Post Game Observations - Texas ('15)...

[EifertPower]

Typical Notre Dame game. Even when the team beats the living heck out of Texas in a prime time game you're left feeling down.

The four positions where depth scared me the most coming into this season was:

QB (because of Golson's transfer)
RB (because of Bryant's transfer)
S (because I don't trust Shumate and Redfield based on last year)
CB (because Crawford got injured in camp)

Running back scared me the most and, of course, we lose Folston for the season in the first quarter on a seemingly inoccous play. Ugh.

Now i hear Sebastian is out for 4-6 weeks.

Football is so much about depth but, man, this is just brutal. With Golson, Bryant, and Crawford I would've felt we had the depth needed at these positions.

Prosise looked better than i thought last night and that's a brilliant move by Kelly switching him to RB last spring and Josh Adams wowed me with his explosiveness. But realistically i don't think we can get by the next 11 games with Dexter, Adams, and Prosise. And that's assuming none of these guys get banged up. This team has lofty goals of reaching the CFB Playoffs. I'm not sure these three are good enough to get us there.

Folston was so underrated for us last year. This loss is brutal.

Watching Notre Dame football games has become a weird thing where i spend as much time rooting for our players not to get injured as i do hoping we score and stop our opponent.

Our schedule is brutal, too, with GA Tech, Clemson, Navy, and USC in a 5-week time period without a bye. I was hoping to be as healthy as possible for that string of games.

 

[KPENN]

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[TheOneWhoKnocks]

I think there will be more explosive plays from rbs without TF. I'm a huge fan of CJ move to rb, so besides depth it doesn't worry me. I think TF will be a better pro then college player also. Just suits his style better.

 

[texbender]

We looked very good, but Texas looks like an awful football team right now. Unreal how bad that offense was.

The TX offense was exactly what it was last year...pathetic. There will not be a lot of patience with UT fans to stick with Swoopes.

Irish looked good, give them credit, but really Texas is not good, and I was surprised that their defense gave up so many easy passes. Score could have been worse.

 

[Redbar]

I think there will be more explosive plays from rbs without TF. I'm a huge fan of CJ move to rb, so besides depth it doesn't worry me. I think TF will be a better pro then college player also. Just suits his style better.

The one and only criticism I have of Folston is that he appeared to lack the burning desire to be the man. I want my running back to have a "give me the damm ball" attitude and never want to come off the field. Sometimes I felt a lack of urgency like maybe everything came a little easy for him.

 

[wizards8507]

Typical Notre Dame game. Even when the team beats the living heck out of Texas in a prime time game you're left feeling down.

The four positions where depth scared me the most coming into this season was:

QB (because of Golson's transfer)
RB (because of Bryant's transfer)
S (because I don't trust Shumate and Redfield based on last year)
CB (because Crawford got injured in camp)

Running back scared me the most and, of course, we lose Folston for the season in the first quarter on a seemingly inoccous play. Ugh.

Now i hear Sebastian is out for 4-6 weeks.

Football is so much about depth but, man, this is just brutal. With Golson, Bryant, and Crawford I would've felt we had the depth needed at these positions.

Prosise looked better than i thought last night and that's a brilliant move by Kelly switching him to RB last spring and Josh Adams wowed me with his explosiveness. But realistically i don't think we can get by the next 11 games with Dexter, Adams, and Prosise. And that's assuming none of these guys get banged up. This team has lofty goals of reaching the CFB Playoffs. I'm not sure these three are good enough to get us there.

Folston was so underrated for us last year. This loss is brutal.

Watching Notre Dame football games has become a weird thing where i spend as much time rooting for our players not to get injured as i do hoping we score and stop our opponent.

Our schedule is brutal, too, with GA Tech, Clemson, Navy, and USC in a 5-week time period without a bye. I was hoping to be as healthy as possible for that string of games.

My lord some of you guys are miserable. Folston will be missed, but he's not nearly the world-is-ending loss it's being made out to be. We played 55 minutes without him, ran the ball 42 times, and didn't miss a beat.

 

[EuropeanDomer22]

I think the fault was with the safety. KVR thought he had help coming over the top. Not sure why Cole would be the deep coverage there, but he was late getting over to help. IIRC.

Yes. Russell had outside leverage so he obviously expected some help coming over the top.

 

[phillyirish]

One thing that concerns me that I haven't seen mentioned much is that we had quite a few negative plays, 9 total I think. Some were just bad play call, like that early sweep on 3rd and 1 when you know the defense is going to play the run, then there was Jefferson making that incredible play on adams in the backfield. But giving up 9 tackles for a loss is far too many considering our dominating defensive performance only netted us 7.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

One thing that concerns me that I haven't seen mentioned much is that we had quite a few negative plays, 9 total I think. Some were just bad play call, like that early sweep on 3rd and 1 when you know the defense is going to play the run, then there was Jefferson making that incredible play on adams in the backfield. But giving up 9 tackles for a loss is far too many considering our dominating defensive performance only netted us 7.

Agreed. That, coupled with the penalties, must stop moving forward. The facemask, the false starts, nearly delay of game and the negative plays will kill us against a better team.

 

[Cackalacky]

One thing that concerns me that I haven't seen mentioned much is that we had quite a few negative plays, 9 total I think. Some were just bad play call, like that early sweep on 3rd and 1 when you know the defense is going to play the run, then there was Jefferson making that incredible play on adams in the backfield. But giving up 9 tackles for a loss is far too many considering our dominating defensive performance only netted us 7.

Agree. I posted earlier that we forced Texas into bad situations and they could not convert. We likewise had several 2nd and longs or 3rd and longs but did convert for first downs. A little bit of game management to work on but over all too many positives to have a negative feeling about that game.

 

[Irish#1]

One thing that concerns me that I haven't seen mentioned much is that we had quite a few negative plays, 9 total I think. Some were just bad play call, like that early sweep on 3rd and 1 when you know the defense is going to play the run, then there was Jefferson making that incredible play on adams in the backfield. But giving up 9 tackles for a loss is far too many considering our dominating defensive performance only netted us 7.

Agreed. That, coupled with the penalties, must stop moving forward. The facemask, the false starts, nearly delay of game and the negative plays will kill us against a better team.

I attibute this to working out the kinks. As much as you try, you just can't mimic a game in practice. We'll get these cleaned up.

The thing I took from this game was the offensive diversity shown. Teams that watch tape will be scratching their heads trying to figure out where the next play is coming from.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

The one and only criticism I have of Folston is that he appeared to lack the burning desire to be the man. I want my running back to have a "give me the damm ball" attitude and never want to come off the field. Sometimes I felt a lack of urgency like maybe everything came a little easy for him.

I just totally disagree. He was part of a deep squad and took the regular job. And he runs lots of intensity. He lacks elite speed. That's what CJ and Josh will bring.

 

[GoIrish41]

I thought Josh Adams was a little slow and a ramrod type back. Swear there was a discussion about it in his thread. He looked pretty darn fast, though. It was certainly a very pleasant surprise.

 

[blackirish]

If you're missing an OL or a QB your team is pretty screwed. They're missing both.

With that being said, I expect Texas to win at least 7 games this year. They aren't as bad as we made them look.

They've been out scored 117-20 in their last 3 games. I tell ya this..... Charlie Strong better find a QB in a hurry ! Because from what I saw 7 games is a reach.

 

[blackirish]

Scary good.

He "gong the s... out of Josh Adams.

 

[Rocknes Ghost]

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Oh man...please tell me I don't have to wait until mid week for this. I'm used to getting up Sunday and going straight to WatchND

 

[Old Man Mike]

As to the so-called Russell Bust on their one long pass: It was my intuition that this was a safety bust not a corner bust. We had no safety anywhere in the field of vision on that play --- it's POSSIBLE that such a "no safety at all" scheme would be played I guess, but frankly I can't imagine one without at least a deep linebacker drop [no linebacker in the field of vision either].

My intuition is that we had our semi-regular [last year] safety bust, and BOTH of our great instinctive corners hustled their butts over to defend the play. Rather than getting on Russell, I say All Hail!

 

[koonja]

Anyone notice how Tillery and Schmidt played? Not interested in Tillery's stats, but was he holding his own against the OL and creating any disruption? Didn't notice Schmidt out there really. Not saying good/bad, just saying.

IDK how Hayes and Blankership didn't log a snap. I guess it's a good sign.

 

[rocket66]

Anyone notice how Tillery and Schmidt played? Not interested in Tillery's stats, but was he holding his own against the OL and creating any disruption? Didn't notice Schmidt out there really. Not saying good/bad, just saying.

IDK how Hayes and Blankership didn't log a snap. I guess it's a good sign.

I actually felt like Schmidt was chasing a lot and missed a few tackles. He's definitely a step behind last year's playing speed so far.


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[Irish Insanity]

Got a text from my closest friend a bit ago. He said:

Hey get us to an ND game this season...I'd like to see your bad ass QB in person. No joke...dude looked the real deal last night.

My friend is a U of M fan. Doesn't typically give ND, or one of its players, much positive thought or comment.

Put a huge smile on my face.

#HeiZman

 

[connor_in]

Please be really good, Ohio State. I don't want to admit how good Notre Dame looks. - SBNation.com

 

[blackirish]

I believe we will find that Texas is a better team that Virginia.

(Between the lines : blitz-happy Tenuta is really fucked!)

Texas made good adjustments all night, their coaches were on top of it. Nothing worked.

Of course the biggest test in a lot of ways for the year is GA Tech. With a dominant and/or injury free solid performance, we should feel pretty good about matching up against anyone else this season.

What adjustments did Texas make ? Because frankly I saw the same thing from them last year..... Thier best player is a freshman Malik Jefferson, after him who else on that team do other defenses have to be concerned about ? However with that being said I liked the way our defense played.... I think we beat both GT and Virginia. I know GT had a monster triple option but their defense is suspect. Virginia , eh... I'd be surprised if we struggle against them but ya never know.
Go Irish

 

[Cackalacky]

Anyone notice how Tillery and Schmidt played? Not interested in Tillery's stats, but was he holding his own against the OL and creating any disruption? Didn't notice Schmidt out there really. Not saying good/bad, just saying.

IDK how Hayes and Blankership didn't log a snap. I guess it's a good sign.

Tillery had a sack and was also in pursuit on Okwara's sack so he could have had another one there as well. Schmidt was not called upon to do much by Texas but he was very active and did a variety of things defensively. You may not have seen much from him because Texas did not go into his area very much.

 

[koonja]

I really liked that Malik stepped out of bounds every time on the sideline to avoid a hit. I have a feeling he doesn't like doing that, but I'm glad he's doing it smart/

 

[Irish Insanity]

I really liked that Malik stepped out of bounds every time on the sideline to avoid a hit. I have a feeling he doesn't like doing that, but I'm glad he's doing it smart/

On the one up the left side line he had another 5 yards before any contact. I'd like to at least see him take another step forward before he steps out. And he seem to love his runs up the middle as he fought for every yard he could.

 

[IrishinSyria]

I actually felt like Schmidt was chasing a lot and missed a few tackles. He's definitely a step behind last year's playing speed so far.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I didn't notice this but he did seem half a step slow. Granted, I was watching from the top of the bowl, so take with a huge grain of salt.

 

[Riddickulous]

I didn't notice this but he did seem half a step slow. Granted, I was watching from the top of the bowl, so take with a huge grain of salt.

There was one play that stood out to me. Texas ran something like a bubble screen or a swing pass and Joe had it sniffed out from the start, but he was just too slow to make the play.

 

[Calabrese's People]

Game Replay

Game Replay

For those who want to reference events, or just enjoy it again and again, the full game is below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYLzVUF4wR8

 

[aubeirish]

Anyone notice how Tillery and Schmidt played? Not interested in Tillery's stats, but was he holding his own against the OL and creating any disruption? Didn't notice Schmidt out there really. Not saying good/bad, just saying.

IDK how Hayes and Blankership didn't log a snap. I guess it's a good sign.

You might not have noticed Schmidt making spectacular plays, but you could easily see he was leading this defense. There wasn't a lot of blown assignments in the front seven yesterday, and he's an integral part of all that.

 

[IrishinSyria]

There was one play that stood out to me. Texas ran something like a bubble screen or a swing pass and Joe had it sniffed out from the start, but he was just too slow to make the play.

Yup. I remember that exact play.

edit: 1st play of the 2nd quarter.