good fanbase for home games and would sometimes have an overflow crowd, but theose were accomidated with endzone bleachers. A stadium holding upwards of 8-9K is going to look empty fairly often.

At worst, they're already at parity. Let's not forget Dwenger has had their season ended recently by two different NWI schools. NWI and Fort Wayne have a long standing Semi-State rivalry between the two of them. It's never been lopsided in FW's favor. What is lopsided in FW's favor is the amount of D1 talent they produce. Per capita (100,000), I wouldn't be surprised if they exceed Central Indiana.

A ceiling of 3rd or 4th is still competing in my book.

You think? I disagree. I have the uneasy feeling they’ll try riding Foles for one season to groom his replacement. Or, they get someone via trade. I would be shocked if Mitch even gets a franchise tag. IF Watson would agree to the trade, would he be worth what Houston wants? A poll of execs said the asking price would start with 3 1st round picks.

Plus, the Packers should be able to walk away with their division, which puts them right back into the bid for a 1st round bye and home field advantage.

I didn’t catch every game. Those I did watch the O-Line was getting blown off the ball. I get your point and I think there’s a lot of validity to it that’s hard to argue. Just offering a contrarian viewpoint. Noblesville is still growing at a very strong pace and the decision was made a year or so ago to expand the current HS as opposed to building a 2nd HS on the west side by Westfield. They may lose some good QB’s and WR’s to pass happy offenses, but they’ll get their share of move ins as well. For instance, I know one of their top Freshman who has the size of a TE/DE played middle school ball in one of Chatard’s feeder Catholic schools. i do hope to see some sort of balance in the offense week 1 against Mt. Vernon. What you saw against your team is exactly what Mt. Vernon did. They stacked the box and terrorized Noblesville’s O-Line. Noblesville attempted 8 passes the entire game.

Merrillville’s past two teams and Valpo’s State Runner Up team could have definitely competed in the HCC. Last year was an odd year for Valpo with the amount of practices and games they missed. I wouldn’t go as far as calling northern Indiana dead just because HCC and MIC rule the roost.

Noblesville didn’t fair much better airing it out with a QB that’s currently on IU’s roster. I get what you’re saying and at times I was too disgusted to watch them last year. I’m still willing to give Sharpe time to build his program, though my opinion doesn’t really matter. And if it works, it’s really a mute point if good passing QB’s and WR’s from Noblesville will go elsewhere. Just win without them. I’ll tell you they likely won’t leave if they also play baseball as that’s the premier men’s sport in Noblesville. Who knows. Maybe he’ll adapt the offense like Moore did with Jackson if he has a QB that can throw. Maybe, because of limited practice reps, he was using live games as practice for installing his offense. Honestly, with the way our line played, a passing game would have been non existent. D-Lines would have feasted on the QB.

Similiar to what Lake Central recently did, Noblesville has a brand new stadium currently under construction. It should hold up to 8-9K. https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/noblesville-build-new-high-school-stadium/531-de9df832-5824-45d3-8cfb-d56703d7ccf7

I live in Noblesville. My kids go to Noblesville schools. I watch a lot of their games. I just want them to win, no matter the type of offense they run. Last year, their OL wasn't close to being good enough to run that offense. Hopefully, next year is a different story. Noblesville does have a solid youth football program, ironically called The Grinderrs, but I'm not sure if they're even running his offense.

Let it go, man.

The Duneland is going to be extremely interesting next year with a lot of storylines. 1. Valpo & Merrillville: Coming off of multiple sucessful Tournament runs and both lost significant amounts of high end talent/size. Can Seiss and Marshall sustain success or do they take a step back and wait for more talent to come through? 2. Michigan City: There's been some mentions on here that Mason will have a contender next year with some really good talent. 3. Chesterton: Typically floats around .500. Will the standout QB deliver some unexpected W's? 4. Crown Point: Lake Central, LaPorte: New Coaches. Lake Central and Crown Point both appear to be good hires. LaPorte still without a coach. 5. Portage: I don't like the future trajectory for the Red Tribe. Chestovich has his work cut out for him with the way the landscape is changing in the Duneland.

Fair point Mark and you can certainly be right. My argument would be he's not coaching against Zac Wells or Rick Wimmer. No offense to Seiss, but he had a really good crop of talent come through that got even better with transfers. Can he sustain success or drop back down to .500'ish level seasons? If the later, I coud see CP dominating Merrillville regularly.

That would be extremely coincidental it's not his daughter. Doesn't Lux live in Crown Point with a kid on the basketball team?

This is roughly the 8th time he's announced a departure. He'll be back. He has too much time vested in this forum to quit cold turkey like this. Ironically, his comment wasn't even accurate. Crown Point's percent of white students is lower because of the number of Hispanic students.

Agree. Currently, best case scenario, he puts Crown Point on the same page as the upper ring of the Hoosier Crossroads. He still hasn't gotten over that hump to win a Title. Lost in '94 with Portage and had 2 teams at H-F capable of winning 8A in Illinois. One lost in the State Championship and the other lost the defacto State Championship to Loyola Academy when sketchy seeding had the two playing early in the playoffs. I can envision him getting Crown Point into the State Championship eventually if all goes well. The guy just beat cancer a year ago and hasn't coached since. Hopefully, his health allows him to continue until he decides it's time to hang up the whistle. But, taking down the last team standing from the MIC in Lucas Oil, I have to agree it'll take more than just good coaching.

I'll tell you, from the experience of playing for him in the mid '90's, he expects perfection at all times. There's no slacking in the weight room, off season conditioning, film room, practice field, etc. Very good players were benched or held completely out of key games if they weren't focused. He holds everyone accountable. Expect a very seasoned and intelligent coaching staff if he brings in one similiar to what he had in Michigan City and H-F. I look forward to seeing how this plays out. The Blue Ring has eluded him at Portage and H-F. He's not leaving a perennial 8A contender in Illinois to settle for Sectional and Regional Titles in Indiana.

Here's a good Bears factoid to highlight the geniuses at Halas Hall. The Bears chose Mark Trestman over Bruce Arians in 2013 because Bruce wouldn't take part in a silly mock Press Conference as part of the interview process. Trestman agred and the rest is history.

My wife, who knows absolutely nothing about football, even asked why Rodgers didn't run to the EZ on that 3rd down play.

Speaking of Brady, maybe the hyperbole is strong with this take, but I feel like his WR's let him down on those picks. Definately on the dropped passes. It seems like the guys he had in NE would be smart enough to look for the 1 on 1 jump ball when Brady is trying to avoid a 3rd down sack.

How does Matt LeFleur not realize that kicking a FG with 2:05 left is the same result as not converting the 4th and Goal to potentially tie the game? You still have to get the ball back!!! Unreal. Absolutely. Though the millenial NBA fanboys will insist it's China's favorite son.

Yeah, me neither. I immediately though of the Tennessee game last year when the deficit was much larger. Meh. 9 point deficit is chump change to the KC offense.

And only in the southeast will a school purposely turn itself in for violations just to fire their coach and bring in the next best thing. I'm in not confidant in anything more than a 1 year self imposed Bowl ban for the Vols. The fact that Will Wade is still coaching hoops in Baton Rouge is about all you need to know about the power of the folks at NCAA HQ.

I would be curious to see the impact Andreas has on Crown Point. My guess is Andrean gets more football talent out of Crown Point than they do Valpo. Though I'm unsure how many of Andrean's starters are actually from Crown Point. I would imagine Center Grove has the benefit that they'll never lose anyone of significance to Roncalli. Just my guess though.