The Irish Roundup

Hollywood is a breeding ground for a–holes
Wallets get as big as Reggie Bush’s
Skinny girl, eat some more food
Muscle man, you look like a f–king freak

Hollywood is a nice place for the weekend
Not a place for a nice person to live
Football star, no one likes you
How’d ya learn to be so f–king mean?

Take me home to sweet South Bend
Big women at the ‘Backer
This Saturday (YEAH)
Come and see the Irish win

LET’S GO!

- NoFX, “San Francisco Fat” (censored and otherwise tweaked)

Perhaps it’s a bit of Post-BC Fatigue Syndrome or maybe some general exhaustion after a 1-6 start, but the Irish netroots have been surprisingly quiet about tomorrow’s showdown against SC. But while I can’t speak to the mood on the team or around campus, I can tell you that there’s no shortage of excitement on tap around my own home:

(Gear courtesy of bamfshirts.com)

That’s right folks, it’s FREAKING SC week! And all we can hope for is that Saturday’s game goes as badly for the Trojans as their plane flight into the ‘Bend:

USC’s football team, coaches and staff endured several terrifying minutes as their chartered flight to South Bend plummeted amid a severe thunderstorm, forcing the pilot to abort his first landing attempt.

…

USC sports information director Tim Tessalone told The Associated Press on Friday that some passengers were thrown from their seats by turbulence as lightning cracked around the storm-tossed aircraft about 9 p.m. Thursday.

“It was a little bit of a roller coaster drop there for a minute,” he said. “We had some people fly out of some seats. Everybody is fine, but it was a frightening little dip there.”

The pilot aborted the approach and circled around the storm before landing without incident about 20 minutes later to the relief of the shaken team and the spouses of some staff members also on the flight, Tessalone said.

Safety Taylor Mays said he was screaming.

At their hotel, senior defensive end Lawrence Jackson said he was going to see the team trainer because a Popsicle stick had pierced the inside of his mouth during the drop.

“That was terrifying,” fullback Stanley Havili said. “I thought I was going to die.”

Quarterback John David Booty said, “It wasn’t the worst flight I’ve ever been on, but it was definitely the biggest drop.”

Saturday’s weather report, unfortunately, calls for clear skies and temperatures in the low-70s, but not to fear: the playing field at ND stadium has once again been populated with miniaturized leprechauns with tiny little dart guns, with clear instructions to attack Trojan players and Trojan players only. (Oh, and Pete Carroll, too.) Good luck running wild in the midst of that, jagoffs.

Speaking of running: as the Irish pass defense begins to get the credit they actually deserve (that’s right, Bob Kravitz, you are an ass), and the USC quarterback situation still up in the air [EDIT: Not anymore. It's Dirty Sanchez, baby!], it’s worth taking a quick look into the question of whether the Irish have a chance to slow down a Southern Cal (yeah, I said it again) running game that currently ranks 24th in the nation at 198.2 yards per game.

For comparison’s sake, here’s what the Irish have done against the run so far this year, together with their opponents’ averages and national rankings in rushing offense:

One thing these numbers reveal is that part of the reason the Irish run defense has looked so bad, especially on paper (ranked 93rd overall, giving up 186.7 yards a game), may be due to the fact that so many of the teams ND has played so far have simply had terrific running attacks overall: by the numbers, Tailback U’s splenderrific ground game is only the fourth-best the Irish will have faced this year. Moreover, a quick comparison between the season-long rushing averages for ND’s opponents and the yards they gained on the ground against the Irish reveals that in only three of seven games have ND’s opponents gained more rushing yards than usual.

A closer look at the numbers for SC’s ground game reveals a similar situation:

The Trojans, in other words, have not exactly played a bunch of run-stoppers: and while they’ve exceeded their opponents’ averages for rushing yards allowed in all but one case (the loss to Stanford), there’s definitely reason to take a bit of hope from these numbers.

If the Irish can continue to build on their (relative) defensive successes from the past few weeks - note that if we factor out the 52-yard run on BC’s opening drive, their rushing average drops to 3.52 yards per carry on the day - and hold the Trojans under, say, 160 140 rushing yards tomorrow, I have to think they’ll have a shot. This is, of course, predicated on continuing to defend the pass well and so keeping SC’s rather mediocre 57th-ranked air attack (that’s only 232 yards per game) under wraps, perhaps forcing a turnover or two, and (here’s where it gets unlikely) also showing some signs of freaking life - and perhaps doing less stupid crap - on offense against a Trojan defense that has been nothing short of dynamic thus far, having given up more than 250 or so total yards only to Nebraska. (A few hopeful statistics, though: SC ranks only 86th in the nation with just ten forced turnovers, 55th with twelve sacks, and 86th with 33 tackles for a loss.) Whether the Irish can pull this off, especially without James Aldridge, is naturally the biggest question going into gameday, though if ND can force Saturday’s matchup into the same kind of game they played two weeks ago against UCLA - and that UCLA played against USC last year - we may get to see the Pete Carroll Face once again:

Ahh, good stuff, that.

Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow morning with some injury updates on both teams and perhaps some more thoughts on the game.

When the unbeaten Boston College Golden Eagles take the field at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday, they’ll bring with them a 6-0 record and a #4 ranking that is one of the highest in the program’s less-than-illustrious history. But they’ll also be riding a winning streak compiled against the likes of Army, North Carolina State, Bowling Green, and Div. 1-AA UMass - a schedule tough enough to be ranked only 78th in the nation by Jeff Sagarin, compared to Notre Dame’s #3-ranked schedule.

Jason Kelly’s excellent column in today’s South Bend Tribune makes this point quite effectively:

The Eagles will be a case study on the subject of mirage vs. reality.

Other than a win on the road at Georgia Tech, Boston College got to 6-0 without the strain of travel or any opponent more imposing than a pop quiz (and Notre Dame makes seven, perhaps).

In other words, the “0″ rings a little hollow. Yell into it and the echo of vanquished opponents — Army-my-my, Bowling Green-een-een, UMass-mass-mass — is faint and uninspiring. Again, not that Notre Dame merits much more respect than that right now, but the circumstances reek of a set-up.

But do the 1-5 Irish really have a shot against a team that ranks eleventh in the nation in passing yardage and third against the run? Looking more closely over the numbers, here are some reasons for hope. (Note: all statistics via NCAA.org.)

Let’s start with the BC offense. While senior signal-caller Matt Ryan has led BC to 314.2 passing yards per game, good for eleventh in the nation as noted above, the Eagles’ running game is considerably less dynamic, as their 140.7 yds/game average ranks only 70th overall. Moreover, when we look at the quality of BC’s opponents at stopping the run, we see that only two of the six teams the Eagles have played have been at all stout in this respect so far this year: Georgia Tech ranks sixth in the nation with an average of 68.5 yards given up, and Wake Forest ranks 27th with an average of 111.0. (I’m discounting UMass, whose average of 90.8 looks imposing until you remember that they play in 1-AA, and have compiled that average against the likes of Holy Cross, Colgate, Towson, and Maine.) Against those two teams, the Eagles totaled only 146 yards on the ground, though to be fair they did gain 92 yards against Georgia Tech in week three, well above the Yellowjackets’ average. If we leave out the games against NC State (ranked 114th in the nation against the run) and Army (ranked 78th), in which BC totaled 433 yards, the Eagles have yet to put together a genuinely dominant game running the ball. To be sure, an Irish defense that gives up 189.8 yards a game on the ground, good only for 96th nationwide, might be a nice opponent to pick up a third such game, but the point at present is only that BC’s stats so far this season make it far from indubitable that this will happen.

The Eagles’ vaunted passing attack actually shows a similar trend: they’ve played against only two statistically solid pass defenses - NC State (192.2 yds/game, good for 25th nationally) and (again, Div. I-AA) UMass (214.4 yds/game) - and have struggled against both, totaling only 346 yards against the two of them. Meanwhile, while the Eagles did put up 371 passing yards against Army’s 40th-ranked pass defense (so ranked, of course, thanks in part to having played Akron, Rhode Island, Temple, and Tulane), their other three opponents respectively rank only 69th (Bowling Green), 71st (Georgia Tech), and 83rd (Wake Forest) nationally in pass defense. The fact that BC’s air attack has been really effective only against teams that have shown little ability to defend against the pass this season gives reason to hope that an ND squad that ranks fourth nationally in passing yardage given up and 22nd in pass efficiency defense might be able to slow the Eagles down.

Here are those numbers in a bit more detail (my apologies for not being as much of a tech-wiz as the show-offs at HLS):

When we look in some depth at the numbers put up by BC’s defense, we find a similar trend. As noted above, the Eagles’ run defense ranks third in the nation, giving up a scant 49.7 yards per game: but while they have clearly been able to hold teams below their season-long averages, they’ve faced only one opponent with a rushing game ranked higher than 71st nationally in Div. I-A. Moreover, the fact that BC has been able to get out to some nice leads against these inferior opponents has meant that they’ve simply faced fewer situations in which teams can run the ball against them: the Eagles have rushed the ball 208 times to their opponents’ 158, and have given up a less than dominant average of 2.9 yards per carry. This isn’t to say that BC’s run defense is weak: it clearly isn’t, and it will be a big challenge for an ND rushing attack that ranks last in the nation with only 33.0 yards per game. But it is to say that the Eagles’ schedule so far hasn’t faced them with much of a threat in this department: against Georgia Tech, which is the one team they’ve faced with a top-flight running game, BC was up 14-0 at the half and 21-0 going into the fourth quarter, and the Yellowjackets threw 39 passes and were able to run the ball only 28 times.

Meanwhile, the Eagles’ passing defense has looked downright bad so far this year, giving up 290.8 yards per game, good for only 110th in the nation. To some extent this might also be a product of teams’ having to throw the ball more once they fall behind, but every BC opponent except UMass (none of whose other opponents were I-A teams) has exceeded their season-long passing average against the Eagles, in many cases by large margins. On the season, BC’s opponents have completed 59.4% of their passes for an average of 6.3 yards per attempt, making for numbers that aren’t far behind Heisman candidate Ryan’s 62.7% completion rate and 7.3 yard average. Defending the pass is by far the Eagles’ biggest weakness: they gave up 368 passing yards to Wake Forest and 351 to NC State, and while they settled down a bit by giving up an average of only 209 passing yards per game against Georgia Tech, Army, and UMass in weeks 3-5, they followed that up by reverting to early-season form and allowing Bowling Green to throw for 401 yards against them last week. If the Irish offense can recapture the form that led to a 65.4% completion rate and 377 passing yards against a similarly mediocre Purdue pass defense, there’s no reason to think that ND won’t be able to move the ball downfield against BC.

Once again, here are those numbers in a bit more detail for the stat junkies:

Like I said when I offered a similar breakdown before the game against Purdue: I have plenty of doubts as to whether the Irish can win this one. But there’s clearly hope for an upset that would, as Kelly wonderfully puts it once again, “tear down one of the new McMansions dotting the college football landscape.”

Ohh, you mean THAT rivalry …

Like OCDomer said (as well as Pat, I guess), a win is a win is a win. Even if it did come against a third-string walk-on freshman quarterback and a coach who did his best Karl Dorrell impersonation by running the ball only four times and asking said walk-on freshman to throw the ball constantly after falling behind by two scores despite the fact that there were over fifteen minutes left on the clock. And even if the Irish did manage only twelve first downs to UCLA’s twenty, and 140 offensive yards to UCLA’s 282. A win is a win is a win. And to be quite honest, it feels like a bit more than a win when it comes on a day that we get to see this face:

Good stuff. Oh, and by the way - Trojan fans, I got your “Booty for Booty” right here. (Word is, he prefers that kind anyway.)

Anyway, here are some thoughts on the game.

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The game ball goes to …

I know the easy thing to do here is to go with Maurice Crum Jr. (seven tackles, one sack, a forced fumble, two fumble recoveries, two interceptions, and a touchdown), but doing so would indicate that he actually had a better game than, say, Trevor Laws (five tackles, one sack, two pass breakups, and an all-around great job of being a pain in the butt), which in my mind is hard to say. Plus, there were two plays in the first half - eight-yard rushes by Joe Cowan and Kahlil Green, respectively - when he whiffed pretty badly on his tackles. But no question that Crum played a great second half and largely redeemed what has been a mediocre season for him so far.

In my mind, though, credit needs to go to the defense as a whole, rather than to any one or two individuals: Pat Kuntz, for instance, led the team with eight tackles and also had two pass breakups, Joe Brockington had another solid game with six tackles, and Tom Zbikowski showed some signs of life with five tackles, a sack, and a beautiful strip to force a fumble. These guys were bouncing around the field like I haven’t seen them do in years - they actually looked to be enjoying themselves. Kudos to Corwin Brown for the job he’s done in bringing this unit around.

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By the numbers

Offense:

• I already noted that the Irish had only 140 total offensive yards on the day. But that’s a bit of a misleading statistic, since the average starting field position for Notre Dame’s four scoring drives was the UCLA 27-yard line. If you don’t have far to go, you’re not going to get many yards. That said, five three-and-outs, a turnover on downs, and a drive that started at the opponent’s twelve and resulted in four yards and a field goal, do not a good offensive day make.
• If we take out the yards lost on UCLA’s three sacks and the kneel-downs at the end of the game, Notre Dame ended up with a somewhat respectable 81 rushing yards on the day, which is right at UCLA’s average for the season (though that number includes sacks, of course). James Aldridge netted 52 yards on his 22 carries, and Armando Allen provided a nice change of pace with three carries for 19 yards. Not good enough, to be sure, but also not disastrous against the Bruin defense.
• While Jimmy Clausen completed 17 of his 27 passes, they netted only 84 yards - an average of 3.1 yards per attempt. Clausen didn’t make any awful mistakes, but there were some times when he held on to the ball too long, and he didn’t look very good throwing the ball long downfield. Each of John Carlson (six catches for 38 yards), Aldridge (three for 18 yards), and Duval Kamara (two for 20 yards) had a nice day, but this passing game is going to have to do a lot more if the Irish want to beat Backup College or the Spoiled Children.
• While time of possession was evenly divided in the first half, Notre Dame held the ball for 20:15 after halftime.

Defense:

• As mentioned above, UCLA totaled 282 offense yards on the day, more than double the production of the Irish. 193 of those yards came through the air, on 16 completions - an average of 12.1 yards per completion, and a clear sign that the Irish pass defense has got to tighten up. The Bruins netted only 89 yards rushing, but that that number jumps up to 140 if we discount the yardage lost on Notre Dame’s five (!!) sacks. Still, though, all these numbers look really good against a UCLA offense that averaged 199.4 rushing yards and 225.2 passing yards coming into yesterday’s game.
• After recovering three Bruin fumbles and intercepting four passes, the Irish defense now ranks ninth in the nation with 19 forced turnovers on the season. They also rank fourth in total pass defense (and 22nd in pass efficiency) and 41st overall defensively.

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Mistake-free football

Well, not quite. We saw some pretty awful tackling at times in the first half, and there were a few times when our offensive linemen got toasted by the UCLA pass rush. There were some bad penalties, too: Raeshon McNeil getting called for a block in the back on a Zbikowski punt return a bit before halftime, pushing the Irish back to their own 30 instead of enabling them to start from midfield; Toryan Smith handing UCLA a first down on a bad pass interference penalty just after the half; Eric Olsen picking up an awful personal foul penalty that turned 3rd-and-9 into 3rd-and-24; and TWO holds called as Aldridge broke a nice run on 3rd-and-eleven near the start of the fourth. The Irish also failed once again to convert in short yardage, as Clausen’s fourth-down sneak attempt with ten minutes to go in the fourth quarter went nowhere.

But there’s no doubt that there was a major improvement in this department: my list of “inexcusables” was less than half as long as it was last week, and UCLA’s complete offensive incompetence more than made up for ND’s handful of errors.

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Worth noting:

• Leo Ferrine, David Grimes, and Dan Wenger all made the trip to Pasadena, but sat out the game with injuries.
• Justin Brown returned after missing the past two games, though he didn’t impact the box score.
• Robert Hughes didn’t see the field, nor did Matt Romine, Ray Herring, or Morrice Richardson. Chris Stewart made the trip to Pasadena, but didn’t end up playing. This was also the first game all season in which Evan Sharpley didn’t play.
• Geoff Price replaced Eric Maust as Notre Dame’s punter, and averaged 40.3 yards on nine punts, with three downed inside the twenty yard-line.

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All in all …

There’s no doubt that this team is improving, on both sides of the ball. If we take out the Michigan game, Notre Dame’s margin of defeat dropped constantly up until yesterday, from 30 points against Georgia Tech, to 21 against Penn State, to 17 against Michigan State, to 14 against Purdue. Notre Dame’s offensive line seems to have turned a corner since the debacle at the Big House, and the Irish defense has given up a total of 208 rushing yards the past two games after yielding an average of 232.8 yards in the first four weeks. Suddenly the possibility of making it to a bowl game doesn’t seem as utterly far-fetched as it once did.

Accomplishing that, though, will require pulling off a huge upset against Fredo or the Condoms. Look for the Notre Dame campus to be energized this coming week, and the stadium to be jumping when the Eagles come to town. The monkey’s off their back - now the Irish just need to keep on improving from week to week.

Against Purdue last Saturday, true freshmen and sophomores accounted for 48 of Notre Dame’s 71 rushing yards (67.6% - sacks not included) and 268 of their 377 receiving yards (71.1%). This continued what has clearly been one of the stories of the season for the Irish: they start a true freshman at quarterback in Jimmy Clausen, and each of their three leading rushers (James Aldridge, Armando Allen, and Robert Hughes) and four of their six leading receivers (Robby Parris, George West, Duval Kamara, and Golden Tate) are just one or two years removed from high school. On the season, 362 of Notre Dame’s 391 rushing yards have come via true freshmen or sophomores, as have 582 of their 822 total receiving yards - numbers good for 91.2% and 70.8% of the team’s offensive output in those categories.

How do these numbers stack up to other Division I programs, whether national championship contenders or teams in “rebuilding” mode? [NOTE: While I've done my best not to include redshirt sophomores in these statistics, I've probably made some mistakes somewhere. Where possible, I've also tried not to include sacks in the rushing totals, though that doesn't really work for teams with dual-threat quarterbacks.]

Let’s start with top-ranked LSU and USC. The Tigers start an upperclassman at quarterback in Matt Flynn, and while their #1 rusher is an upperclassmen, each of the five players who follow him in total rushing yardage are true freshmen or sophomores. Still, though, only 750 of LSU’s 1117 total rushing yards, or 67.14%, have come from underclassmen - much less than Notre Dame’s 91.2%. Meanwhile, among their receiving corps, LSU has only two underclassmen with more than 100 receiving yards on the season, and true freshmen and sophomores account for a total of 416 of their 1084 total receiving yards, or 38.4%.

USC, meanwhile, also starts an upperclassman at quarterback, but four of their five leading rushers are true underclassmen. On the whole, true freshmen or sophomores account for 71.2% of USC’s rushing yards, still far less than the percentage for Notre Dame. Only two Trojan underclassmen have 99 or more receiving yards, though, and underclassmen account for only 330 of 898, or 36.8%, of their total receiving yards.

It also seems worth looking at a few other programs with third-year coaches. One such team is the Florida Gators, who start a true sophomore at quarterback in Tim Tebow. Tebow is also the team’s leading rusher, and fellow sophomore Percy Harvin leads the team in receiving yards and is also their third-leading rusher. But on the whole, the Gators’ offense is still much less dependent on underclassmen than Notre Dame’s: 71.4% of their rushing yards come from true freshmen or sophomores, to go with 53.6% of their receiving yards.

The Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois are also in their third year under head coach Ron Zook. They start a true sophomore at quarterback in Juice Williams, but three of their four leading rushers - Williams is #2 - are upperclassmen, and underclassmen have accounted for only 267 of their 1278 rushing yards (20.9%) so far this season. Meanwhile, the leading receiver for the Illini is freshman Arrelious Benn, with 286 yards on the season, but overall their underclassmen have accounted for only 55.6% (438 of 787) of Illinois’s receiving yards.

Finally, let’s take a look at the University of Washington, in their third year under former Irish head coach Tyrone Willingham. The Huskies start a true sophomore at quarterback in Jake Locker, and he is also the team’s leading rusher. But Locker is the only UW underclassman with substantial rushing yardage, and true freshman and sophomores have accounted for 503 of the Huskies’ 804 yards on the ground so far, or 62.6%. Moreover, all of Washington’s top receivers are upperclassmen: true freshmen and sophomores have only 17 receiving yards so far this year for UW, a mere 1.97% of their 861 total.

Here’s a chart detailing those statistics:

What these numbers make clear is that Notre Dame’s offense is MUCH more reliant on true freshmen and sophomores than other programs. Moreover, the fact that the Irish have fallen behind in each of their games so far this year means that very few of these numbers are based on performance in “mop-up duty”: ND’s depth chart lists a true freshman or sophomore at either first- or second-string for every offensive position except center. Thus far this year, a huge portion of the offensive burden has been placed on players only one or two years removed from high school - and judging by how things have gone, there is no reason to think this state of affairs won’t become even more pronounced as the year goes on.

None of this is meant to excuse an 0-5 start that is the worst in Notre Dame’s history. This team has underperformed, and they have no-one but themselves to blame for that. But comparisons like this certainly help to put things in perspective.

In 2006, after Charlie Weis’s first season as Notre Dame’s head coach and a 9-3 record, the Irish pulled in Rivals’s eighth-ranked recruiting class: 28 players, with an average rating of 3.46 stars. Now three of those players - QBs Zach Frazer and Demetrius Jones, and TE Konrad Reuland - have all left the team, and another - OL Chris Stewart - is thinking of doing the same. In each case, these have been players low on the depth chart - Frazer was the #4 quarterback and Jones was a backup at best, Reuland was reportedly in a battle with freshman Mike Ragone for the #3 spot, and Stewart hadn’t seen the field at all this year - apparently looking for a place where they’ll have a better chance to play. Following up on a suggestion from domer.mq at Her Loyal Sons, though, it seems worth comparing this rate of attrition with those at other top programs.

Let’s start with Southern Cal, which had the #1-ranked 2006 class according to Rivals, with 25 total players. That class has seen the following players depart (USC’s current roster is here):

• 4* RB Kenny Ashley transferred to Ole Miss.
• 3* DT Walker Ashley transferred to Minnesota.
• 4* WR Jamere Holland was dismissed from the team.
• 4* RB Emmanuel Moody transferred to Florida.
• 4* DB Antwine Perez transferred to Maryland.
• 4* LB Joshua Tatum has left the team and is reportedly considering a transfer to Michigan.

Florida’s second-ranked class is considerably more intact (official roster here), as their only transfer so far out of 27 total players was that of 3* ATH Derrick Robinson, who quit the team to pursue a career in professional baseball. But Florida State’s third-ranked class has lost four players out of their original 31 (official roster here):

• 3* WR Brent Brewer left to play professional baseball.
• 4* OL Matt Hardrick transferred to South Florida.
• 3* LB Tim Rawlinson was declared academically ineligible and is currently at Pearl River Community College.
• 5* WR Brandon Warren left the program, but his request to transfer to Tennessee was denied by the university.

Similarly, Georgia’s fourth-ranked class has lost three players of its original 28 (official roster here):

• 4* LB Akeem Hebron had some, err, “off-the-field troubles,” and is reportedly planning on transferring to Georgia Military College.
• 3* OL John Miller left the team.
• 4* OL Clifton Gethers withdrew his commitment and enrolled at South Carolina.

And the University of Texas (official roster here) has lost five players from their original 25, which ranked fifth:

• 3* DB James Henry was arrested on two felony charges and has been suspended indefinitely.
• 4* DB Robert Joseph was suspended from the team as well and has decided to transfer.
• 4* QB Jevan Snead transferred to Ole Miss.
• 3* OL Roy Watts has transferred from the team.
• 4* OL J’Marcus Webb has also transferred.

In sum, ND’s transfer rate so far is not much to worry about. As I said, all of the players who have left, or are thinking about leaving in Stewart’s case, seem to have done so primarily because of depth chart issues, and when four-star highschoolers don’t manage to get on the playing field, that suggests that the talent level - in ND’s case, among the underclassmen - is very high.

Moreover, note that with an NCAA-imposed limit of 85 total scholarships, having a class of 28 can be a bit problematic. The Irish can get away with it - and indeed, can use all the bodies they can get - right now because of their incredibly small junior, senior, and fifth-year classes, but the size of the ‘06 class could have posed a problem down the line. That said, other schools make up for players who transfer away from their program with others who transfer TO it - whether from junior colleges or other D-I programs - and ND has a policy of not doing this.

Don’t jump, though. At this point there’s every reason to think these transfers have been a product of what’s happened on the practice field and the players’ inabilities to rise to the top, rather than ND’s lack of success this season on Saturday afternoons.

I know it’s been discussed before, but it’s worth emphasizing: if Notre Dame is going to beat Purdue this weekend, they’re going to do it by running the ball successfully. Here’s a breakdown of ND’s last four games against Purdue: two losses under Tyrone Willingham in 2003 and 2004, and two wins under Charlie Weis in 2005 and 2006.

What these numbers make clear is exactly what most of us already thought: if you run the ball successfully against the Boilermakers, you can win the game, and if you don’t, you can’t. (Let me re-emphasize this point for all those bemoaning how historically bad our offense has been this year: in 2003 and 2004 Willingham managed an average of 57.5 rushing yards a game against PURDUE.)

When asked about his game plan for Saturday, Coach Weis said on Tuesday that a key aspect of it is “that you have to try your best to try to keep their offense off the field.” Interestingly, though, a closer look at Purdue’s numbers from last year doesn’t necessarily bear out the specific importance of possessing the ball for long periods of time. Here’s a game-by-game rundown of Purdue’s wins and losses from the 2006 season, with their opponents’ rushing statistics and time of possession:

So these numbers don’t indicate a strong relationship between POSSESSING the ball, and so keeping the Purdue offense off the field, and beating the Boilermakers. They do, though, reemphasize the importance of gaining serious yardage on the ground, and also give further support to a point I made yesterday: namely, that Purdue is REALLY BAD at defending the run. (316 rushing yards given up to ILLINOIS?!)

Come Saturday, then, the best hope for Irish fans rests on the backs of the four horses.

When the o-4 Notre Dame Fighting Irish arrive in West Lafayette to face the 4-0 Purdue Boilermakers, they’ll have their work cut out for them. Purdue is ranked #25 in the nation in the coaches’ poll, and is just one spot out of the top 25 according to the AP. They also rank seventh in the nation in scoring offense with 48.5 points per game, and eighth in total offense with 527 yards per game.

Nor is Purdue the kind of pass-first, pass-second, pass-third, run rarely team that some might take them to be: the Boilermakers are averaging almost 203 yards per game on the ground, good for 29th in the nation, to go with their twelfth-ranked passing offense (324 yards/game). While ND head coach Charlie Weis said in his press conference yesterday that Purdue is still “a passing team first,” one that runs the ball “to keep you honest,” it’s clear that this has worked well so far for them in both categories: they average almost six yards per rush, and have given up only three sacks in their first four games.

None of this bodes well for an Irish defense that, while it ranks 52nd in the nation in yardage against at 352 yards per game, is 91st in scoring defense (as BGS noted earlier this week, the chief reason for this disparity rests in field position: Irish opponents have had to go 45 yards or less on eleven of their 23 scoring drives). ND’s defense looks good statistically against the pass, giving up only 120 yards per game (good for 55th in the nation), but this is largely a factor of the “blowout” quality of their losses: teams have run for an average of 232.8 yards per game against the Irish, leaving ND’s rushing defense with a national ranking of 111th.

All of this adds up to a point spread that favors the Boilermakers by more than three touchdowns, and a general sense that Notre Dame’s first-ever 0-5 start is all but inevitable.

But is it? Sticking just with the numbers once again, I think Irish fans can find a few reasons for hope:

• The first lies in the extremely low quality of opponents that Purdue has played thus far. The Boilermakers blew out 1-3 Toledo, 2-2 Eastern Illinois, 1-3 Central Michigan, and 1-3 Minnesota in the first four weeks of the season: hardly a gauntlet of the sort that the Irish have faced. (For what it’s worth, Toledo, Central Michigan, and Minnesota are ranked 86th, 107th, and 100th in the nation by SI, and Eastern Illinois is a I-AA team. Compare this to ND’s opponents: both Penn State and MSU are either ranked or just outside the top 25 in both polls, while Michigan ranks 30th and Georgia Tech 44th.)
• The second lies in the generally low quality of the defenses that Purdue has had to face. Toledo ranks 106th in the nation in total defense, giving up 476 yards per game, while Eastern Illinois (386 yds/game) ranks 99th, Central Michigan (509.8 yds/game) 115th, and Minnesota (543.3 yds/game) 119th. It sounds strange to say it, but the Fighting Irish will be the BEST defensive team that Purdue has faced so far this year.
• The third point relates to the overall quality of Purdue’s defense: while the Boilermakers rank 15th in pass efficiency defense at 97.3 yards per game, they’ve given up 147 yards per game on the ground, good for 61st in the nation, and last week’s game saw Minnesota rush for 232 yards against them. This bodes well for an Irish running game that started to get rolling last week, with their three underclassmen tailbacks totaling 150 yards between them against a Michigan State team that ranks 26th in the nation in rushing defense. If the Irish can run the ball effectively once again and keep Purdue off the field, they’ll have a shot.

In sum: this is going to be a tough one for the Irish, but the fact is that they’ve squared up against four quality opponents so far this season while Purdue has been able to cakewalk. Will the Irish win? I have my doubts. But look for them to put a scare into the West Lafayette crowd come Saturday.

(Team statistics courtesy of NCAA.org.)

Despite a “back to training camp” mentality in practice this week, Charlie Weis’s Fighting Irish came up short yet again this week, falling to 0-4 for the first time in Notre Dame’s illustrious history. Here’s my analysis of what went wrong (and, occasionally, right)

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The turning pointLooking back at a game like this - so close through the first half, then out of hand so quickly - the question of what went wrong is a natural one. The answer, though, is quite obvious: just take a look at the first two drives of the second half.

The trouble started when ND’s opening kickoff of the second half was returned 52 yards to the Irish 45 yard line. It took MSU less than three minutes to march down the remainder of the field on a drive that included two long completions on 3rd-and-9 and 3rd-and-17 respectively, topped off by a 16-yard touchdown pass to Mark Dell that increased the Spartan lead to 24-14.

The next nail was driven in on ND’s very next drive. After an 18-yard rush by James Aldridge to the ND 42, the Irish picked up eight more yards on their next two plays and faced 3rd-and-2 from their own 50. But Aldridge and Robert Hughes were stopped short on consecutive carries, and the Irish turned the ball over to MSU at midfield.

The Spartans scored again two drives after this last big stop, to make the score 31-14, and the Irish didn’t complete another first down until the game’s final drive, long after the outcome was no longer in doubt.

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By the numbers

In lieu of a lot of amateurish analysis of such things as blocking schemes, missed tackles, and so on, I’ve pored over the box score to find a few statistics that I think are especially helpful in encapsulating today’s game from the ND perspective. The good

• With 18 carries for 104 net yards, sophomore James Aldridge became the first ND tailback to break the century mark this year. Aldridge and fellow underclassmen Robert Hughes (6 rushes, 33 yards, 1 TD) and Armando Allen (3 rushes, 13 yards) totaled 150 rushing yards between them, with an average of 5.6 yards/rush.
• Maurice Crum Jr. led the Irish with 16 total tackles (6 solo, 10 assisted). David Bruton was next with 15 (8 solo), followed by Trevor Laws with nine (all assisted, as well as a fumble recovery) and Joe Brockington with seven (3 solo). It was nice to see Crum have such a solid week after being so quiet in the UM game.
• Freshmen Kerry Neal - a sack, a batted pass, and two hits on the quarterback - and Brian Smith - three tackles, one for a loss - had solid games and showed a lot of energy. Look to see even more of them against Purdue. Fellow frosh Ian Williams - four tackles, one solo, from his DT position - also played well once again.

The bad

• Jimmy Clausen - 7-of-13 passing for only 53 yards and a fumble - had a really tough day. In his postgame press conference, Weis made it clear that the decision to pull Clausen in favor of Evan Sharpley near the start of the fourth quarter was not based on Clausen’s poor play or on a desire to “protect” the prized freshman, but was motivated by the fact that ND had to start passing the ball more and Sharpley was more experienced and so better equipped to run a “two-minute”-type of offense.
• Wideouts George West - three catches for 25 yards - and David Grimes - three catches, two of them really difficult ones, for 24 yards - both had decent days, given how quiet ND’s passing game was. But even given the continuing struggles of the offensive line, it’s hard to see how a large part of the burden for ND’s lethargic air attack doesn’t fall on the inability of our wide receivers and tight ends to get open.

The ugly

• Spartan tailbacks Javon Ringer and Jehuu Caulcrick shredded the Irish defense for 227 yards between them, on 46 carries.
• The Irish netted only nine total first downs, only three of them coming in the second half. Of those three, two of them came on long runs by James Aldridge in ND’s first two drives, and the last came on the last play of the game, a pass to John Carlson on 4th-and-6.
• While Spartan QB Brian Hoyer completed only eleven of his 24 passes, those completions went for a total of 135 yards (an average of 12.3 yds/comp) and FOUR touchdowns.

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The inexcusablesOne of the biggest problems the Irish have faced over the past few weeks is a tendency for stupid mistakes, bad penalties, and other sorts of errors that are frankly inexcusable for a top-flight team (think Justin Brown getting tossed out of the GT game, Travis Thomas getting into a fistfight against PSU, and so on). Here’s a rundown, based on my own back-of-the-envelope notes, of how ND did in these categories against Michigan State. (The moral in short: not well.)

Going nowhere on the ground

• The play-by-play shows six rushing plays (sacks not included) for negative yardage, two for no gain, and four for only one yard.

Failing to convert on third- or fourth- and short

• I marked down two key junctures where this happened: one on ND’s third drive of the game, where Asaph Schwapp got the ball on 3rd-and-1 and was brought down for no gain; and the other, mentioned above, on ND’s first drive of the second half, where Aldridge picked up one yard on 3rd-and-2 and Robert Hughes was then held to no gain on 4th-and-1.

Bad penalties

• On MSU’s second drive of the game, with ND leading 7-0, Brian Hoyer completed a 25-yard pass to the ND 24 yard line and was clearly pushed to the ground by Trevor Laws. The penalty was marked off half the distance to the goal, and the Spartans scored three plays later.
• After ND held MSU on their third drive of the game, with the score tied 7-7, MSU punter Aaron Bates sent a kick out of bounds at the ND 17 yard line. Travis Thomas, who has had a remarkable tendency to commit bad penalties this year, was called for holding, and the ball was brought back to the 9.

Old-fashioned mental mistakes

• On ND’s first drive after the first MSU touchdown, Irish punter Geoff Price dropped the snap and barely managed to get away a 27-yard kick.
• Inside two minutes to go in the first half, with ND facing 3rd-and-13 from their own 30 yard line, the Irish were called for delay of game.
• Toward the end of the third quarter, with MSU facing 4th-and-2 from the ND 34 yard line, the Irish were nearly whistled for an illegal substitution but managed to call a timeout beforehand. On the very next play, MSU tight end Kellen Davis blew by a flatfooted Maurice Crum for a 34-yard touchdown catch.
• Later in the third quarter, Price made yet another mistake, this time a punt that shanked off his foot and sailed out of bounds, for a net of only eleven yards.

Kick coverage

• We’ve already discussed the opening kick of the second half, which was returned 52 yards to the Irish 45 yard line by MSU’s Devin Thomas. The Spartans were in the end zone less than three minutes later, for a 24-14 lead.
• In the middle of the third quarter, a 54-yard Geoff Price punt that was caught at the MSU 15 yard line was returned 18 yards. Ten plays and 67 yards later, the Spartan lead stood at 31-14.

Not getting rid of the ball on time

• Jimmy Clausen seemed to have less of a problem in this area than in weeks past, but there were some times where he still held on for too long when he should have thrown it away. Obviously the key instance of this came near the start of the second quarter, when Clausen ran backwards as the pocket collapsed and had the ball taken right out of his hands by MSU’s Jonal Saint-Dic.

Pass protection

• ND only gave up four sacks for a total of 32 yards - an improvement after giving up 24 in their first three games, but still not satisfactory.

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Injury worriesAny Irish fan whose heart didn’t skip a beat when it looked like John Sullivan might have to leave the game mustn’t have been following the team too carefully. With backup center Dan Wenger out indefinitely with an undisclosed injury, junior walk-on Thomas “The Man, The Myth, The Legend” Bemenderfer was ND’s only remaining center. Thankfully, Sullivan was able to return.

One thing I didn’t see talked about was the fact that defensive end Justin Brown sat out today’s game with an undisclosed injury, with Derrell Hand taking his starting spot. It’s unclear how serious Brown’s injury is and from what I know it wasn’t talked about much before the game, but here’s what Michael Rothstein had to say about it earlier this week:

Justin Brown is looking a little bit hobbled these days. During a running lines drill the Irish typically do, every other player did side steps while Brown lugged along straight ahead. He also stretched with a trainer instead of another player and was doing calf and leg stretching maneuvers while the rest of the Irish were doing other stretches. And he looked very awkward doing so. As another reporter put it, he was the definition of ‘gingerly.’

Yikes. As we all said after the Hand “incident”, the last thing this team needs is a loss of bodies along the defensive line. We’ll have to keep an eye on this one.

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In sum, this game was obviously a huge disappointment, though there were signs of improvement - in particular the running game and some signs of life along the offensive line - that give reason for hope. But the things the Irish did wrong - in particular the second straight week of shoddy defense and tackling, a startlingly inept passing game, an inability to pick up crucial first downs on short yardage, a once-again bad job of covering kick returns after an improvement in this area against Michigan, and several key mental mistakes in big spots, not to mention the way things completely derailed after a couple of bad sequences at the start of the second half - give reason to be seriously concerned.Charlie Weis and the rest of the coaching staff have got a lot of work to do. They’re out of free passes at this point.

(This builds on something I posted a month or so ago at IrishEnvy, but it updates the numbers and goes in a bit of a different direction.)

As most people know, Notre Dame’s current group of 19 committed players for their 2008 recruiting class is ranked #1 overall by both Scout and Rivals. As anyone who follows recruiting will be quick to remind you, though, the programs that have been the best at recruiting in recent years - Florida and USC in particular, with just 8 and 14 total commitments respectively - are just getting started, so it’s hard to say where ND’s class will be ranked overall when National Signing Day rolls around.

Nevertheless, we can get some sense of how to answer this question by comparing ND’s class as it currently stands to Charlie Weis’s recruiting classes from the past two years. At present, four of ND’s committed players have received five stars from Scout.com, eleven have received four stars, and four others have received three stars. Meanwhile, Rivals has given five stars to just one ND commit, but fourteen others have four stars and the final three have three stars. As the following table shows, those numbers stack up pretty well against ND’s classes from the past two years:

One thing this chart makes clear is that according to both recruiting services, the average star rating of an ND recruit has gone up each year under Weis, to the point where now our average recruit is just about a four-star player. (For comparison’s sake, the average star rating in Tyrone Willingham’s banner year of 2003 was 3.52 from Scout and 3.41 from Rivals.) So while our number of genuinely elite, five-star players still hasn’t reached the level of a Florida or a USC, our overall player quality is more than respectable.

What’s in a way even more interesting, though, is that the total number of “points” given to this recruiting class by both services is already higher than the number of points received by either of our previous two classes, including the group from 2006 which was nearly half again as large as our current class. Obviously there might be a bit of inconsistency in terms of how points are assigned from year to year, but it’s instructive to compare the current class to the very top overall classes from previous years in this respect: in 2007, a total of 3,685 points would have been good for the #7-ranked class from Scout, and in 2006 this total would have been good for the #1 overall ranking. Meanwhile, Rivals would have given a class that received 2,226 points their #6 ranking in 2007 and their #8 ranking in 2006. (For comparison’s sake, it’s perhaps also worth mentioning that Willingham’s 2003 class earned 2,338 points from Scout and 1,756 points from Rivals, though inter-year variability in how points are assigned is probably even more extreme here.) Once again, the possibility of year-to-year inconsistency in the assignment of points makes these statistics a bit hard to interpret, but they do give us good reason to believe that even if Notre Dame doesn’t manage to land ANY more commitments for this year, the present group of 19 will be good enough for a top ten ranking from both services.

This last remark - that ND’s current recruiting class is probably “top ten” caliber even as it stands - raises obvious questions about how good it will be if the class grows larger. But that’s a post for another day.