BYU Postgame

[BrianWalsh]

Someone had to yel “hut”… 2-3 seconds went off the clock… if it wasn’t CJ how long would we have waited?

He was calling an audible into a different spike.

 

[FDNYIrish1]

We lost way before the last play.

I hope you know more about firefighting than football. Which is zero.

 

[Giddyup]

I sway back and forth between disappointed in how we played 101 how to lose a football game and we suck again and ok with this wake up loss. Cause if we can’t win at least 2/3 against BYU UM SMU we aren’t gonna win a title anyway.

Onward and upward! Change what we need to change and improve

 

[Irish#1]

Do the computers know our defense was caught off guard by the staple of BYU’s offense?

Truly the main thing that worries me about reaching that potential.

I don't think they were caught off guard. I think Ash created a plan to keep Bachmeier from beating them with his legs. Thus the lack of blitzing and primarily four man rushes in the first half. Out of necessity IMO, he went back to calling a defense that we're use to seeing. We have superior experienced athletes on the defense. He should have trusted them to contain Bachmeier with our typical defense all along. He could have easily changed up if they had problems. I'm still wondering why he didn't make adjustments in the first half.

 

[Irish#1]

This loss has one person to blame: @Irish#1

Changing the banner and site colors in the middle of a winning streak. I haven't changed my underwear since A&M and you do something this crazy???

According to my wife, it's always my fault, so I'll accept the blame for this with my usual humility.

 

[WildMan1]

We lost on the road on the last play to a team that’s about to be ranked #2 or 3 in the country and we can point out a million ways we should have won the game. I personally think BYU was a tough opponent and played very well. And I’m still pissed at our mistakes costing us the game which gives me hope they can be fixed. The talent is there. Put asses in the right seats and LFG. It should be an absolute nightmare for Miami coming into South Bend in November. We’re pissed and are only fans. I’ll assume this team is very angry moving forward. We hung in to the very end. Don’t give up the ship just yet.

You’re not wrong.. but I think what bothers me most is to me BYU represented what we have been for so long. A squad comprised of mostly 3 & low level 4 stars that wins against mediocre competition but can’t beat the elite tier..

We saw this year after year.. 2024 we thought we rounded the corner but I was at that NC game & Ohio St was never scared.

Then we have the two best backs in the country & play A&M & Miami down to the last plays but don’t pull either one out & end up not being able to ride those two guys into the playoffs.

And again, we build up the theory that through recruiting, the portal & CJ Carr’s development we’ve become a legitimate top 3 juggernaut that will torch everything in its path leaving no doubt behind.

But instead, we let that scrappy, well coached team of 3 stars & a few stand outs, that we used to be, do what we could never do & beat that “marquee opponent” straight up.

We’re still stuck, spinning out tires, just a few feet ahead of where we were.

The only reason I think we might just beat Miami is because I have zero faith that we will right now & think Mensah & Toney are going to be a nightmare all night. And Hetherman is a legit D coordinator that will feast on whatever that gameplan was that took the field in Provo.

When I feel this strongly it’s usually an emotional overreaction & I’m almost always wrong.

Maybe with the bye & handling Navy the staff can actually put together a winning game plan.

We’ll see..

 

[NDMatt91]

Matt Freeman of ISD was telling one of the II guys that Faison was so gassed by the end of the game, that he asked out on that last drive. I think that’s why we saw Graham come in. It’s game 7 and they still haven’t developed even a few of the WR depth to rotate with the starters? With Faison & Greathouse likely gone after this year, that WR is gonna be a huge question mark.

The WR approach they took in the portal has been a complete failure. I feel stupid for buying into some of the Graham/Porter hype. But looking at it objectively, we should've known that there was a high chance that there would be a lack of depth at WR. Graham basically did nothing in 2 years and according to Matt Freeman and John Brice, multiple OSU folks at the time said they weren't sad to lose Porter because of his injury. I took that to mean they felt he'd never be fully healthy again.

What is incredibly frustrating is that there were still several proven WR in the portal when Graham and Porter entered the portal and when they committed. That is a failure on behalf of whoever was involved - Mike Martin, Mike Brown, Freeman, etc.

 

[NDFAN2008]

I think the biggest question needing answered is the issue with getting Freshman and SO on the field at WR. Is this a OC issue with making the play calling way to difficult and it needs simplified or is this a WR coach being too damn stubborn to play any of his underclassmen? Jeremiah Smith is averaging like 55 snaps a week. He just played his career high Saturday which was 66 which is less than our 3 WR's played Sunday in high altitude. Legend Glasker was a low ranked 3 star recruit and he is BYU's top WR. I think Faison and Greathouse are both gone after this year, Graham hasn't proven anything yet, that leaves you with only Gilbert with experience.

 

[IrishLax]

A surprisingly frank post hy Brice.

Not that I dont think hes a straight shooter, I think hes a pretty great insider who speaks his mind

Im just kind of surprised he dropped something *that* cutting

No lies detected though

To add on to this -- Brice is a national guy and a *coaching* insider. He is as connected as it gets with coaching from his Football Scoop days. He is also somewhat close to ND because of his time doing some contributions to ISD, but he has been at USA Today as a national guy for awhile now.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

Yeah, that's quite the public call-out for Brice. And honestly, I'm here for it.

 

[FWIrish4]

I don't think they were caught off guard. I think Ash created a plan to keep Bachmeier from beating them with his legs. Thus the lack of blitzing and primarily four man rushes in the first half. Out of necessity IMO, he went back to calling a defense that we're use to seeing. We have superior experienced athletes on the defense. He should have trusted them to contain Bachmeier with our typical defense all along. He could have easily changed up if they had problems. I'm still wondering why he didn't make adjustments in the first half.

I was joking referencing Freeman saying they were caught off guard by misdirection and probably should have used italics.

Someone throughout the week (I think @Dale) posted the statistics that Bachmeier’s running is primarily designed runs and not scrambles. The game plan should not have been built around limiting Bear’s scrambling as the top priority because that’s not how he hurts you.

 

[stlnd01]

I sway back and forth between disappointed in how we played 101 how to lose a football game and we suck again and ok with this wake up loss. Cause if we can’t win at least 2/3 against BYU UM SMU we aren’t gonna win a title anyway.

Onward and upward! Change what we need to change and improve

Yep. I always figured we'd lose one - probably either BYU or Miami - for the simple reason that going undefeated in college football is very very hard. Now we have, and the question becomes what happens next. History under Freeman suggests we will focus and respond just fine.

 

[PutuporShutup]

After a re watch to oversimplify good and bad

Good
We have some really good players that have been developed and are improving and playing well

James, Lambert, Absher, Craig (minus snapping), Black, Faison, greathouse, walton, Armel, Brewu, Dunham, sneed, KVA, Sanders, Talich

IMO, when BYU didn't know exactly what we were doing and overload it, we for the most part won the LOS on both sides, pretty significantly.
WRs made some big time plays when gassed.

Defense when they knew what they were doing and weren't playing a passive zone, played good at times. at least 50% maybe 75% of the defensive calls were a "passive" type of call to see what they do and try to keep the ball infront of them.

Bad
We got severely out coached. It's almost as if our staff didn't prepare for BYU, they just prepared a regular game plan.

BYU used motions to get us into the exact defense and look they wanted, and knew how to handle a lot of our looks.

When we motion our TE into the line it's a run, everyone knows it, BYU brought extra hats in every time 2nd half for sure. They baited Carr into throws and checks and almost every one of them was an incompletion or a bad run play.

Again, we have good players that 1-1 were whipping some BYU players, our D was only better in the 2nd half when we went man and just flat our locked them down, then went conservative last drive again with more zone and less blitzing until last play.

No play action, no wr rotation, etc. BYU was in single high a lot, if we had rotated WRs more there was chances for shots. At times our WRs were loafing and taking plays off as they were gassed.

Denbrock/Ash/Freeman were just flat out awful in their plan for this game, bottom line.

Carr, knapp, moore, shuler, bowen (3 of 4 captains) individually didn't play up to their standard, not close to it, but again, coaching was the biggest issue IMO.

I have to say it for a fifth time because it was that bad, coaching, 100 people on this chat can see our tendencies/tells and issues yet our staff has done nothing to change or improve them. Frustrating. They have a massive staff of smart people. You have bowen talking about how much different looks BYU gave them they didn't prepare for. Other teams challenge our eyes, discpline, prep, etc, but our offense just runs the same exact plays over and over and expects our players to have to win every rep vs actually challenge the defense mentally.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

Losses like Saturday's cause me to pull back and reevaluate things. I love ND football, but I've reached the point where the sting of a bad loss usually wears off within 24 hours. I got up yesterday, went to Mass, had donuts with the family, and played football outside with the kids. Life is good. But this loss is harder to shake, and I think it's because it comes on the heels of last season's disappointments: Miami, A&M, the CFP snub, and the bowl game refusal (against BYU of all teams).

The BYU loss felt eerily similar to the Miami loss. Not necessarily in the details, but in the overall impression of where this program stands against other top tier teams and why the same problems keep arising.

I'm tired of watching Denbrock and Ash let opponents dictate the game before making meaningful adjustments. Both losses raise questions about whether our coordinators can adapt when their initial game plans aren't working. Denbrock's lack of creativity is particularly frustrating. The red-zone touchdown efficiency was atrocious, and the play-calling after the INT to put ourselves in position to ice the game was just as bad. Seriously, what are we paying these guys to do? Beating Syracuse and Purdue 70-7 is nice and show what a team is capable of doing to lesser opponents, but no one cares if you then lay eggs against Top 10 teams.

Carr didn't come close to living up to the hype on Saturday. The WR rotation is baffling. Not getting our best RB more involved is baffling. And watching BYU doing whatever they wanted w/o pressure is baffling. I literally cannot understand what they're doing out there when I watch games like this. From my couch, it just has "pucker" feelz to it and I'm so over it.

 

[calvegas04]

 

[jpachuta33]

Despite how disappointed we are, this team still has everything in front of them and on the table. I’m excited to see how this team responds knowing that the margin of error is now zero. They have five 1-game seasons. The Miami game shouldn’t even be mentioned until the Navy game is over.

Keep the faith.

 

[MacIrish75]

This made me lol. AI is good for a few things.

 

[Jiggafini19Deux]

Hope to see BYU again. Soon.

 

[NDFAN2008]

I'd rather get a loss now and then learn from it. If you had to ask me if we had one loss would you rather it be to Miami or BYU the answer would be BYU. The issue with losing to Miami if we do, is we are going to be 10-2 most likely with zero top 25 wins. Wisconsin hopefully can pull off an upset, knock off USC or IOWA, and then win out. They could easily finish between 20-25. UNC should finish 9-3 and in the top 25. Would be nice if they could pull off an upset against UNC. Lose to Miami and we are probally looking for some type of crazyiness to happen and hope a bunch of Big 10 and SEC teams beat one another.

 

[GowerND11]

The third quarter adjustments were perfect. Sadly, we got 6 points out of that quarter. Even getting 10 makes it a totally different final drive, needing a FG to win the game. Add to this that after the tuddy and INT in the 4th we went back to conservative.

Awful 3 plays by Denbrock, then zone again by Ash.

 

[PolishDomer]

Now that gave me a very needed laugh about this whole thing!

Thats how I felt about this whole game...frustrating. I wanted to punch the coaches...

I rewatched the game, and it was frustrating how we performed. there were 2 positives: RBs and Special Teams.

I do want to place more blame on the OL. They had a hard time dominating the BYU DL and to me they were getting pushed back quite often and collapsing the pocket, putting pressure on Carr. There were often times where they let DL/LB through which was terrible...i didnt think OL player well at all...and the low snaps were awful all game.

Carr was off all game...worst game I have seen from him.

They spent WAYYY too much time game planning for Bear...it was ridiculous as his runs were nothing earth-shattering...we effectively stopped their running game, but we saw the effects as they did whatever they wanted on our LB/DB.

I dont understand the need for a TE to be in on every play...so predictable passing offense and then the running tell...

Where the hell is the Playaction? Especially with decent RBs...criminal.

Denbrock...F-....horrendous playcalling and everyone making excuses about him saving plays for big games...truth be told, very vanilla plays...

No WR rotation...ridiculous!

No pressure on the QB...it was ridiculous looking at that, and then seeing Carr under pressure most of the game.

Talich played outstanding and the defense improved once they went to man...hearing Ash saying that they should only make adjustments at halftime...idiot...

Im not going to blame the referrees too much...but i know they were holding our players many, many times...

I was angry but then realized they were flat and looked unready. I am concerned...thankfully we have a bye so they can fix these things.

Biggest issue for me is the coaching, and the lack of Alphas as captains...there was a lack of fire from our team.

 

[Some Irish Bloke]

I'm sure I'm not sharing anything new. But ND picked a helluva game to beat themselves. CJ Carr missing wide open guys. Fumbling an effing spike. Uninspiring play calling on both sides of the ball. 6 points off of *3 turnovers (absolutely counting that fake punt). Denbrock runs Walton down-hill on the go-ahead score and 2 point conversion then abandons it the rest of the game, going 3 and out in a critical spot after the INT (outside zone with James, QB Power, screen - sick dude).

I'm not going to pin this on the officials. Yeah, they missed two important calls late (DPI and time on the clock) but ND had every opportunity to win that game prior to leaving it in the officials' hands. Freeman has preached all year "ND cannot beat ND," but that's exactly what happened.

I'm also not going to bitch and moan that this isn't a good football team. It is a great football team. We have the pieces when we play 4 clean quarters to beat anybody. We just played 1.5 good quarters of football and it was almost enough to beat a top 10 opponent on the road in prime time. No silver lining in this sport, but that's the damn truth. Coordinators and Freeman absolutely have to do a better job getting them prepared in that type of environment and executing a more effective gameplan.

Clean it up, get to work, and beat Miami or we will in fact leave doubt once again.

 

[NotKoon]

They’re a smaller favorite over 3-3 UCF than we were over them

 

[NDFAN2008]

Back to the WR topic:
Jesse Legree 5'9" 160 lbs low 3 star recruit. Leads the nation in receiving yards as a Freshman.
Bubba Frazier 5'10" 180 lbs star Freshman zero action
Brayden Robinson 5'9" 165 lbs zero action
Get your speed on the field end of story!!

 

[Dale]

I imagine BYU humbled CJ quite a bit on his pre-snap adjustments. Sitake basically said they baited us into throwing the slot fade on the final play. That is why the Nickel was the only one pressing. They also stuffed a few runs the 2H by baiting a few checks. I imagine that MLB Cade Uluave was the engine there. I thought we had some adjustments for what BYU. But BYU had better adjustments to our adjustments. The just run the damn play CJ stuff has been boiling for a few weeks. He needs to learn he’s not always the smartest, best player on the field.

 

[IrishFanForever23]

I don't understand why it always has to be a slot fade there. The middle was wide open. Pauling used to make a killing on those middle passes.

 

[Some Irish Bloke]

I don't understand why it always has to be a slot fade there. The middle was wide open. Pauling used to make a killing on those middle passes.

They didn't use the middle at all in the RZ late there. We had timeouts. No reason why we couldn't attack the middle of the field or lean on Walton for a carry or two IMO. Just bizarre play calling or CJ was scared to attack between the hashes. Maybe a combination of both.

Denbrock got worked in this one. Too predictable.

 

[notredomer23]

They’re a smaller favorite over 3-3 UCF than we were over them

It's the classic let down spot. Biggest win for their program possibly ever. Traveling across 2 timezones. And they haven't exactly killed anyone competent this year. I'd bet UCF on principal if it was still 9.5 but it's already down to 6.5

 

[Dale]

I don't understand why it always has to be a slot fade there. The middle was wide open. Pauling used to make a killing on those middle passes.

Because he was scared all game one of the mugged LBs would drop back in coverage. Gilbert was open. The protection rolled to the right means he was never gonna look left.

 

[PutuporShutup]

Another reason this loss really sucks as a fan, if we beat BYU as we should have, the Miami game remains a huge game but it's not possibly a play in game for ND, and as a fan, a lot less stressful. Pure fan perspective. Because of the crazy losses that happened, ND has a shot to get in at 10-2, but if they go 10-2, whether they get in or not, the narrative after the 2nd loss for the next month after it will be they should NOT get in, right or wrong.

Now, maybe this loss is what the ND players and coaches need to actually get locked in, make the appropriate changes, and play to their potential.

It's very obvious Freeman struggles to coach and prepares teams without having their backs against the wall. Somehow, we came out flat as F against Wisconsin, in Lambeau to open up the season after getting their hearts ripped out being left out of the playoff.

We also need to root for BYU and Miami (minus ND game) to win out, so if we do have two losses it's to the #1 and #2 team in the country only. Then we have to handle business vs SMU.

IMO this loss gives us a better shot vs Miami because it's clear the coaching staff wasn't going to fix/change anything that was painfully obvious because we were winning. Now, it's VERY PAINFULLY obvious some scheme/game plan, situational issues and a few personnel issues. With the team getting healthier. Hopefully DJ Mckinney is ok, he's the only person that looked to be a bit banged up from the game. Shocked Onye got in 26 snaps on his first game back.

****Lastly, i forgot to mention him in my earlier post but Gray played good, probably his best game of the season. Nickel clearly suits him better.