Failure Isn’t an Option

To build on my Game Over post on whyWeis is different and Bonger’s excellent post expanding on those theme’s today, I want to reframe the angst debate very simply:

1 – No matter what you think about this season Charlie isn’t going anywhere. He’s not getting fired and he’s not quitting and moving to the NFL. His contract is huge and the administration has to give him a chance to get his recruits to the Junior and Senior levels.

2 – His situation is different from this predecessors for three reasons:

• He has a genuine love for the school, where the previous coaches were users. But this alone doesn’t matter.
• He’s been left a virtual death sentence in scholarships and talent in the junior and senior classes. His predecessor had talent from his predecessor’s recruiting. We have the worst talent in modern history and no numbers.
• It isn’t that we have a young offensive line. It isn’t that we have freshman quarterback who was injured. It isn’t just that we lack threats at wide receiver. It isn’t a relentless schedule. It’s that all of these things are happening at once that makes it a challenging offensive situation.
• Charlie’s recruited back to back to back top ten recruiting classes, something his predecessors combined weren’t able to do. His predecessor was destroying the program class by class.

Given one and two the ONLY outcome of the constant Hold Me I’m Irish Negativity could have would be to degrade the current recruiting class. That’s it.

Charlie’s not moving anywhere. The recruits are coming in. The current talent level is very poor.

So, a rhetorical question: If the only effect of constant wailing is to hurt the future we’re building…. wouldn’t it be better to go mow the lawn than constantly harp on negatives that bring on the very thing we’re worried about?

Failure isn’t an option. The talent foundation is being reset for the first time in almost 15 years.

This is the year to support, not tear down the team no matter how bad it gets… because the alternative is to make it worse.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

A Rush to Judgement

Toledo, Central Michigan, Eastern Illinois and Minnesota averaged 4.4 yards a rush so far this year against Purdue for 34 first downs and 7 touchdowns. Purdue’s defensive ends are 241 and 247 pounds apiece. Robert Hughes and James Aldridge are 238 and 220 pounds apiece.

I’m just sayin’

If you haven’t read Vannie’s two cents you should.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

Recruits are Savvy

****This was shared by Art Fern (rock’s house)

Recruits are savvy enough to know

· That Weis already had a verbal commitment from Frazer and a strong feelers coming from the reopened Mustain camp when Weis accepted Jones’ verbal commitment over Mustain’s

· That Weis eliminated Frazer, not Jones from the competition after spring practice

· That Weis would have chosen Sharpley to start against Georgia Tech if he only wanted a caretaker until Clausen was ready

· That Weis would not have developed packages for Jones to use against Michigan if he had no intention of allowing Jones to compete for the starting spot

· That Weis had no problem starting a sophomore over a junior at QB

· That Weis has had no problem starting a freshman at QB, on the line, at DB, as kick returner, at WR, and at RB

· That Weis let Rick Minter go and hired Corwin Brown in his place

Recruits are also savvy enough to know that opposing coaches that spin the Jones situation in light of the above are proving their own self-interest is more important than truth and the best interest of the kid.

Recruits are also savvy enough to know that opposing coaches that were ready to supplant their three-year starter with a freshman or a tag-along recruit should not be the ones accusing Weis of ulterior motives.

Truth be told, the recruits are savvy enough to know that, thanks to the recruiting shortfalls left by the previous regime, they have an unparalleled opportunity in the history of Notre Dame to walk into immediate playing time and at the same time resurrect the most storied college football program.

As a matter of fact, the verbal commitments, particularly on defense (or any WR that commits), need to come to campus ready to play because play they will. And no opposing coach, no matter how sleazy, will be able to counter this double question from any one of our verbal commits:

Coach Doubletalk, “Tell me again why I won’t be able to get immediate playing time at ND? Do you think they have too much talent, or do you think I’m not good enough?”

I’ll add one more, Coach Weis isn’t going anywhere for a variety of reasons. ZERO chance.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

The Purpose of Blame

We always have to blame something or someone. It makes us feel better by giving us a sense that the uneasy feeling we’re living with and our accompanying emotional distresses have been addressed.

Once we’ve blamed somebody, our frustration and burdens are temporarily exorcised.

But blame resolution, like the pursuit of instant gratification (insert joke) is rarely lasting and only helpful if placed within context.

It takes a certain amount of experience to balance the need to satiate blame with the reality of where things truly stand. Human nature requires we assign responsibility and “do something” to mitigate the perceived wrong. Until we blame somebody, we feel that our worries are unresolved. If we really care about something, it’s essential to our heads that we get why it’s wrong and that there’s movement toward addressing it.

If not, it gets basketed into the unresolved emotional distress bin — and that gnaws at you.

It reminds me of…. pardon the elder reference here… the “Mash” line where Frank intones, “we need to do something, ANYTHING.” Hawkeye replies, “I agree with Frank, let’s do anything.”

That’s the “make the pain go away” line, but it usually doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

My unfortunate friend is married to someone who constantly harps on money while this person is building a business and highlights everything that’s wrong in the day-to-day world. That doesn’t change the fact that all those little things that are wrong aren’t going to get better until they get better. Which simply means that everything is going to look like it’s wrong until things are headed in the right direction. All of the little things that appear to be wrong would be just fine if things were good in the short-term.

The thing is… it was clear before they got married that they’d have to go through this, but the frustration of the problem begets the need to blame something. And, of course, everything looks bad. If business were great, human nature would find a way to generate happy signals for most of the frustration signs.

Folks, we’re in the perfect storm of awful — we all saw this coming, but it’s worse than we ever thought it would be.

Reflecting back, we should have thought it could get this bad.

We’ve got a brand new quarterback, brand new wide receivers and a mostly new line starting against one of the hardest opening schedules in the country.

Now layer that in with the fact that we’ve had one of the worst defenses in the country with paper thin, lower-rated depth adjusting to a brand new defensive scheme.

That’s all bad enough, but we also don’t have ONE WEEK of rest for EIGHT STRAIGHT WEEKS. Not one smaller team to at least get our footing against.

In addition to all of this, we’re struggling with the worst junior/senior classes in ND history and even those low rated classes have been decimated by attrition.

I hate where we’re at. No football fan could enjoy this, but I also know the talent that’s coming underneath; it’s landscape changing talent especially on defense.

In the meantime understand that the personal need to assign blame is human, but not necessarily helpful or relative. We just don’t, and can’t, understand much of what is wrong until we come up the backside of awful. Everything (and I’m to blame as well) looks bad right now. Are the lack of hitting practices to blame? Probably, but if we had hitting practices and lost Trevor Laws or Pat Kuntz is that worth the trade-off? Or after Laws goes down for the season do we then blame the stupid decision to have harder hitting tackle to the ground practices?

Blame is one of the most useless, but essential of human reactions. Blame allows us to move on That’s why we can blame with venom one week and embrace again the next week with a fervor we thought was impossible the week before.

It’s part of being a fan.

The emotional need to blame, whether it’s in relationships, business or sports, needs to be satiated and… something needs to be sacrificed to be free of this need to make the wrong, right.

We’re all going to be mad after every loss, let’s just don’t sacrifice the wrong idea or jump the wrong conclusions to satisfy blood lust. It takes courage to back your man and stay the course.

We’ve all thrown in with Charlie who, most of all, cares about ND while being smart enough to figure it out.

Our plight today was absolutely 100% predictable two years ago.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t mistakes being made, but we wouldn’t notice most of them, at all, if we were winning and, because we’ve got some basic fundamental issues, we can’t tell if things are symptoms or causes.

The key here is to adjust our focus away from our beer-slamming emotions and onto the fact South Bend is going to be loaded with talent for the next four years. One, it’s the truth and two, nothing else we do in the meantime, this emotional thrashing, accomplishes anything more than appeasing our own angst.

Oh, I forgot, the one thing that has been horrible from the start is special teams.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

And in This Corner

Here come the Irish hoopsters with the best collection of talent Mike Brey has had since Troy Murphy roamed the court. Anyone who saw Notre Dame last year understands that Tory Jackson has enormous potential at point guard. Luke Harangody, another sophomore, is the best big man we’ve had since Mr. Murphy. But more importantly, Notre Dame doesn’t have any glaring holes to fill for teams to exploit. The book on ND basketball(that’s besides Coffey’s book) was always extend on the perimeter and double down inside. Teams did it with great success, but now we have players who can finish from outside, midrange and inside.

Perhaps the biggest change (besides a weak schedule) is that a team attitude seems to have taken hold. ND was notorious for defensive breakdowns and jacking threes on offense. What Brey’s team showed last year was the ability to become multi-dimensional on offense, play aggressive defense and run the ball in transition.

Thinking about the possibilities his year with an attacking offense fueled by Tory Jackson’s penetration and a low post presence by Harangody and Kurz who can kick it out to McAlarney or Ayers on the wing,… and now we also have the ability sink the 12 foot shot. Reportedly, Luke Zeller played very well overseas.

While losing Falls and Carter, we’re gaining in maturity from Brey’s best recruiting classes.

Here are some notes from JHND from the pit on Saturday’s scrimmage:

General Notes on the Upperclassmen

– Tory Jackson is outstanding. He’s quick, he’s athletic, he can finish around the hoop, he can dish the ball, and now he can shoot, too. I have to imagine that he’ll be All-Big East this year if he stays healthy.

– McAlarney looked like McAlarney. A great outside shooter, but you can kind of tell when he’s looking to shoot the ball. He looks calm and confident, though, and it looked like his defense was good. He has a serious, pissed-off (not in a bad way) demeanor to him that I
like.

– I really didn’t see much of Ayers. He made a couple of nice mini-drives into the lane from 15′ out on the wing, finished with finger rolls, but I don’t remember him shooting the ball. He’s solid, but not spectacular.

– Peoples looks pretty average to me, to be honest. I’m not sure what he brings to the table, other than another ball-handler in a
crunch. He doesn’t seem to have any confidence to shoot the ball, and Jackson
seemed to get on him at one point (seemingly only half-seriously) about never
looking for his shot.

– Kurz looked like Kurz, which is a good thing. Very polished, with nice defense and controlled outside shooting. I don’t remember his finishing around the rim to be as impressive as I was hoping, however, but he’s a great player.

– Harangody is a beast, pure and simple. There were times during the scrimmage in which he was scoring at will, and against some pretty decent defense from Zeller. He was hitting some hooks, making post moves, hitting 10′ jumpers, and hitting threes. He also seems to be making better decisions — at one point he was barreling down the court at full speed in his traditional runaway locomotive style (which would make me crap my pants if I were the opposition), and whereas last year he probably would have committed a very gruesome charge, this time he made a nice dish to a teammate, who finished easily. I can’t see why he won’t be an All-Big East player this year, and some All-America recognition wouldn’t be shocking if he were on a team
that didn’t have as many balanced scoring options.

– Zeller plays like a poor man’s Yao Ming, from this untrained eye. He seems to like to stick exclusively to turn around jumpers when gets near the rim, and he still likes to light up the three. At least he was hitting a decent amount of them. It’s funny,
because when I saw him play with the team in one of these scrimmages when he was
a high school senior, he showed a variety of post moves and baby hooks, which I
haven’t seen since. His interior defense did seem improved, which is a nice
sign.

– I like Hillesland a lot, and I hope he gets some more PT
this year at the three spot. I like him more than Ayers at the 3, because he can
drive to the hoop, is bulkier, and still plays awesome defense. His shot has
also gotten better, but regardless Brey shouldn’t feel like he needs another
shooter at the 3, when he has Jackson, McAlarney and Kurz on the floor.

General Notes on the Freshmen

– Tyrone Nash played the most out of any of the freshmen, and I expect that he’ll get decent minutes here and there, especially during the early non-conference schedule. He seems very athletic, which is something we can always use more of in our lineup (aside from Jackson), and reasonably polished.

– Carlton Scott is really, really thin, but he at least looks to have long arms and legs. He really didn’t play much, though.

– Ty Proffitt got in the scrimmage quite a bit
at the end, and showed off a very nice looking, high-arching (Matt Carroll-like)
three-point stroke. He also handles the ball well, and seems confident.

– Tim Abromaitis looked pretty good, and seemed more athletic than
I was expecting. However, he seemed to look for his outside shot way, way more
often than I thought he should (he looked to have been about 1-6 shooting from
three), but perhaps that was only because it was a scrimmage.

General Summary Thoughts

– I love the way this team seems to work very hard and aggressively on the defensive end. If that translates to games, they’ll be tough to beat just from that perspective. They play tough in the half-court set, and they hussle to get back on fast breaks. There were a couple of a nice-looking blocks today. More than anything else,
defense was something I liked the look of today.

– We have a lot of confident leadership on this team, in direct contrast with the football team, which has almost none. Kurz, McAlarney and Jackson are all great floor leaders, either by speaking, doing, or both.

– We’ll probably lack overall athleticism again in this team, but Jackson and Nash have as much as you’d ever want at their spots, and Harangody and Hillesland can hold their own in that department. Harangody seems especially improved in that area.

– I’m sure the team will again look to the three too much, even though they have
enough talent to be able to dominate from two-point range, but we’ll have to
accept that offensive strategy when our coach is from the Duke coaching tree.
They still seem to look three first, and all it would take is a little nudging
from time to time to remind them that they really are good enough to score
inside, both from passes to big men, and from drives and cuts.

– The recruit in attendance looked like a good player. Raw, but a little less so
than he was made out to be, and he looked to have a college body already.

– Brey and the coaches were there for seemingly the first third of
the scrimmage, but it was then turned over to the players.

– This team is ready to do some damage this year, as long as they can stay healthy, get some balls to roll their way in their Big East road schedule, and get enough
respect so as not to be fucked over in the Tourney seeding/draw again this year.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

A Glimpse Into the Future

Junior Jimmy Clausen takes the snap and hands off to Junior Robert Hughes for five yards. Clausen to Junior Armando Allen for two. Junior Clausen hits Junior Kamara for ten yards on an out. Clausen to Junior Mike Ragone for 30 yards over the middle. Sophomore Omar Hunter sacks Ryan Mallet for a ten yard loss. Sophomore Filer picks off USC’s Sanchez and returns for a touchdown.

These are words we want to hear now, but these guys aren’t going to mature into their college rolls (collectively) for another year at least… and nothing is going to change that. It doesn’t matter if I think that Weis throws too much and it doesn’t matter if our OL isn’t blocking now (though new offensive lines usually gel around week 5.)

None of our nuggets of wisdom are going to change that fact that our best players are sophomores, freshmen and High School seniors. Everyone’s got one now (an opinion) and they’re all worth what you paid at the bar for them.

If there’s one through-thread in Notre Dame’s performance it’s been lack of seasoned talent while facing a tough opening schedule. We don’t have one standout performer in two full years of recruiting, we don’t have numbers and that creates a leadership void. Yeah, this team could have been tweaked better, but it would have different degrees of bad. Charlie shouldn’t have tried to design an offense around Jones, but Clausen was still hurt. Six of bad on one hand…

As I commented on Group Stupid Mindthink with regard to Quinn, the same is true with Notre Dame Mindthink right now. The singular, absolute truth about Notre Dame football is this: fans will either be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. There is no middle and fans are almost never right on aggregate. I usually discount about 20-30% on both the optimistic and the pessimistic side. And this isn’t my invention, it’s Lou who famously said “Teams are never as good or as bad as they appear.”

Just as I thought going into last year things were too optimistic and before this year, now the momentum is switching to the side of pessimism — but behind the scenes I see a transformation heading in the other direction.

The pendulum has swung, it just hasn’t been reflected yet in a complete game. Progress may be a dirty word at Notre Dame, but whether it’s on Wall Street or in D.C. prevailing wisdom is always a trailer, rarely a leader in predicting the future. Of course, it’s hard to maintain perspective after four beatings (see Saturday’s column.)

But we’re going to have a hell of team very soon.

What’s really worryisome now is that our defensive line is starting wear down, it’s only week four and we don’t get a game off until after USC. The perfect storm, indeed. Kudos to Charlie for NOT bringing up the schedule as an excuse.

***What good is Polian? Our special teams are consistently awful. Whatever nepotistic bargain got him to Notre Dame isn’t worth it. We’re giving away field position. We can’t afford to be bad on special teams.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

The Definition of Insanity

***** Author’s Note: the following was written after a gamewatch ******

is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Repeat a thousand times: we cannot protect the passer. No amount of nifty scheming is going to change this until we actually do the dirty work of protection.

The turning point in this game (and I yelled it loudly when it happened) was the first quarter with second and 5 from our own 13. We’ve just had a nice run for 5 yards up the gut. We’ve got forward momentum and good blocking. The only thing that can set us back at this point is a pass.

We call a drop-back pass. Michigan State is bringing the house.

Clausen is sacked on the 4 yard line.

Repeat: PASSING PLAYS GO BACKWARDS!

Draw is stuffed, we punt, Michigan State scores a touchdown.

The second defining moment was just a few series later.

ND is down 14-7, Aldridge powers it out for 5. Notre Dame then throws for a first down with Clausen barely getting it off in time. It’s clear that we cannot protect the quarterback right now. It’s then first and 10 from the 31… we call a play action action with hardly a nod to the fake the ball is stripped loose on the 13.

Even though it doesn’t look like it, I think this is the game right here. We hold them to a field goal. We just don’t have margin of error to give up field position like that. We needed a cushion and instead gave them the advantage WE KNEW they were going to have going into this game — their pass rush against our passing game.

Our passing game goes backward, while our running game was chewing them up for almost 6 yards a carry! Clausen threw 20 times for a net gain of 7 yards after sacks and fumbled takeaways. We lose or gain no yards more than half the time and net a ridiculous .3 yards per attempt (including sacks.)

J. Aldridge	18	104	5.8	43	0	0
R. Hughes	6	35	5.8	18	1	0
A. Allen	3	13	4.3	9	0	0

It’s not a crime that our passing game isn’t there yet. There was simply no need to go there because the risk was just too high. We go backwards when we pass and Michigan State couldn’t stop the run.

I’m frustrated because this should have been a W. Aldridge and Hughes should carry this team until we can get protection. Grimes made some great grabs, but he wouldn’t have to make “great” grabs if he were 6’3″. There is simply no plausible reason to be starting two wide receivers you can’t even see. If they had game breaking speed, maybe. They don’t. Kamara, Parris, Hord and Tate give us size and speed.

Why Charlie went to the passing game with Sharpley at the end is perplexing. We can’t pass. There’s no point.

We need to start the big receivers, run the ball and ditch the horizontal passing game except as a change-up. Everyone’s prepared for it. And no need to go for it on 4th down especially at that point in the game.

We showed signs of a great running game that we need to ride. MSU couldn’t deal with it.

There were a lot of positive signs today and I should note that new offensive lines usually gel by the 5th game.

But we could have been the one’s gutting MSU in the second half.

Instead we were gutted again.

***What good is Polian? Our special teams are consistently awful. Whatever nepotistic bargain got him to Notre Dame isn’t worth it. We’re giving away field position. We can’t afford to be bad on special teams.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

A Moment to Redefine

It occurred to me that Weis has a great moment to show he understands there’s a learning curve in the college game. A shot of humility, as in: “I’ve learned a great lesson this year” would set the stage for a nice build the rest of this year and into next year. This week is the first one in which I think Charlie articulated a problem with his ‘schematic’ approach:

“Sometimes when you try to do every game, you try to find the X’s and O’s schematics to best exploit a team’s weaknesses. Sometimes you really don’t have an identity. The identity that I have always dealt with, at least on the offensive side of the ball, is multiple formations and multiple personnel groups to run the same plays. That’s my stereotype; that’s my label. And I think that’s what we really haven’t gotten to. We’re trying to get back to the basics and the core because you can always grow from the core. But I think right now we do not have a very established solid core. I think that’s what this week has been about; I think we are going about establishing that core.”

“Let’s just say that too many X’s and O’s are on the right track. We maybe are trying to do too many different things to scheme week by week that doesn’t give you a chance to have an identity.”

The first step is admitting there’s a problem, the second is taking action to fix it. Pete Carroll has emphasized running the ball and they’re driving kids 5 yards off the line of scrimmage, which of course, gives them an incredible margin for error in their passing game.

As Across says, if we’re missing 40% of our passing plays and getting sacked another 10%, there is no way to win. If you miss a slant, you get zero yards and break the rhythm of an offense. If you run the ball and fail you at least are moving forward, but running does something else, it opens up the passing game and takes the charge out of the pass rush. So a missed pass play breaks the rhythm of the offense and does nothing to open up the run game, but a failed run keeps you moving forward and sets up the pass. It also wears down the pass rush, the linebackers and the d-backs. Additionally, it creates a tough forward leaning offensive line, which is where we want to get to.

Let’s face it, we couldn’t stop the pass rush last year either.

Andy Reid once said he’d never run the ball if he didn’t have to. I fear the same is true with Reid’s good buddy Weis.

As I was discussing with Vannie, this isn’t rocket science here.

Other issues we talked about:

• Charlie just needs to get Kamara, Tate, Hord and Parris out on the field. You can actually see these guys when they’re open and they’re big enough to block. Grimes and West do get open, but they also get stuffed at the line and Clausen has missed them. We need to invest is some receivers who will improve the probability of completing passes and runs… it’s not just about who’s getting open. A big receiver on a slant is a bigger target. More room for error. My oh my are we missing Benn this year. He was a two win recruit.
• As I wrote before, we need to get an effective fullback in there.
• Aldridge is a bell-cow type back and so is Hughes. We need to make a decision and get these guys in and let them get in a rhythm.

Footbaw can be a very simple game.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

Late Prediction

Michigan State’s defensive line is good at getting to the quarterback, but they are not at the same level gainst the run. They’re also not overly big, overly talented and lack great depth. “If” Charlie can take the deep plunge and commit to trying to gut this team, it will open up the passing game for Clausen. What’s been frustrating in the past is that we’ve used the running game to open up the pass and then switched entirely to a short passing offense. Charlie’s commitment to the run game has been non-existent so far.

Notre Dame needs to pound the Spartans until the final whistle mixing in passes from Clausen. Pittsburgh ran for over 200 yards and 5 yards a carry against the Spartans. If Weis gives them a healthy dose of Aldridge up the gut, ND could land enough body blows to mitigate the Spartans pass rush.

I’d really like to see Schmidt and Aldridge in the same backfield. Armando has incredible talent, but ND needs to beat on some people up the middle this year and Aldridge is that guy. Schwapp is big and strong, but can’t get a hat on anyone and doesn’t have natural running skills. Schmidt does.

Line up the big boys and let our OL move forward instead of always moving back and you could see a different dynamic for the Irish.

ND not only can win this game, but should win this game.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl

You kiddin’ me?

Whose idea was it to wave white flags for an 0-3 football team? I understand it’s for a great cause… but… sheesh.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl