So, I didn’t define my progress indicators before the UCLA game. Sorry. Real life likes to intrude on my hobbies sometimes. So let’s just take a look at some team statistics for the season, and compare them to the game last night, and see what we see.

Indicators:

1. Win: Season previous to UCLA Game: Winless UCLA Game: Win. Nice. I like where this is going so far.
2. Kickoff return: Earlier this week, I took a look at ND’s kickoff teams, and found that ND typically receives a kickoff at the 9 yard line, returns it 19 yards, and starts their drives after kickoffs from the 28 yards line. For the UCLA game, ND received the kick, on average, on the 5 yard line, returned it for 24 yards, and started their drives from the 29 yard line. Really, this isn’t tremendously improved, though Armando Allen’s 31 yard return was one of those “momentum” building type returns. It was really solid, and came at a good time in the game.
3. Kickoff defense: Also, in the same post linked above, I looked at the kickoff defense of ND, and found that, on average, ND kicks the ball to the 11 yard line, allows the ball to be returned 25 yards, and allows the opponent to start drives after kickoffs from the 36 yard line. Against UCLA, ND kicked the ball to about the 11 yard line, allowed a 20 yard return, and allowed the Bruins to start drives after kickoffs from their 31 yard line. Not a ton of improvement, but the Bruins never had one of those momentum gathering returns that have plagued the Irish this season. In every other game that the Irish have shown any level of competence this season (Early in PSU, MSU, and Purdue), they’ve allowed long returns at terrible times. Marginal improvement here.
4. Sacks Allowed: Earlier this week I also looked at how awful our pass protection has been, and discovered that it was just as bad as Bruce Davis thought it was. ND had, after 5 games, essentially spotted their opponents an extra 3 sacks per game. Going into the UCLA game, where they averaged a little over 3 sacks a game without having played ND, this stat didn’t bode well. I figured the ND offensive line was good for 6 sacks or more this weekend. But, in fact, ND only gave up 3 sacks for the game. Bruce Davis had them all. He’s got a huge mouth, but he’s a really good DE. And the OL had so many people helping them out I thought they were trying to relive Hands Across America, but hey, in this particular game, it worked. ND also practically abandoned the passing game in the 2nd half. (More on this later.)
5. Rushing Defense: ND’s rushing defense had been terrible up to this weekend, allowing just over 200 yards a game. This weekend, against a team averaging just a shade under 200 rushing yards per game, I’d have expected this to bode poorly for the Irish. Yet again, ND surprised, managing to keep UCLA to 89 yards rushing on 37 attemtps (UCLA’s 2nd highest rushing attempt total of the season). And even if you take negative rushing plays (like all those QB sacks) out of the equation, UCLA only managed to gain 134 yards of positive rushing. This is an excellent improvement over the previous 5 weeks.
6. Time of Possession: With the way this game was going (really, it was a battle of 2 defenses), ND managed to hold onto the ball longer than UCLA, 32:02 to 27:58. That’s a key piece of the puzzle when the ND defense was really leaving everything out on the field (they looked exhausted early in the 4th). Even though the ND offense didn’t produce a ton of yards, they did managed to give the ND defense some key breathers late in the game.
7. Tackling: This isn’t a quantitative stat, clearly, but our tackling technique still blows. Ambrose Wooden seems to think all 190 lbs of him will take a running back down with a good shoulder hit. Way too much of this stuff all over the field, but there are also examples by guys like Toryan Smith, Kerry Neal, etc… of knocking the snot out of guys and wrapping up. Still, among just about everyone on this team, they’re all tackling too high.
8. Passing: Jimmy Clausen continues to keep a high passing percentage, completing 64% of his passes in this game. The passes were almost all very short gainers, but in a game like this, being the team that makes the fewest mistakes is a very good thing. Some people have already looked at Clausen’s passing in the 2nd half as a matter of yardage and contended that we should have played Sharpley. I don’t get that at all. It was pretty clear when UCLA had to go to their emergency back-up-back-up QB that, unless something went really wrong, UCLA wasn’t going to score again. So ND called pass plays only 8 times in the 2nd half, and played ball control offense. Not only that, but the 1 pass thrown by ND in the 4th quarter was by Armando Allen on a gadget play for 10 yards. Clausen had 8 total pass plays called in the 2nd half, he completed passes in 6 of those plays, took 1 sack, and had one incompletion.
9. Snapping: I’m almost certain we’ve had a bad shotgun snap in every game this season. Last night was no exception. Also no exception: the center thinking it was the QB’s fault. Someone on the coaching staff needs to correct this immediately. It’s going to cost the team a chance at a win this season, if it hasn’t already.
10. Stupid Penalties: I was just about to say that ND finally had a game without a dumb penalty, then I realized that Eric Olsen decided to finally block somebody, 3 seconds after the whistle blew. Dumb.

Ok, since I didn’t pre-define the metrics, and mostly I’m just hung-over from celebratory schnapps, I think I’ll just quit here. I’m not really going to grade this thing out. We won. That’s all the progress we need this week. We’ll do better next week, we promise. I’ll try to keep real life/work at bay long enough to blow everyone away with my football insight just in time for the Fredo game. I’ll just say I’m really happy for the players. They’ve shown, by and large, that they’ve got no quit in them, and it paid off. They got a win - an ugly win against a bad team with a walk-on, third string QB, but it’s still a win.

Probably the best thing that could be said about the game last night is the way the defense played after the starting QB for UCLA went down: They played exactly how a good team should play against a bad team - they slaughtered them. The ND defense smelled blood in the water and, for the first time since the 2006 Penn State game, put their foot on the throat of the opponent. It’s great to see. Too often in the last decade, ND has allowed poor teams to look good. Not last night.

Oh, and how awesome is Trevor Laws? I want a #98 jersey.

Go IRISH, Beat Fredo!

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