Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Oh, no. not again.

Pittsburgh 27, Notre Dame 22


"Curiously, the only thing that the bowl of petunias thought as it fell was, 'Oh no, not again.' Many have argued that if we knew why the bowl of petunias thought this, we should have a better understanding of the universe than we do now." --The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy



Bowl of Petunias

You can't deny it. That's EXACTLY what we are. We are like that bowl of petunias from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, watching our team plummet into the fourth quarter, trying to scrape together a win again and again and again. And on the sideline is the team, having a lot of thoughts just like the whale, trying to make things happen.

And sometimes the whale splashes into the sea and swims cheerfully off into next week's game.

And sometimes it slams head-first into the ground.

Either way, I can bet you the only thing the fans are thinking is, Oh no. Not again.

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just don't...don't even worry about it.)




I've calculated your chance of survival, but I don't think you'll like it.
--Marvin the Robot


So.......I think this quote pretty much sums up Charlie's job situation right now.

Which is too bad, really, because it's just another distraction the team / coaching staff DOESN'T need if they want to avoid another disgusting 6-6 end to a season.

Not that I'm suggesting we're going to lose to UConn. I'm just saying that the rest of the season looks pretty bleak when you consider that our offense didn't bother to show up for the first half of the last game, Michael Floyd still looks as rusty as an old man's pickup truck, and Stanford just scored more points against USC than ANY TEAM EVER.



Have I been to this planet before? ...I HAVE been here before!
--Ford

I think we've been on this planet all season long. This can't-get-it-done-til-the-
last-second planet. And, even then, we can only really accomplish the getting-it-together business against teams that aren't very good. You could make an argument for Boston College, I guess--but really, who wants to think about Boston College right now?

It's too bad our offense and defense can't show up for the same quarter. In the first half, that would've been...really helpful.

So. This is basically the same stuff we've seen all season long: 65% passing from Jimmy, 5.5 ypc for Armando Allen, 100+ yards receiving and 2 TDs for Golden Tate, and very little offensive production until the fourth quarter. The defense did enough to enable the offense to win. And this week, for the fourth time, we came up short.

At this point in the season, I'm gonna have to say: this is just the team we've got. I'm going to keep hoping for a really miraculous transformation in the sunshine in California, but...it's the end of the season. Everyone's got to be worn out by now, and I feel like all the major problems we have aren't things you can fix in a one- or two-week stint. When you don't show up for all four quarters of a football game...when your veteran O-line gets penalized week after week...when you can't buckle down and make things happen except in the clutch.... I don't know, maybe it's just me, but that sort of screams lack of discipline and fundamentals, doesn't it? And if they don't have those by now, it ain't gonna never happen.

Not this season anyway.


42 23
--The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

For the purposes of our team, the answer to the Ultimate Question is Golden Tate.

The kid absolutely will not quit, no matter what the odds. Not even when the Vogons have destroyed our planet and we've been tooling around the galaxy with the idiot who signed the orders.

Also, I'm pretty sure that pretty much every Irish fan in existence zapped Golden Tate with the Point of View gun, because general consensus before/during/after the game seemed to be that it had been way too freaking long since ND ran a punt back for a touchdown, and somebody needed to do something about it.

So thank YOU, Golden, for making it happen.



Infinite Improbability Drive

Odds Charlie will be back next season?

Odds the Irish will score 55 points against Stanford?

Odds Zach Frazer will show the Irish a thing or two about quarterbacking?


...............I don't even want to know.



I don't have a lot of words this week. At this point in the season, there's very little left to say.

Only two weeks of football left... I'm just taking it one day at a time. (Too bad there's no patch on the market for football withdrawal.)


GO IRISH BEAT HUSKIES!

Sunday, November 8, 2009

.......................flatlined.

Navy 23, Notre Dame 21

Note: I am not nearly as rational and collected as this note makes me sound. If indeed it makes me sound like either of these things.







EXPLETIVE — EXPLETIVE — EXPLETIVE — irrational bout of self-loathing —

EXPLETIVE.





So, Irish fans, if you’re like me, you had yourself convinced that the spirit-crushing triple overtime debacle of 2007 was nothing more than a hideous byproduct of the tradition-shredding, nightmare-inducing 3-9 death spiral of horror, and that last year’s unnecessarily close game in Baltimore was proof that we would go right on beating Navy for another 43 years without a hiccup.

Guess what? We were wrong! Ha!

Apparently now this game is just like any other, and the biggest weapon we had going up against the Naval Academy—the solid and unwavering conviction that, no matter the odds, we were going to win and both squads knew it—is poof! Gone. Out of existence. No longer a factor. Navy knows it’s an even spread now.

But apparently the Irish didn’t.



FML. …..FML? FML.

Listed above are the three states of emotion I had from the end of the first quarter until the end of this game.

The first part of the first quarter was all roses and sunshine and feeling fluffy, bunny-shaped torrents of glee at the sight of Michael Floyd running around in full uniform catching the ball again. It was apparent even on the TV broadcast that all the Irish fans in the stadium were feeling giddy about this too, and were consequently way too distracted by endorphins to notice that the football game was going to shit until we reached halftime down 14-0.

Or perhaps until Nick Tausch missed that first field goal. That, too, was a pretty good indicator that whatever luck was hanging over the stadium on Saturday was not there to swing things our way.

I wasn’t miffed at Tausch for missing that first field goal. It was a long one, and at an angle.

The second one, though, was all in his head, and THAT was not okay.

It became even more not okay later when we were fighting for our lives in the fourth quarter, but then of course you can’t blame Nick Tausch for losing this game. Not...really.



For those of you NOT watching at home….

…allow me to give you a darling recap of the ENTIRE COMMENTARY OF THE GAME:

Announcer 1: Man, these Navy kids play so hard! Golly, they’re just so disciplined! They really just play harder than hard for this game! You’ve got to admire the way they play so hard!

Announcer 2: You know, I think it’s the way Navy plays hard that’s really impressive! I mean, just look at the size of these guys—they’re smaller than the Notre Dame guys! I mean, would you just look at this weight comparison chart? Gee whiz, I can’t get over how they weigh less than the Notre Dame guys! And yet they play so hard! They really make up for that weight difference by playing hard!!!

HALFTIME

Announcer 1: Let’s look at some statistics from the first half. Man, you know what, I just don’t think these numbers reflect how hard those Navy guys have been playing!

Announcer 2: No kidding! I mean, just look at their coach—he really gets them to play hard! I mean, Notre Dame, they’ve got some good players. That Jimmy kid, he’s a tough guy. But look how hard those Navy guys have been playing!!!!!!!!

Announcer 1: I KNOW! I don’t think anyone understands HOW HARD those Navy guys play!!!!!!!

(During a commercial break….)

Announcer 2: Do you think anyone’s noticed that we ran out of things to say about this game after the first quarter?

Announcer 1: No way! We’ve been commentating Notre Dame football forever. All we have to do is keep mentioning the past so people know that we know what we’re talking about.

Announcer 2: Good point! When we get back from commercial, let’s mention that 2007 overtime loss again!

So, you know, if you were actually AT the game and you thought it was bad…oh trust me, it was worse watching it at home. I mean, occasionally the commentators would spew out player names and tell you what down it was, but for the most part they were completely useless. I kept the game on mute for pretty much the entirety of the fourth quarter.



So WTF happened out there?

You know, after a lot of deep soul-searching and original, innovative thought, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps we didn’t play hard enough.

Or, perhaps, that the Navy guys played harder.

But that’s just idle, unfounded musings…pay no attention to the lightness of my thoughts or the glimmering postulations of my being.


I think, perhaps, what really sunk us was our (team’s) conviction that we were going to win. We were playing Navy, for goodness’ sake, and we’ve spent almost this entire season winning (or losing) games in the final minutes of the fourth quarter. I don’t think the team ever got worried enough, because I don’t think they truly believed they would fail to pull it out.

But Navy did.

Navy (I think) had two weeks to prepare for this game. Navy has seen us win games in the fourth quarter all season long. Navy knew what to prepare for.

And Navy won the last time they came to Notre Dame Stadium.

I think our pride worked against us, in the same way it worked against us in the USC game. Only for the USC game—we had two weeks to prepare, we respected our opponent more, and we put in the kind of effort to try to beat them that Navy put in to beat us. (Though you might argue that Navy played even harder.)

That’s really what I think it is—I think we came back from San Antonio and our arrogance bit us in the butt. Michael Floyd came off the bench and we convinced ourselves we would be unstoppable. Jimmy came out at the end and readied himself to play Superman again—the savior of the fourth-quarter deficit. But Navy was ready for us. Navy was not tired, Navy did not quit, and Navy’s secondary--somehow--made two of the best receivers in all of college football miss.

Sometimes it was pressure on the quarterback. There were a lot of tipped passes toward the end of the game. But mostly it was just good coverage—damn good coverage. The kind of coverage that usually Golden Tate and Michael Floyd are able to wrap their hands around and beat. But apparently not against Navy—not against a team that wanted this game so bad the announcers could talk about nothing else.

Make no mistake: our offense didn’t choke this one up. The Navy defense beat us.

They beat our receivers. They beat our O-line. They beat up on our quarterback so hard he lost the ball and a scoring chance and convinced most everyone that Evan Sharpley was going to have to try to win this game.

Which, if you remembered the last time Evan Sharpley started against Navy, did not exactly bring warm fuzzy feelings to the cockles of your frazzled heart.

I was also concerned about the play of Michael Floyd. Especially in the fourth quarter, Jimmy gravitated toward his favorite target, and Floyd did not quite come through in the clutch. Was it the defenders? Was it fear of ripping the ball down too hard and injuring his collarbone again? Or was his head just not all the way in the game because he’s been out for seven weeks, and he is—dare I say it—a little rusty?

That interception was just bizarre. What was Floyd doing on that play? It looked almost like he was trying to block the defender, as though it was some sort of run play or something—and then he couldn’t turn around fast enough to even see the ball that was flying in his direction, and it bounced off his back and a Navy guy caught it—and now Jimmy’s 3-for-3 on interceptions that weren’t his fault.

Those Navy guys swarmed to the ball like we did against Boston College. It was a little terrifying. And unexpected—we’ve been so good at ball control this season.

But once again, I maintain that we partially beat ourselves in this game by having too much faith in our ability to win in the clutch. We HAVE to start playing in the first and second quarters like we do in the fourth. Which is easy to say but harder to do, considering how much more tired the defenses are in the fourth quarter.

The Navy game is proof, just like the USC game was—you cannot count upon your ability to make it happen in the fourth quarter. You cannot. You have to play 100% of the football game—play like it’s the fourth quarter all the time.

Navy did. We didn’t.



The Red Zone is Not Our Friend

I think if Charlie calls a pitch play on a first-and-goal one more time I’m going to have a seizure. “Oh, sure, we’re two yards away from the endzone, let’s toss the ball BACK five yards, the defense won’t have any time to adjust to THAT before our player gets close to the goal line!”

………………………………………….ugh.

I don’t know what it is. I don’t know WHY our team can’t score from less than 20 yards out. It is not only pathetic but alarming.

Granted, in this game, especially toward the end, turnovers were our biggest obstacle to getting in the endzone.

But even so…it’s not as though it’s just this game, and just against this clawing, persistent Navy defense that we’ve failed to come through from scoring territory. It’s every game this season. It’s one thing to come away from a possession without scoring—it’s quite another to come away from the red zone five, six times a game with a field goal or less.

How consistent we are in this deficiency. Oh goody! Consistency!


Defense.

Struggled against the triple option, more than they did last year. Came through in the fourth quarter once again when our offense needed some desperate chances to score. Disappointed at that huge pass they gave up—but when a team is running and running and running the ball all game, how much can you really prepare for that? I mean, I guess you can cuss at our secondary if you like, seeing as we’ve been giving up deep balls all season long—but really, when you’re holding a team like Navy to three TDs in a game, and almost equal time of possession through the first half…

There were plenty of things I would have liked to see the defense do a little better, but really, against this style of offense, you’re going to be on your heels most of the time trying to figure out where the ball’s going. And the Navy quarterback played his system very well. The one thing I might’ve asked for more is a turnover. That’s what our offense really needed our defense to do—and granted, our defense is a lot better at interceptions than forced fumbles, and it’s hard to pop the ball out of the hands of the disciplined players you’ll find at the Naval Academy….but it would’ve been nice.

Even so, I don’t think our defense lost this game. I think the Navy defense won this game. Even though our offense (and our special teams with those onside kicks) tried really hard at the end to make the Navy D's effort fall short.



So…Pittsburgh next week

Let’s hope this week was a wake-up call. We’re going to have to play a little tougher and a little harder in every quarter from here on out if we have any hope of being the kind of team we want to be next year.

I don’t know how the Irish nation / the team is feeling in general after that game, but I maintain that the players have their standards set high for next season. And at the moment they’re slipping away from the pinnacle they’re trying to achieve. And I anticipate that the pollsters will rightly punish them for it, and that even a win against Pitt—unless it is a solid throwdown of a win—frankly isn’t going to help us much.

So unless we’re throwing up 40 points this week and we demolish UConn and Stanford, we can pretty much say good-bye to any bowl game higher than the Gator.

Although you never know. Those bowl scouts—they’re a funny bunch of squirrels, and they think mostly in profit margins. So if they think ND fans will come out in droves to see us play, for example, in the Cotton Bowl, we could easily end up in a place we don’t belong.

We could also easily start playing like it’s a place we DO belong, but after last weekend I’m a little too heartsore to be feeling very optimistic about our chances of winning the kind of bowl game that has any weight to it at all.

Lou always says “it’s a different team every week”—and we can assume the man knows what he’s talking about. So I expect this week’s team to be a far cry (in the RIGHT direction) from the team that just lost to Navy. (It’s like a twilight zone, typing those words, but I have to do it to convince myself that it’s not just a hallucination, and to adjust myself to the new paradigm of thought that must exist in order for Irish fans to accept that we are, in fact, now living in a world in which our football team may occasionally lose to Navy.)

Anyway. Looking ahead….

We’re going to get more chances to score against Pitt, because Pitt isn’t running the triple option and (hopefully) our run defense will be as staunch as it was against USC so that they can’t chew exorbitant amounts of time off the clock. We’re also going to play better against Pitt as a whole, because we just got smacked in the face by Navy. (Or, conversely, we’re going to play like hell against Pitt, but I personally have full confidence in this squad—unlike previous squads—to bounce the f*** back when they’re down.)

But I haven’t actually looked to see how good Pitt is compared to their ranking (#9? They're probably quite good), soooo…let’s just wait it out til Saturday night and see how this shit goes down.

GO IRISH BEAT PANTHERS!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Candyland

Notre Dame 40, Washington State 14

The Irish spent Saturday night strolling down the colorful lanes of Candyland, stuffing their pockets with bonbons and lollipops and ice cream floats and tossing their opponents into the Molasses Swamp.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dembicer/126630489/in/photostream/

Appropriate, considering it was Halloween, and the Irish are 15-0 in games played on the 31st of October.



Rumbling Through the Gumdrop Mountains

Is it just me, or did the Washington State defense make our running attack look particularly spectacular last weekend? It's pretty hard to say boo to 255 yards rushing and 5.3 yards per carry. Robert Huuuuuuughes racked up 131 yards on the ground (as well as 51 through the air) and 1 TD, more than making up for the absence of injured lead running back Armando Allen. There is absolutely nothing that is not fun about watching your lead runner consistently pound it into traffic and knock three guys over at once while lunging for first downs. The WSU defense might have been a bunch of squidgy, sugar-coated gumdrops for all the difference it made to our runners.

But gumdrops are an exceedingly appropriate metaphor, seeing as they do occasionally glob onto you if you don't watch out. Case in point: the speedy, scrappy play of Theo Riddick (right), who on more than one occasion looked like he was going to make a break for the endzone, only to get tripped up by his shoestrings. You have to give credit to the WSU defense for that, at least--Theo's the fastest guy on the team, and if WSU didn't manage to stuff the run, at least they managed to stop our runners from churning up more than 20 yards at a time. But Theo was pretty sweet to watch nevertheless, and what I loved most about him was the passion he brought to the game--almost every time he was downed, he pounded the ball to the ground as if to say, "Damn! I shoulda had more."

Which is more or less exactly the attitude you want every single player on your team to have, if you expect to go forth and win any games at all.

So, props to you, Irish rushing attack. Not only did you pound it to the WSU defense all day long, you helped us rack up massive amounts of time on the clock, leading the Irish to win the time of possession battle in fine fashion, 40:54 to Washington State's 19:06. (And this week, winning the time of possession actually meant something.)


Soaring Over the Rainbow Trail

And by that, I mean Golden Tate.

So, if you're like me and you just can't get enough of Golden Tate's spectacular Hail Mary touchdown grab in between the hands of three Washington State defenders...here's a little highlight clip for you.

Also in this clip is Charlie Weis's other pick for "play of the game"--the mad dash by Mike Ragone to stop a WSU player for returning our blocked punt for a score, which also deserves a ROY G. BIV nod of recognition.





Every week, there is more to say about Golden Tate. The man is absolutely unstoppable. He does it through the air. He does it on the ground. (He waves his hand around a lot and catches things on special teams.) Because it's not enough to have four grabs for 80 yards and 1 receiving touchdown. It's not enough to have 61 yards on the ground (including the longest run of the game, at 33 yards) and 1 rushing touchdown. Golden Tate must also have the absolute greatest stat of the game--which was that after the first half, he had more all-purpose yards by himself than the entire WSU offense combined.

Tate is currently #3 in the country in receiving yards with 927, sandwiched in between players from the apparently juggernaut offenses of Bowling Green, Hawaii (#1 and #2 in receiving yards) and Toledo (both the #3 and #4 receivers in terms of yardage play for the Rockets). Unranked teams in Ohio apparently have killer pass offenses this year...who knew?

And Golden Tate wasn't even the #1 receiver on our team this week (in # of receptions). That distinction goes to Kyle Rudolph--apparently Coach Weis remembered he could catch the ball and decided to actually throw it to him this week. Six catches for 59 yards and a tidy little collection of first downs...no complaints there. Though of course it seemed like every time Kyle Rudolph had a really big play, it got called back on a penalty. Speaking of which...


Our Very own Molasses Swamp

Six penalties on offense is far too many. And two completely unnecessary personal fouls on Eric Olsen that negated two really spectacular plays? Inexcusable. Olsen's a senior. It's way too late in the game for this kind of nonsense. (You know what, Eric, you better just sit there for a while and wait until I draw a red card.)

The penalties were our only really reprehensible aspect of play in this game, I thought--that and our continuing failure to make it to the endzone after we reach the red zone. Come on, guys, seriously? We can throw 50-yard touchdown bombs to end the second half but we can't run it in from the 11?

Although I guess it is nice to say that our current kicker now holds the record for the most successive field goals made by an ND player, with 14 in a row. (Which just goes to show you how much of a priority special teams have NOT been for the Irish for, oh, pretty much forever.)


Chucking it over the Gingerbread Plum Tree

But let's not let the minor frustrations of our offense overshadow the exemplary play of our gunslingers, who both, in addition to throwing beautiful touchdown passes, also apparently have the special ability to become injured by having other people fall on them. (You know, Dayne, you don't really HAVE to follow in Jimmy's footsteps, that's...just an expression...)

That horrifying (and simultaenously brain-scratching--seriously, did YOU remember Evan Sharpley was still on the team?) moment aside, however, Dayne Crist gave us a glimpse of why he was such a highly-rated recruit, and what we can expect to see from him in the future:




As the announcers point out in the video, Crist didn't have a stellar day; only 2-of-6 for passing and then that injury...but his only significant playing time in the past two seasons was during this year's Purdue game, and as I recall it there were an awful lot of Wildcat plays called in that game. So give it another year or so, throw in some more playing experience (fingers crossed for some nice, easy fourth quarters next season) and a chance for him to catch up to the college game speed...and I'd say we have another solid passer on our hands.


Speaking of which, JimmayJimmayJimmay once again proved why he's the #2 (not #1 yet? durn) college passer in America, finishing with 22-of-27 passing (good for an 81% completion rate), 258 yards, and 2 TDs by the end of the third quarter. Not too shabby.

As I understand it, there have been a lot of rumors flying around about whether dear Jimbo's going to declare for the draft after the end of this season.

To which I say: damn fool move if he does.

But I don't think he will. I am of the opinion that Jimmy wanted to play college ball--and wanted to play at Notre Dame--for a few different reasons:
1) He wanted to start all four years.
2) He wanted to win the Heisman Trophy.
3) He wanted to win a national championship.

And he's not going to accomplish any of those this year, so I highly anticipate his return next season.

(If you don't believe me, I present to you Darius Walker & Declaring Early for the Draft: A Cautionary Tale. D-Walk, despite his obvious talent and good looks, has now been on the practice squads of 3 different NFL teams, most recently the Denver Broncos. Not exactly a superstar career so far.)

I personally, despite my enduring disdain for Jimmy Clausen, would advise him to go nowhere. (Especially, you know, if Dayne Crist is seriously injured.)




Knocking over the Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House
aka This is the story of how the Notre Dame defense lit up the field ALL--NIGHT--LONG.


I have to say, the first time the Notre Dame defense went out there and failed to force a three-and-out, I was disappointed.

But that was on WSU's fourth possession, so really, who am I to complain?

There is absolutely nothing but sweet, crunchy, peanut brittle-y goodness when it comes to the defensive play on Saturday. Sure, there were some weak patches--once when our starting secondary got beat for a TD reception to WSU's Jared Karstetter, and then after our second-string came out, missed a few tackles, and gave up another TD pass to Karstetter.

But other than that, our secondary did a pretty good job of disrupting WSU's passing game--freshman QB Jeff Tuel, who passed for 354 yards and 2 TDs against Cal, was 12-of-24 passing for 104 yards. WSU's leading receiver had 3 catches for 27 yards.

Looks to me like the WSU receivers got whacked with some pretty big sticks of peanut brittle.

In other crunchy, tasty news, our defense recorded 10 tackles for loss, 3 pass break-ups, 2 interceptions, and 5 sacks.

The rest of the defense has also decided to continue the trend of proving they can tackle as well as Kyle McCarthy. McCarthy tied for second this week in total tackles, along with Jamoris Slaughter. Both Slaughter (who, by the way, has one of my all-time favorite football player names--right up there with Golden H. Tate III, Booger McFarland, Justin White-Frisbee, and Peerless Price) and McCarthy finished with 3 solo and 1 assists in tackles, behind Kapron Lewis-Moore, who had 5 total tackles.

The best news, though, is that twenty-four of Notre Dame's players recorded tackles this week, and half of them came away with more than one tackle. Which just goes to show you that our defense knows how to play like a unit after all.

My absolute favorite defensive picture of the week has to be the one of Brian Smith (above) bearing down on Tuel from above like a sheet of flying shrapnel (good for abrasions, contusions, and incomplete passes!).


Ice Cream Floats

That's what it feels like to be on the other side of this game...like we're floating on a big, creamy, dreamy lake of--

Oh wait we're playing the triple option this week against a 6-3 Navy squad that apparently has a defense this year. Shit.

So let's just rewind to the end of this game, shall we? And stay there and celebrate with Sergio Brown for a while....

I'm not sure what's better in this picture...the aerodynamics of Sergio Brown or Golden Tate's face.

Also, if you're like me and just can't get enough of embedded video, here is a very nice highlight reel of the game, complete with intense rock song overlay. (I advise you to watch Michael Floyd's face when Charlie Weis is telling off the offense for having too many penalties, at around the 1:35 mark in the video. Even when that kid's not in the game, he is INTENSE.) Also I highly advise you to overlook the fact that this video oversteps the boundaries of the rest of this post. Or at least it does on my computer. (I'm considering a change to a new blog template, but I'm just too lazy to do anything about it right now.)





Thus concludes our stroll through Candyland.


GO IRISH BEAT NAVY!


P.S. Did anyone else notice that this game was being sponsored by the U.S. Navy? Gotta love that Navy. So classy.

Also, for those of you not watching the game at home, here is a little recap of the advertisements put out this week by Washington State University and the University of Notre Dame (paraphrased):

WSU: Guess what? We save sea otters!

ND: Oh yeah? Well we refashioned the government of Chile into a DEMOCRACY! What now? Bring it! *manly chest thump*