Three games left in the season with the chances for a bowl game on life support. Coming off the loss to Navy instead of an injury report centered around ankles and knees it’s concussions still ruling the day for the Irish.
Both Drue Tranquill and Julian Love left the game last weekend with brain injuries. The good news is that they are cleared to play against Army this weekend.
The same cannot be said for nose guard Daniel Cage who missed the Navy game and is out again versus the Black Knights. He’ll be seeing a specialist on Friday which is typically not a great sign for playing in the immediate future. It’s quite possible the Irish will be without Cage for the remainder of 2016.
Without Cage last week the Irish relied heavily on 3 players: Tillery, Rochell, and Trumbetti. Even with Navy’s sluggish pace not much depth was used. Bonner, Jones, and both Hayes’ each played fewer than 20 snaps.
Speaking of Daelin Hayes he met with the media this week and discussed how he was up to 261 pounds in the spring but is playing around 240 right now. He said he’s more comfortable at that lower weight and is still trying to figure things out as a pass rusher. So far this season Hayes has just 4 solo tackles and no back field disruption in 131 snaps.
There was much ado about Jarron Jones barely playing against Navy last week. Brian Kelly was asked this week if Jones would be given more snaps against Army and we were fortunate enough to be on the scene for his reaction:
Instead, the head coach brought up Elijah Taylor getting more reps citing his stocky power as a good weapon to use against Army. If you read burger23’s preview of Army you’d know they like to attack in between the tackles for more than Navy. For the record, Taylor has 7 snaps this season. Not last week, on the entire season.
Colin McGovern returned to the lineup last week and played every snap along with the rest of the starters.
The Irish went with a lot more 2 tight end sets last week, we’ll see if that continues against Army. Redshirt sophomore Nic Weishar’s 28 snaps versus Navy were his most in a month.
After getting healthy following the bye week the offense is riding Josh Adams pretty hard. Last week he took nearly 70% of all the running back snaps.
The decrease in playing time continues for C.J. Sanders who remains a starter in the slot in name only. The trio of Hunter/Stepherson/St. Brown are hogging nearly all of the snaps. As a result, Sanders has logged just 50 snaps over the last 3 games. It’s pretty amazing to see Sanders without much of an impact for the second half of this season.
