On a day that had a little of everything for Irish fans, perhaps the most enjoyable, if not the most surprising, was Tommy Rees’s nearly flawless start to the game. Shaking off a bewildering illegal substitution penalty to start the game, Tommy directed the next two drives right at the Owls and put all the toys at his, and Offensive Coordinator Chuck Martin’s, disposal on display. Hooking up twice with Davaris Daniels to score on thirty-yard passes, the Notre Dame signal caller had the Irish offense on cruise control.
Unfortunately, the ride went from thrilling to humdrum rather quickly. The brilliant flashes we saw in the first two drives, which featured gaudy runs by Amir Carlisle and TJ Jones, gave way to punts and horrific missed field goals. Frankly, for all the breath expended talking about special teams during the off season, I expected more than one nineteen yard return from George Atkinson, III. Both Kyle Brindza and Nick Tausch missed pedestrian field goal tries. Maybe there was something in the water, though, as Temple couldn’t put the ball between the sticks, either.
Defensively, Notre Dame clearly wasn’t showing a lot, with Michigan up next. Temple did a good job containing, and frustrating, Big Louis Nix, who goofed his way into three penalties and at one point threw his hands up in disgust as he trailed after Temple’s quarterback. Stephon Tuitt managed one sack as the Irish gave up a rushing touchdown and one hundred and thirty-four yards on the ground.
The real story, though, has to be the consistency and competency displayed by Tommy Rees. His three touchdown passes were perfectly thrown balls and he guided the offense to a healthy production that would have been healthier but for the aforementioned missed FGs. The Irish kept a clean sheet, too, on turnovers.
In all, this was a good warm up for the Skunkbears on Saturday. Nine Notre Dame freshman made it onto the field and Brian Kelly, on the heels of a new contract extension, was obviously comfortable enough to put Andrew Hendrix in to see out the win. You can expect a much tougher test from Michigan, but I think we saw enough yesterday to know that we have plenty of tools for the task.
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
- Finding Flaws in a Diamond: Clemson’s Rushing Offense - December 17, 2018
- Why Nobody Will Cotton to Notre Dame - December 3, 2018
- Irish Finish Regular Season Perfect 12-0 - November 26, 2018
Big Lou’s day was something I’m going to want to take a deeper look at. He was commanding double teams, but somehow always seemed to be the closest guy to the play.
My gut feeling is that we should have had more LBs filling the gaps, but I’m going to have to watch the film again. I was definitely disappointed by our front seven play to say the least.
The one knock on TD Tommy(God, it is great to call him that) were his multiple missed opportunities. He easily could have had 2-3 more TDs but flat out overthrew receivers. Luckily, those all fell the the ground instead of being intercepted. O
Trey……. couldn’t tell if he overthrew or if the WR (Freshman Fuller for instance) didn’t complete the route?
I definitely give him credit(or at least dont knock him for the DD groin play) but it seemed like everytime he missed, he missed high. That’s REALLY dangerous to see and could be cause for concern. Overall, though, very nice day for him
Overall, I think his deep ball looked great. I was really surprised at where he was placing the ball.
He can’t be perfect, but this was definitely a noticeable improvement from him.
I think the ball to Daniels, where he pulled up lame, would have been a TD if he had kept running.
Beat me to it. I was going to say the same thing. TDT should have one more in the TD column.
I think that might have been the play where Daniels tweaked his groin. I haven’t gone through and watched the replay to see if he came back into the game after that play or not but if he tweaked his groin trying to turn around a locate the ball it would make a lot of sense as to why he pulled up like that.
It was. He left the game after that play.