This episode got us so heated that even the Homefield Apparel ad read wasn’t spared a rant inclusion.

We are red, mad, and nude online.

Thank Christ this is an audio format.

Podcast

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Right off the bat, Shane and I deem this loss the worst of the Brian Kelly era. There’s no sugar-coating it.

This episode is probably less than a pod, but more of an hour-long therapy session on trying to deal with this. So come join us and try to start the healing–or come listen and get even angrier. Whatever works.

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Twitch Broadcast

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What went wrong? What went right? Can Notre Dame ever win these kind of games? What does this mean for the rest of the 2019 season?

We tackle that and much more off the cuff and raw from the heartbreaking loss, including many questions and comments from an incredibly active live chat. Have thoughts yourself? Be sure to leave us a message and sound off.

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However the highlight, in my opinion at least, was absolutely the interviews that I conducted during the HLS tailgate. Jessica Smetana from Sports Illustrated, and former ND O-linemen, and current ESPN personality, Mike Golic Jr. take top billing. However, don’t sleep on an ND fan attending his first game, the HLS OGs, NDEddieMac, and some of my fellow Otters.

Enjoy!

Podcast

Twitch Broadcast

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Through the magic of podcasting time travel, Eddie and I are able to chat about the earth-shattering development that rocked Notre Dame fans by recording later after the news broke.

So…yeah, this episode is a little interesting and this is all either the result of Brian Kelly’s halftime blood sacrifice to win the Citrus Bowl, an attempt to divide by zero, or the end result of having two SEC teams in the title game.

The post HLS Podcast – SEC: Swiping Elko and Championships appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

In this episode, we cover all the “fun” hot topics from the ass-kicking in Southern Cal. We talk about Golson’s disappointing performance and the QB controversy with Malik Zaire, take a look at the injury-decimated defense, just how much we should blame Kelly for this mess (spoiler alert: we don’t absolve him), and where the Irish go from here into bowl season.

The video and audio are embedded below as always. I’d say “enjoy”, but I’m not going to lie to you. We’ll be back next week to give our initial thoughts about ND’s bowl placement and opponent.

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We can’t lose sight of today. We have to remember where we are after today’s loss. It’s a red-letter day for our players and coaches alike. Two years ago we were playing for a national championship. Today we got our butts beat. And it wasn’t as close as the score. I thought Coach (Sarkisian) was very generous today running the football to keep the score where it was. Having said that, we’ve got a lot of young players and I’m confident as to where they want to go. We expect to be back in the spot we were a couple years ago, but we’re in a tough spot now.

We used this earlier in the season. It’s certainly appropriate now. (Screen capture from @SuperManTDJesus)

Those words from coach Brian Kelly’s post-game press conference rather succinctly describes the disaster that was this game and where the Irish stand right now. I’ll get to the injury-riddled defense in a bit, as it is certainly a large part of this story; however, the biggest shock of this game was just how poorly the Irish offense performed.

That shock begins and ends with Everett Golson.

Turnovers weren’t the issue this time, but rather basic execution. Golson flat out looked lost. He missed wide open receivers with throws that weren’t even in the same zip code. The took absurd amounts of time in the pocket as some of his receivers ran wide open and unseen. He had happy feet. He had no pocket presence. He didn’t look anything close to the quarterback that we saw that the beginning of season.

His performance was so poor that many, myself included, wondered if his shoulder was still giving him issues. Kelly immediately dismissed that possibility in his post-game presser, meaning Golson was simply out of sorts and rightfully benched for redshirt freshman, Malik Zaire.

Zaire gave the offense, and the team, a desperately needed spark. While he played well, and I’m certain many will point out the game was a 14-14 affair after his entry, I urge people to look at the bigger picture in this game. Southern Cal took their foot of the gas for the most part. They went incredibly conservative, some head-scratching fourth down attempts aside. While the offense under Zaire looked much better, I could see why Kelly was hesitant to place him in a game as any play that required good touch on passes seemed to go awry more often than not.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Zaire did just fine and I certainly believe our starting QB for the bowl game should be an open competition at this point. However, I do see a few things here and there that likely made Kelly gun-shy.

Golson wasn’t the only offensive player that struggled. Will Fuller and Corey Robinson inexplicably got a major case of the drops out of nowhere. When Golson did put passes on target, some of those passes fell to the ground. Zaire had some similar issues with the receivers as well.

Simply put, the offense was a mess. The game wasn’t just a blowout because the defense resembles our pre-season scout team, but also because our offense, the strength of the team, failed to put points on the board. There is no reason the game should have ever gotten that out of hand.

As far as the defense, people can spout as many stats as they wish, but for me the story is simple. Here is the first depth chart that Notre Dame released before Rice with injured players crossed out (suspensions aren’t included nor are Jarrett Grace and Ben Councell who suffered injuries from last season):

[table “” not found /]

That’s six opening day starters out. If we include the suspensions to KeiVarae Russel and Ishaq Williams, the total rises to eight and takes out the entire starting secondary and most of the defensive line. That’s just absurd and how we get this depth chart for Southern Cal, again with injured players crossed out:

[table “” not found /]

Note: Matthias Farley listed as a 3rd String safety behind Redfield.

There were people not even on the depth chart playing meaningful snaps. Jay Hayes went from “excited to make an impact” when his redshirt was burned to “HUGE MISTAKE” in just a week.

People can try and blame Brian Kelly until they are blue (or purple) in the face for depth issues, but I challenge someone to find me a coach that wouldn’t have depth issues if they lost nine scholarship players due to injury, lost two more due to an injury from last year, and then four more due to suspension on one side of the ball. That’s 15 players out. Read that again, 15 scholarship players gone and I haven’t even mentioned Nicky Baratti and Drue Tranquill simply because they weren’t on the two depth charts above.

That brings the total of injured and suspended scholarship players on the defense to 17. That’s the same amount of people that Notre Dame signed in the recruiting class of 2012. Notre Dame could damn near make a two deep out of this list. It’s why Daniel Cage was playing despite a hurt knee. It’s why Chase Hounshell was playing inside despite the fact Kelly thought he was too small to play there earlier in the week. This is not an insignificant factor we’re talking about here.

This is why coaches in the SEC oversign, to avoid this potential nightmare scenario. This is also why many schools recruit junior college athletes (JUCOs), another practice that Notre Dame declines to participate in. This allows schools to plug in these gaps when the worst happens. Even if it the worst doesn’t happen, this prevents schools from having to play underclassmen before they are ready or burning precious redshirt years.

The Subway Domer mentioned this a couple weeks ago. When you decide to be bound by the code of 85 scholarships and no more, this happens. You fall further and further away from that limit and thus performance suffers on the field.

Perhaps it’s almost appropriate that this all hits a critical mass against Southern Cal, a team that had 30 scholarships stripped over three years ago. If you decide to try any scholarship player depth argument against that fanbase, you might be laughed out of the room.

The difference though is that the Trojans at least knew, for the most part, the situation that they were in and could prepare accordingly. The Irish aren’t even on Plan B or C right now, we are in Plan E or F, a spot no one could foresee.

So if your frustration stems from defensive performance, I feel that you are jousting windmills when judging this team. All things considered, it’s almost a miracle that this didn’t all blow up sooner. Now, if your frustration stems from a lackluster offense and perhaps even at Brian Kelly for waiting so long to sub out Golson, I think that ground is much firmer ground to stand on. I can excuse the defensive performance in this game and most of the season, but the offense has no excuse for struggling this much.

As the Irish approach bowl season, I’m hoping that the Irish manage to get healthy and end the season on a good note. I am fearful though, that we could see Alabama redux. If the Irish were suffering from depth issues then and the physicality of practice had to be reduced, I can only imagine the situation the Irish will face, or have been currently facing. Just look at the physical play as the season has progressed, especially in tackling, which has significantly subsided.

As far as where we land, I seriously doubt the Pinstripe Bowl will happen, despite some pundits lazily picking that slot. The Irish have been there recently and the other tier 1 ACC bowls, which the Pinstripe is a part of, will certainly be looking to snag the Irish to create a unique matchup, most likely against a SEC opponent, that will drive all kinds of excitement and revenue to their game. Simply put, standings and the W/L record aren’t king there.

Further, I want to see how the Irish respond in a bowl game. If this truly was a “red letter day” for the program, I want to see the response in action, not words.

The post Notre Dame’s “Red Letter Day” Against Southern Cal appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Oh, we also get a surprise return from Molly’s dad this episode. No, seriously, it surprised us both and neither of us had any idea it was coming. Poor Molly was the victim of “burn of the year” thanks to her father as well.

This weekend was weird.

Anyways, the video and audio is below. As a note, going forward (and I started today), I’m going to post the audio to Podbean first so it hits the iTunes feed as quickly as possible. So the best way to get these episodes quickly is to subscribe via iTunes or to check out our Podbean page.

Also, I’m aware the iTunes picture isn’t working right as it file was apparently too large for iTunes. I’m hoping it will be fixed this week as I have the right file loaded now.

Enjoy (or cry).

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Credit: Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

I’m not even sure where exactly to start with the mess that was Notre Dame’s loss to Northwestern. Typing “Notre Dame’s loss to Northwestern” doesn’t even make sense to me. The Irish lost and gave up 43 points to a team that hasn’t even cracked 30 all season.

Iowa blew these guys out.

But here we are in what I consider the worst loss since I walked on to campus in 2003. Oh sure, we’ve lost to worse teams, but those ND teams were objectively terrible. While this team isn’t championship-caliber or even playoff-caliber, a dose of reality that I accepted last week, this isn’t a terrible team; however, they most certainly played like one.

No one is blameless in this dumpster fire. Everett Golson turned the ball over twice, one of which was a fumble right at the goal line. Chris Brown fumbled near the goal line as well. Malik Zaire’s debut at holder saw him botch a hold that ended up not just blowing a PAT, but gave Northwestern two free points as they took it the other way. Cam McDaniel, the one person no one expected to fumble, did so when Notre Dame was in the process of running out the clock to escape with a win.

Notre Dame has been playing with the fire of turnovers ever since the Syracuse game. They’ve somehow managed to overcome 3-5 turnover performances and win. Now they are regressing back to the mean and now facing the expected consequences of being so damned careless with the football.

The defense doesn’t escape from blame in this one either. As I said before, Notre Dame gave up 43 points to a team that hasn’t cracked 30 to this point. They surrendered a simply absurd 547 yards to the Wildcats. That, by the way, would be the highest total that Notre Dame has given up all season. Northwestern hadn’t cracked the 400 yard mark yet this season.

Now, I’m absolutely certain that injuries are playing into this. The loss of Joe Schmidt seems to loom larger than anyone expected. Sheldon Day and Daniel Cage also went down in this game. Of course, the suspensions expected starters like KeiVarae Russell and Ishaq Williams are wearing on this team. That still doesn’t excuse what happened here.

The defense looked absolutely lost. There were so many blown coverages in this game that I simply lost count. Wildcat receivers ran wide open all game long and, had they had actually caught a few balls, I’m likely sitting here ranting and raving about one of the worst blowout losses in ND history.

Even with Nothwestern managing to drop every wide open pass possible, Notre Dame still surrendered four TD drives of 70 yards or more.

The special teams screwed the pooch as well. We’ve already mentioned the bad hold from Zaire, but Kyle Brindza also managed to have the worst night of his career. Brindza is a 70%+ FG kicker and, even with the Stanford botched snaps and being forced to kick into a gale-force wind during Navy, you have a kicker that has only missed a small handful of attempts all season. He missed two tonight, going 0-2. He also had a 26 yard punt just for good measure too. Even when ND did something great on special teams with a blocked FG, Drue Tranquill inexplicably decided try and return in a completely bone-headed move.

The coaching staff is far from blameless in this disaster too. It starts with the curious decision to bench Max Redfield. I understand Max has struggled quite a bit this season, but I’m not sure that Drue improved this situation as the true freshman saw his own share of struggles throughout the night. Criticism could also be placed on using Zaire as a holder as that swap clearly wasn’t a quick fix.

And speaking of the holding/kicking situation, Brian Kelly noted that those struggles pushed him to go for two. In his presser after the game, Kelly stated that the chart showed the situation as a coin flip and, his confidence as a coach was so shaken in the disaster that is the FG unit, that he felt his chances were better going for two than kicking the PAT. Let that sink in for a bit. Once it does, further consider that if the Irish don’t botch the PAT and give up two points earlier, Kelly doesn’t even have to think twice about simply kicking the PAT.

And once that all sinks in, further consider that we are pulling our hair out over extra freakin’ points to squeak out a win against NORTHWESTERN.

I know Kelly has taken a bit of flack for not kneeling the ball, but I’m actually with him there. Kneeling the ball only to still have time on the clock and be forced to punt is dumb and, in my opinion is the epitome of terrible clock management. Calling a couple of runs takes some extra seconds off the clock and you might just bleed enough off the clock to sit on the ball on fourth down or, better yet, get a first and ice the game. But no, Cam fumbled and here we are splitting hairs about the final minutes of a game against Northwestern.

Make no mistake, there are plenty of other spots to have issues with how the game was coached and Kelly admitted as much in his presser. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say after a game that he needs to examine coaching decisions as well as needing to coach better in a game. Most notably, Kelly stated that perhaps calling a read option so close to the endzone was on him as he perhaps got too confident of Golson’s ability with that play. Further, his comments and reactions to questions about the issues with the kicking game and going for two almost screamed “I screwed up the kicking battery and then I didn’t trust it once it blew up in my face”.

As far as the Golson/Zaire debate. I don’t even know. Even Kelly paused before he gave Golson a very lackluster vote of confidence. I have a feeling the leash is shortening quite rapidly.

I know I’m about 1,000 words into this without tipping my hat at all to the Wildcats, but I do want to say that they punched well beyond their weight class and did what they needed to do to win. This team eclipsed previous offensive marks out of nowhere and their special teams made an impact. They didn’t have a FG of 30 yards or more coming into tonight and all four of their FGs were beyond that mark. It was that kind of night for them.

Simply put, I’m pissed. This was, excuse my French, a clusterfuck of epic proportions in every phase of the game and the coaching staff. There is a load of work to be done to halt this freefall and prevent a 7-5 disaster which, if Notre Dame plays like this the next two weeks, is an absolute certainly.

I didn’t want to head to the edge of the cliff last week, but I feel like I’ve just been tossed off the ledge. I believe that I’ve found the bottom. The last time I felt like this was when Notre Dame lost to Navy and Tulsa back-to-back. The Irish responded by upsetting Utah at home and won out for the remainder of the season. That’s the bounce-back that I need to see.

Because if this isn’t the bottom, I’m not sure how to handle the rest of this season.

The post Finding the Bottom appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Today, Brian Kelly mirrored my feelings perfectly as to why I’m so full of piss and vinegar right now:

Brian Kelly: "Florida State blew the coverage and they got rewarded for it.” #NotreDame

— Rachel Terlep (@eTruth_Irish) October 19, 2014

I stand behind Kelly 100% in that statement. I can understand why the refs believe Will Fuller went a step too far in fighting for position with the DB. What I don’t understand is how they believed Fuller’s action actually impeded anyone from making a play.

Let’s take a look at this play from two different angles taken by The Observer and ND Insider (South Bend Tribune):

#NotreDame’s reaction regarding the negated TD: http://t.co/38QCARK89J https://t.co/ta5zxUjAmh

— Observer Sports (@ObserverSports) October 19, 2014

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Our view of the penalty call that will be debated for quite some time. #NotreDame #FloridaState #NDvsFSU #NDFB

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The two DBs engaged with Prosise and Fuller never make an attempt to go towards Robinson; in fact, they aren’t even looking at him until the ball is in the air and by then it’s far too late to do anything. #26, P.J. Williams, is the only one that makes a move towards Robinson, but even he recognizes what’s going on far too late. He is hopelessly out of position and Golson throws the ball almost immediately.

Simply put, the play call was perfect. Florida State was completely out of position and no DB attempted to switch off in order to try and get Robinson covered. Had either one of the FSU DBs done that, I’d be singing a far different tune. Prosise and Fuller could have just stood there and Robinson would have still scored. That’s how bad FSU botched the coverage here.

So we can talk all day long about who engaged who, who got more contact, and dumb comparisons to the roughing the snapper penalty last week. The Seminoles blown coverage still remains. No yellow flag will ever wipe that out.

If you watch the FSU’s secondary reactions after the play, you can easily see that was their initial reaction too. They all started screaming at each other in frustration for, what they thought, was a game-blowing play. Not a single player motioned for a flag.

What they did do, specifically P.J. Williams, was remove his helmet during the screaming match. Today, Brian Kelly stated that the officials told him that they missed this and blew the call. That wouldn’t have offset the OPI call; however, it would have granted Notre Dame an automatic first down and would have been on the 8.5 yard line instead of the 17–wait, no, the final play was run from the 18 because these refs, paragons of the rules that they are, granted a bonus penalty yard for mysterious reasons.

So, if we really want to go down the road that this call was “technically right”, we also need to apply the same scrutiny in which the refs were technically wrong. Missing a removed helmet, but managing to focus on the borderline OPI is beyond laughable.

Go back earlier in the game and you will also see a celebration no-call as Florida State high-stepped into the endzone. Normally, I would roll my eyes at such a call as I hate the rule, but ND fans are being lectured about OPI technicalities while that no-call goes largely forgotten and it drives me up the wall.

Make no mistake, that flag was not the sole reason why we lost that game and that will be a topic I will certainly expand upon another time. However, that flag did take away the win on a drive that was absolutely incredible and included a gigantic 4th and 18 conversion.

It’s frustrating. It’s aggravating. And it’ll probably take me another day or two to not be angry by the mere thought of that play and that flag. And the worst part of it all was that the person at the center of one of the most famous no-calls in ND history, the one in which we were all told that no ref should ever throw a flag on to decide the game, tweeted this:

Wow not sure about that call

— Reggie Bush (@ReggieBush) October 19, 2014

Hate to see a game decided on that

— Reggie Bush (@ReggieBush) October 19, 2014

Salt in the freakin’ wound.

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