Nyles Morgan (Credit: Chicago Tribune)

Notre Dame coaches “undersold” sophomore linebacker Nyles Morgan last year in an effort to conceal a significant weakness in Brian VanGorder’s defensive scheme.

Blue & Gold Illustrated’s Bryan Driskell criticized VanGorder, the Irish’s defensive coordinator, for being too faithful to scheme and sticking with Joe Schmidt – although he graded out as one of the worst linebackers last year.

“Why did you run a defense that required you to put such an inferior player on the field in order for your defense to work?” asked Driskell on a podcast he co-hosted with BGI senior editor Lou Somogyi. “Why can’t Notre Dame, in two years, find a way to get a player like Nyles Morgan on the field? And now all of a sudden we’re to believe that this spring, Nyles Morgan went from – he was so bad that he couldn’t beat out the third worst linebacker in the country. We’re supposed to believe that now all of a sudden, according to the coaches, he’s this tremendous player and go out and lead the defense. That’s the frustration.”

Somoygi said Coach Brian Kelly admitted in a recent one-on-one interview that the staff may have “undersold” Morgan and were “loyal to a fault” to Schmidt last year.

Credit: Irish Sports Daily

Driskell said, despite the loss of Butkus Award winner Jaylon Smith, Notre Dame’s linebacker group could be better this year than last.

“The defense was built around the Mike linebacker making plays,” said Driskell. Schmidt, he said, consistently failed in that regard – noting that he both failed to sack USC’s Cody Kessler despite being sent on a blitz repeatedly and registered zero tackles (and seven missed tackles) against Clemson last year. Smith was used as an “eraser,” in Kelly’s terminology, for the errors of the both the defensive line and Schmidt in 2015.

“Now you have a player at Mike linebacker who is a more athletic, more effective, more productive player,” the analyst said of Morgan. “The key is: Can Nyles Morgan be a consistent player, avoid some of the big negatives that hurt him? But I think you’re going to see more production from the linebacking corps simply because – just by the nature of who he has – there is that weapon now at Mike linebacker that the defense can be built around. Whereas last year, when they tried to build their defense around Joe Schmidt, it just didn’t work because he wasn’t a good enough player.”

Morgan, Driskell said, will be the player who will most impact the success or failure of the defense if VanGorder’s approach remains unchanged. Somogyi noted that national experts, such as Phil Steele, had low expectations for the linebacker group. Steele slotted them as 45th best out of 128 teams entering 2016.

“This is a guy who has the physical tools. This is a guy who has been credited by Brian VanGorder, Brian Kelly, Mike Elston as working his tail off,” said Driskell. “I’ve heard great things behind the scenes about how hard he’s working, his attitude, the leadership he’s shown – all those kind of things. So I believe that position is poised to have much better production this season. Now, will Nyles Morgan take that step and become a legitimate playmaker? That remains to be seen.”

The entire podcast is worth a listen. Check it out here.

The post Expert: Nyles Morgan Scapegoated To Cover Coach’s Weakness appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

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 on the post. Ten more practices are in the books (ND completed practices #12 and #13 yesterday) across the past eight days and quite a bit has happened. It’s time to play some catch-up.

So today, it’s time to enjoy a very Irish-centric special edition of the Roundup. Think of this as the quick way to catch up the past week of fall camp.

The Roundup

I will never cease to be amazed at the freaks of nature we have at TE. Koyack should not be able to move as fast for how big he is. Tyler Luata is also an absolute freak of nature. Just check out the pancake he delivers at 3:20 in the clip. Yeah, that’s a freshman.

The first day of practice in full pads is probably the real first glimpse of what we can expect this season. I think this goes double for defense. For most of the videos to this point, we’ve seen the secondary just abuse receivers with incredibly physical play. Throughout this clip though, they seem to have backed off behavior that would draw out more defensive PI flags than Sparty trying to stop Tommy Rees. Other highlights that I liked: Sheldon Day looking like a beast and Ishaq Williams putting some good rushes together:

The August 9 practice gave us a peak the Irish in the red zone. Spoiler alert: THEY RAN THE DAMN BALL! In all seriousness, the last bit of the video has Greg Bryant flat out GOING OFF on two great runs. Once the Irish got inside the 10, we saw Bryant get a blow and Cam tried to punch it in. The next play featured Bryant in a personnel package that included freshman beast Tyler Luata that got the TD. As for the rest of the practice? Probably the most physical highlights we’ve seen thus far:

The RB profile gave us no clues on the depth chart battle. The combination of Cam McDaniel, Tarean Folston, and Greg Bryant make this position one of the most exciting on the team. With their talent though, it’s hard to project who is going to come out of the gate as the starter or how all three will rotate. If I could read any of the tea leaves that Tony Alford was throwing out there, it appears that Bryant might have the most work to do out of the trio.

The profile on the safeties led me to an interesting conclusion. Kerry Cooks said a few different things that jumped out at me. Firstly, Austin Collinsworth has clearly jumped out as the QB of the defense. The mention that he can play both positions jumped out at me as well. Cooks also mentioned that Max Redfield was making noticeable improvement. Mathias Farley was listed in the video as a S/CB. Finally, Cooks touted Shumate as the most talented of the group. All of this together leads me to believe that nickel and dime packages might feature some hybrid roles that we haven’t seen before. Either that or we are going to see a crazy, constant rotation:

Here’s a shocker, Everett Golson is your starting QB for Rice. Yes, “for Rice”, much like the same language Kelly used in 2012. That’s fine, I’m good with it and I’m sure Malik Zaire is going to see the field a fair amount this season (hopefully not due to injury). Want to know what really stood out to me though? The managers got to play the pitch man for the QBs during an option drill and I’m forever sad that I didn’t get to do that:

Yesterday’s practice video focused on the defensive line. Honestly, I thought this was one of the more enlightening position profile videos to date. The D-line has to be the lead as far as question marks go considering all the talent that was lost. Listening Mike Elston break down everyone’s performance and what they expect of everyone was great. I know Andrew Trumbetti made a lot of waves this week (more on that later), but it’s good to hear that another freshman, Johnny Williams is standing out a bit as well, even if it appears he is behind a touch on the learning curve:

And here’s your main event: Brian Kelly’s August 13th presser. Loads of information in this one, including our first peak into portions of the depth chart. I had a few things that stood out to me:

• Kelly talked a lot about rotations on defense, especially in the front seven.
• Mentioned that VanGorder’s defense allows the young guys to just go and play on instinct.
• In fact, for all that’s been made about how complicated the schemes on defense are, I have a feeling VanGorder is scheming to his talent.
• Kelly seemed frustrated with questions about if ND had their base defense installed. I read that as “we won’t have a traditional base”.
• Everett can check out of plays, but he probably won’t need to due to the way the offense is designed.
• No major injuries on the O-line, but with various guys being out for a day, the starting five is still up in the air.
• Kelly is taking a look at individual competitive drills before he decides who is on the special teams units.

With all that in mind, here’s the depth chart. Or rather, what Kelly confirmed explicitly thus far:

And now you’re moment of Nix…

What is this I don't even #MSPaintMonday pic.twitter.com/MBKxDzX8Yw

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) August 12, 2014

The Booze

Summer is nearly done and I haven’t yet had one of my favorite summer whiskey cocktails, the Lynchburg Lemonade:

1 part Jack
1 part Triple Sec
1 part Sour Mix
4 parts lemon-lime soda

You can sub in Jack with a bourbon as well (obviously it kills the Lunchburg namesake, but whatever).

Cheers.

The post Friday Roundup: The “Notre Dame Fall Camp 2014 Catch-Up” Edition appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.