Post Game Observations...

[IrishinSyria]

Because I didn't see one up in the forums yet. Please delete if I just missed it.

1) Jonas Gray is the story of this game and the season. His running on the first drive put us in the driver's seat for the rest of the game. His injury was devastating to the offense and if it keeps him out or limited against Stanford really hurts our chances to pull off the upset. On the plus side, Jonas has had a late-career surge for the ages. There were people on this board hoping he would never get another carry after the USF game. Luckily, he did, and made the most of every single touch he got after that.

2) There seems to be a blueprint for stopping ND's offense. Rush 3, put 8 in coverage, don't worry too much about getting beat over-top. We've seen variations of the same basic gameplan from USC and Pitt as well.

3) Tommy continues to win... but. Listen, the QB debate should be dead until after bowl season. You don't change course at this point. That being said, even Tommy's staunchest supporters have to see where the questions are coming from.

4) Eifert is really really good.

5) Manti is the beating heart and soul of the D.

6) Boston College beat themselves. Frodo brought their A-game, but failed to execute on some critical plays.

7) Glad to see the seniors go out with a win. Today wasn't pretty, but the Irish put up win #8 and won on senior day. That's going to mean a lot to some good kids for a long time to come.

8) Next week is huge. Twice this season, the Irish have generated a lot of hype on the heals of 4 game winning streaks: the weeks before opening day and the weeks before USC. Both times, the Irish cracked under the pressure of high expectations. We just hit win #4, getting that 5th win would say a lot about the development of this team.

 

[EifertPower]

6 reasons we won this game:

1. Great running on opening drive by Jonas Gray

2. Great field goal kicking by David Ruffer. If Ruffer had kicked like he did in the first half of this season then we lose this game

3. Pressure we were able to get on Boston College QB. That guy couldn't handle a blitz to save his life.

4. Rettig is a terrible, terrible quarterback.

5. We rarely missed any tackles on defense

6. A terrific catch by Eifert in the first quarter.


Other observations:

1. Rees is proving more and more each week he can't handle any pressure nor can he make any plays when he is flushed out of the pocket.

2. At least we won't go into the Stanford game overconfident

3. Like Ruffer, Ben Turk has been really good since a tough start to the season

4. Did Tuitt play in the game? Did Ishaq play? It was nice to see Nicklas make a big hit late in the game.

5. Zeke Motta looked lost out there again. Collingsworth has been getting more and more time at safety these past few games but i haven't been too impressed.

6. I felt that it was one of the worst games we had running the ball and yet we still ran for 161 yards!

7. I thought that was Louis Nix's best game of his career.

8. What's up with kicking the ball out of bounds all the times on kickoffs?

9. Robby Toma is a great slot receiver. Let's please not turn this opportunity into saying he is better than Riddick. Both are great players and both should be given a lot of opportunities and i truly feel if we had a top tier QB these guys both would be putting up monster numbers.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Minimal comments: A). we pretty much stunk the field up yesterday, but won. After following football for half a century, I find that such performances, even by pretty darn good football teams, are common. An ND NC team once had to fake injuries at the end of both halves to get extra plays to keep an much lesser Iowa team from winning. When Kelly says "a win is a win", he is not talking trash.

B). Jonas Gray has turned into our stud. Losing him is going to hurt us FAR more in the coming two games than I believe we realize. I hope that I am wrong.

C). Our good players generally played well.

D). BC had good game plans both sides of the ball. They took advantage of our two unfixable [this year] flaws: Tommy's inability/unwillingness to occasionally run [even his mediocre running ability COULD have gained a fair amount of yardage in the run 5-8 yards and duck method]; and the inability of all our linebackers to make correct pass-coverage drops and locate the enemy receivers [I do not believe that this is because Diaco is a lousy linebackers coach. I believe that we have very few of these guys who have any football instincts for pass defense. Our linebackers are downhill people smashers by nature.] These two weaknesses a).stalled the offense and b).kept BC on the field.

E). A win is a win. We are 8-3 and about where I thought we might be going into this season's end [though not specifically game-by-game]. If we win 9 games this year, we will be moving forward. If, just for imagination's sake, we win 10 next year, and 11 the year following, most sensible fans would look back at this "9-win-season" as part of a reasonable and wonderful beginning of NDs return to glory. That is the way I am going to view it until proved differently by actual historical results.

 

[bert2834]

6 reasons we won this game:

1. Great running on opening drive by Jonas Gray

2. Great field goal kicking by David Ruffer. If Ruffer had kicked like he did in the first half of this season then we lose this game

3. Pressure we were able to get on Boston College QB. That guy couldn't handle a blitz to save his life.

4. Rettig is a terrible, terrible quarterback.

5. We rarely missed any tackles on defense

6. A terrific catch by Eifert in the first quarter.


Other observations:

1. Rees is proving more and more each week he can't handle any pressure nor can he make any plays when he is flushed out of the pocket.

2. At least we won't go into the Stanford game overconfident

3. Like Ruffer, Ben Turk has been really good since a tough start to the season

4. Did Tuitt play in the game? Did Ishaq play? It was nice to see Nicklas make a big hit late in the game.

5. Zeke Motta looked lost out there again. Collingsworth has been getting more and more time at safety these past few games but i haven't been too impressed.

6. I felt that it was one of the worst games we had running the ball and yet we still ran for 161 yards!

7. I thought that was Louis Nix's best game of his career.

8. What's up with kicking the ball out of bounds all the times on kickoffs?

9. Robby Toma is a great slot receiver. Let's please not turn this opportunity into saying he is better than Riddick. Both are great players and both should be given a lot of opportunities and i truly feel if we had a top tier QB these guys both would be putting up monster numbers.

Tuiit was sick and did not play.

 

[Irish Man3]

- The Jonas Gray injury is big. Not only was he running hard, but he was running good enough to take the starting job from Cierre Wood (1000 yard rusher). That's will hurt badly over the next two games.

- Our defensive line played really well I thought. I normally like how they rotate young players across the defensive line, but I didn't like Niklas at NG. That didn't make a lot of sense to me.

- I said this last week and caught some crap for it but I'll say it again, Michael Floyd needs to lay out for a ball. I understand the fact that Tommy overthrew him by two yards or so when he was wide open down the sidelines but why not lay out and make that catch? Why just throw one hand out there? If he makes the one-handed catch he probably scores and everyone thinks it's amazing. If he dives and secures the catch he doesn't score but he picks up 40+ yards. Just something that bothered me about him this year.

- Who backs up Cierre next week? GAIII? Stanford's defense is not as good as it was last year, but it is stout and they hit hard. Cierre hasn't really proved that he's a back that gets better asa the game goes on. We'll see.

- Liked what I saw again from Toma (although I think that ball he dove and caught hit the ground). He's just as solid slot guy that is quick but not fast.

- TJ looked a little better this week than he has recently. Not just his hands but his down field blocking.

- Lynch doesn't have a whole lot of sacks this year, but he has to have about 35 quarterback hurries. The kid is unreal at beating a single blocker.

- Teo looked a little healthier. Hope he didn't just play his last game in South Bend.

- Eifert is awesome. Simple.

- I thought Tommy played well enough to win. I think he made some really good throws at times and then other times he made some really bad decisions. The blatant lack of respect for his running ability by BC is a problem for me. Hopefully, someone steps up enough in the off-season to really battle Tommy for the starting job. Our offense is limited, simple.

- Ugly win against a rival that treated this game like their bowl game. We won. 8-3 and heading west for a tough one.

 

[sportallyr]

1) Turk is improving on his long kicks, but his two punts into the end zone late in the game (20 yard net and 30 yard net) were really bad punts and could have cost us the game.

2) Speaking of stupid plays that could have cost us the game, what in the hell was Brindza doing kicking the ball out of bounds? Many of his kicks this year have come really close and some have gone out of bounds. What happened to the kid at the beginning of the year that routinely put the ball into the end zone. SMH at this one.

3) Manti, Nix, Lynch and Slaughter played really well on D. Nobody else seemed to make any plays and many of the other guys played downright horrible. Gary Gray player like Gary Gray and I thought Blanton played his worst game of the year.

4). Not sure I've felt worse for a player in my entire life than I did when I saw Jonas Gray crying on the sideline. I'm tearing up just thinking about this young man right now and praying that he somehow makes it through this without a devistating injury.

5) Cierre Wood is an explosive back, but he seems to lack patience. There were many times that he just ran into the backs of the lineman, rather than taking his time and letting a hole develop. We need him to tote the rock 20 times or so next week to stand any chance, so I really hope he studies film from the game and makes the adjustment next week.

6) This game was won by Bob Diaco, who made adjustments at halftime and figured out that we needed to blitz the LB's in order to get consistent pressure on their QB.

7) I am happy that we are 8-3...but we have no chance next week if we play like we did yesterday.

 

[Patulski]

We are who we are: A top 25 team, with too many holes across the board to compete with the big boys.

I expect Stanford to beat us by 10.

Kelly has to recruit his way up the ladder. If he does, which means upgrading overall team speed, we'll be better.

 

[condoms SUCk]

a) It was a sloppy game, but we won
b) D played well, but I agree that our LB’s need to learn how to play in space in pass coverage
c) O played inconsistent, running game was OK and I’m surprised we got 161 rushing yards
d) Why did we not see Hendrix? If BC is dropping 8, bring Hendrix in and mix it up.

 

[notredomer23]

Question for anyone, mainly because I am too lazy to look it up. Toma's last year of eligibility is next year correct, because Weis played him a little his freshman year?

Also, why is Slaughter not getting any love? He played is best game of his career yesterday IMO

 

[BeatSC]

Agree with most observations

Agree with most observations

The Positive:
Ben Turk's punting distance

Ruffer's FG kicking

Toma (not enough targets though)

Eiffert not enough targets though)

Pass Protection

Floyd's blocking

Overall Defense but not so much in the clutch.

Jonas Gray

Luck on dropped Ints

Luck on BC dropped passes

Won a game that we would have lost under Weis although that prevent defense at the end of the game was pretty bad.

Negatives:

Yes Tommy Reese, he could have had 4 Ints and is one Int was a complete joke. His inability to run at 6 foot and 195 is also a joke. Throiwng the ball out of bounds on 3rd and 6 3 times is just deflating. Can't remember a QB at ND this immobile. Even Ron Powlas could mover a little bit.

Dropped passes by Floyd and Jones. Could have built up a little pad if these guys make plays like D1 starting WRs.

Bad penalties at bad times (Floyd PI and Motta PI)

Kelly playcalling and Reese decisions. What happened to all is savvy check downs. I'm not buying in that e is making all these great reads at the LOS. That's BS IMO.

Playing down to the level of our competition. You can flush any style points down the drain. BC has been beat down by many others and I would have to file this as our worst game of the season (win or lose). We were lucky we didn't have one more TO although Tommy did his best to give them a shot.

Awful Kickoffs, WTF! Waiting to see te camera on Kelly letting off steam after those.

That illegal motion that wasn't blown dead when we finally make a big sack, cause a fumble and recover.

Prevent defense that doesn't prevent sh-t!

BC WR wide open in the middle of the field!

Lack of all imagination on the offense. Can't we try a direct snap for once?

Lack of playing time for alot of seniors beacuse this team couldn't put away a dog. Kept thinking as bad as Tommy was playing that somehow we would make a switch at QB. Kelly's unwillingness to pull the trigger on Tommy. He looked worse all game than Dayne did in the first alf of the USF game. Dayne made BC win look easy last year on the road against a better BC team. His ability to deliver a ball with velocity is a differnece maker that Tommy's pop warner high school arm will never achieve. I cant watch this offense with Tommy next year without a Michael Floyd or Jonas Gray is too much to bear.

 

[Veer option]

Pros
Great kicking/punting by Ruffer and Turk
Congrats on 1000k rushing CW. The Irish will need you big time the next two games.
Overall defense played very well.
What the Irish lack on sideline to sideline speed they make up for in solid tackling.
Great to see EJ back in there.
Toma has played well filling in for Riddick.
ND stadium seemed very energized.
Holy crap the middle lb for BC was all over the place.
The improvisational play by MF was one of his best plays all season.

Cons
I would have liked to have seen some sort of offensive adjustments to the BC defense.
Sometimes you just have to tuck it and run Tommy. 2nd and 7 to me seems better than a 2nd and 10.
The loss of Jonas will hurt severely the next two games. Get well soon big guy!

 

[Riddickulous]

If I was an offensive coordinator playing Notre Dame I would run a drag route underneath on every play. It's wide open literally every time.

 

[DillonHall]

If I was an offensive coordinator playing Notre Dame I would run a drag route underneath on every play. It's wide open literally every time.

Stanford next week.

 

[HereComeTheIrish]

If I was an offensive coordinator playing Notre Dame I would run a drag route underneath on every play. It's wide open literally every time.

Very, very true.

 

[NDinL.A.]

The Positive:

Dropped passes by Floyd and Jones. Could have built up a little pad if these guys make plays like D1 starting WRs.

Yeah, because Floyd is the problem...he hasn't been playing like a D1 receiver. Riiiiiiiight. (He's playing at an elite level, 1 top 3 receiver that many have said is the best receiver in the game. But he didn't play like a D1 receiver. Hmmm....

Bad penalties at bad times (Floyd PI and Motta PI)

That wasn't a PI on Floyd. That was a bullcrap call.

Kelly playcalling and Reese decisions. What happened to all is savvy check downs. I'm not buying in that e is making all these great reads at the LOS. That's BS IMO.

So because YOU think it's BS, it is???? Even though his coaches say it, and other experts (who are around the team and know more football than we do) say that he is making the correct checks, and the offense is putting up way more points/yards than they did last year, you aren't buying it. Would that have anything to do with your mancrush on Crist (I L-O-V-E how you always ignore Crist's many flaws and errors and continually beat up on Rees) and your utter hatred for Rees, would it?

And spell his name correctly. He might not be the greatest QB in the world (obviously - I'm hoping for a wide-open QB competition next year and hopefully the young kids can step up)), but he's an ND player, he works his *** off for the team and the university, and all he's done is win 'pop-warner arm' and all. Show a ND player some damn respect and spell his name correctly. You sound like a troll with that crap.
Playing down to the level of our competition. You can flush any style points down the drain. BC has been beat down by many others and I would have to file this as our worst game of the season (win or lose). We were lucky we didn't have one more TO although Tommy did his best to give them a shot.

Awful Kickoffs, WTF! Waiting to see te camera on Kelly letting off steam after those.

He's been hurt, per a family friend of his on a paysite, but he's the best we have.

 

[JoeyGetherall]

Slaughter is eligible for a 5th no? Hopefully he can move back to his natural position next year with the developement of younger guys.

Felt sick for Jonas. Really going to miss him these last two games. He has been my favorite player this year. For those blamming Tommy for that get a life.

Oline seemed to struggle with run blocking in second half. Idk if the Jonas injury was in their head or what. That needs to improve next week though. I am sure to staff will be on it.

Tommy had some good plays where he stayed cool, read the defense and found the open man. Other times he struggled mightly and his inability to run really hurts when they drop 8. Growing pains for sure. The pick was awful though. It will be interesting to see what BK game plans for next week as I am sure Stanford will use this and Pitt and USC games as blueprint.

Overall I was proud of our defense. Kelly put the game in their hands and they responded again. The last td BC had showed again our lack of athletisim in the secondary. I thought Diaco called a pretty good game. BC helped a bit too with dropped and overthrown balls. Thats for ya CFB though.

Special teams kicking has done a 180. Ruffer and Turk are playing much better while Brindoza is now struggling. NDLA says he is injured which makes sense since at the beginning of the year he was kicking it into the endzone and now hes kicking it out of bounds.

I think this wins helps as this team progresses. IMO its the ability to win the close ones that help a program start to become great. Its something that has to be learned as every week can't be a blow out.

Excited for next week!

 

[irishff1014]

There really isn't much to say about this game other then an ugly win. If this team shows up next weekend that did yesterday it is going to be really bad.

 

[BeatSC]

Yeah, because Floyd is the problem...he hasn't been playing like a D1 receiver. Riiiiiiiight. (He's playing at an elite level, 1 top 3 receiver that many have said is the best receiver in the game. But he didn't play like a D1 receiver. Hmmm....



That wasn't a PI on Floyd. That was a bullcrap call.



So because YOU think it's BS, it is???? Even though his coaches say it, and other experts (who are around the team and know more football than we do) say that he is making the correct checks, and the offense is putting up way more points/yards than they did last year, you aren't buying it. Would that have anything to do with your mancrush on Crist (I L-O-V-E how you always ignore Crist's many flaws and errors and continually beat up on Rees) and your utter hatred for Rees, would it?

And spell his name correctly. He might not be the greatest QB in the world (obviously - I'm hoping for a wide-open QB competition next year and hopefully the young kids can step up)), but he's an ND player, he works his *** off for the team and the university, and all he's done is win 'pop-warner arm' and all. Show a ND player some damn respect and spell his name correctly. You sound like a troll with that crap.
Playing down to the level of our competition. You can flush any style points down the drain. BC has been beat down by many others and I would have to file this as our worst game of the season (win or lose). We were lucky we didn't have one more TO although Tommy did his best to give them a shot.



He's been hurt, per a family friend of his on a paysite, but he's the best we have.

Apologies on the Rees mispell. Not done on purpose. Keep an eye on me as it wont happen again. Do like your observations on my mancrush/bromance with D.
didn't call for him to play against Stanford anywhere in my posts because he was awful agaisnt them last year and was beat down. I don't think my opinions on Tommy Rees are that different from the majority of the folks on this site. If he can work out and spend some time withthe track team over the spring and can run the read-option then more power to him. I liked what I saw with Golson in the Blue Gold game. I just want to see ND go with players with the highest upside. Two weeks in a row that Floyd has dropped 2 passes in one game. I noted his good blocking and others dropped passes.

 

[Old Man Mike]

On Brindza: Kelly has addressed this. Brindza is working through a mental thing that is messing him up game time. Kelly said that Ruffer had the same thing earlier and mentally broke through. He says he has seen this before. He seems relaxed enough [yes, he doesn't like the poor KOs] that he believes that Brindza has what it takes to put the mental element to rest and be an outstanding kicker.