Growing Pains

What would we do baby, with out u-uu-uuusss?  Shalalalaaaaaaa.

So, there were a few things we knew this year coming into the season.   We knew we had a perfect storm of bad things coming our way:

• A young (and inexperienced) team that is very bottom-heavy
• A gauntlet of a schedule, and that’s being nice
• Loss of some of the best talent ND has seen since Ty took over (meaning Bob’s last recruits and his tailfeather/left-overs)

But we also knew that  we had a genius of a football coach that knew exactly how to handle this to get the best results out of these kids.

Okay, so we knew the first two and we THOUGHT we knew the 3rd.   Now I’m not saying that Charlie isn’t a genius, or that it’s all his fault, etc. etc.  I think CW is a damn fine coach, the best guy we could have, and I think he’ll turn this around.  But, up until this week I blamed it all on those first two aspects – the young/inexperienced team, and the brutal schedule.  Well, after the 3rd straight week of no progress (as MQ has so eloquently pointed out time and again) I started thinking about it a bit, and Charlie hasn’t done right by his team.  Here’s my analysis on where Charlie went wrong, and what he didn’t do wrong as well.

First, this was not an issue of trying.  I know Charlie has put his heart and soul into trying to give his team the best chance to win.  He’s worked tirelessly, and maintained recruiting as well.  He’s been wracking his brain all summer on personnell and packages, combinations and sets.  Trust me, we know this. 

He also, in my mind, hasn’t made bad decisions on gameday preparation, scouting or in-game play-calling.  Those are all things he’s always done well, and I wouldn’t say he’s been consistently bad there either.  I wouldn’t question many of his choices on who he’s playing and where and when (except maybe Travis Thomas who has reinvented the word non-leader). 

Charlie made one really big error which essentially accounts for all of his 1/3 of responsibility for the mess we’re in right now (the other 2/3 is the young/inexperienced team and the death-penalty-schedule for you math whiz’s out there).  What’s that one big mistake?

He thought he was dealing with the same type of team.

What the hell am I talking about?  Just this:  Charlie spent years in the Pro ranks.  He was dealing with adults – guys that have played forever, guys that can handle everything in the world being thrown at them because they’ve done it all before.  With a team like that, you can install a new offense every week (essentially) based on your opponent.  You can tinker and adjust and change a TON of things – schemewise, personell-wise, etc. etc.  Because the players don’t have to worry about anything else.  They’re pros, and they’ve already learned all the basics.  They’ve been there and done it, and things get a heck of a lot easier after a few years of that.  Flipping around and making adjustments week-to-week for them is just a day at the office.  

Charlie is used to that, and that’s what he brought to Notre Dame.  And for his first 2 years, it worked.  Why?  Experience and leadership.  ND had some great juniors and seniors the past 2 years.  Good talent, good leadership, and they were used to playing at a top level.  Those guys brought this team through, and they could handle Charlie’s complex play book and schematic outlines.  They were already used to the speed of the game, they could throw a block consistently and they could face a dude 130 pounds heavier and be okay with it, without getting rattled.  And those schemes did give us an advantage. It helped us play beyond our level of talent, and win a ton of games. 

So Charlie comes into this year, and maybe he did a few things differently.  He talked about how he treats the younger guys a bit differently, gives them some slack where he wouldnt have yesterday.  But that base philosophy – of changing everything, adjusting and tinkering until you get the perfect matchups you want – has made it almost impossible for this team to win.  The same philosophy that created that schematic advantage over the past 2 years has completely destroyed any advantage this season.  Because these guys have a TON to worry about that last year’s team and the Pats never had to – look at the crowd, the cameras, are my shoes tied?, speed of the game, getting CRUSHED by that huge 300-lb lineman that would’ve been 175 lbs max last year in HS, where should my feet be, who’s that guy, why are we both blocking the same man, $&*#&^&!!!!, etc. etc. 

Bottom line?  This team wasn’t ready for that complexity.  Not even close. 

Until you get a team a steady identity, a consistent look and feel until they’re competent at the base package and working cohesively, there’s no way they can execute the extremely complex offenses Charlie prefers to work into the game week in and week out.  Corwin’s D is facing the same thing, although they haven’t changed much week to week - it’s just that they haven’t come together as a squad yet either (and being on the field forever doesnt help much). 

Charlie’s biggest miscalculation was his shift to the spread against Ga Tech.  We’re a week-to-week preparation team in Charlie’s mind, which means we spent our camp getting ready for Ga Tech.  When that plan went to hell, what did we have?  Nothing.  With a younger team like this, we need a longer term game plan.  A plan to get this team moving in the right direction, and that means consistency.

So what’s Charlie to do?  Exactly what he’s doing.  Back to the basics.  Get the right players in the right places, and get them doing their basic job correctly.  That might mean you’ll end up pretty limited and pretty predictable next week.  But I guarantee everything (finally) starts looking a little better.  And you build from there. 

I think this is a huge lesson for Charlie.  And I think he’ll take it to heart and make it work for him in the future.  Charlie’s plan was always to adjust the system he believed in so that it better fit his players and their competitor.  Now it’s time for him to adjust his beliefs so that his players can better fit the system.  Simpler, easier, better.  So they can believe in themselves again.

Charlie has taken the blame every week, and he certainly deserves part of it (though not all of it no matter what he says in his pressers).  But this coach knows how to win, and will work tirelessly to get the job done.  It might not be this week, or the next, but this team will rise again.  It’s hard to see now, but with talent, hard work and perseverance, it will happen.

I think we’ll start to see improvement this week, for the first time. It may be slow, it may be painful at times, but it will come.