A New LowBy: Joe
I did something on Saturday that I've never done before. I quit watching a Notre Dame football game.
That's saying something, considering I've seen some pretty bad Irish football the past decade and a half. But Saturday was a new low.
The problem wasn't that I expected Notre Dame to win. I picked Michigan because they have a very talented team that has one glaring weakness -- they can't stop a spread offense. I figured Mike Hart would have a big day and we'd fall by 10-14 points. I would have been OK with that for two reasons: 1. Michigan isn't as bad as the media says and 2. At least we would have shown improvement.
No. 1 turned out to be true. And No. 2 happened, except the exact opposite.
The worst part of this game is that I didn't even get to enjoy ONE friggin' play. Not one. I couldn't even think positively for a whole play. We returned the opening kickoff to the 17 and then our senior captain snapped it over Armando Allen's head to put us at 2nd and forever from our own 1. A Notre Dame hater couldn't have scripted a worse scenario for the Irish.
And it went downhill from there.
To be completely honest, I'm shocked right now. I believe in Charlie Weis and I believe we are headed in the right direction. But to show no ability or technique in any facet of the football game has to make Irish fans wonder what the heck is going on during practice each week? This is by far the worst Notre Dame game I have ever watched (or partly watched) and it wasn't because we "don't have the talent" as analysts will say. It's because we lack any concept of fundamentals.
We don't block correctly. We don't protect the passer. We don't get a "push" on the offensive line. We don't cover receivers. We make mental errors. We have too many penalties. We can't tackle. We can't cover a punt return. We can't score. We can't hang on to the football. We can't convert a 3rd down. We can't rush for one yard with our fullback. We can't snap. And we certainly haven't made progress in the first three weeks of the season.
The only thing we can do is punt.
Where's the improvement? This week, Coach Weis said that it's time to "take the gloves off" and "open up the playbook." I don't understand how we expected to "open up the playbook" when we can't block anyone or run for positive yards. Shouldn't we work on executing those facets of the offense before we send Jimmy Clausen into a shotgun with no running backs? Shouldn't Weis go through some type of offensive progression to help this offense improve? For example, first we figure out why we're blocking poorly. Then we work on how to run the ball more effectively. Then, after we correct those two problems, then and only then do we work on opening up the offense.
Michigan killed Clausen all day. Every time he went shotgun with four or five wide, he had two seconds to throw the ball. If you've watched the Irish through two games, does that surprise you at all? We can't block anyone and Weis is going to try to run a spread offense with no extra protection for Clausen? How was this scheme supposed to work in the first place?
I could write a book about all our problems. But it basically comes down to this. Yes, the team is hurting because of two poor recruiting classes by Tyrone Willingham. Yes, the offensive line is comprised of one senior, two very average talented juniors and a couple supposed-promising sophomores. Yes, the brutal schedule and the young team is a perfect storm for a disastrous record this season.
But all those facts don't reprieve Weis, line coach John Latina, and the rest of the staff from putting a team on the field that is this putrid.
Perhaps the most depressing result of this 38-0 loss is that it's bound to hurt recruiting. Weis, to his credit, has done a remarkable job recruiting -- much better than his predecessor who quit recruiting in November before he was fired. But high school recruits who have committed or are thinking of attending Notre Dame are going to start second-guessing themselves with all these embarrassing losses. Opposing coaches are going to have an easy time calling recruits up to remind them how bad Notre Dame has been this year. Their question will be simple: "Do you really want to play for that team?
It doesn't get easier. Michigan State is undefeated. Purdue can put up bunches of points. UCLA and Boston College are top-15 teams and USC is No. 1. And Air Force just upset No. 20 TCU on Thursday.
Anyone who predicts Notre Dame will finish better than 1-11 is an idiot. There is no tangible reason, at this point, to believe Notre Dame can win a football game in 2007, besides beating lowly Duke. We haven't even scored an offensive touchdown, how are we supposed to win two games? That's the truth and it's sad.
At this point, I'm flabbergasted. I don't know how we can be this bad. Weis better turn this season around, and fast, or all the good he's done the past two years will vanish in a hurry.
5 comments:
For the record, when I made similar points before the Michigan game Joe called me an idiot, and said I was 'one of those typical Notre Dame fans who always thinks the sky is falling.'
I think its hard to imagine a scenario where we're not 0-8 after the USC game. In a best case scenario we might be able to steal one of the next 5, and then take 3 of the 4 games vs. Navy, Air Force, Duke and Stanford to finish 4-8, but that's the optimist in me talking.
Does anyone have any guesses as to how we got so bad so quick? It's like everyone on both sides of the ball suddenly forgot how to play football. Are the young guys not as good as the ratings agencies thought? Did our position coaches not bother to re-teach fundamentals in Spring and Fall practices? Has the team quit on Weis and the other coaches? Your guesses are as good as mine.
It seems to me that weis has made one bad decision after another. In the first game, he starts a QB (who incidently is no longer with the team) who apparently was a glorified running back. We presumably spent fall practice instilling a mickey mouse, high school offense, that we now can't even run. He gets away from his basic offense to run a quasi-qb read, pop warner - lets snap it to our fastest guy and hope he can outrun everyone else because we don't have anyone else on this team who knows his ass from a hole in the ground - offense, because he a) has no confidence in his system b) is arrogant enough to believe that he can adequately install a truly complicated system that Urban Meyer and Rich Rodriguez have spent years perfecting c) like the rest of his team, he too doesn't know his ass from a whole in the ground.
Against PSU, it seemed Weis may have learned his lesson and decided to get back to his basic scheme, and we actually showed some improvement as the first 3 quarters were close, but our D tired out in the end.
Then, there was this debacle. First play of the game, Weis figures, "Hey, GT runs this play with Choice alone in the backfield, maybe I'll give it a try" And then, the rest of the game he tries to run the damn true QB read option, which would have maybe worked better in week 1 with Jones if you'd have actually used it.
It's like instead of picking a system and sticking with it from week to week in trying to improve, he comes out with a completely different plan each week, with only 4 days of practice in between to work on it.
As much as it pains me to say it, Joe is right. There is not one thing this team does well. In fact, this team has shown me nothing to believe we could even beat Duke. We do NOTHING well. We are in fucking negative rushing yards on the season. 119 out of 119 teams rushing, and just about every other category. You have a fucking 5th year senior who forgets how to snap the damn ball. You have an o-line that allows the defense to blitz freely, untouched. You're playing a 19 year old kid at QB who looks, understandably, lost.
Yesterday was like watching Michigan play the scout time. Take that back, it was like a middle of the road high school team. They could defend nothing and we helpless on offense.
Chris,
I think you nailed it when you said Weis is designing a different offense each week, depending on the opponents weaknesses. This is all well and good in the NFL, but in college football with 19 and 20 year old kids, it'll never work. I agree that he needs to pick an offensive scheme and stick to it for the season. Of course, this is something we should have been doing in practice since April. Trying to do that now in between games is going to be almost impossible.
We should choose ten plays and practice those plays over and over again. I would rather have a 4th grade football offense which is executed properly than a 500 page playbook which has produced nothing short of a disaster. I have never seen a college team ever execute as poorly as we did on saturday.
Another possibility is that Charlie brought in all of these young and talented guys and didn't bother drilling the fundamentals into them. As an NFL coach I guess he can take it for granted that players will be fundamentally sound, and he could have gotten away with under-practicing fundamentals over the last 2 years because he had a veteran team.
No matter how good Weis' recruits are they've still only been instructed by high school coaches. It seems like freakish athletes can often get by without sound fundamentals, but that doesn't cut it when you move to the next level.
Imagine how much time he wasted in training camp trying (unsuccessfully) to install a spread offense when he could have been teaching blocking and tackling.
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