After that Minnesota game and basing these thoughts on just one of hopefully 15 games this season:

Whether or not this team wins it all this year, next year has the potential to be better than the 2019 team. We saw so many freshmen and sophomores start and play significant snaps last night. A lot of rookie mistakes were made but the playing time they earned is invaluable.

If the guys who played last night improve into solid starters this year, we would return an absolutely astounding amount of talent next year, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

I'm so excited for this year but my expectations are tempered almost solely because of how young many of our snap leaders will be by the end of the year. This has me SO excited for next year. And the year after that.

(Adding a bit after posting)

This is all with the caveat that I'm not writing off this season at all or not enjoying it. We finally have full stadiums, vaccinated players which means less testing protocols which means fewer missed games, and a really damn good team. Once all of our players settle in to their roles this team is going to be one of the top 4 teams in the country yet again.

The point I wanted to make is that watching all of the young guys playing last night made me realize how incredibly lucky we are we'll have many of them for 2-3 more years no matter how good they already are.