I've been mentally writing the obituary for Weis' tenure at ND for 7 weeks. Frankly I was fully prepared to watch the Nevada offense blow the doors off of Notre Dame Stadium. And then I was fully prepared to watch Michigan clobber the Irish. By the end of that game, I assumed the emotional toll would blitz the Irish against MSU, and after all of that, I figured with a hurt Clausen, ND was going to have a tough time against Purdue. And after Washington beat SC, and I'd gotten enough looks at the Irish tackling capabilities, it seemed clear to me that UW was going to get 2 signature wins in 2009 before Weis even had a chance to claim his. Naturally, the 4-1 record up to that point was a pleasant surprise, but I was disappointed that the program was in such a state that a 4-1 record requiring 3 miracle last-moment wins against far inferior "on paper" talent was a pleasant surprise. Needless to say, carrying that disappointment made it pretty easy to fully suspect that another 31+ point loss to the Trojans was coming our way. Tonight, I'm no longer pleasantly surprised. I'm just confused and unconvinced.
Don't worry, I've still got one foot firmly planted atop the stump of self righteousness and I'm ready to stand up the moment something becomes clear to me, but a comeback from 34-14 to 1 play away from tying a team that has owned Notre Dame for most of the last decade (particularly their defense against our offense) makes the outlook foggy. And it's made foggier still by the rest of the voices coming down from that stump right now. See, when the masses start group-thinking, I get suspicious. When the masses start getting really loud about that over which they all agree, I get stubborn. Because I'm starting to have just as much doubt in the angry masses as I have in Charlie Weis. Suddenly, the only thing that seems clear is that a lot of people with loud voices feel a need to be right.
Before the game, we heard much about this weekend serving as a refferendum on Charlie Weis. Even I suggested that the 5th time had better be the charm. But people with an inability to go with the flow, bend with the curves and corners, and react as needed make for lousy business partners and worse lovers. And to any rational mind, the results of this weekend are unclear. If that game was to be a referendum, we need a recount. I think I see a few hanging chads.
While I'm still ready to let this season play out and get a better extrapolation for the future of the program, I'm not willing to forgive the unforgivable. This was no moral victory. It was no victory at all. A victory would have clarified things immediately. At least for a week, Charlie Weis would have been "the guy." And unfortunately for Weis, now he needs to keep things unclear for 6 full weeks. Because if things become clear at all before then, it'll be to the detriment of Weis. The only way things will get clear before Thanksgiving weekend is if Notre Dame loses another football game, and frankly, I don't think Weis can allow that.
I'm not suggesting I think or know that another loss would end his tenure immediately. I'm simply saying that another loss may finally be the hit to his armor in reputation and recruiting that kills Weis in the long term. Another loss might snowball in ways we can't really guess at today. And such unseen ramifications would mean the end to Weis' bid to succeed in the Notre Dame sense of the word one way or another.
And to think that so much of this frustration was brought on by Weis being magnanimous. After a 3-9 season, Weis should have had the chopping block out and the blood spilling into the St. Joseph river. Instead he held onto dead weight in his staff, and we had a defensive line coach who wasn't very attractive to defensive line recruits and an offensive line coach who couldn't work with Weis. Weis's recent staff moves have been tremendous and tremendously late. And unfortunately, watching the defense, it looks like some of his other staff moves have been tremendous failures. Today the defensive staff features a legendary DC coaching linebackers for, as near as we can tell, the first time in his coaching career. We've got another amorphously assigned coach leading the defensive backs unit who we're not exactly sure fully understands what his DC wants. After 6 games, Notre Dame's defense is 104th in total defense, a ranking about which a Tenuta lead defense has never even had nightmares. Something's broken, something's not working, and... Hey, there goes another wide open tight end for a 30 yard reception on 3rd and 7! Where was I? Ah. Yes. Broken defense. Here everyone was worried about stopping SoCal's ground game, and instead we watched Belgium, um, er, the defensive backs get bombed to hell. Frankly, it should have been expected. Michigan's Tate Forcier and MSU's Kirk Cousins both had their career-best passing days against ND. If ND thought they were going to make SoCal win by passing, SoCal probably thought they were going to make ND show they could stop the pass. Now a half of ND's opposing QBs thus far have had career-best days. And sure, that's a bit of spin considering 2 of those guys were true freshmen, but it's not spin that before this year a Tenuta called defense had never lost to a true freshman.
We'll reserve our judgement, meaningless as it is anyway. For every absurd, aggravating moment we saw the Irish experience yesterday, there were others that made us stand up and take notice. Yes, Kamara slipped on the final play, but he also powered thru tackles and made key catches through the day. Sure, our defense is prone to leaving tight ends wide open, but Manti T'eo and Brian Smith lead the team in tackles, finally. Our offensive line got owned by 3 and 4 man rushes, giving up 5 sacks on the day, but the Irish only committed 4 penalties and Golden Tate had over 100 yards receiving against arguably the best defense in the country.
One more loss, and we do think things will be pretty clear - to us personally. We can't even fathom what Jack Swarbrick must be thinking right now. We do feel confident about one thing though: Weis, once again, has painted himself into a corner. He's done it with outstanding recruiting to get up our hopes. He's done it with surprisingly successful seasons to raise our expectations. And now he's done it with a game against an elite program that was just good enough to push the bar up in terms of what he must do in the next 6 weeks. Because it's apparent that not only has he now assembled a team that doesn't know how to quit, he's also assembled a team that should know no limit to its potential. Great coaches raise their teams above their ceiling of potential, and Weis has a lot of work to do just to take them to what should be their floor.
By oaknd1 October 18, 2009 - 8:40 pm
See, the problem with being certain about anything is that you feel less pressure to examine new evidence on it’s merits opting instead to cherry pick only the facts that back up that of which you’ve already made up your mind.
I see head coaching changes as the Nuclear Option, about which elements of the fan base are far too cavalier. You revoke the keys when the players quit, the recruits stop paying attention and the fan base stops caring. In short: when you you have a Willingham.
I applaud your new-found skepticism, because it’s a sure sign of clear, rational thinking. Notre Dame Nation needs a lot more of this right now. The farther we get as a fan base from the nightmare cavalcade of errors that led to hiring of Davie/O’Leary/Willingham, the more arrogant we seem to become that a perfect coaching solution a) exists and b) will actually be hired.
Notre Dame fans should look in the mirror every day and repeat “coaching changes are not guarantees of improvement” to themselves until it sinks in.
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By Mark October 18, 2009 - 10:15 pm
The talent on the defensive side of the ball just isn’t in USC’s league, particularly on D-line. Ethan Johnson is playing out of position. Clearly this Defense is giving up too many big plays. Everybody’s favorite whipping boy is Harrison Smith right now, and I hope someone else will be back there against BC.
Weis has recruited well, but mostly on the offensive side of the ball. He’s a great OC, but not a great coach. I tend to think he won’t be able to lead us to being a top 10 program, but I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any coach out there who could return the program to that status, given the restrictions on the type of recruit Notre Dame can offer scholarships to.
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By SDI October 18, 2009 - 10:47 pm
Mark–agreed, CW has recruited more talent on O than D. But Johnson, Williams, KLM, Walls, McNeil, Gray, H. Smith, Teo are all 4 star or better. That is plenty enough D talent to be at least a top 40 defense. With this offense, the D doesn’t have to be great, just respectable. Ideally you would have both a great D and O and I’m sure that is the goal, but you can win a whole lot of games being dominant in one and decent in the other.
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By elroy kona October 18, 2009 - 10:55 pm
I agree – your judgment is meaningless. If you think Swarbrick would fire Weis after a 9-3 season (one more loss), you have completely lost it. This team may indeed lose one more game (I worry about a let down on a road game following a series of more tough wins), but 9-3 plus a bowl win would be respectable given the weaknesses on defense that you accurately chronicle in the space above. All Domers want undefeated, perfect seasons, but they come around as often as a QB as talented as JC. That said, I’m hoping, but not expecting, one next year. And praying that JC gives us one more year of his life.
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By The Biscuit October 18, 2009 - 11:38 pm
I don’t think MQ was saying that Weis would be fired with one more loss. I think he’s saying that another loss could lead to more than 3, and therefore a firing. I’m not sure that Weis would be canned at 8-4 anymore, depending on how those losses would come about. But I dont think we’ll lose more than 1 more this year, and I think we can run the table. With Floyd back, even a horrible D like ours can be overcome. What I want to really know is this: how the F does a Tenuta-led D suck this bad? A dude with his track record, and some serious talent on D, results in this? There is something broken, and I have no clue what it is. But if anyone calls the Tenuta hire bad (and therefore are blaming Weis for that hire), they deserve to be kicked in the nuts. If you don’t want a guy with his record of success, you’re a full-blown idiot. It was a GREAT hire, and he’s a guy everyone wanted at the time. But something’s gone wrong this year, and clearly things aren’t working as anyone would like on Defense. ND: Where we make mediocre QBs into world-beaters. WTF.
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By SDI October 18, 2009 - 11:53 pm
Biscuit–that is why I think CW is a little snake bitten here. He has to throw together a coaching staff pretty quickly from NE and (probably on the recommendation of Holtz) hires Minter. Minter sucks, so Weis acts relatively decisively and cans him and hires Brown who gets recommended by Parcells and Belicheck. Then he convinces Brown and Tenuta to put there egos aside and work together and everyone says brilliant hire of Tenuta. And now, Brown and Tenuta, two highly recommended D coaches later, and the D is as bad as ever. I’m not sure what else Weis could have done. Or what he can do now.
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By SDI October 18, 2009 - 11:54 pm
their egos. damn.
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By brendan October 19, 2009 - 7:21 am
Totally agree, but one minor correction: before this year a Tenuta defense has lost one game to a freshman QB: Stafford at UGA. Still, in 19 years he lost one; this year he has already lost 2, not good.
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By domer.mq October 19, 2009 - 10:02 am
Ah. Stafford wasn’t a redshirt, brendan? Shoot. I should have asked an UGA guy.
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By DeepTeaKup October 19, 2009 - 12:15 pm
Tenuta was a great hire for ND in theory but he botched it by not just going all in and dumping Corwin Brown at the same time. If you are going to bring in Tenuta, you bring him and let him figure out the D staff and leave Weis to run the offense.
And yeah, ND’s safeties are awful, maybe even worse than UM’s and that’s saying a lot.
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By domer.mq October 19, 2009 - 12:31 pm
At least UM’s free safety is close enough to the play to be on camera whilst being torched.
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By brendan October 19, 2009 - 2:48 pm
No, he didn’t redshirt. He did enroll early and then won the starting job a few games in. But they always play Georgia Tech at the end of the year so he was starting there (though by that point he had been ‘on campus’ almost a year).
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By tjak October 19, 2009 - 3:04 pm
I have like everyone else, poored my heart and soul into cheering for this team, this year. I want to believe so much that this regime can get it done. Although I am disappointed in the defense and the loss of Floyd etc., I am one of those people who am moved by the heart, fight and spirit that this team has shown this year. Frankly, it is what will keep me tuning in for the rest of the year. Now that we do not have to worry about a National Championship and a Heisman, I can to relax and enjoy the games more. BTW, Ruldolph was in bounds and we would have won in overtime.
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