So the game’s been finished for about a day and a half. Here’s a list of all the things I’ve done since the game ended:
- Driven back to Chicago from Naperville. Now, that doesn’t sound like much, but apparently it’s akin to traveling the Oregon Trail. With a broken leg.
- Unpacked a lot of boxes. I’m moving and as such, even though all of our stuff is now in our new place, it’s still in need of unpacking. So even though I moved on Thursday, I’m still moving until every last piece of crap I own is in something other than a uHaul box.
- Purchased a dresser. Like I said, I’m moving. And turns out all those clothes that somehow fit just fine in our dressers and closets at the old place don’t all fit in our new environment.
- Ran 15 miles. I was supposed to run 18. Hey, I hurt my back and hadn’t run for 2 weeks.
- Enjoyed a post-run omlette at R&D Coffee Shop. The omlette was sausage and cheddar. But really I had a cheddar omlette with about 18 sticks of sausage. R&D Coffee Shop rules. My heart is crying today.
Notice that nowhere in my list of activities does anything even resemble reading the newspaper or internet for a breakdown of Saturday’s game. Notice too that I’ve not yet surfed the internet, working my way thru all the posts at NDNation to fully understand what the collective wisdom of a whacko fanbase felt they saw during our 14-10 victory. I’ve not even had the chance to watch ESPN and see Corso spit and throw feces at onlookers during a vitriolic, anti-ND attack. Hell, I don’t even know what Mark May thought of it all. Actually, I gotta say, that last part is pretty nice, and I plan to continue that trend thru the rest of the season.
And so I present this game review under the “Unfiltered” heading. If ever there was a piece of evidence to use to either support or detract from the notion that I know what the hell I’m talking about when it comes to football, this is it. ESPN, pay attention, you may or may not want to hire me to replace Chimp.
Ok, so as I start this, let me just say that, while I have a feeling once I finally do go over to Rock’s House on NDN, I’ll see at least a few panicked posts, this is no time to panick. That was a hell of an assignment our football team just took on. That was about as juiced an opponent as I’ve seen. They came out with a lot of energy, an excellent defensive gameplan, and really more talent that I think most of the ND Nation was willing to admit this time Friday.
I’d be much more concerned today if we’d either lost or if we didn’t have any shiny moments to point to and say, “There. That’s where our offense is. That’s how it works.”
Maybe it’s best if I just break things down by position. Ok, here it goes:
Quarterback
Brady actually had a pretty darn solid game. He certainly got some happy feet at times, and he looked really rushed at other times, but in the second quarter his OLine seemed to give him a little more time, and it didn’t take too long for his subconcious to realize it and chill the hell out. Also, I’d say this was about his most gutty performance we’ve seen in an ND Win. He took a ton of hits, some of which would have made the Word Wrestling Federation proud. But he kept getting up, he kept making throws, and he kept running – hard. He’s a really great competitor, and that may actually be his best QB quality.
Sure, some of his throws looked really awful. He threw back across his body a few times, took at least one intentional grounding penalty, and even threw a wounded duck bomb to Rhema for what turned out to be a hell of a play. Put simply, this wasn’t the sort of performance that would get you a lot of Heisman mentions in the paper on Sunday. This was, however, the sort of performance that showed Quinn’s intangibles. We saw him run for a key first down to keep a drive alive. We saw him audible (I believe) into a QB draw to get a score and steal back all the momentum before the half. He did get enough nice throws to let the guys at Dietler.net put together a decent highlight video, and Brady literally knocked the wind out of an amped GT crowd when he dove over the middle for a 4th and 1 to effectively end the game. Overall, I feel pretty good about what we saw this weekend from Brady. I think this week he’ll get a lot of 1 on 1 time from Charlie, and the happy feet and few miscues mentally will be eliminated.
I’ve always thought I saw a little bit of Bret Favre in Quinn. I think he comes out of the gate a little too wound up. He’s not “tight.” I don’t think he’s really nervous. There are just some competitors that come into a competition or even a season a little too energetically, and it takes a few solid hits, a few words of wisdom, and a few easy completions to get them to settle down. Brady, to me, is one of these creatures.
Running Back
I’m mostly only going to talk about Darius here. I think he deserves a lot of kudos. I saw at least a few plays where he took on GT’s very quick linebackers, squared them up, and ended their bids to hit his QB. He’s the best pass protect RB I’ve ever seen at the collegiate level, and his career film should be used by every HS coach in the country as a teaching tool. And I’ve not even mentioned his running in the game. Just a quality, workman-like effort on his part. His vision is really great, and I can’t believe he actually made that defense look a step slow on more than one occasion, especially on his TD run.
Travis Thomas didn’t look to bad during his rushing stints either, but I think the OL should get a lot of credit here, so let’s move on to them.
Offensive Line
The OL had a hell of a time in the first half managing any decent protection of rush blocking. I don’t think anyone realized how fast GT’s overall defense really is. Those linebackers were lean, but boy could they rush an edge. Add to that the level of excitement they must have felt playing against ND in an upset bid, and those linebackers were simply flying. Still, we saw toward the end of the first half a few quality adjustments by the offense, and our team’s conditioning started to play into the scheme of things. Quite simply, excitement can only get you so far, and once the adrenaline rush dies, it’s all about conditioning. It seemed that the OL showed all their hard work from the summer when they started to simply knock guys back and/or shuffle laterally and stuff a rushing LB or safety. They didn’t exactly earn a steak dinner from Brady, but maybe Darius will take them out for some DQ.
Receivers
Late in the first half I started to think to myself, “Where the hell is Shark?” I was even starting to wonder if he was hurt, b/c I couldn’t find him on the field and neither, it seemed, could Quinn. And then, in the second half, Shark made another, “You Really Should Draft Me #1” reception, and all seemed right with the world. Rhema certainly looks as quick as advertised, and it was great to see his 2 best catches of the night come on what were essentially jump balls. When the offense finds their rhythm (which I think they did about 5 minutes into the 3rd), these 2 are going to be a nightmare for opponents.
I was really hoping Grimes would have a break-out game this weekend, but my only memory of the guy comes from a play in which he missed a tough but makeable catch. Hey, I’ve been there, and when you’re a little nervous, those soft hands just don’t seem attached to your arms. He’ll mature on the field, and I have a feeling whatever impressed Charlie in camp will start to impress us in the stands.
I’m going to include Tight Ends in this category as well. Color me pleased, but not uber impressed, yet. There was that one highlight reel not-a-catch-OH-MY-GOD-HE-CAUGHT-IT! moment that I really loved. Showed talent and determination. Charlie was also able to utilize these guys toward the end of the 1st half quite effectively to keep that 14 play drive going and going. And I have a feeling Charlie has a lot more up his sleeve for these guys in the coming games. I’ll have to withold most of my judgement until then, I guess.
Defensive Line
WHERE THE HELL IS MY PASS RUSH!? Seriously, even though the defense held a potentially explosive offense to just 10 points, I need to know where the hell my pass rush is. Did that not make the bus? We had more than a few times when my friends and I would yell something at the TV like, “GET HIM!”, only to see the ball fly out of the pocket deep down field. Thankfully, Reggie Ball still plays the Dr.-J-Mr.-H role for GT, so most of the time that ball just went sailing out of bounds, but still, when we go up against a better than average QB, this sort of performance will be a problem. Is #95 really as good as we all like to believe, or will he just end up being a fair amount of hype? You’re still on notice, Victor.
Linebackers
Quicker. Certainly. Travis Thomas shows some really good speed, but the corps’ ability to square up and tackle someone is, well, I think I heard Baby Jesus crying after a few of those QB Draw plays.
Now of course Ball was probably the fastest guy playing football in the greater Atlanta area this weekend, but c’mon! At least square up and use good enough technique to force a rusher back into the teeth of a defense. There was a moment when one of our LBs allowed the QB to cut outside. This moment would have gotten most highschoolers benched for the game. That’s just unacceptable. I think the greatest football analyst ever Herbie nearly ran down from the booth to chew the kid out, it was such a bad play. And that’s coming from a freaking QB. Geeze.
Cornerback
I’m separating the 2 parts of the d-backfield because I think they deserve separate reviews given their overall performance. The cornerbacks must have done something right, afterall GT only scored 1 TD in the whole game with the greatest wide receiver to ever play the game OMFG! aren’t his hand’s pretty? Calvin Johnson on the field. That can’t ALL be because GT has the suckiest offensive coordinator/QB combo to ever suck, can it? I mean, at the very least, if it were possible, just have CJ run down the field a long way and have Ball throw the rock that same distance. So the CBs must have done something right.
Still, they did end up the victim of a few “big plays” and we all know where that got us in the Fiesta Bowl last year. Now, one of those instances has to sit on the coaches. What the hell was a true frosh doing in 1-on-1 against God CJ? So as far as the players are concerned, I almost give them a pass on that one. Bad coaches! Bad! Where’s the water sprayer? However, we did see Richardson get posterized against CJ when he took a freaking outside technique on an obvious jump ball scenario in GT’s only TD play. What were you going to do, #30? Gonna use your superiour body frame and jumping ability to reach over and pick the ball from the air? Eh? Was that your master plan? That one had to make Bill Lewis want to break something. And I suspect that will get a lot of attention in practice this week.
Safeties
Well, I will say this, they established that the safeties are going to hit you. Hard. Whether they pursue you on a rush or have a chance to knock your head off as you are about to catch the ball, they’re going to hit you. Hard. I say again, they are going to hit you. Hard. I love it.
And to steal a line from HLS Expert Dneelan, “Whatever number of tackles ND has, that’s what Zibby has. If ND has N tackles, Zibby has N tackles.” Which was seemingly true up to a point until Trais Thomas made a nice play, which caused HLS nonExpert Peej to say, “Ah, now it’s N-1 for Zibby.” So it seems that the easiest way to determine how many plays Zibby was in on is to take N number of plays and subtract the few that Zibby did not make the play. I have very mixed feelings about this, as Zibby certainly is an excellent player with a real nose for the ball, but he’s also still a safety, and as a general rule of thumb, when a safety is a leader in tackles for your team, it means you’re giving up a lot of ground. Still, I’ll have to go and review the numbers to see if the Dneelan/Peej theory of Zibby’s performance rings true.
Did I mention that Zibby and Nedu are going to hit you? Hard? Because they will, and I love it. I say again, Zibby and now perhaps Nedu will actually put the life of a receiver in harm’s way. May god bless those poor bastards.
Kicking
Barf. We all saw this coming, and unfortunately we were right. The punting and kickoffs actually look quite good, but Jeezy Creezy can’t we find a kicker that can make a field goal? I could have made that second one. I don’t really have much more to say than that. I could have made that second one. Solve this problem, Charlie, or it WILL cost us a chance at an NC this year.
Kick Returning
I’m setting the over/under for ST TDs at 4 for the season. Zibby is bound to get at least 1. I have a feeling our kickoff return can get one in a big game and probably one against an academy, and then we’ll either get one on a blocked punt or something otherwise unexpected. Sweet. I’m pretty pleased with what I saw here, and in tight games like last night having this area as a real asset, nay, a weapon, is amazingly valuable. Free yardage, bitches.
Coaching
BALLLSSSSSSSS! They have BALLLLSSSSSSS! Bringing probably the most anticlimactic end to such a tight game ever, coach Weis once again shows that he’s come to win. Win pretty. Win ugly. Just win, baby. I’m pretty sure even Bob Davie now understands why Weis is the Head Coach of the University of Notre Dame Football Program and Bob is sitting in the booth. It takes Balls, Bob.
Other than that, I’d say that the coaches had a solid if unspectacular first game. Charlie and Minter both showed their ability to make adjustments in a game. That’s always nice to see. And I have to give Minter credit for bringing pressure and playing to win rather than playing not to lose in some key moments when GT had the chance to take back momentum. Charlie, as usual, made adjustments late in the second quarter to respond to Tenuta’s defensive plan. My only gripe is I’d have liked to have seen those adjustments made even earlier, as it seemed clear to me, my friends, and my friend’s worst dog in the world that some adjustments needed to be made, but maybe there’s some nuance I’m missing here. Clearly after a really lack-luster first half, our coaches did things right and made sure that we won the game. So if I were to give them a grade here, I’d give them a B-. They expect the best and so do I.
Summary
So overall, this game left me feeling the same way I feel after I leave Vegas. I know it was really exciting. I know it was really hyped. I know thing turned out ok in the end. But overall, I think that most of what happened is best left in the past and it’s time to learn from our mistakes.
I expect that this game served as a good wakeup call for anyone on the team that may have purchased stock in their hype earlier this year. I also expect a much stronger performance against a PSU team that may be flying just a bit high this week after their stunning defeat of the Zips or whoever the hell they played for their opening week scrimmage.
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-15 - November 15, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-08 - November 8, 2009
- HLS Tweets for the Week of 2009-11-01 - November 1, 2009
Bad Kermit
Ryno says, “F@#$ you, Q. Beagles like food.”