What needs to be done in the short-term

The following is omahadomer’s post from Rock’s House:

Let’s just assume for the present purposes that Weis’s long term success is neither guaranteed nor doomed but rests in his hands. Clearly this season is going to be an utterly lost cause without some dramatic changes and an utterly lost season will do more than just hurt this year it will probably cost us recruits and hurt future years.

If there’s anything good about what’s happened it is that it has been an object lesson in the different needs of a young college team from an NFL team. In 2005 and 2006 Weis had a fairly veteran team. It wasn’t deep but it had established starters and pretty good and experienced talent at the top of the depth chart in most places. It made sense to work on the mental side of the game with a team like that because that’s what they needed the most and practice injuries could be devastating.

Treating the 2005 and 2006 teams like NFL teams worked darn well. The 2005 team was about 2 TD’s per game better than the 2004 team and the 2006 team was pretty close to the 2005 team which was a mild disappointment but hardly horrendous.

Weis had quite evidently reached the conclusion that he badly miscalculated how to handle the team. Some of it has been bad luck (e.g., Clausen’s elbow) but mostly it has been his fault. The “see what sticks” approach worked well with the 2005 and 2006 teams because that meant that we could have offensive game plans that genuinely kept other teams off balance. But that assumed some minimal level of competence in pass blocking and the like. What this team needed was a lot more physical practices and a lot more reps on the base offense and that’s apparently where he’s headed this week.

While cohesion is an important element in OL play, we’re so far from worrying about that factor that he just needs to find the five who want to play the hardest. Romine and the transfer whose name starts with “B” (center) would earn starts from me next week just because they look like they want to hit someone. In fact, I’m not sure that there’s anyone in the starting OL that I’d start next week. I haven’t had the heart to look at the TIVO of the game to really tell, but at a minimum there need to be some significant personnel changes.

Weis’s biggest recruiting mistake thus far has been Jones. I’m not trying to bust on the kid and I hope he does well at NIU, but Jesus son — do you think of anyone but yourself? If you were out the door couldn’t you have said something before you sucked up QB reps this week? I believe that the team spent so much time fooling around this past spring and this fall trying to install stuff that Jones could run that it has taken away from doing the basic things that got us in the endzone a lot in 2005 and 2006. That spread series to start the game had all the earmarks of something that was supposed to be run by Jones. Now Weis was an idiot for sticking with it when Jones decided to take the bus to DeKalb instead of Ann Arbor but that never would have happened if Jones had been upfront.

I’m glad Jones is gone. There, I said it. I don’t think he was willing to help the team unless he could be the star and I think he resented the hell out of Clausen.

Weis has got to find out who the young leaders are on this team and play them. The guys who have been in it for themselves can take a seat on the bench or get out of town.

I would sit most of the OL. I would sit Carlson and start Yeatman until Carlson decides to block. Parris and Kamara would be my starting WR’s and I’d just start throwing those quick outs like we did against BYU two years ago until they roll the corners up and then I’d run slants. Schwapp can take a seat and Schmidt can start until Schwapp figures out how to block something other than air. Clausen is the QB. He has shown toughness and poise beyond his years. He has a lot to learn (I’m sure Powlus is a decent QB coach, but one thing you don’t want to listen to him on Jimmy is that stuff about holding onto the ball for 5 seconds) but he will.

I’m mostly OK with the defense. Yes they missed a lot of tackles but their effort has generally been there this year. It’s just darn hard to keep your head in the game when the game starts with some screwed up notion about Allen taking the snap and it goes over his head and the offense goes backwards and gives UM the ball almost in FG range on the punt. And then two plays into the next series they fumble and all of the sudden you’re down 10-0 and the offense hasn’t scored a TD all year. You could have the 1985 Bears on defense and it wouldn’t matter.

Weis has done a miserable job thus far this year after having done a very good job for two years. If he keeps doing a miserable job he won’t and shouldn’t survive. But the reason he has a chance is that he is willing to try different things. At least we aren’t getting the “it’s all part of the plan” crap that was all that TW could come up with.

I’m still optimistic. Not irrationally so, I hope — but with some foundation. There is just way too much talent on this team to play like this and we’ve got coaches who know way too much about football to let this continue.

It all starts with finding out who wants to be part of the solution and who wants to be part of the problem. Problems to the bench or better yet off the team. Solutions to the field.

Notre Dame Football, Charlie Weis, Sugar Bowl