Man Cave Quarterback: Reviewing Notre Dame’s 17-31 Loss to USC
Posted by Steve Herring on October 24, 2011
Here is Saturday’s Rapid Reaction to the game.
Man Cave Quarterback: Southern California
Something Funny - Surely, by the time this hits the presses, Notre Dame fans have watched, talked, and read about the horrors of what transpired in South Bend on Saturday evening. Probably multiple times. So…
Did you know that two of the recruits in attendance at the game are named Taco and Courtney Love? Forgive me if I don’t take a moment and imagine Kirk Herbstreit on College Gameday,
The Taco to Courtney Love connection on the field is the best thing going in college football. You can’t stop the Taco! If you stop the beautiful music that Taco makes, may you be doomed to an evening of the assault that is Courtney Love.
Alas, Taco (Charlton) is a defensive end and Courtney Love is an inside linebacker, meaning that makes even less sense, but typing that sentence made me smile much more than most of what I took in during the dreadful evening we must re-hash in some manner.
Sigh…
Who or What is this 2011 Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football Team? To say the masses are baffled would be an understatement. Saying Dayne Crist’s career has been unlucky would be a massive understatement. To say USC played well on Saturday would be the biggest understatement in college football.
To say Notre Dame appeared ready to go toe-to-toe with anything resembling a quality football team would be a lie requiring about 6 books of matches and 1,000 Hail Marys in the Grotto. Maybe an intervention.
It Was Bad, But In the End Meaningless - The officiating, in the first half especially, was terrible. I’ll reiterate that Notre Dame had no right to victory, but the calls made and missed against the Irish left a lot to be desired. I lost my football player’s composure after the ”helmet to helmet” personal foul on Jamoris Slaughter. That type of hit is being misdiagnosed at every level of the sport and will continue in the interim most likely. Smart coaches may start encouraging offensive players to lower THEIR heads because it results in the loud “POP!” that has referees reaching for their flags instantaneously.
Lack of Desire, Relentlessness - I won’t harp nearly as much on the offensive line as others have – 0 Sacks, 3.1 Yards Per Rush (not awful). The real problems all night were with the Irish front seven. Facing the best offensive line of the season, this unit served up a highlight reel of bad techniques, lack of effort, and loss of self-control. We saw the terrible personal fouls on Calabrese and Lynch (both deserved), but the observations that really irked me were multiple instances giving up completely on plays.
I’ve never seen or thought this of Manti Te’o, but I saw him do something that blew my mind. He misread a play-action pass, followed the pile, looked up and saw QB Matt Barkley dropped back to pass… and he just stopped. His head didn’t whip around to find an eligible receiver, he didn’t drop into coverage, he didn’t sprint after the quarterback. He just stopped and watched. I’m sure he knows it wasn’t his best game, or even close, but that’s something on film we’re just not used to seeing from No. 5.
Same goes with Aaron Lynch. One of our favorite parts of Lynch’s spring game was seeing the 6’6” 260 lb. blue-chip behemoth sprinting downfield after passes and tallying up a few extra tackles. Lynch played at half speed and did what high-paid NFL players do on any pass over 3 yards - he stopped and watched the action. I wrote in my preview of the defense in August that if Lynch and Tuitt were asked to play big minutes in games they trailed I doubted their age and knowledge of the defense would allow them to maintain gaps and intensity at high levels. I was sadly proven correct as the absence of starter Ethan Johnson loomed larger than any expert could have imagined.
Single Play?!? - Why harp on a single offensive play all day? This offense was 20+ plays from executing at an acceptable pace. The fumbles were awful on basic exchanges, the interception “classic Rees”, the play-calling confusing, the defensive assignments poorly designed, and the team came out flat. No point in pretending a single snap determined this game – USC took it to the squad and deserved the win, if not by quite a few more scores.
Favorite Thing - It’s easy to forget that players on the field can’t actually see the yellow 1st Down line we’ve all become accustomed to. Some guys get the ball in their hands and seem to see it anyways. Every time tight end Tyler Eifert makes a catch he appears to instinctively calculate exactly how he will get the football past that line and move the chains. He was fantastic on Saturday.
Stats
8.5 - On a day that saw Notre Dame rack up a measly 41 Rushing Yards, Jonas Gray actually INCREASED his Yards Per Carry in 2011 to 8.5 with 38 yards on just four carries. Again, according to this page of the 2011 Notre Dame Media Guide he remains on pace to surpass the immortal George Gipp’s single season record. Tell me how the hell that makes any sense.
72 & 5 - There have been 75 instances of a football team turning the ball over inside their opponents 5 yard line in ALL of Division I-A during 2011. Notre Dame accounts for 5 of those 72. A staggering 14.4% of the entire 120+ teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision!
Are you f*****g kidding me!!! Once, twice, three plus times an embarrassing trend. If you think the fans are seeing Notre Dame in the Red Zone and assuming failure, one can only project the calamity between the players on the field.
3 - Total yards by Notre Dame on punt returns in 7 games. Again, that is the TOTAL, T-O-T-A-L, yards garnered by punt returners. Seems an odd time to bring it up with so few opportunities on Saturday, but I simply don’t want to forget tossing that one out to the wolves. What a statement of futility.
3 & 0- That’s the number of time-outs you get per half in college football. and zero is the number that carry over into the next week. It’s up for debate whether Kelly made the right decision with his time-outs at the end of the game. Relentless attitude reflects leadership and I did not care of the lack of effort there.
9 - AP ranking of a Michigan State team Notre Dame dominated, but has since reeled off wins versus #11 Michigan, Ohio State, and #6 Wisconsin. Please make sense of this.
Moving forward
If there’s something I’m personally familiar with it’s this – playing on a football team in October with all the season’s goals out the window. It’s a cold, dark place the first few mornings after. I certainly didn’t have any seniors entertaining the idea of selling out for draft positioning, but there always exists a degree of “I’m done with this shit” that needs to be tempered. If the Irish couldn’t get all the way up for their past game, we can only hope a month versus inferior competition doesn’t bring out the worst in this team.
What is the team playing for now? A BCS game is out of the picture, and so is a Top 25 ranking without a win versus Stanford in a MONTH.
On the heels of the 2011 team’s most embarrassing performance, do they feel any passion for avenging 2010′s pile of turd in New Jersey versus NAVY? Good God, we hope so. A performance mirroring last season’s against a 2-5 NAVY team on a five game losing streak would power the fan base, myself included, into mass hysteria and anarchy.
Finish
Tommy Rees…what next? You won’t hear a Boise State fan complain about Kellen Moore’s athletic ability or arm strength, and haven’t heard it stated in 3+ years. The comparison of their measurables is beyond fair, but hoping the statistics ever match up remains far-fetched dream. Rees struggled all night and unearthed all the questions he attempted to answer while blowing out Purdue and Air Force. His vaunted “4-0 as starter” stat from the offseason now glows in the light of being 4-2 in 2011 with those “2″ being Michigan and USC. The BCS games and Top 10 finishes are wiped off the plate and do we believe Rees without Floyd in 2012 is best case scenario? Do we start preparing for 2012? Do we use an elixir of 2010 and ride seniors through the rough patch?
I can’t answer these things. Maybe I’ll just go eat a taco and watch The People vs. Larry Flynt for no reason whatsoever.
Go.Irish.
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One thing I remember from last week was you writing about the break in the middle of the season you rec’d when you were playing college football, and how mentally refreshed you felt the following week.
That really resonated with me, and I expected to see a fresh, hungry, man eating ND team playing its biggest game of the year – by far. Instead we saw flat, uninspired, error prone football. It was the worst.
I still believe in Kelly, but admit for the 1st time, doubt has crossed my mind. So much of their problems are coaching related: Penalties, uninspired play, turnovers. I hope that’s not the case; rather I hope it’s just that they need a couple more solid recruiting cycles to completely close the door on the Weis era and fill the roster with RKGs.
Some other thoughts:
1. Rees isn’t the guy. He’s probably the 4th best QB on that roster. Let’s quit fuc**ng around here.
2. Some of the Frosh need to see the bench, particularly Lynch, Tuitt, Ishaq. Non existent vs. USC.
3. I won’t be surprised if they lose 2-3 more games. Stanford is a given.
4. Something just seems “wrong” here. Coach? Talent level? Bad chemistry? All of the above? When an ND team plays SO BADLY on such a grand stage, I sense there’s something more to this story.
5. I saw a stat yesterday – can’t remember the source – that they have gone backward in every offensive category this year vs last. Turnovers, red zone efficiency, and a bunch of other things. EVERY category.
6. Rees has personally accounted for more turnovers (10) than something like 72 other D1 teams.
I’m glad that my own personal experiences on BYE Weeks at the Junior College level carried so much weight. In hindsight both of those came prior to entering league play, so it was a way to wipe out the start of the season and actually be 0-0 in October. Looking back I couldn’t tell you who we played or if we won following byes, but we also didn’t follow up BYEs with Fall Break (which meant ND players went about 4 days with no football and 8 days with no class. Small, pathetic excuses, but they are what they are.
I’m fairly certain that Ishaq Williams never saw the field and neither did Frosh Troy Niklas. If you’re hoping to see fewer frosh, the news that Kapron Lewis-Moore is out for the season isn’t going to expedite that process. I imagine Tuitt/Lynch will get their fair share, but I’ve been wondering all year why we haven’t seen more of Kona Schwenke at DE. Another big body who played well as a freshman and has put on a ton of weight.
Questioning Kelly at this point remains fair game in my opinion. It’s the rigors of the job following that performance.
The comparison makes sense in that players at ANY level who are cooped up for 2-3 months, living/breathing football every day would experience the equivalent of a shot of fresh adrenaline from getting a break.
I maintain there is something amiss in the the ND lockerroom.
Has the Crist/Rees decision divided the lockerroom?
Has Kelly worn them out with his intensity?
Or …
… maybe the answer is this: They’re just not that good.
Certainly their QB play has ranged from “pretty good” at its very best to “terrible” at its worst. And it’s been ‘”terrible” more often than “pretty good”. And you just don’t win with lousy QB play at any level. But that doesn’t explain their uninspired play on defense.
Who knows? I’m still pissed off.
Here’s an excerpt from the article I cited earlier about ND on offense this year. From Eric Hansen in the South Bend Trib. I stand corrected on one issue: Rees personally has more turnovers than 44 teams; not 72.
Still … time to say good night to Tommy.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
The question, though, never has been about Rees’ readiness early in his career or his fortitude. It’s been about his physical limitations and where that sets his ceiling. In other words, is he the next Matt LoVecchio? You look at three critical areas involving Notre Dame’s quarterback position — pass-efficiency, red-zone offense and turnover margin. The Irish have regressed in all three.
ND was 59th in passing efficiency last season when Dayne Crist started nine games and Rees four. They’re 61st this year with Rees doing most of the playing. The red-zone offense ranking has fallen from 49th in 2010 to 110th. Turnover margin has gone from 51st to 119th.
Twelve of ND’s 18 giveaways have come from the quarterback position. Ten are tied specifically to Rees. That’s as many or more than 44 FBS teams have produced this season
Nudeman – you’re making solid points and they definitely resonate with me and many others I’m sure. I’m firmly in the boat that when you win, all is forgiven and Rees didn’t do enough to win versus USC. He also is continuing to put the defense and team in bad spots with poor turnovers. One of my biggest gripes was seeing a team off a bye week miss the very first audible at the line. Two weeks of prep and Rees and the receiver (Floyd) were in a different world. It was one of many early signs that the offense was completely out of sync and quality QBs pick the team up at that point. His wins, as one looks back, have been so heavily supported by a solid defense, and when it falters he doesn’t posess the ability at times to drive the team through all of that.
Those that point to the Michigan and Pitt drives have arguments similar to people defending Tim Tebow in that he proved his critics and supporters right in the same game. Rees was ice cold in the final drive versus Michigan, but ND had the ball and a 17 point lead in the 3rd quarter and a two score lead in the 4th quarter and he failed to drain the clock or score and actually put the game out of reach. Same with Pitt- he was terrible terrible terrible, but the defense put him in position to win and he went out and won the game. It’s so goddam frustrating.
God this response makes as much sense as comparing the ND vs. Michigan State and ND vs USC. It’s sports…
I’m all over the place on this kid. He failed Saturday, but not nearly as bad as many others on the squad. He’s getting too much blame for the loss and too much recognition for some of the wins.
He just isn’t that good.
Not better than Dayne or Hendrix; and I’ll go out on a limb and say not better than Golson. So why the fu** is he playing? As Vince Lombardi said in that famous SB clip “WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT THERE??”.
I’m tired of writing it and you’re tired of reading it, but I still don’t get the Dayne benching. Rees is just good enough to play well against inferior opponents, and as Bill Walsh once said about Steve DeBerg, “just good enough to get you beat” against decent competition.
I am at a loss for words. While it’s easy to blame Kelly I keep thinking of my own experiences in business. I’ve be fortunate to have managed some large sales organizations selling tech products to large customers. I have seen sales guys fly through training, know the product, do all the practice demos, excell in role play and look great dressed for success. Some do well and some simply are Dayne. I’ve seen guys and gals choke when the stakes were high. Spent a lot of time rehearsing folks for the big day, watched them nail it in reheasal only to stumble when the lights go on. I have also witnessed guys that walk and talk well but cannot close a deal or hit a quota.Remember we are dealing with young guys whose talent has carried them to a high level. They now need to find something other than talent to continue to develop. I am convinced coaching can reach only a few and the rest has to come from within. It’s no wonder this team has played more focused on the road. I think the whole ND experience is great for tradition and the fans but carries a heavy weight for the the. I get the sense with all the things they have to do they forget they are there to win. It’s no wonder when we really think about it when all the recruiting stuff tells them they are there for one thing…..to graduate. No saying I want an SEC mentality but I would like to see us look like Stanford lately. Remember it took Harbaugh 3 years and Andreew Luck to turn it around. Let’s see how the season turns out. Any reaction we have to a win, loss, press conference or comment from now till the end of the season is our mistake. I am rambling now and will sign off but the game will be on Saturday, the ND flag will be flying for all to see and hope will spring eternal.
A very interesting take Don. I appreciate the comment and insight. As a young man playing ball it’s drilled into players “how you react on the field reflects your reactions in the future. You learn how to lead and be an example of overcoming adversity.”
I just can’t put my finger on what it is that has stifled Crist in limited exposure in 2011. He the “unluck” factor is off the charts.
No question the 2010 edition at Stanford is what every Notre Dame fan wants to see on Saturday. Mentally and physically tough while playing the game the right way. We can dream that Kelly is driving the team towards that.
All good observations Don.
I’ve spent an entire career in high tech enterprise selling as well, and have seen many who look the part, talk the part and occasionally even act the part. But they never make their number. The difference is usually the willingness to do the unglamorous, dirty work – regular prospecting, making that extra call, asking the tough questions, etc.
Is there a parallel there with ND football? Maybe a stretch/maybe not. I remember something Kelly said when he gave Crist the job: (paraphrasing) “He’s the type of kid I want to coach, and I’m not sure I could have said that last year”.
Whoa!!
And NO ONE HAS EVER FOLLOWED UP ON THAT. Is Crist unwilling to go the extra mile in preparation? Is he selfish? Soft? Easily intimidated? There is SOMETHING there that has never been explained, because for my money he sure looks like he has a helluva lot more talent than Rees. He’s either the good looking sales guy I described above who can’t sell, or he’s been royally screwed.
That quote is a great example of something that slipped under the radar in preseason hopes and dreams and when re-visited strikes a significantly different tone.
What wasn’t he doing that made Kelly not want to coach him?