Next Year's Prospectus (SDSU and Michigan)

[irishfan1122]

Having a government job, I have a lot of time to think about other things rather than work. So I looked at SDSU and scUM for 2008 and broke them down a little bit.

S06 SAN DIEGO STATE- In 07 SDSU finished 4-8 overall (3-5 in the MWC) The Aztec's wins came against Portland St, Colorado St, Wyoming and UNLV. Their leading passer, Kevin O'Connell, is a senior and will be leaving. O'Connell passed for over 3000 yds with 15 td's
and 8 picks. As far as rushing is concerned, Kevin O'Connell also wins this competition with 408 yards on 135 carries. The next closest rusher was Brandon Bornes, also a senior, with 354 on 88 carries. So it's safe to say that the Aztec offense is going to be hurting next year without question. As far as the defense is concerned, they need to improve significantly. In the 8 Aztec losses, they gave up an average of 40.25 pts a game. If ND doesn't' win this game, Weis will be, shall we say, "under pressure."

S13 MICHIGAN- Michigan, the assholes from the North. As I am sure many of you know, Michigan is going to be losing a considerable amount of offensive power in the off season. Chad Henne, Mike Hart, Jake Long, Adrian Arrington and probably Mario Manningham to name a few. With the spread offense coming in to play with Rich Rod at the helm, it will be interesting to see if they have enough athletes on the field to accomplish that feat. I say they don't. Mallet isn't Pat White and Brandon Minor is light years away from Steve Slaton. Michigan is going to have to get McDuffie, Butler and Mathews to grow up quickly if they want to win games this season. On the defensive side, Michigan constantly gets toasted by mobile quarterbacks. I still remember when Dennis Dixon was cutting up that Wolverine defense like a piece of meat. Shawn Crable, Chirs Grahm, Englemon, are all gone. The line backing corps will be like swiss cheese. It should be a close game, its at home, so i'll call a win here.

 

[notredomer23]

Good break down. The game that worries me the most next season besides SC however is MSU. Michigan should be a low scoring game for both teams, but i think we come out on top. SDSU should be a blowout. If we dont win by 21 I will be disappointed. I wont be angry because a win is a win. but i dont want it to be a win by like 3-7 points.

 

[irishfan1122]

i will be doing every game, but I actually had to work, so I will be doing the others later today probably

 

[NDSMC78]

On the defensive side, Michigan constantly gets toasted by mobile quarterbacks. I still remember when Dennis Dixon was cutting up that Wolverine defense like a piece of meat. Shawn Crable, Chirs Grahm, Englemon, are all gone. The line backing corps will be like swiss cheese. It should be a close game, its at home, so i'll call a win here.

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but do you remember last year's game in Ann Arbor? We looked awful against Michigan's defense. Clausen was sacked repeatedly, and we had no semblance of any running game. We looked positively inept.
While you suggest that Michigan lost a lot of people, which is true, what makes you think we are going to improve enough on offense to beat Michigan?

 

[notredomer23]

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but do you remember last year's game in Ann Arbor? We looked awful against Michigan's defense. Clausen was sacked repeatedly, and we had no semblance of any running game. We looked positively inept.
While you suggest that Michigan lost a lot of people, which is true, what makes you think we are going to improve enough on offense to beat Michigan?

It all comes down to the O line. If the o line improves how it will, we will win. if its the same as this year, then we will obviously lose.

 

[irishfan1122]

no offense, but if there is not significant improvement made across the board I think we will all be surprised. That was our 3rd game of the season, we looked horrible and I won't deny that. But after the longest off season in recent memory for these players, I think there will be a lot of motivation to put all the critics to sleep. They are going to pissed off for the next 8 months, they cant' wail till September.

 

[IHateMarkMay]

It will probably be the same thing as last year, but switched. Granted we wont go crazy on offense, but we lost a heck of a lot of great offensive players and look what happened to us, we got creamed. They are losing basically their entire offense, hopefully the tables have turned.

 

[NDSMC78]

no offense, but if there is not significant improvement made across the board I think we will all be surprised. That was our 3rd game of the season, we looked horrible and I won't deny that. But after the longest off season in recent memory for these players, I think there will be a lot of motivation to put all the critics to sleep. They are going to pissed off for the next 8 months, they cant' wail till September.

I don't know about you, but I did not see much improvement on the offensive line from the first game of the season through the final game of the season. We looked horrible against GaTech, PSU and Michigan, and we didn't move the ball all that much against Duke and Stanford, who were poor football teams.
I think everyone here will agree that the offensive line was the source of a lot of our problems last year. And while we all hope for improvement on the OL, I'm not sure why we should count on it happening.

 

[irishfan1122]

we actually did move the ball pretty well against stanford. We had over 300 yards of offense, equally balanced. Plus we got hosed out of a TD and Baby Bus fumbled near the goal line on the first drive. In the Duke game we had over 414 yards of offense and Zibby got a few snaps when the game was already sealed up. Stanford may not be good, but they did beat USC in LA no matter how you look at it. There was a great disparity in offensive line play from Ga Tech to Stanford. Just look at the rushing statistics.

 

[irish4ever]

I think everyone here will agree that the offensive line was the source of a lot of our problems last year.

Bingo ... we have winner! If "nasty" is going to be instilled into the Irish teams, it better start with the OL and sooner rather than later! They were horrendous last year (and that's probably even an understatement)!!! They couldn't pass protect a fat and slow grandma!!!

 

[irishfan1122]

oh and as far as the rushing stats are concerned, they are lopsided for a reason. When you play behind nearly the whole game, running the ball isn't going to get you back in the game too quickly. It's pretty easy for Ron English to call up schemes when he knows we are going to throw.

 

[NDSMC78]

OK, here are the game by game stats from last year. We had 903 rushing yards all season, more than a third of which came in the last two games (Duke 220, Stanford 117). We had 58 rushing yards against Air Force, not to mention -8 against GaTech, 0 against PSU, -6 against Michigan, 27 against BC, and 48 against southern cal. These figures tell me more than that the OL didn't do a good job. They tell me that the OL was horrible.
Like I said earlier, we all hope that the OL will improve. But other than blind hope, I don't know why we should count on it.
And as for the notion that the rushing game suffered because we were always way behind early, there is some truth to that (although being minus rushing yards total after three games is unheard of). But 903 yards the entire season. You do the math---that's 75 yards per game.


TEAM STATISTICS



|---RUSHING---| |--RECEIVING--| |-------PASSING-------| |--KICK RET--| |--PUNT RET--| tot
Date Opponent No. Yds TD Lg No. Yds TD Lg Cmp-Att-Int Yds TD Lg No Yds TD Lg No Yds TD Lg off
Sep 01, 2007 GEORGIA TECH........... 41 -8 0 11 15 130 0 20 15- 22- 0 130 0 20 8 112 0 25 1 -1 0 0 122
Sep 08, 2007 at Penn State.......... 26 0 0 10 17 144 0 35 17- 32- 1 144 0 35 4 101 0 34 2 47 0 47 144
Sep 15, 2007 at Michigan............ 33 -6 0 13 13 85 0 14 13- 22- 2 85 0 14 5 133 0 40 3 26 0 16 79
Sep 22, 2007 MICHIGAN STATE......... 35 117 2 43 11 86 0 16 11- 20- 0 86 0 16 5 100 0 27 0 0 0 0 203
Sep 29, 2007 at Purdue.............. 26 49 0 9 34 377 3 43 34- 52- 2 377 3 43 8 132 0 33 1 6 0 6 426
Oct 06, 2007 at UCLA................ 38 46 1 11 18 94 0 15 18- 28- 0 94 0 15 3 73 0 31 2 1 0 1 140
Oct 13, 2007 BOSTON COLLEGE......... 21 27 0 8 18 195 1 28 18- 49- 2 195 1 28 4 74 0 19 3 34 0 18 222
Oct 20, 2007 USC.................... 30 48 0 11 17 117 0 22 17- 33- 1 117 0 22 5 92 0 33 3 13 0 10 165
Nov 03, 2007 NAVY................... 63 235 4 15 17 140 2 21 17- 27- 0 140 2 21 5 131 0 38 2 37 0 32 375
Nov 10, 2007 AIR FORCE.............. 38 58 0 16 22 246 3 28 22- 40- 0 246 3 28 6 117 0 27 2 2 0 9 304
Nov 17, 2007 DUKE................... 48 220 1 33 16 194 3 41 16- 32- 0 194 3 41 2 31 0 22 3 8 0 4 414
Nov 24, 2007 at Stanford............ 38 117 3 45 19 196 0 44 19- 32- 1 196 0 44 3 46 0 17 4 64 0 60 313

Totals..............................437 903 11 45 217 2004 12 44 217-389- 9 2004 12 44 58 1142 0 40 26 237 0 60 2907
Opponent............................548 2345 20 52 181 1939 19 51 181-344- 11 1939 19 51 40 910 0 68 32 238 1 78 4284

 

[irishfan1122]

negative rushing yards in those games is due to sacks. I was at the games, it sucked, we sucked, the line sucked, I won't deny that. But we improved as the year went on. I looked at the stats and 2/3 games we won, we rushed the ball effectively. In a previous post you said improvement. That is improvement no matter who you are playing

 

[NDSMC78]

1122--serious question: do you think the OL actually improved, or do you think we were able to run the ball better because the level of competition was inferior? Noting that we combined for 572 of our 903 rushing yards against Navy, Duke, and Stanford, I am concerned that it was likely the level of competion.

 

[irishfan1122]

I would agree that it was the level of competition. It is hard to gauge how much improvement there was, but I believe there was improvement

 

[Denny]

I think the O Line will be better next year just due to the fact that they are more expierenced right now. Turkovich never started or played consistant minutes before this year while Young and Duncan were splitting time before becoming full time starters. Olson and Careful were just in for mop up duty while Wegner and Stewart didn't even play their freshman year. So the O line really didn't have a chance to be succsesful last year.

Going into next year we have 2 seniors (Turk, Duncan) and 3 juniours (Olson, Young, Wegner) as probably starters that gained invaluable playing time last year and also started together the last couple games when Sully went down with an injury. You can say i am seeing the optimistic side of things but i think any succsesful O line needs to lean on expierenced upper classmen, which we will have next year.

 

[Irish52]

I have not seen any indication of coaching changes and there is a lot of coaching talent out there now as a result of dismissals/resignations,etc. Anybody have an inside track as to what is going on in this area?

 

[Irish52]

2008 season.

2008 season.

I have not seen any indication of coaching changes and there is a lot of coaching talent out there now as a result of dismissals/resignations,etc. Anybody have an inside track as to what is going on in this area?

 

[irishfan1122]

regarding ND or other schools?

 

[Freeman Ara]

Weis has already said that he won't make any coaching changes until after recruiting is over. So don't expect much for another month, if at all.

 

[Fbolt]

Having a government job, I have a lot of time to think about other things rather than work. So I looked at SDSU and scUM for 2008 and broke them down a little bit.

You're giving us government slugs a bad name.... So what if we aren't responsible for turning a profit?

PAY TAXES!!!

 

[ND/MemphisFan]

Why did ND schedule SDSU?
Coach West here in Memphis is rumored to have contacted ND for a 3-1 / 2-1 game deal but has not gotten to far with it. This area of the country is rich with football talent but seems to be OWNED by the SEC.
Would make sense to schedule down here to expose this talent to ND Football plus I might be able to attend a game.

 

[NDSMC78]

ND scheduled SDSU and Nevada (we play Nevada in 2009) in order to get those schools to move games in the 2004 season so that we could play a game prior to playing Michigan. BYU agreed to open up against us, but it had to juggle its schedule too. Both SDSU and Nevada had to move games so that BYU would do so. They agreed to move their games only if ND would schedule a game with them.
As for playing Memphis, my preference would be to play another home and home with Tennessee. Tennessee has great fans, and attending a game at Neyland Stadium is a great experience.

 

[Moostache]

As for playing Memphis, my preference would be to play another home and home with Tennessee. Tennessee has great fans, and attending a game at Neyland Stadium is a great experience.

I would rather see Vanderbilt worked into the aspirational peers rotation....the "home" games for Vandy could be moved to the Liberty Bowl or to the Titans home stadium...

ND should play a rotation of - Stanford, Northwestern (Soldier Field for "away games"), Duke (Charlotte for "away" games), Baylor (Dallas for "away" dates) and Vanderbilt (Liberty Bowl for "away" games) each decade....no more than 2 games a decade for any of them but at least one game every year against them.

I'd like to see the schedule feature:

Navy (season opener every year - option attack or not; and after '07 I think we can chalk up a season opening win for the next 40 years with such a move...I would also include the usual rotation of "home sites" for Navy - Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC, Dublin)

USC (Thanksgiving Weekend every year - the Trojans can muster up the gumption to brave the elements once or twice a decade in South Bend...hell, with global warming, sooner or later that may be a preferred home date on the schedule....)

Michigan (3rd game of the season every year for both teams....let UM play their cupcakes and face ND just before conference play every year...then they can really console themselves about having a shot at the conference title every year until they run into the OSu buzz-saw)

ROTATE - Purdue / Indiana (3 home, 2 away against each school - every decade, of course, we could also invite IU to play their "home game" in Indianpolis at the new downtown stadium as part of the Kevin White barnstorming tour...)

ROTATE - Michigan State / Penn State / Illinois

ROTATE - Pitt / Syracuse

ROTATE - BC / UVa

The rest of the schedule (6 games a year) could consist of 2-3 total patsies, 1-2 mid-level schools and 1 other possible "big game' perferrably in October every year to allow for a big September game (Michigan), a big October game (rotate in top-flight opponent) and a big November game (USC).