Ever the politician, a plaid-suited Brian Kelly sidestepped a question ripe for opposing locker room material. Sure, the end of the Michigan series has opened the door for some very exciting future games for Notre Dame football, but he wasn't about to proclaim it a "good thing" and provide Michigan with additional motivation. Instead, Kelly called future games with Texas and Georgia the "silver lining" of no longer having Michigan on the schedule. Afterward, he looked to the eager press ...
Greg Bryant
Friday Roundup: The “Notre Dame Fall Camp 2014 Catch-Up” Edition
Once WatchND started pumping out Notre Dame football fall camp practice videos, I was all in for breaking each one down. It worked great for the first two practices, but then practice #3 happened and saw the video breakdown was a position profile for the CBs. Don't get me wrong, the feature was great, but a basically started at my title of "Fall Camp Practice Report #3: CB Report" for about an hour and realized there was no way that I could even drag 100 words out of the topic. So I passed ...
Notre Dame Fall Camp Practice #2 Report (August 5, 2014)
Another day, another practice for Notre Dame football. With the media now locked out of practice, all we have are our small morsels of Jack Nolan and the Fighting Irish Digital Media crew giving us a peak into practice. And, yes, we will happily devour it and attempt to over-analyze it because we have signs of football and we are starving for it, dammit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBUQkvpI008 And now to wring some analysis out of sub-five minute clip: Jack Nolan opened with a ...
It’s All a Matter of Perspective
Attempting to analyze Notre Dame's spring game every year is an interesting exercise. While there is certainly a good amount of information that can be mined from the Blue/Gold game, conclusions tend to lie in the perspective that you start with. One person can rave about great QB play and another can be worried about a terrible secondary. One person's great pass rush could be another person's astute observation of terrible offensive line play. Or, as a wise philosopher once said, these ...
8 Big Questions: Where Do the Irish Stand?
Back in August, I outlined 8 big questions that were on my mind for the upcoming season. Now that we are three games in, I wanted to take a look at where the Irish currently stand. 1. Which Tommy Rees will show up? So far, we've seen good Tommy Rees, Touchdown Tommy, Reesus, whatever you want to call the opposite of Turnover Tommy. Thus far, Rees is 65/107 (60.7%) for 969 yards (323 yards/game), 7 TDs, and, most importantly only 2 INTs. Further, only one of those INTs was really a bad ...
Irish Blogger Gathering: The Penultimate Hate Week
Ah, Hate Week, it's good to see you again. I must admit, this week is when I really miss the "Old School" IBG in which every corner of the Notre Dame Blogosphere would tear Michigan a new one. The annual vitriol was simply amazing. However, much like the ND/Michigan series itself, the Irish Blogger Gathering has changed, but that doesn't mean I didn't give Keith Arnold of Inside the Irish a chance to do some Skunkbear damage. But did he take a swing at our enemy in Ann Arbor? Find out ...
Four Pleasant Surprises and Four Areas of Concern
Week one is in the books. While all of us here at HLS will start diving in to some deeper analysis of the game, for now, I wanted to share some of my initial thoughts and takeaways from the tilt against Temple. So without further ado, here are four pleasant surprises and four areas of concern from last Saturday's game. Four Pleasant Surprises 1) Tommy Rees Has Improved And not just his stat line either. Oh sure, he had a career day going 16-23 for 346 yards, 3 TDs, and, most importantly ...
8 Big Questions for the 2013 Season
With the season nearing ever closer, I started to think of some of the big questions on my mind for the 2013 campaign. While we don't have some of the major burning questions that we did last year (who will be the starting QB?), there are still some unanswered questions coming into season. Here are the eight questions that I came up with as I pondered the upcoming season in glorious non-slideshow form: ...
Jack Nolan Talks Notre Dame Football at ND Dallas Kickoff
Every year, the Notre Dame Club of Dallas gets ready for the upcoming Notre Dame football season with our annual kickoff party. The event allows our membership to enjoy to some food and drinks while we raise money via live auction for our scholarship fund, given annually to local Dallas students that attend ND (as a reference, last year, ND Dallas gave $70,000 out to 22 deserving students). One of the highlights of this event though, is the special guest that comes to talk to the club and ...
Ranking the Irish Roster: Tex’s Top 25
Every year, Keith Arnold over at Inside the Irish does an annual ranking of the top 25 players on the Notre Dame roster. This year marks the second year that I have been able to contribute and, this time around, I wanted to give a break down of my rankings. Thankfully, I don't have to justify ranking a kicker #1 (NEVER FORGET) or leaving our starting QB off the top 25 list (NEVER FORGET THIS AS WELL). So without further ado, let's get to the rankings. ...