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Notre Dame football: Irish attitude, intensity, toughness lacking
COMMENTARY
By AL LESAR
Tribune Staff Writer
Outside the Notre Dame football team's locker room Saturday, Dayne Crist stood tall, refusing to dodge the inevitable rehashing of a difficult day.
Look into his eyes. The hurt is obvious. But there's more.
This is a guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He had his blunders. Two interceptions. A couple other badly thrown passes. The inability to move the ball a foot on fourth-and-goal.
"He has some good moments, and then inexperience hits him," Irish head coach Brian Kelly said of Crist after Saturday's loss to Navy. "It's the consistency factor for him, and being able to do this with a competence that is play-in and play-out. Hate to say it, but we're going through some of the growing pains with that.
"It manifests itself at times, in inopportune times, but he did some good things. That's kind of where we have to continue to develop with him."
But Navy's demolition of Notre Dame was fraught with blunders. Plenty of problems to go around.
A game like that can expose the warts. Nothing cosmetic can cover them up.
Bottom line: The Irish weren't tough - mentally or physically.
Consider the lackluster effort in the first two quarters of the Western Michigan and an alarming trend can be developing.
This is more like the attitude the Irish embraced from 2007-09. Kelly's trying to force-feed his hard-line approach on a group that doesn't appear hungry for change.
How much of that blame falls on Crist's shoulders? Eight games into his apprenticeship in the spread offense, how difficult is it to operate with his three top receivers out with injuries?
The Irish offensive line, outweighing the Midshipmen defensive line an average of 301 pounds to 255, missed a golden opportunity to assert itself.
Remember: Stoned from a foot on fourth-and-goal.
Nothing short of confession could absolve that sin.
While Crist is taking his lumps trying to establish himself as a productive part of the offense, maybe it's the line that's not a good fit. Last year at Cincinnati, when Kelly had his type of player in the trenches, the Bearcats averaged a very athletic 282 pounds.
That group was built on the premise of speed and mobility. Just like the spread offense has a foundation on balance. There's no hint of balance when the Irish rank 18th in the country (283 yards a game) in passing offense and 98th (112) in rushing.
Notre Dame's defense was submissive to a one-dimensional offense.
No matter the blocking scheme, a defense with attitude and intensity somehow - sooner or later - would have figured out a way to stop the fullback.
From the periphery of the Notre Dame football program, it seems simple. Think back to the last time the Irish had success on a regular basis, there was more than attitude and swagger.
Lou Holtz had his teams mentally prepared, fundamentally sound, and loaded for bear when the ball went in the air.
Maybe the symptoms that brought on a 20-25 record over the last four seasons haven't been remedied by a coaching change, no matter how hard Kelly forces the issue.
Kelly has the track record for progress. A 4-7 start at Central Michigan was a 9-4 record two years later. He had a 10-3 beginning at Cincinnati that evolved into 12-0 two years later.
Hard to look two years down the road now. After the massacre in the (New) Meadowlands, the immediate future's kinda scary.
A block is a block?
Navy offensive linemen, seriously undersized compared to just about every defensive line they face, use a tactic called a cut block to clear the way. One man goes low to take out a defender in a legal manner.
That's much different than the term "chop block." A chop block, illegal in college football, is when one man hits low, another hits the same defender high.
There's a big difference between the two.
It was inaccurately mentioned in a Tribune story Sunday that the two terms were interchangeable.
Navy, not flagged for a single penalty Saturday, obviously was cutting and not chopping.
Mea culpa. Mea culpa.
COMMENTARY
By AL LESAR
Tribune Staff Writer
Outside the Notre Dame football team's locker room Saturday, Dayne Crist stood tall, refusing to dodge the inevitable rehashing of a difficult day.
Look into his eyes. The hurt is obvious. But there's more.
This is a guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He had his blunders. Two interceptions. A couple other badly thrown passes. The inability to move the ball a foot on fourth-and-goal.
"He has some good moments, and then inexperience hits him," Irish head coach Brian Kelly said of Crist after Saturday's loss to Navy. "It's the consistency factor for him, and being able to do this with a competence that is play-in and play-out. Hate to say it, but we're going through some of the growing pains with that.
"It manifests itself at times, in inopportune times, but he did some good things. That's kind of where we have to continue to develop with him."
But Navy's demolition of Notre Dame was fraught with blunders. Plenty of problems to go around.
A game like that can expose the warts. Nothing cosmetic can cover them up.
Bottom line: The Irish weren't tough - mentally or physically.
Consider the lackluster effort in the first two quarters of the Western Michigan and an alarming trend can be developing.
This is more like the attitude the Irish embraced from 2007-09. Kelly's trying to force-feed his hard-line approach on a group that doesn't appear hungry for change.
How much of that blame falls on Crist's shoulders? Eight games into his apprenticeship in the spread offense, how difficult is it to operate with his three top receivers out with injuries?
The Irish offensive line, outweighing the Midshipmen defensive line an average of 301 pounds to 255, missed a golden opportunity to assert itself.
Remember: Stoned from a foot on fourth-and-goal.
Nothing short of confession could absolve that sin.
While Crist is taking his lumps trying to establish himself as a productive part of the offense, maybe it's the line that's not a good fit. Last year at Cincinnati, when Kelly had his type of player in the trenches, the Bearcats averaged a very athletic 282 pounds.
That group was built on the premise of speed and mobility. Just like the spread offense has a foundation on balance. There's no hint of balance when the Irish rank 18th in the country (283 yards a game) in passing offense and 98th (112) in rushing.
Notre Dame's defense was submissive to a one-dimensional offense.
No matter the blocking scheme, a defense with attitude and intensity somehow - sooner or later - would have figured out a way to stop the fullback.
From the periphery of the Notre Dame football program, it seems simple. Think back to the last time the Irish had success on a regular basis, there was more than attitude and swagger.
Lou Holtz had his teams mentally prepared, fundamentally sound, and loaded for bear when the ball went in the air.
Maybe the symptoms that brought on a 20-25 record over the last four seasons haven't been remedied by a coaching change, no matter how hard Kelly forces the issue.
Kelly has the track record for progress. A 4-7 start at Central Michigan was a 9-4 record two years later. He had a 10-3 beginning at Cincinnati that evolved into 12-0 two years later.
Hard to look two years down the road now. After the massacre in the (New) Meadowlands, the immediate future's kinda scary.
A block is a block?
Navy offensive linemen, seriously undersized compared to just about every defensive line they face, use a tactic called a cut block to clear the way. One man goes low to take out a defender in a legal manner.
That's much different than the term "chop block." A chop block, illegal in college football, is when one man hits low, another hits the same defender high.
There's a big difference between the two.
It was inaccurately mentioned in a Tribune story Sunday that the two terms were interchangeable.
Navy, not flagged for a single penalty Saturday, obviously was cutting and not chopping.
Mea culpa. Mea culpa.
