Really loud, obnoxious guy next to me in stands: “God [expletive] why are they letting [Stanford] back in this game?”

Me, because at this point, I’d grown tired of his commentary: “They’re still really young.”

Obnoxious guy: “They were young last year.”

Me: “Yeah.”

Obnoxious guy: “So how much longer are we gonna let them be young?”

Me: “Until they’re not young any more.”

Obnoxious guy: “You’re an idiot.”

Me: “Yeah, but they’re still young.”

To obnoxious guy, I’m really sorry to recount our conversation in such a public forum. You probably didn’t realize you were speaking with someone who has an audience well into the teens. Hopefully people don’t find it too easy to identify you simply based on our exchange and my characterization of you.

We have a neighbor in our quiet little Chicago ‘hood, and that neighbor has a dog. That dog happens to be a chihuahua. And that chihuahua happens to be named Taco. Taco barks. Taco barks a lot. Taco nipped at my heels one morning while I was walking by his yard. I’ll admit, Taco’s little needle-like teeth stung a bit, but he didn’t break the skin, near as I could tell, and when I yelled at him for nipping at me, Taco nearly went into cardiac arrest. Taco hasn’t chased after me since. After the performance you, the Stanford Football Team, put on this past week, I hereby re-macotize you. From this point forward, you shall be known as the Stanford Tacos.

Stanford’s New Mascot

The Stanford Tacos will be like the mighty Wofford Terriers, minus the respectability and might. Heck, they’re already minus the respectability. It’s no great surprise that a team coached by a guy that would have a hissy-fit worthy of an 8 year old girl on the sidelines would kill their own momentum with stupid penalties. No shock that a team that plays that dirty, and yet that poorly, would have at least a few calls go against them. No great stunner that a team that would talk trash with apparently no self-awareness the week before a game, and then talk trash to the opposition’s band, and then proceed to claw, spit, hold, and kick at every given opportunity would get what’s coming to them.

What Harbaugh fails to understand, or, more accurately, among the vast number of things in this world that Harbaugh fails to understand is that he’s the coach of freaking Stanford. He just doesn’t have the horses to play the brand of football he wants to play. He will never have those horses because nobody but he cares about Stanford football. He should take a page out of Paul Johnson’s playbook, get someone else to read it for him, and then start applying some level of discipline on his football team to get them to execute a small number of plays really well, giving them at least a puncher’s chance of a bowl game.

But Harbaugh will never do that. As displayed on the sidelines on Saturyday, he lacks the patience. In fact, his team displayed that same lack of patience when they threw away 2 excellent drives to start the game by trying to be clever. Not satisfied to do what they can do - run the ball pretty well - Harbaugh, or whoever calls the plays, kept tripping over their own “intellect.” That, paired with a lack of discipline normally on display at the daycare at Ikea, allowed Notre Dame to out-athlete and then out-last the Stanford Tacos.

Various thoughts and errata because I’ve been dying to use the term “errata” on this blog:

• This was my first game in the stadium this season. While watching a game on television brings with it a certain clarity and focus, allowing you to sort of view the nitty-gritty of what’s happening wherever the ball happens to be, watching the game from the stands sort of lets you (warning: awful, overused pun about to ensue) see the forest for the trees Tacos. Some observations underneath this umbrella statement:
  • When ND’s athletes run, it makes the Stanford Tacos look like they’re standing still. Huzzah, finally the product on the field looks really, really fast. Quite a few of the key plays for the Irish offense weren’t so much by-design as they were byproducts of a far-superior set of athletes breaking into play lot mode and beating the Tacos even when the Tacos initially had the play sniffed out or beat. A Taco cannot and will not cover Golden Tate for 5 full seconds.
  • Supposing the Pac-10 officiating crew called what they saw, they called a pretty consistent game. That’s a big supposition. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to catch every penalty during a game. And there were a few non-calls in ND’s favor as well - a block in the back to spring a 1st down early in the game comes to mind. However, when an officiating crew actually calls ND’s QB for false-start penalties, then they should be paying at least enough attention to notice that the Tacos were committing a personal-foul penalty on nearly every play. Once ND was up 21, I started an experiment and just began randomly picking a Stanford defensive player to watch no matter what happened during the play. Over the course of about half of the 3rd quarter, I counted 10 non-calls. Don’t even get me started about Stanford’s offensive line. Chris Marinelli had better call Kerry Neal the next day after all that action.
• Hey, speaking of Chris: Thank you, sir, for “waking the echoes,” if you will, and getting the defense to dust off the ole’ sack-machine. 1 sack through the first 4 games, 5 sacks against Stanford. Do not tug on Superman’s cape, Chris. And in the future, make sure the mute button is on before you start calling your direct-report a buffoon.
• We’re still digging through the internet, trying to find the ethnic origination of Wopamo Osaisai. We’re fairly certain that whatever ethnicity it is, in their native language, “osaisai,” means “burnt toast.” Mr. Osaisai, we’re sure you’re a very nice young man, but there are times when your coach tells you to move up into press coverage on Michael Floyd. In the future, realize such times will only serve to illustrate our point that ND now looks really fast on the field and Stanford just doesn’t have the horses, and refuse to do so. Instead, give Floyd a 10 yard cushion, then proceed to be picked on for 7 yard pass plays all the way down the field. Oh sure, you wont feel any better about yourself, but it’ll be less glaringly embarrassing for you in the eyes of the general population and will increase the number of times the ND play announcer gets to say, “Osaisai,” which must be fun.
• We were going to make this point about ND’s inability to keep their foot on the throat of the Tacos, but Rakes already said pretty much what we were going to say on the matter, so just go read that.
• Actually, I’ll say one thing about the way the Irish let the Tacos back into the game: It was mostly the coaches’ fault. Now, granted, the players did sort of seem to relax a bit, but the play-calling just fell into bizzaro-land after ND was up 21. I applaud the coaches for realizing what sort of team ND is, and letting them play that way, but the coaches need to learn how to call a game once they’ve got a big lead. After the Irish went up by 21, the pass-to-run call ratio was 10 passes to 12 rushes. 1 of those rushes was Harrison Smith’s fake-punt run (glorious, by the way). That’s not a bad mix, but the nature of the passes was far different from earlier in the game. Gone were the deep looks. The Irish averaged 3.9 yards per pass from that point. Even just counting completions, the Irish averaged just 5 yards. Heck, one of the passes actually lost yardage. And that’s part of the problem, ND is still relying on that Quinn to Stovall/Shark quick pass, but the young, tall guys aren’t strong enough to stretch that into a consistently positive play, and Grimes is too small, not quick enough, and dances around with the ball too much to be effective. That play has to go until one or two of the young, big guys learns how to run it correctly. It’s a catch and go, not a catch and dance. When the young guys do it correctly, the ball will be in the hands of the receiver, and the usually smaller corner will be entirely personally responsible to stop him. They’re all still trying to Reggie Bush it. The coaches need to coach that out of them, and in the meantime recognize that the “Holy cow, Osaisai is still trying to play tight coverage on Floyd” play is still wide open.
• All that said, the coaches also need to remain patient. When I walked away from the game on Saturday, I was muttering, “wish we could run the ball to put it away.” Well, actually, the Irish can run the ball fairly serviceably. At least, they were able to run the ball with some serviceability against the Tacos with a lead. If you negate the Harrison fake-punt and the Clausen scramble for 8, and only count the rush plays run after the Irish were up by 21, they averaged 3.18 yards per carry. And if you go even further, and negate the final 2 rushes, which, really, didn’t matter a wink whether they gained a first down or not, the Irish averaged 3.8 yards per carry. Hardly awesome, but certainly enough to kill the clock. It does bear asking, Robert Hughes, where are ya, man?
• ND’s rushing defense, as pretty much everyone expected pre-season, is suffering. Still, it would look infinitely better if the first tackler would square up and tackle rather than either a) fly into the hole, dive at the ball carrier, grab the carrier’s shoulder pads, and then fly off the carrier, or b) hug the ball carrier, and then allow the carrier to run for 5 more yards after the “tackle,” while the entire ND defense is making ripping motions at the arms of the carrier. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big, big fan of the turnovers, but I’m also a big, big fan of 3-and-outs.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this game and what they may say about the Irish’s ability to beat North Carolina, but I’ll save that for another post. I’ve got some researching to do.

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