Very Post Game Observations (Michigan State) ....

[ACamp1900]

Tommy has been better than many expected and deserves a ton of credit... Yesterday though he missed a lot of throws and that left points off the board... He was high on any pass over the middle of the field all day...

With that said, I'd rather him be high than throw three picks...

 

[phgreek]

1. The offense looked pretty bad; 82 yard net rushing, 142 yards passing on 34 attempts. Rees looked like he was off just a bit, for most of the night. And I have to wonder whether or not BK has a pass play in the playbook that is LESS than 20 yards down the field. We kept trying to go deep on these guys. Maybe the coaches saw something on film, but when that wasn't working a majority of the time, and your QB looks a little rusty; start calling some short and medium length pass plays. Let your QB, and your offense, get into a rhythmn.

2. The defense didn't play particularly well, but they didn't svck, either. They only gave up 254 total yards, and 13 points. But the philosophy is what worries me. It's not a big secret, that Diaco's philosophy is to keep everything in front of the Defense, fly to the ball to prevent big YACs, and wait for the offense to make a mistake. One of the things that I have noticed, this year, is that when ND gets off of the field on 3rd down, it is usually because of an offensive mistake, not a great defensive play. We play a lot of quality teams, with our schedule. Quality teams are quality teams because they don't normally make a lot of unforced errrors. So we need to get better on D. I'm sure this is no surprise to any of you, and certainly not to the coaching staff. But once you realize what it is that ND is doing, you watch the game a little differently. You don't have a stroke, every time your opponent puts a drive together. You don't freak out on every ND offense's 3 and out.

3. Not one single turnover by the offense. Great job of taking care of the ball, in what looked to be a pretty physical game.

4. The freshmen got their chances........ Corey Robinson probably earned himself a starting spot, or at least a spot in the WR rotation, for the rest of the season. This kid could end up being VERY good. Folston didn't impress much. Not enough for me, or anyone else, to clamor to give him more PT.

5. The run blocking by the Offensive line looked as bad as I have seen it, in the last two seasons. They pass blocked well, in that Rees seemed to have plenty of time in the pocket. But there were WAY too many defenders meeting the RBs, head on, in the hole.

6. This is not, nor is it likely to be, the same caliber of team as went to the BCS Championship Game, last year. But they are a talented team that never quits, and has not shown a propensity to panic, either, thus far. 10 wins are a fair possibility, although it may look ugly getting there.

Thanks for the MI state tag on the end...some of your older ones floated up ...

I agree with most of it...and in terms of c
alming down...you covered the philosophy well. But I think there is some criticism of coaches out there. My contribution to the call to relax is this....23-3 ... thats our record over the last 26 games with THIS staff....23-3 against an ND schedule...

 

[pkt77242]

Its not just an issue of playing good. Rees can play lights out every start and still not give you what Golson brings to the table. His lack of mobility limits the play calling and also gives the defense a huge advantage of not having to concern themselves with QB contain. Kellys O is designed for a mobile QB. If anything, the mostly seamless transition from Golson to Rees full time should be a huge indicator of Kellys ability to adapt offensively. Pike was fine in his role at Cincy, it was much like Rees's last year a closer and strictly passing option, not someone the offense was built around.

You do realize that Pike did not play the closer role at Cincy right?

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Tommy has been better than many expected and deserves a ton of credit... Yesterday though he missed a lot of throws and that left points off the board... He was high on any pass over the middle of the field all day...

With that said, I'd rather him be high than throw three picks...

Hey Acamp, you obviously watched the game while not sideways, did you think some of the high throws were timing, with the receivers being disrupted by the MSU DB's?

 

[Emcee77]

Tommy looked pretty great throwing deep balls for three games ... then suddenly yesterday he looked wildly inaccurate. I just don't know what to say about it. I mean, it's not like he was under pressure.

Kelly was just as confused and frustrated. Everyone should watch his postgame comments to the press on und.com. If there was any doubt, Kelly made it real clear what was happening: MSU loaded the box and played man coverage the whole game, and when a tough team does that, you throw over the top. Rees did that; he just missed open guys. You should see the video of Kelly explaining that to the press. The frustration at Rees's inaccuracy is evident on Kelly's face.

Tommy had a bad night. He will shake it off and come out ready to play next week, just like we need him to.

Hey Acamp, you obviously watched the game while not sideways, did you think some of the high throws were timing, with the receivers being disrupted by the MSU DB's?

I was wondering the same thing. Hard to tell watching on TV because you usually can't watch the whole route.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Tommy looked pretty great throwing deep balls for three games ... then suddenly yesterday he looked wildly inaccurate. I just don't know what to say about it. I mean, it's not like he was under pressure.

Kelly was just as confused and frustrated. Everyone should watch his postgame comments to the press on und.com. If there was any doubt, Kelly made it real clear what was happening: MSU loaded the box and played man coverage the whole game, and when a tough team does that, you throw over the top. Rees did that; he just missed open guys. You should see the video of Kelly explaining that to the press. The frustration at Rees's inaccuracy is evident on Kelly's face.

Tommy had a bad night. He will shake it off and come out ready to play next week, just like we need him to.

A) Not under pressure. Correct. That was an awesome job by the O-line against what I will bet will end up one of the best pass rush lines in the country.

B) If your receivers, particularly those running long routes are getting jammed and hammered, won't that majorly disrupt your timing, just as you have described? All your balls to the long receivers will be long.

C) And in that case shouldn't you throw underneath?

 

[twig21]

I want to use a Major Tournament Golf analogy for Brian Kelly. I believe this is what is driving us crazy and making these games so darn close. Kelly really has the instincts and intuition that tells him where his team is at. He knows he doesn't have the leadership like he had last year with Manti, Motta, Klm, Eifert, etc.
This is a different team, different personality. Maybe the defense assumed they were going to dominate and they are getting a dose of reality. Anyway...if you listen to Kelly's press conference he quite often talks about slugging it out and getting the game into the 4th quarter, even with a team like Purdue. So, how does this relate to Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger or other great champions? They would go into a major tournament, look at the course set up and their main competition and have a score in mind as to what would probably win the tournament. They would mold their "game plan" to that score and manage their game accordingly. I believe Kelly like he has said so many times is just trying to win games. This week was slug it out, even if ugly and don't turn it over! Thus the agonizing pass routes. Only our receivers could catch them, they usually didn't, but they couldn't be picked. Kelly had a score in mind and he planned around that. When Golson comes back and Diaco finds some leaders on D things will change, until then Kelly is a US Open type coach.

 

[anarin]

1- Rees was awful. The offense is strapped because of him. If I knew that Hendrix wouldn't be worse as a passer I'd say give him a shot.
2- The Spartan D-Line was better at the point of attack.
3- I'm not convinced the O-Line are great run blockers. Excellent pass blockers though.
4- We have one good pass rusher (Prince Shembo), Ishaq just looks extra slow to me.
5- Thank god Diaco played Grace more.
6- Koyack may not have potential
7- Robinson looks like a good one.
8- The runningback situation needs to be cleared up, and the offensive line isn't helping.

I'm glad to see the win. For all that think Oklahoma is going to blow us out, you didnt see them play a horrid WVU team.

 

[Buster Bluth]

The play calling is just putrid. We were so lucky to get that touchdown before the half. WTF is Kelly doing. 1st down from the two yard line. You run it twice, at least. If you don't get it the first two times, maybe try the fade. Everything was just so predictable today. Thankfully we won't play a defense like MSU every week, but still.

So your answer to predictability is to do what 85% of coaches would do? Hmmmm.

My biggest critique, while the running game was bad, is why the F do we only throw to the perimeter. The middle of the field was wide open soooooooooo many times. I can recall about two plays that were thrown to the deep middle. One time to TJ Jones and it was just slightly overthrown by Rees, but he was wide open.

Agreed.

PLEASE ditch the WR screen. It's a joke.

How many times did they run that yesterday?

 

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

I'd like to see the stats of how we ran when going left, right, and up the middle. On both of Cam's 4 yard losses it was to the left. Really weird since there are two future draft picks on that side. I think it is just predictability.

 

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

How many times did they run that yesterday?

Probably 4 or 5 I would guess.

 

[Buster Bluth]

1- Rees was awful. The offense is strapped because of him. If I knew that Hendrix wouldn't be worse as a passer I'd say give him a shot.

He didn't turn the ball over and we beat the #1 defense in the country, and a ranked team. I'm not calling for his head.

 

[ACamp1900]

Hey Acamp, you obviously watched the game while not sideways, did you think some of the high throws were timing, with the receivers being disrupted by the MSU DB's?

Prob a little of that for sure.... But for the most part Tommy just missed his throws he was way too high on a number of passes... Again though, we won and he didnt throw a pick... To Emcees point, he missed most of his throws over the middle of the field, it's hard to explain but he's clearly not as accurate as he is going to either sideline, at least he wasn't yesterday,... Overall on the season the kid is getting stacked boxes and teams are making him beat them... He's 3-1...

 

[twig21]

He didn't turn the ball over and we beat the #1 defense in the country, and a ranked team. I'm not calling for his head.

This is what I was referring to. We won the turnover battle and the game. Kelly and we "experts" know what we have in Tommy, he can't extend plays or run the ball. In the mean time, be happy Kelly knows how to win. We never would of won this type of game yesterday in the past. This team might not have a identity yet, but Kelly and staff has definitely taught them how to win. By the way, those calling for Longo's head last week!
We went toe to toe with a big, physical team down the stretch. I don't hear people giving him credit now. One day in the not too distant future ND will have the team we all want.
Its easier to be patient if they keep winning, hard to watch, but much better than the past.

 

[anarin]

He didn't turn the ball over and we beat the #1 defense in the country, and a ranked team. I'm not calling for his head.

That is a terrible way of thinking about your starting QB. You aren't supposed to be happy that your QB didn't lose the game for you, you must have been a fan of Trent Dilfer.

Yes they beat a good defense (dont skew their actual worth by throwing #1 out there), and last I saw they weren't ranked in the AP.

I also didn't call for his head. There are no better options.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

I'd like to see the stats of how we ran when going left, right, and up the middle. On both of Cam's 4 yard losses it was to the left. Really weird since there are two future draft picks on that side. I think it is just predictability.

That may have been Christian pulling and clogging the hole again. I saw him do that once and I believe Cam was running . . .

 

[FDNYIrish1]

Happy with the win first and foremost. This team can get frustrating to watch but I'll take it. Looked like chuck and duck out there sometimes against the man defense. I like the chances of our receivers in those situations one on one but Tommy was a little off yesterday.
Those WR screens are a little annoying at times, but seems like in the absence of a steady running game we are trying to almost use those as a substitute.
My biggest problem is aggression on defense. I know they didnt give up many points but I would like to see this D-line pin their ears back sometimes instead of gap play. Blow up the field and wreak some havoc. Like was mentioned earlier, it looks like they are a half step slow instead of blowing off the line. Let our athletes be athletes. This is just my eye test from watching. I don't have the stats most of you do but this is what I see.

 

[Sherm Sticky]

Hey Acamp, you obviously watched the game while not sideways, did you think some of the high throws were timing, with the receivers being disrupted by the MSU DB's?

I think that was part of the issue bogs, the other part is the farther the throw the less accurate the pass.

Kelly said that the corners were mugging the wr's down field. There could have been more pi's called.


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[IrishLax]

My singular post game observation:
This team is just not very good relative to last year. Despite superior talent at a couple positions, there are some glaring deficiencies that coupled with poor play calling make it hard to put together a complete game or dominant performance. This reminds me of the 2011 team that had Tommy at the helm... went 8-5 with losses to USF, Michigan, USC, Stanford, Florida State. Michigan is our USF of this year... just like USF, they had a mirage of a good game thanks to Irish miscues and building a big early lead that was hard to claw back against. Michigan is actually REALLY REALLY BAD. Devin Gardner is not good. Their skill position players are not good. Their OL is not good. Their defense is average. A good team like Stanford or Oregon or Alabama or Ohio State pounds a team like Michigan by 35+ points. We will have very tough sledding against Oklahoma, ASU, and Stanford... I'd be shocked if we won any of those games without some drastic changes... and USC/BYU/Pitt are games we could be favored but lose. So if we sneak out one of the tough games and drop one of the easier games that's 8-4. That's my optimistic projection sans huge strategic changes across the board. If this O can't start scoring 35+ we're not going to win because this D is not good enough to shut down teams.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

That is a terrible way of thinking about your starting QB. You aren't supposed to be happy that your QB didn't lose the game for you, you must have been a fan of Trent Dilfer.

Yes they beat a good defense (dont skew their actual worth by throwing #1 out there), and last I saw they weren't ranked in the AP.

I also didn't call for his head. There are no better options.

# 26.

 

[IrishLax]

1- Rees was awful. The offense is strapped because of him. If I knew that Hendrix wouldn't be worse as a passer I'd say give him a shot.
2- The Spartan D-Line was better at the point of attack.
3- I'm not convinced the O-Line are great run blockers. Excellent pass blockers though.
4- We have one good pass rusher (Prince Shembo), Ishaq just looks extra slow to me.
5- Thank god Diaco played Grace more.
6- Koyack may not have potential
7- Robinson looks like a good one.
8- The runningback situation needs to be cleared up, and the offensive line isn't helping.

I'm glad to see the win. For all that think Oklahoma is going to blow us out, you didnt see them play a horrid WVU team.

Yeah, but Blake Bell looks way better than Knight. That's my worry.

 

[ickythump1225]

Happy with the win. Of course I want to win more by more but you know what we've won 15 of our last 17 games. We've played some tough teams and I think that people overlook the fact that we play a bitter rival nearly every week. We don't get the benefit of ironing out the wrinkles and working out the kinks against Elon, FIU, Colorado St., Sam Houston St., North Texas, Savannah St., etc. We got Temple, and then @Michigan, @Purdue, and Michigan State all in a row. Those are three of our rivals there's no let up next week with Oklahoma. Alabama always seems to balance their tough games with a cupcake the next week so they never have to play hard two games in a row.

As for people questioning Brian Kelly, give me a break. The man inherited a program in a mess and getting worse. The cupboards were relatively barren and ND as a program was stuck in the early 1990s in terms of operation and day to day inner workings. From nearly scratch he's rebuilt Notre Dame and laid the foundation for sustainable success.

Notre Dame's been playing close games for a long time the difference is we're now winning those games. Think of all the choke jobs and almost wins that marked the Weis era. We're a mentally and physically tough team now. We may not win pretty but we WIN. We're progressing forward even if you can't/won't see it.

We lost a lot of leadership from last year including a once in a generation program transforming type player in Manti Te'o and our starting quarterback. We're more talented overall than last year but we lack experience and we're still gelling. Other teams, as I already said, get the luxury of gelling against garbage teams from lower divisions.

Even if we lose two more games this year the program is getting better. People here were spoiled by last and they want to be Alabama right now. We're not Alabama...yet, perhaps one day. But that's not guaranteed though, nothing is guaranteed. We finally have a coach who understands how to build a winning program and we're complaining, not that he's not winning enough, but that he's not winning BY enough. I take it as a good sign for out team that our coach's cardinal sin is not winning by large enough margins to satiate the bloodlust of our fanbase.

 

[FearTheBeard]

ITS ALL TOMMY'S FAULT WE ARENT AS GOOD AS LAST YEAR!!

Just kidding, im sick of hearing that and it is just stupid. Yeah he could have hit a few more deep balls, but the O-line could be better in run blocking and our offensive play calling could be alot less predictable. Our special could use huge improvements as well, so dont blame it all on him when we have other units that need to do much better.

Thats not even getting to the D, but on the positive note i think Jaylon played a pretty good game. Hes a freshman but i think he played a little better than just a freshman, i know councell whiffed on an open field tackle. I think one of the biggest assets is his speed which we really need there.

What i want to know is how we cant get even a half *** decent special teams unit out there. They are terrible and GA3 doesnt even look good returning kicks, i would assume we have a special teams coordinator of some sort and i would think after this year it would be time to look for a little change.

Robinson looked really good and is a mismatch with his height advantage, and will fuller had a great catch. I really like seeing some of our freshman make an impact

Edit: what does everyone think about the odds of Tuitt coming back next year? In my opinion i would think his draft status is falling. A win is a win hopefully we can pull one out next week too. Go Irish!

 

[DillonHall]

Can anyone tell me what team in college football runs a uptempo offense with a qb that can't run? I'm not saying this to be confrontational because I would love to go uptempo but we don't want to play the players needed to do it.

How about Tony Pike and Brian Kelly at Cincinnati?

 

[WakeUpEchoes]

Prob a little of that for sure.... But for the most part Tommy just missed his throws he was way too high on a number of passes... Again though, we won and he didnt throw a pick... To Emcees point, he missed most of his throws over the middle of the field, it's hard to explain but he's clearly not as accurate as he is going to either sideline, at least he wasn't yesterday,... Overall on the season the kid is getting stacked boxes and teams are making him beat them... He's 3-1...

Also, and as Mayock pointed out, some of those were bad routes. WR's giving Tommy enough room to make the throw to the outside shoulder.

Atkinson played better yesterday and actually broke some tackles.

The MSU defense is for real. Drummond and Max Burrough are both verrrryyyy good. I expect the defense we just beat to finish in the top 7.

 

[Kak7304]

Uptempo can lead to more punts and leaving the D out on the field longer. I don't know why everyone thinks this is the answer.

 

[Patulski]

I want to use a Major Tournament Golf analogy for Brian Kelly. I believe this is what is driving us crazy and making these games so darn close. Kelly really has the instincts and intuition that tells him where his team is at. He knows he doesn't have the leadership like he had last year with Manti, Motta, Klm, Eifert, etc.
This is a different team, different personality. Maybe the defense assumed they were going to dominate and they are getting a dose of reality. Anyway...if you listen to Kelly's press conference he quite often talks about slugging it out and getting the game into the 4th quarter, even with a team like Purdue. So, how does this relate to Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger or other great champions? They would go into a major tournament, look at the course set up and their main competition and have a score in mind as to what would probably win the tournament. They would mold their "game plan" to that score and manage their game accordingly. I believe Kelly like he has said so many times is just trying to win games. This week was slug it out, even if ugly and don't turn it over! Thus the agonizing pass routes. Only our receivers could catch them, they usually didn't, but they couldn't be picked. Kelly had a score in mind and he planned around that. When Golson comes back and Diaco finds some leaders on D things will change, until then Kelly is a US Open type coach.

Well that's a nice analogy, but I don't think it is remotely near the reality of what happened yesterday.

This week was "slug it out"?

We threw 26 passes in the first half, precisely because Kelly did not want to slug it out with a team that in his words had" nine guys hawking the run game".

Kelly had a score in mind and managed the game accordingly?

Why then did he say "We missed a lot of opportunities in the first half. We missed the chances we had early on. Then the way the game went, you know, we were going to run the football. "?

Kelly wanted some long TD passes in the first half to jump into the lead and make MSU either adapt defensively, or get burned more. When that didn't happen, he changed his strategy to manage a win.

 

[IrishFan4L]

How about Tony Pike and Brian Kelly at Cincinnati?

I'm pretty sure Kelly used 2 QBs Tony Pike & Zach Collaros.

 

[Sherm Sticky]

My singular post game observation:
This team is just not very good relative to last year. Despite superior talent at a couple positions, there are some glaring deficiencies that coupled with poor play calling make it hard to put together a complete game or dominant performance. This reminds me of the 2011 team that had Tommy at the helm... went 8-5 with losses to USF, Michigan, USC, Stanford, Florida State. Michigan is our USF of this year... just like USF, they had a mirage of a good game thanks to Irish miscues and building a big early lead that was hard to claw back against. Michigan is actually REALLY REALLY BAD. Devin Gardner is not good. Their skill position players are not good. Their OL is not good. Their defense is average. A good team like Stanford or Oregon or Alabama or Ohio State pounds a team like Michigan by 35+ points. We will have very tough sledding against Oklahoma, ASU, and Stanford... I'd be shocked if we won any of those games without some drastic changes... and USC/BYU/Pitt are games we could be favored but lose. So if we sneak out one of the tough games and drop one of the easier games that's 8-4. That's my optimistic projection sans huge strategic changes across the board. If this O can't start scoring 35+ we're not going to win because this D is not good enough to shut down teams.

Lax i usually like your input, but I think you are a glass half empty type guy on this. Unlike the 2011 team, this team has young players in key positions and should only improve each week.


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[Buster Bluth]

Lax i usually like your input, but I think you are a glass half empty type guy on this. Unlike the 2011 team, this team has going players in key positions and should only improve each week.


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I think the bigger difference is that this team doesn't beat itself with turnovers.