A Look At The Game Wherein I Wish John Saunders a Long Life

Pictured here: The icing on Saturday’s cake.

First, this was a big win. It wasn’t Duke. It wasn’t a bad Stanford. It wasn’t SDSU. It was Michigan (sucks!) and in the history of the series, the eventual records of both programs matter little to the game between them. Enjoy the win. Enjoy the weekend. And if you’re incapable of finding some exhilaration in this win, or at the very least some sense of contentment, then consider taking a long walk into a dark, endless forest and stop being a burden on the rest of the tribe. (This is where someone sends me an angry e-mail about recommending they go and rot in the wilderness. It’s amusing.)

Second, no “yeah buts.” First you wanted to say, “yeah, but it was a down/rebuilding Michigan (sucks!),” and now you want to say, “yeah, but they had 6 turnovers.” They sure did. And Michigan (sucks!) had 2 turnovers to essentially start the game, and Notre Dame took that, plus a stop on downs, to their advantage and finally, FINALLY, jumped on them, scoring 21 points before the clock had even ticked away the 1st quarter of play. And that’s why I’m excited, because good teams do that. Good teams take advantage of timely turnovers and use them to punish the opposition. SDSU were handed a number of timely turnovers last week. Did they jump all over ND? No. They were only good enough to use the turnovers to cling to life in that game. This week, the Irish were good enough to clobber Michigan (sucks!) for their sins. This Irish squad may not be great. It’s too soon to tell. And this Irish squad may not be in the top-25. It’s too soon to say. But this Irish squad is finally good enough to make fewer mistakes than a program unaccustomed to being laughed off a gridiron, and this Irish squad is finally good enough to capitalize on opprotunities. Finally.

Thoughts running through my head too quickly to coagulate into any semblance of order:

That’s not OC inexperience. Okay, so I get that Weis and his staff saw that the weather was going to get bad in the 2nd half, and wanted to try and jump on Michigan early, thus the “bombs away” play calling up to the 21-0 mark in the game. But for the love of all that is right with this world, why are we going into 5-wide sets in the 2nd half while Noah busily converts cubits to the metric system (even biblical characters are moving on from the English system) on the sidelines? Why are you completely taking the run game out of any play at that point, Coach Haywood? And why are you not calling a timeout to straighten him out, Coach Weis?

I was arguing on a ND message board that it’s not 10 times harder to catch a football in rain. It’s not even 2 times harder, if you could actually create some measurement of difficulty in catching a ball. But near as I could tell from my couch, ND went to a no-back set at least twice in weather with less visibility than the inner workings of the KGB. It’s pretty damn hard to catch a ball you can’t see.

I get the feeling that Haywood is excellent with game planning and needs some work on game-time adjusting. Case in point, at the 10:42 mark in the 3rd quarter, ND starts a series with a Hughes rush for 0 yards, and then a pass to Grimes for 11 yards and a 1st down. At this point, the rain is really coming down, and ND is up 11 points. Hughes then rushes for 7 yards and 13 yards on consecutive plays that really made me, and I think the UM(s!) D take notice. At this point, the ball is at the 49 yard line, it’s horrible weather, and ND is protecting an 11 point lead with a lot of time left. And Hughes’ last 5 rushes have gone for 18, 4, 0, 7, and 13 yards for an average of 8.4 yards a carry. I know Haywood knows that, so why did he call an no-back formation and a pass? I know he’s got someone charting plays and giving him real-time stats like that. So why not go with the flow of the game and see if you can’t keep that 8.4 yards average going? Or at least, why not spend the rest of the game in formations threatening to do so? I don’t care what the call sheet, complete with some formulation developed pre-game to determine chances of success tells you, when the ground game is rolling in wet weather, laissez les bon temps roulez!
I was wrong, and I’m sort of disappointed. Last week, recapping the SDSU game, I swore that the ND defense would look quite different against Michigan (sucks!) than it did against SDSU. Now, I’m not going to wonder about who neutered Tenuta, because we certainly are playing a “ballsy” version of defense. The Irish blitz constantly, but in an almost inexplicably unlucky fashion. Maybe it’s because the spread is particularly effective against Tenuta-style blitzing, what with the single-read decision for the QB and all that, but I really have to wonder A) why does Corwin Brown seem to misguess on the blitz so often and is that just one of those phenomna to which I need to grow accustomed if I wish to bask in the glory of relatively increased turnover production and B) who stole Tenuta’s muse? The blitz frequency is there, but man, the creativity sure seems to be missing.

Perhaps it’s that neither Maurice Crum or even Brain Smith possess the secondary-type speed of a Philip Wheeler, and that’s why Corwin and Tenuta utilize them in a much more pedestrian fashion. Perhaps it’s the lack of dreadlocks in our linebacking corps. I don’t know, but I’m really curious. Thus far the blitz schemes have been as creative as having Tina Fey play Governor Palin on SNL. You can see them coming from weeks away.
Poor, pathetic SmÃ©agol. Last night, most of you probably witnessed the desperate attempts to poo-poo the ND win by one John Saunders of ABC Sports. John’s a particularly curious creature. While Mark May, Pat Forde, and so many other ESPN oratorical orifices clearly play up the anti-ND shtick either by executive decree or because they know it’ll generate ad revenue, and thus personal income, Saunders quite clearly hates Notre Dame with a genuine, jealous rage. He’s the Gollum of college football, and I wish him a long, bitter existence – one filled with many Notre Dame successes and at least a half dozen national championships. Gollum exists to balance out the football world. For all the joy and excitement that something like a win for Notre Dame over Michigan (sucks!) brings to so many people, Gollum exists to balance out that joy for at least 10,000 people. May Gollum Saunders live in his own dark cave for many decades to come, ranting and screaming about how much he hatesssssssssssssss Notre Dame.
I really hate that kid. Sam McGuffie quickly established himself as a total pain in the Irish rear. I’m not looking forward to 3 more games against that kid (and he’ll be there for the full 4 years of eligibility because he’ll be a horrible NFL prospect). Some kids are just weird freaks of athletic nature, and McGuffie is one of them. There wasn’t anything particularly, obviously great about his talent or abilities on display yesterday, but he sure seemed to have a knack for finding holes where they shouldn’t be and making plays when he shouldn’t have. I really hate that kid, and that’s why I’m already awarding him the inaugural HLS Paul Reiser Award. Paul Reiser has never done anything that didn’t tick me off, most notably helping create a show that featured Helen Hunt as the lead, supposed-to-be-attractive female. No male actually thinks Helen Hunt is attractive. My girlfriend in college loved this stupid show to the point of obsession. My God, I hated that show. My God, I hate Paul Reiser. Congratulations, Sam.
The most fortunate ACL tear ever. I wouldn’t wish the injury sustained by Coach Weis during the game on anyone (except Paul Reiser), but I think, in a weird way, the injury helped the team. A lot of people, in Weis’ situation, would have chosen not to leave the sidelines and to stay with his team, but it’s still great for his guys to see that he’s sticking with his guys and not worrying about himself.
Spread ’em Out. Now that the defense has had to contend with 2 spread attacks in a row, they get to face MSU in the next week. MSU has a much more traditional offense that largely features 11th year senior Javon Ringer in the role of Jehuu Caulcrick, except Ringer doesn’t have the rhino-thighs of Caulcrick. It will be very interesting to see how the ND defensive front contends with a guy who just put up 282 yards rushing. Hopefully they look a lot better than FAU. Hopefully I never have to wonder, ever again, if ND’s defensive front can look a lot better than FAU.
On UCLA. No. I’m not going to talk about the 50 steps backwards that that UCLA program took yesterday. We’ll get to it later, maybe. I just couldn’t help but think of the 2007 ND/UCLA game. In that game, UCLA suffered 7 turnovers, and it was pretty clear that the Irish won because of those turnovers and supernatural possession of Maurice Crum. ND produced drives of 4 plays for -1 yards and a field goal off a fumble, 13 plays for 29 yards and a field goal off a turnover on downs, 3 plays for 6 yards and a punt off a fumble, 3 plays for 2 yards and a TD off an INT, 4 plays for 9 yards and a turnover on downs off an INT, and 5 plays for 18 yards and a punt off an INT. ND was not very good last year, and the way they “took advantage” of turnovers showed it. What a difference a year makes.

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