There are basically two reasons I am not fully ready to burn Weis at the stake or hang him from a yard-arm for this mess just yet...
#1 - Recruiting classes have been a whole lot better than Ty's "efforts". This was already rumored to be an issue for Ty as far back as his initial class - the one with Quinn - when he apparently did not even want to offer Quinn in the first place.
For Weis, holding this incoming class together for February's signing day (and attracting at least 3-4 other 'big name' players to the fold) would go a long way towards me believing that a 4th season for Weis is not only justified but should not be challeneged except by brain-dead media types (think Mark May - the human penis) or race-baiting 'journalists' (think Jason Whitlock)
Weis absolutely deserves some of the blame for all of this (questionable decisions in pre-season camp seem to be the favored theory, but I subscribe more to the lack of allowing players to get quality minutes in the last two years as more of a root cause - that helped make the leadership void wider than absolutely necessary - also a point I will touch on again briefly...5th year disappointments) - but to lay it all on him; and to say crazy things like "his third year guys should be leading the program", is to ignore the fact that the current 3rd year guys are not really all his (again, fans in the know will understand the dynamics of recruiting, the timetable of the Weis hiring and the facts as they actually exist on this point). Its crazy to think that guys who had never even heard from Charlie Weis before January of 2005 would suddenly turn their backs on programs who had been actively involved in recruiting them for 2+ years and sign to play at ND! Yet, time and again I see people drag out the "this is Weis' 3rd class" mantra as if it were willed to them by the Dalai Lama!
Repeat after me everyone - "Charlie Weis is fully responsible for TWO recruiting classes and a salvage job on a third." His third full class will be signing in February, and so far they look to be a very, very solid effort and the cornerstone for potentially great results in the future. If the 2008 campaign looks ANYTHING like this one, and if by some act of Satan's will the Irish find themselves at 0-5 AGAIN in '08, then I will gladly become the self-appointed ombudsman of the "Can Charlie" campaign - complete with nifty little graphics and logos borrowed heavily from Starkist tuna. However, since it is my absolute belief that Weis does not have those three classes on the field yet, and the fact that prior to '07 he had put in back-to-back stellar efforts, I am not quite ready to break out the photoshop programs to start making banners at this time....
Weis' culpability in this mess extends to the fact that the current sophomore O-linemen, including Sam Young, are either poorly coached or vastly over-rated coming out of HS. Either way, it is not a positive reflection on Weis. If they are poorly coached, then he needs to ensure the coaching is stepped up. Perhaps there is some traction to the argument that Weis started the season intent on 'scheming' his way to a couple early-season wins (GT, UM with spread packages, etc.) and it simply blew up in his face...I don't buy it entirely though. These sophomores - Wenger, Carufel, Olsen, Stewart, Young - were supposed to be the core of the team. Now, maybe its also true that they are not quite ready to play in prime-time, but that theory takes a lot of shots in my book when you watch Auburn's 3 true freshmen play and play capably at Florida. Our SOPHOMORES can't play capably at HOME!!!
#2 - I have seen progress over the last 5 weeks. The fact that the progress is slow, and comes in fits and starts (think running game emerging in 1st half, albeit briefly, against MSU and the passing game emerging in the 2nd half against Purdue; also think of the defense in the first half against GT or in the 2nd half against PU) only tells me that Weis is dealing with an exceedingly young team and one that lacks the most indespensible thing a football team must have - solid senior leadership or solid 5th year senior leadership.
This is where the bare-cupboard is most damning for this team....many other articles exist to this general effect, and quite frankly, the kind of fans who will still be here at season's end already know those facts and where to find those analyes. I do not believe that Weis did not see this coming. In fact I am 100% certain that he did and that was the reason that there are currently 9 5th year guys on the team.
What follows is sure to be unpopular, as in a lot of ways as it is throwing good kids and good students under the bus for failed athletic performance - but know this before reading further; none of what follows is meant to denigrate any of these fine young men as a human being - only to point out their recent shortcomings as leaders and football players. The great thing about their ND experience is that I am 100% sure these will all be incredibly fine men in their other lifetime pursuits, and that this season in particular will help them rise to higher highs in their lives after the game than they may have attained without this crucible of a season.
These players have let down their coach, themselves and the program in numerous ways.
The most disappointing thing to me this season has not been the play of the underclassmen (sure, I wish the development was more apparent, that the OL was playing up to expectations - more likely to produce huge results sooner rather than later) - fact is young guys are going to be uneven and spotty at times, a situation only made worse when the guys around them are also inexperienced and young or ill-suited to their positions; but the play - and near complete lack of leadership displyed by the 5th year seniors - has been truly mystifying and crushingly disappointing, not to mention exceptionally harmful to this edition of the Irish.
To wit:
(**Note - Trevor Laws is exempt from this soon to be abrasive and scalding analysis of his classmates. He has been the lone bright spot in a class of unbelievable disappointment.)
Travis Thomas - nice leadership at PSU and with the other mindless penalties taken this year. He is a quality person off the field I am sure, but on the field this year he is a liability to the team and a horrid 'leader' as a second year captain. You simply cannot under estimate the damage that the combination has brought. As the season has progressed, his 'touches' have dimminished - and they will continue to do so; but the bigger problem is, that on a team in desperate need of someone to show the young players how to play at the D1 level, his idea of setting an example was to audition for the film version of the Miami vs. Florida International fight by MUGGING a PSU player on national TV in week 2 - before the season's ugly momentum had really started on a downward slide.
More than anything else, had you told me in August that Thomas would be doing such incredibly stupid things, I would have laughed. Sadly, the joke was on all of us who thought that TT was going to step up for this year's team and set an example for them to emulate throughout their ND careers.
Tom Zibikowski is now a shell of the player he was just 2 years ago. At one point I thought he could legitimately become the "next John Lynch-type safety" in the NFL...now? He'll be lucky to get a position in the CFL, and mainly as a gate attraction and a PR... I can't figure it out. Is he still injured? Did he somehow lose his pasion for football along the way? What can make a player go from an electrifying presence on defense and special teams into a guy who takes horrible angles (both to the ball carrier and to receivers) more often than not, gets beat down in one-on-one tackling situations - often times badly, fails to get off a block with any consistency and allows punts to bounce and roll into horrid field position on multiple occasions?
I will ALWAYS remember Tommy Z's strip and TD return against MSU and his INT and PR for a TD against Tennessee and his fumble recovery and TD against PSU in '06 and above all his PR against USC in '05; but the sad thing is he has regressed so far, so fast that the only logical explanation is a permanent injury of some kind that either makes him physically incapable of those plays or has rendered him psychologically unable to play with the abandon that once made him exciting to watch. Fact is that Kyle McCarthy looks like a better player now and I NEVER would have believed that before the season began. I thought TZ was going to be an awesome leader on this defense - a man who would pull the huddle together and instill a fire and refusal to lose in those young defenders, the guy who would inspire them to play beyond their years and beyond their abilities in some case to make a play. Hasn't happened. Not even close really....
John Sullivan - pre-season All-American? Surefire draft pick? Future NFL player? Best ND center since Faine? 5th year senior? Leader of the offense until the QB can gain enough experience to take the role over? ABJECT FAILURE in all cases. The numbers speak for themselves - last in offense, last in scoring, first in sacks allowed....that speaks more about players performances than coaches in some ways. Those are gut-check unacceptable numbers that Sullivan should have been SEETHING over and demanding to see improvement out the guys on his right and left each game. Instead, the O-Line has been a joke, a collossal punchline - no, check that, - a conga-line that simply ends in the ND backfield either at the QB or on a RB as he gets the ball.
Sullivan's performance mirrors Zibby's - he is playing worse now than he was two years back. The regression is stunning and a damning check mark against Weis and his staff. Were the guys around him in the past THAT much better than the new players? LeVoir? Stephenson? Morton? Did they actually cover up Sully's mistakes in the past and allow him to seem like a better player than he actually was - at least to casual observers? The answer is no. Those guys were no better than Carufel, Olsen, et. al. They may have made fewer mistakes and blown fewer assignments, but they weren't better players. Sullivan's performance has been awful.
John Carlson - Mackey Award Finalist? Future NFL pick? Maybe on the latter, no chance in hell on the former... Part of Carlson's failure are due to the horrific play of the OL and his essential removal from the passing game to keep from having Darrin Bragg as the only healthy body left at this point in the year. But even at that, his staying in to block has not improved the situation to date....its not like the QB has had an extra 3 seconds due to Carlson's vicious play at the line and skilled double team blocks. In fact, Carlson has missed as many blocks as the others and instead of displaying a new dimension of his game - adept blocking - he has essentially exposed himself as not-ready-for-primetime as a blocker in the NFL.
Last but not least, Geoff Price. I have always believed kickers and punters were odd in football to begin with, but his utter collapse from nearly perfect 2006 performance to the "Steve Sax of College Football" in 2007 is also utterly baffling. What a mess...
When people truly analyze what has gone wrong at ND this year, the play of these 5th years is right up there at the top of the list for reasons why the results have been so bad. Is that Willingham's fault? Hardly....he was unable to use these players in his tenure and Weis was able to milk some performance out of them all in 2005 and 2006. Yet this year, not ONE of these 5th year guys is what an outsider would look at and say "there's a real impact player for Notre Dame" (again, Laws is excepted).
I think we all expected to see Sullivan lead that young line to competence, if not dominance, by this point in the year. We may have believed that Zibby would have broken free and scored a few times by now, and would have delivered some devestating hits to break up passes or force punts in key suituations, or to would just fill the hole and make a tackle without getting run over or totally dominated by a blocker. We certainly believed that Carlson would be the new QB's best safety blanket and outlet receiver. We believed that Price would at the very worst help with field position games - just did not think that he would be helping the other team with bobbled snaps, shanked kicks and underwhelming hang times. We believed that Travis Thomas was going to be a stabilizing influence on the special teams and a hard-nosed runner in short yardage situations.
And guess what? I am reasonably certain that Weis expected all of the same things from them. Not ONE has materialized. ZERO. On a team desperately thin in experience, the one thing this season absolutley had to have to avoid a meltdown was senior leadership and a firm example by those leaders of how to play at the D1 level. Here we sit, 5 weeks into a disaster of Titanic-like proportions and the best players on this team (once again Trevor Laws excepted) are freshmen! Clasuen. Kamara. Tate. Hughes. Allen. There are also some very promising sophomores. Walls. Aldridge. Young (finally starting to play again). And others. The problem is that no one - inside, outside, ND lover or ND hater, - no one can look at this season and say that the 5th year senior leadership has made it better in any way at all.
Everyone knew the senior and junior classes this year were bad by historical measures. No one expected much, if anything from those classes anyway. This year's hope and dreams were laid on sophomores and freshmen and a select group of fifth year players who would teach them the ropes, guide them through the games and bring usher them into the role of "future of ND football". Well, they are absolutely the future of ND football still, they are just having to find the way there all on their own....
I believe wholeheartedly in the theory that inexperinece, coupled with a difficult start to the season and spiced up with a whole mess of mental errors and a LEADERSHIP CHASM on the team has baked us this shit-sandwhcih of a season. It is horrifying, nasty, distasteful and hard to choke back....made all the worse by the uncertainty at this point that next year won't bring another helping of the same - but, in the end, if this team's youth develops above their potential and billing - the hallmark a truly great coach, then they will bring back BCS games and talk of MNC in the near future and this painful stretch will become the furnace that forges the blade. If they do not develop beyond their potential, then mediocrity awaits and this season's nuclear winter will only serve to remind us all how close the program sits to the edge of oblivion without a truly great head coach....
Can or will Weis be that coach? At this point the answer is unclear, although there are enough reasons to have hope that it is not just "Kool-Aid" drinkers who can say "give Weis another year", rational and passionate fans can still hold out hope that things will be better soon...
Now, starting with upset wins over UCLA AND BC would go a long way towards salving the burnt skin of ND nation as we endure our metaphorical time in hell on earth....
