Happy EndingI understand that Duke is one of the worst Division I football teams year in and year out. That doesn't make me any less happy with Notre Dame's 28-7 victory over the Blue Devils Saturday.
The Irish showed improvements across the board, starting with quarterback Jimmy Clausen. My biggest concern with Clausen has been his struggles reading defenses and moving through his progression, and his severe lack of pocket presence. The combination of these two problems has led to Clausen taking too many sacks and playing ineffectively.
But the last two games, Clausen has shown vast improvement in the way he reads a defense and moves out of the pocket before it collapses. Against Duke, Clausen efficiently went through his progression, found the open receiver and delivered the football on target. He also avoided five or six sacks by ducking out of trouble right before a Blue Devil defender brought him down. The result was a more effective offense that didn't repeatedly kill drives with huge loss plays.
Clausen's throw to David Grimes for a 25-yard touchdown near the end of the second quarter was beautiful. The freshman threaded the ball between the defender covering Grimes and the safety. You couldn't ask for a better pass.
On the next drive, after narrowly avoiding a sack, Clausen heaved a perfect jump ball to the end zone and put Duval Kamara in great position to haul in a touchdown, which the freshman receiver did to put the Irish ahead 14-0.
For the past few weeks, I've been concerned that Clausen has failed to develop or improve this season. But the last two games make me feel better. If Clausen can play well against Stanford next week, he'll head into the offseason with some positive momentum.
The Irish ran the ball very well behind another freshman, Robert Hughes, who finished with 17 carries for 110 yards and a touchdown. Hughes is big enough to break tackles, but quick enough to elude defenders. I really like Armando Allen and James Aldridge, but Allen is too small to run consistently well between the tackles and Aldridge tries to run people over a little too often instead of trying a sidestep move. Hughes is the best of both worlds. He made great reads, quick cuts and most importantly, never, ever stopped churning his legs. Those three could be a devastating backfield for the next two or three years.
The defense played very well, particularly Trevor Laws. Laws is the one player I wish we'd have back next year. He is absolute animal. On one play against Duke, Laws spun past his defender, fell to the ground, immediately sprung up and dived for a sack. Despite the announcers repeatedly gushing that Tom Zibikowski is the heart of the Irish defense, the right answer is Laws. He's played well enough to merit All-American honors, and it's certain he'll be picked in the first two or three rounds of the NFL draft.
While there were plenty of positives, Notre Dame still made plenty of mistakes, especially in the first half. And beating lowly Duke certainly doesn't erase this team's struggles and shortcomings throughout the 2007 season. But the Irish also made strides today, gained a little confidence and got to enjoy a home victory.
Overall, a nice way to send the seniors out in their final home game.
3 comments:
Ha ha ha! Comedy Channel msterial
Dude,
This is DUKE!...while a "win is a win is a win" put this in some semblance of a rational context. The defense that Jimmy sees in practice should far outstrip what saw from lowly, 1-win-in-last-thirty-games DUKE (I seem to recall Brady having some pretty sick stats vs. Army/Navy/Air Force over the years).
The best way for Jimmy and ND to improve is increase the level of practice by having better players competing (and being developed by the staff).
This team still has severe problems (witness multiple players committing false starts on the 4th down in the first half, dropped ball by Parish, etc.) that have not been fixed. The result on the scoreboard is an improvement (and the ultimate metric) but I don't think ND improved so much as this week's opposing team was downright putrid.
It's great to be an optimist but to Crow about a victory over DUKE is embarrassing and speaks volumes about the current state of ND football---let's wait until the results are in from Stanford before we delineate a definitive upward trend.
If you go back and read the article (especially the last paragraph) again you will see that I said several times that we didn't play flawless by any means. We certainly have lots of improvement to make in every aspect of the game. And Duke is a very bad football team.
However, my point is that Clausen has shown some definite improvement that past two weeks. Should we anoint him an All-American? Absolutely not. But he's definitely made strides from the first week of the season, which is critical for future success.
If you look at Clausen the past two weeks, he's done much better with his reads and pocket presence. My point is that it's a good sign that he's improving, even if that improvement is against bad competition.
There's nothing embarrassing about being happy that the team played better this week. The Irish have been downright awful at times and have regressed at different points throughout the season. Therefore, to see improvement in several areas (even if it is against Duke) is something to be pleased about.
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