KEY TO THE GAME
Let’s talk about where my man Drew Pyne is right now.
Here’s his first 3rd Down pass from the Syracuse game. Give it a watch or two. What happens? Pyne locks onto Mayer from the jump. If he were reading the field he’d see the LBs both suck up on the snap and if he climbed the pocket a little bit he would have had a much easier throw to Thomas, maybe for a TD. Diggs doesn’t do Pyne any favors by setting up right in the path of his throwing step but that’s all the more reason Pyne should have re-set.
Highly plausible that following this one Pyne heard something from Rees along the lines of “Drew, let’s pick it up. If you climb the pocket and look at JT breaking in there it’s a touchdown.”
Flash forward to his very next 3rd Down pass. What does he do? He climbs the pocket all the way through the throwing action and tries to hit Thomas on an in-breaking route. Thomas wasn’t even open, but that’s a moot point given the weird-ass throwing mechanics of the play.
The bad news? This dude is absolutely not in a good spot right now. We’ve seen the numbers, we’ve seen the missed TDs and checkdowns. We’ve seen the tight-chested over-correction in response to whatever the latest mistake might be. But this is not fate! No human being in a well-settled state would misplay the position in this specific way. We know the pieces are there for Pyne to be a Game Manager, or even a Game Manager+, but they’re not fitting together correctly right now.
In anagram terms, Cal through BYU we got ‘DREW PYNE.‘ Stanford through Syracuse some film has come out and we’ve gotten ‘D NEWER? Y’P!‘Â To have a chance against Clemson we need another scramble. We need ‘DR. NEW? YEP!”
If Pyne finds a new equilibrium this will be a super-interesting game. If he doesn’t, it will get ugly.
WHEN ND HAS THE BALL
Without Dr. New
If Pyne continues to play as he has for the past month ND will get suffocated by Clemson. We’ll continually see 9-10 guys within 10 yards of the ball and the elite athletes on Clemson’s defensive line will be able to play hyper aggressively, knowing that they have two additional layers of backup that don’t really have much to worry about beyond cleaning up whatever the DL lets through. We may pick up some random plays here and there or even rock-paper-scissors our way into an explosive or two, but in total the ND offensive effort will likely end up feeling like a poor man’s version of Georgia 2017.
With Dr New
New Drew takes the field and the dynamic of the game completely changes. So long as ND can threaten horizaontal and vertical stretches to the field even modestly the Irish will essentially be able to isolate the matchup of ND’s OL, TEs and RBs vs. Clemson’s Box defenders into a straight up fight. It’s hard to know the ultimate outcome here but intuitively it holds the promise of a compelling watch with a real chance of breaking enough toward the good guys for ND to put up 28 to 35 points.
WHEN CLEMSON HAS THE BALL
Without Dr. New
Likely this will be a movie we’ve all seen before. A game effort of getting off the field just enough to sustain the faint pulse of a competitive game, some skin of our teeth 3rd down escapes, maybe a missed field goal here or there: all this before it becomes clear with finality that the Offense is not going to help, at which point the D will start to fray. Again, a really bad viewing experience.
With Dr. New
The biggest variable here will be a useful performance from ND’s offense putting pressure on the Clemson offensive operation. They’ll be away from home, potentially in adverse conditions, with an embattled QB knowing he is only a few series from being benched. The opportunites to make game changing plays will be categorically more abundant in this scenario and it will be fun to see who (if anyone) steps up and grabs them.
X FACTORS
Without Dr. New
Will ND fans leave early in bad conditions, ceding home field advantage to an outsized Tiger fan contingent? Will Angeli play? Will Powlus?!
With Dr. New
Can another ND special teams unit step up and create an inflection point? Does this game become a national coming out party for Tobias Meriweather? Or the Braden Lenzy Redemption Game? Do any of the gadget plays Rees might have been holding in his back pocket come out and how do they work? Can a guy like Foskey go wild and take over the game for long stretches? How long will Dabo ride his starter?
PREDICTION
Without Dr. New (70% Chance)
Deflating, mostly-ugly loss to a slightly off-brand Clemson team, 32-13
With Dr. New (30% Chance)
A surprisingly Clemson-y type effort where the game feels verytight, or we’re even behind, before a few breaks find us and we end up with a really nice win, 34-24
_____________
Weighted Prediction
CLEMSON 32
ND 19
I can’t argue with Mike’s logic. He’s essentially saying that an almost completely different Drew Pyne needs to show up for us to win this game. He’s right.
I’ll be in the stands either way, hoping, hoping, hoping …
I am bummed that the weather forecast is starting to brighten up. I could use some ugly weather to even things out.
Well a different version from the past few games – which is the version from a couple of earlier games.
Well that was sobering……but sadly true. Here’s to Drew pulling one out of his arse tomorrow night….
i genuinely do not know what to think of this game
do you believe in miracles
i was in the stands for the 2015 rainfest horriawful experience against Clemson
lord give me an absolute torrential downpour and an unbelievably ugly irish win
I think it boils down to who has more success running:
DJ U and Shipley vs. the ND front 7
or
Estime/Diggs vs. the Clemson front
Unfortunately, I think the edge is to Clemson about all of those matchups. Sucks that Clemson is weak (pass defense) where Notre Dame can’t take advantage of it.
Clemson 27
Notre Dame 17
To your question, Clemson will have a lot more success running — the ND defense has to cover the whole field, whereas Clemson’s D will stack the box and triple-team Mayer because, at this point, why even bother covering the ND receivers.
If ND had a competent QB, this could be a fun game, but with the current offense, I think that ND will be lucky to finish within 20 points of Clemson.
20 points?!?!?! Methinks you’re over-estimating Clemson. Other than BC and GT (very bad!) they have not pulled away from any P5 ACC competition. Clemson is a class team though and has that knack to defeat inferior opponents, but I don’t think it’s going to be that ugly, unless it’s a total worst case scenario for Notre Dame.
Clemson reminds me of a lot of a typical Kelly 2.0 team this year: very imperfect offense, very strong defensive front, questionable secondary, inconsistent quarterbacking, a v good running back. Makes for most of the games to be closer than they should be, even though they always manage pull out the win at the end (until they hit a real championship contender).
The difference is that DJ U is inconsistent, where as Pyne has no business playing D1 football
Some things we have going for us:
-The version of Pyne and the offense from the middle quarters of the UNC and BYU games is enough to give Clemson some trouble, I think. To whatever extent Tommy has been holding back RB passes, two-back sets, play action, and Mayer as a decoy, now is the time.
-Punt blocks! That feels weird to write.
-Clemson’s SOS is poor (angry Dabo noises). Other decent-but-not-great teams have given them all they can handle – Wake Forest, Florida State, Syracuse. FSU, of all teams, actually ran the ball on them! We’ve exposed two allegedly good ACC teams this year, so maybe Clemson is our next victim. Vegas and Sagarin seem to think this is the case.
HOWEVA, winning this game will require a four-quarter level of play, coaching, focus, and effort that we have never seen from this team, especially not at home. It will require more than just insisting that Pyne play better and screaming at him when he doesn’t. It will probably require getting an early lead.
Unfortunately, I don’t see it. Clemson 20-6.
i foresee a big play on special teams giving ND an early advantage
be it a score or field position
going to have to take advantage (unlike we did at the start of the 2020 ACC Championship)
OK, I get it. Sigh… Miraculous reversion to the 70% completion Drew needed desperately — and not likely.
The very best glimmer of hope I can offer is to ask you all to read the reprinted column by our late friend Lou Somogyi entitled “A Culture of Instant Gratification.’ Originally it came out on October 10th 2011, and was reprinted a few weeks ago in Blue and Gold Illustrated (October 15th edition).
Basically Lou went into the past records of some legendary ND QBs in their first 263 snaps (he was comparing with the young Tommy Rees who had just thrown 13 picks in his first 263 snaps).
Joe Thiesman: 21 ints. Asa junior, 4/12 passing for 7 yards vs Purdue.
Tom Clements: also 21 ints. 9/22 vs Nebraska in his 11th start, 3 ints and -22 rushing.
Joe Montana: 16 ints. Completion percentage < 50%.
All I am saying is… hope is not lost. Those of you in the Stadium tomorrow night, send Drew the best positive vibes you can!
I admire your optimism.
An OC’s job is to develop a game plan, scheme to that, and adapt to the defense in play-calling. A QB’s job is to execute, to sustain drives and get points. We want Pyne to make the right decisions and to do his job. One measure of that is Red Zone conversions where ND is middle of the national pack in RZ scoring percentage and TD% in RZ.
To me this is a linebacker focus game. Clemson will blitz, sometimes delayed by LB or by DBs from the outside. Their DL is very good and will occupy our OL. Play-action, motion, QB rollouts, crossing routes, occasional screens, RBs in the flat quick-hitters in addition to the Heavy/Jumbo run plays will keep their LBs occupied and neutralized. Blitz pickups by RBs, of course. Let’s forgo the “Go Long” plays, jet sweeps. Outside WRs need to come back to the QB.
While it won’t be cold (For northern Indiana in early November standards), it will be extremely windy – 50mph gusts. Not sure who benefits from that, presumably the team that’s stronger in run game/run defense. Assuming there will be a few missed kicks/shanked punts.
Sot MVP?
NBC: WELL HERE’S WHAT JIM TRESSEL TOLD MARCUS FREEMAN ABOUT WIND,
On the other hand, does anybody have an anagram for DAVID JOHN UIAGALELEI?
Because if you remember, he got benched the last game, and Klubnick would have led Clemson to a punt in his first series except for a typically Syracuse stupid late hit on 3rd down.
if we get bad DJ, and they have to bring in Klubnick, and he isn’t up to the challenge of ND away from home, things start looking different.
A Vagina Deli Hid Joule
I DIE A HOG JAVELIN DUEL
Uh, thanks for the replies, I think? I’m guessing that dying in a hog javelin duel is bad for DJ. Still scratching my head about what exactly a vagina deli is, why James Joule would need to hide there. For this discussion, the 12 year old part of my part giggles a little bit when I read that the guy who proposed the Joule as the unit was named Siemens…
2 things: You asked for anagrams, not good anagrams. That’s on you.
If you replace Joule with Siemens in my anagram, it makes perfect sense.
Said this elsewhere, but ND has overperformed against ranked teams and on the road, and underperformed at home. So it seems like this game is being pulled in two directions…. HOWEVER!
Based on what I saw at the Chicago airport and the hotel in Elkhart, there will be a LOT of orange in the stands tomorrow. Almost… a road environment?
Irish by 2 scores, because having hope for no reason is what makes being a fan fun.
P.S. if you see a poodle decked out in ND gear and painted green around campus or in the stands, that’s my wife’s service dog, this is her first big trip since completing training and she’s doing great!
What are the details with the service doggie?
Got a full ND gear set, a green tail, and shamrocks on the flanks
That is AWESOME.
I didn’t come out of either the UNC or BYU games thinking “Boy, Pyne could be a good one.” So, I don’t expect much later today from him. Maybe if he spreads the ball around like he did vs. UNC, he’ll surprise me.
I think Clemson might win this one somewhat comfortably 28-17.
The wind has been insane here in Chicago all night; I imagine it’s the same or worse in South Bend. We could be looking at something like a 10-3 game tonight.
Good luck making 2 field goals.
I don’t really understand the “Drew Pyne isn’t confident” stuff that you see on Irish Illustrated etc. Drew Pyne isn’t very talented! That’s the problem, not confidence. Any lack of confidence is actually somewhat helpful, I think – he hasn’t thrown as many interceptions as I would anticipate, perhaps because he isn’t trying to force too many throws (other than to Mayer, who can usually at least make enough of a play on the ball that it is incomplete).
Anyway, given the lack of talent I think a 30% chance of Dr. New seems pretty generous. I don’t think we’ll get the defensive or ST touchdown that we need. Clemson 31 ND 21, with that score looking more favorable to ND than the gameflow.
Hope I’m wrong!
I was wrong! But not really?
Meant to post this 5 hours ago, but ND wins 35-14 with a special teams TD