'13 OH QB Malik Zaire (Notre Dame Early Enrollee)

[Bogtrotter07]

All of these things were grossly evident at the end of last season - I am sympathetic to the personal element of firing someone but I cannot fathom how he thought this was not a fatal flaw of our team that needed to be addressed! It was not going to fix itself! BK lost a lot credibility with me here, really hope they can pick up the pieces and take the next few months to make a monster DC hire. Had he addressed it last year I would have a lot more slack in the line for Kelly and more tolerance of a crappy season.

Zactly!

 

[Luckylucci]

Zactly!

Wrong thread here, but c'mon Bogs. You've been one of the most staunch supporters of BVG on this site for the last year. But now you agree, that it was evident 1 year ago, that he should've been fired?

 

[tussin]

Wrong thread here, but c'mon Bogs. You've been one of the most staunch supporters of BVG on this site for the last year. But now you agree, that it was evident 1 year ago, that he should've been fired?

That's typical Bogs if you ask me.

 

[NorthDakota]

Fact, he was very good against UT 15'.
Fact, he was awful against UVA, the very next game. That's the definition of inconsistent. And that's the exact reason, why he's not our starting QB. Because he can't consistently do that. Just the facts.

I wouldn't want to argue either, if I couldn't understand what misleading and inconsistent meant. It makes it awfully difficult for all parties involved.

He was awful against UVA??? He wasn't great but awful is not what I'd say

 

[BobbyMac]

Fact, he was very good against UT 15'.
Fact, he was awful against UVA, the very next game. That's the definition of inconsistent. And that's the exact reason, why he's not our starting QB. Because he can't consistently do that. Just the facts.

I wouldn't want to argue either, if I couldn't understand what misleading and inconsistent meant. It makes it awfully difficult for all parties involved.

(This isn't directed at Lucky but everyone on both sides of the fence)

There's no need to argue. DK should be the QB. He won the audition in a KO. How you feel about who should start, who is better in a vacuum, who is better on a stat sheet, who is better blah blah blah doesn't matter. DK won the audition. If MZ was at OSU in JT Barrett's place, he might be putting up the exact same numbers. That is 100% true. He might. It's also 100% true that he might not.

BUT

The degrading of MZ as a player doesn't need to be employed by meaningless stats posing as fact. Anyone who says he was terrible at UVa is trying to pass of a 7-18 ... 115 yds ... 1 TD ... 0 TO's as a horrible day. It then usually accompanied with... DK came in and saved ND from MZ's horrible game. The fact is a lot of other factors were in play that day. Here's the truth and if you disagree, watch the film again and come back and disagree with me.

His 11 incompletions:

3 incompletions on this drive. Drive ended in TD.

1. Heavy Pressure. Procise misses block on blitz. MZ flushed from pocket by 2 defenders under pressure/hit as he threw against his body. Safe miss on an overthrow - intended for Chris Brown. Perfect pass goes for 30 yards.

2. Heavy Pressure. Elmer whiffs on a block, Prosise fails to pick up the DE either. Hurries/hits MZ as he passes to Fuller down the sideline. Safely out of bounds with only Fuller having a chance at the ball. Perfect pass under the circumstance gets bal to the 5 yd line.

3. Bad decision. Good play by the Virginia defender in space gets a hand on a post or it's a TD for Fuller who had a step on the CB. Ball defelects safely out of bounds. Sometimes the other team makes plays. He did miss Prosise coming out of the backfield wide open so I'll say that was a bad play.

1 incompletion on this drive. Drive ended in FG

4. Heavy pressure. UVa blitzed a LB up the middle. Q doesn't engage, Martin tries to get both, DT gets through with a hurry/hit. Incomplete to the sideline safely out of bounds. No place to run either.

2 incompletions on this drive. Drive ends in FG

5. Bad pass to Hunter on a 5 yd out. Sailed it over his head out of bounds. No pressure. Safety and CB were there play goes lesss than 10 yds unless Hunter pulls a Barry Sanders.

6. Hit Fuller in hands ND picks up a blitz nicely. MZ put it 1-2 ft to the right of it being perfect pass but it was 100% within Fuller's catch radius. Would have been a 1st down and kept drive alive instead of settling for FG.

2 incompletions on this drive Drive ends in punt

7. Heavy pressure. Elmer & Martin whiff on a stunt during another blitz. MZ somehow avoids a sack and with 2 defenders chasing him he barely misses Prosise on the sideline in what had to be a perfect pass. He missed out of bounds so incomplete but A. a safe incompletion and B. avoided a 10 yard sack.

8. Hit Fuller in the hands -- Heavy pressure Elmer and McGlinchey both get beat badly. With two guys about to hit him, he delivered a DIME to Fuller 40 yards downfield on the left sideline. He threw the ball from the right hash so the ball traveled across field and he had no room to step into the pass. Fuller played the ball perfectly up until it hit his hands. It would have been a spectacular play all the way around. Second time he put it on the All American's hands.

1 incompletion on this drive Drive ended with punt

9. Hit Fuller in the hands No pressure. No one else open. Fuller was inside good coverage. MZ put it on his hands and Fuller didn't attempt to catch it away from his body. He has to make that catch when he has that position. It was 2nd & 7, a completion puts them at 3rd & 1 or a 1st down. Instead 3 & 7 and they don't convert after another blitz finally causes a sack.

2 incompletions on this drive Drive ended with a FG

10. Heavy pressure - Bad screen execution. The line does a horrible job selling the bubble screen multiple lineman sniff it out. Still MZ double clutches and waits for Chris Brown to get off the block but he can't get to where MZ had to through it as he ran out of time for the play to develop. No place to run either. Although no one had a play on the ball, it could have been deflected causing an INT. I would have rather he just thrown it away as they were on the UVa 12.

11. Miscommunication -- Fuller ran wrong route(?) I believe it was Fuller not running the right route as did the commentator. Fuller had one on one coverage and never made a move left or right. MZ immediately throws and out at the fist down marker. Can't say definitively it was either's fault and we don't get to see who was yelled at on the sideline. No one else was open and I didn't see any obvious running lanes.


So the tally on the 11 incompletes in my eyes:

1 - Bad pass

1 - Bad decision - missed a TD but scored on a TD later.

5 - Incompletes due to heavy pressure. 4 of them were safely incomplete where only the ND player had a shot at them (or no one did) and one was iffy thrown into traffic. Should have thrown it away.

3 - Hit Will Fuller in the hands. All American's catch balls that hit their hands. All American's catch balls in their catch radius. All American's make tough catches and win 50/50 balls.

1 - Fuller ran wrong route.

So instead of 7-18, 11-18 would have been a nice game with the additional 70ish yards in spite of all the hurried/pressured throws he was forced to make on account of ND not being able to handle UVa's 5-6 man blitz's. Also note, I did not go through MZ's completions to see how many were against the blitz or pressure.

Moving on to the next part of MZ's game. Running.

Malik ran for 90 yards on just 9 carries. He took one sack for -3. That's in just 3 Q's under heavy pressure. He also saved ND a few sacks by escaping at least 3 times I saw on just incompletions. Tenuta was on his A game and HH's boys weren't.

On 6 of 9 possessions he got the Irish to the UVa: 7, 15, 28, 24, 17, 24.

The other tow possessions resulted in a 59 yard TD to Fuller and two punts.

He had a 19-14 lead when he went out and a 26-14 lead the next play when Prosise ran it in from the 24.

Lastly throw in a missed FG from the 34 and some very unimaginative play calling that resulted in too many FG's and even turning it over on downs inside the 25 and MZ had a good game. Showing that stats aren't always the be all end all.

Thankfully ND had a good back up to save the game not from Malik who left them with a lead... but from a combination of BVG's defense and CBK's play calling and his own inability to move the ball on his first two possessions.

Here's the film if anyone wants to disagree.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hWauPa3Gyws" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Luckylucci]

Sincerely not going to go through and read the entire post or watch the game back. Watched it twice, know what happened.

Sorry Crusader but that isn't the only game or time Zaire has been inaccurate. Again, he has 4 of 6 game appearances under 50 comp %. That is a fact. Regardless of circumstances, he's never been consistent at standing in the pocket and passing the ball downfield. That is very evident.

 

[Luckylucci]

Kizer played on the same team (same OL, same WR's) and against better defenses. Never had the type of performances that Zaire had against UVA.

 

[BobbyMac]

Sincerely not going to go through and read the entire post or watch the game back. Watched it twice, know what happened.

Sorry Crusader but that isn't the only game or time Zaire has been inaccurate. Again, he has 4 of 6 game appearances under 50 comp %. That is a fact. Regardless of circumstances, he's never been consistent at standing in the pocket and passing the ball downfield. That is very evident.

No need to be sorry. The right guy has the job now. But you are wrong to say he was horrible at UVa. And he had 10 game appearances, not 6. THAT is the fact.

We'll find out next year if Malik is more Everett Golson, Russell Wilson or Vernon Adams at his next stop.

 

[BobbyMac]

Kizer played on the same team (same OL, same WR's) and against better defenses. Never had the type of performances that Zaire had against UVA.

But he was 1 of 3 on drives in THAT game. Does it not count?

Don't pick and chose facts with me. I'm a real logical person. Has anyone heard me rah rah since UT? I'm not rooting for anyone except the Irish and throwing out facts.

 

[Luckylucci]

He was awful against UVA??? He wasn't great but awful is not what I'd say

Keep in mind my awful reference was to him throwing the ball. He had a 38.5 comp % and avg. 6.38 yds/attempt.

You back out the 40-50 yds TD pass to Fuller and that yds/attempt goes down to below 4, which is atrocious.

Point is, even inside of a singular game, he was crazy inconsistent with his passing.

So, even if you didn't think he was awful on that day, he was still extremely inconsistent. Which was the point of the stats.

Bringing up WR's dropping passes and OL missing blocks blocks is lost on me, as it happens all the time. Love ya Crusader but true. Did to Kizer against Clemson (substantially more talented defense), and he had a much better day, in a tsunami for goodness sake. 55.9 % and 9.44 yds/attempt.

 

[Luckylucci]

No need to be sorry. The right guy has the job now. But you are wrong to say he was horrible at UVa. And he had 10 game appearances, not 6. THAT is the fact.

We'll find out next year if Malik is more Everett Golson, Russell Wilson or Vernon Adams at his next stop.

Malik Zaire has had 6 game appearances, where he actually threw a pass. 2014: USC, LSU 2015: UT, UVA 2016: UT Nevada.

Where are you getting 10 from?

 

[GBdomer]

Look at Lucky just educating everyone. Love it

Irisheyes tell me a story on how Zaire is better den Kizer?

 

[IrishinSyria]

Yeah I mean Fjuk if we want to take Fuller drops out of the equation last season Kizer wins the Heisman.

 

[ulukinatme]

He was awful against UVA??? He wasn't great but awful is not what I'd say

This. On top of that, it's silly to pin the UVA game entirely on Zaire. The entire offense struggled in that game, mostly in the first half. We struggled with handling the Tenuta blitz. WRs were not able to get open fast enough because of the pressure, and we were not running the ball well either. The offense finally started making strides in the 3rd quarter, and shortly after Malik went down. Long story short, Malik was only one component of that UVA debacle. This is a team game, just as much as the defense has been a major cause of our struggles in 2016.

 

[Luckylucci]

This. On top of that, it's silly to pin the UVA game entirely on Zaire. The entire offense struggled in that game, mostly in the first half. We struggled with handling the Tenuta blitz. WRs were not able to get open fast enough because of the pressure, and we were not running the ball well either. The offense finally started making strides in the 3rd quarter, and shortly after Malik went down. Long story short, Malik was only one component of that UVA debacle. This is a team game, just as much as the defense has been a major cause of our struggles in 2016.

FWIW, The result of the game has nothing to with my previous 10ish posts.

 

[ulukinatme]

FWIW, The result of the game has nothing to with my previous 10ish posts.

That's fine. I'm just trying to make sure blame is assigned accordingly here. A lot of people want to lump our problems on Malik. Some people solely blame him for the struggles in the UVA game, and others actually blame him for the loss at Texas. It's a bit ridiculous. If a guy makes a mental mistake on some plays, that's fine to be critical of him. It's unfair to pin an entire game on one guy when we played notoriously bad on one side of the ball (Defense against Texas, or the whole offense against UVA).

 

[dmort]

I dont think Malik is fully recovered from his injury.Right now he is just too one dimensional.

 

[irisheyes]

what we should really be arguing is why we didnt play malik when he red shirted under tommy rees

 

[zelezo vlk]

what we should really be arguing is why we didnt play malik when he red shirted under tommy rees

Didn't he have mono for like half the year?

 

[ulukinatme]

Didn't he have mono for like half the year?

Not really, but it takes some time to come back from it. My guess is he wasn't mentally prepared enough, as well as physically after the mono, to play in 2013. We certainly could have used a mobile QB in 2013 that could run the offense. We had Hendrix, but he wasn't nearly as quick and he struggled with the read portion of the read option (Which should have been his strong suit).

Rees was clearly the best we had in 2013 at the time, although I recall Malik hitting Prosise on the only TD of the Spring Game going into that season...he showed off his arm on a deep ball...in a scrimmage that was blisteringly cold and somewhat boring because the defense really dominated. It was the same game where Big Lou ran it in for a 2 point conversion. Those were literally the only two highlights of the offense on the final two plays of the scrimmage, so we were thankful Malik hit that big play for a little bit of excitement. Zaire looked more impressive in that 2013 scrimmage than most of our freshmen that have come into Spring Games, and even more impressive than Kizer looked last year in the same scrimmage. I wonder if Zaire might have been better prepared and possibly not redshirt in 2013 had the mono not come on when it did.

 

[irisheyes]

Didn't he have mono for like half the year?

Turns out he was just really bored.

 

[IrishLion]

Zaire looked more impressive in that 2013 scrimmage than most of our freshmen that have come into Spring Games, and even more impressive than Kizer looked last year in the same scrimmage.

Gotta disagree here. Despite the general nature of spring games, with vanilla gameplans, vanilla defenses, and limited reps, Kizer's spring game before this season was the most impressive I've seen from an ND QB in the Kelly era.

He was in complete control and looked totally comfortable. Malik had the more exciting drive, but Kizer's game went beyond execution. He was actively putting things on display that the coaching staff wanted him to work on.

 

[BobbyMac]

He needed to redshirt in '13. But I bet if you put enough Jameson's in CBK to get him to speak freely, he'd admit he should have pulled EG @ ASU in '14 and never looked back.

 

[ulukinatme]

Gotta disagree here. Despite the general nature of spring games, with vanilla gameplans, vanilla defenses, and limited reps, Kizer's spring game before this season was the most impressive I've seen from an ND QB in the Kelly era.

He was in complete control and looked totally comfortable. Malik had the more exciting drive, but Kizer's game went beyond execution. He was actively putting things on display that the coaching staff wanted him to work on.

I'm talking last year's Spring Game, 2015. Kizer looked awful, it was frightening. Of course, at the time he was 3rd string and going through a lot of stuff personally. It was a scary prospect when Golson left and Zaire went down, but Kizer stepped up in a big way thankfully.

 

[CrystalHead]

Denbrock on the radio today. When asked if there is a possibility of seeing Zaire this week with the possibility of bad weather, he stated that nothing is off the table for this game. He didn't come out and say yes due to the fact NC State fans and coaches listening to the program but saying whatever helps the team win.

 

[BobbyMac]

Sounds like Denbrock almost gave away ND's decided schematic advantage in the inclement weather. There's a chance the NC St. fans sniffed out the possibility of MZ playing like you did. They are pretty slick, could be informing their staff as we speak. This is why I am against radio interviews on the days leading up to a game. Potentially another opportunity lost.

 

[Blaise]

Sounds like Denbrock almost gave away ND's decided schematic advantage in the inclement weather. There's a chance the NC St. fans sniffed out the possibility of MZ playing like you did. They are pretty slick, could be informing their staff as we speak. This is why I am against radio interviews on the days leading up to a game. Potentially another opportunity lost.

Pretty sure the way Kizer played against Clemson in Hurricane weather is worrying NC ST coaches much more than the potential to see Zaire play in packages

 

[BobbyMac]

Pretty sure the way Kizer played against Clemson in Hurricane weather is worrying NC ST coaches much more than the potential to see Zaire play in packages

This... But I'm still worried if any NC St fans heard Denbrock stop just short of spilling the beans. That renders MZ useless. Can't believe he showed flashed his hand...

 

[Irish#1]

Sounds like Denbrock almost gave away ND's decided schematic advantage in the inclement weather. There's a chance the NC St. fans sniffed out the possibility of MZ playing like you did. They are pretty slick, could be informing their staff as we speak. This is why I am against radio interviews on the days leading up to a game. Potentially another opportunity lost.

This... But I'm still worried if any NC St fans heard Denbrock stop just short of spilling the beans. That renders MZ useless. Can't believe he showed flashed his hand...

I would think given the forecast the NCS staff may have already did a little game planning for MZ.

 

[NDdomer2]

Or it was some general coach speak about "nothing is off the table for this game" and "whatever helps the team win." and trying to keep kid tuned in.