It’s finals week at Notre Dame which means the athletes on campus are on a short hiatus. The men’s hoops teams is off until Saturday while the women are off until Sunday. On Monday, the football program had a lot of news dominating the Irish athletics sphere.
Kizer Declares
As expected, quarterback DeShone Kizer received a first round draft grade and will be leaving for the NFL Draft. Officially, the redshirt sophomore leaves South Bend with 5,809 passing yards, 992 rushing yards, 65 touchdowns, and 19 interceptions.
This is crazy.
Thank you @NotreDame pic.twitter.com/LDjdlCf9nw
— DeShone Kizer (@DKizer_14) December 12, 2016
No, not Kizer’s decision. It feels just like yesterday (I mean it kind of was in a sense) that Kizer had one of the worst spring games in history while looking like he was swiftly moving to the Luke Massa scholarship plan. Then, Golson transferred and heading into fall camp there was a lot of concern about Kizer having to take any snaps.
Sixteen months later Kizer is slated to be a 1st round pick. It’s nuts! It’s also crazy that Brian Kelly breaks quarterbacks but Kizer went from looking like a bad 3rd stringer to a fat multi-million dollar paycheck. Fans of NFL teams are going to be so confused when this gets brought up.
So begins the Brandon Wimbush era in South Bend. Or should I say the Winbush era? We’re saying goodbye to Kaiser and welcoming Winbush. Get used to it now.
Sanford Given Power…at Western Kentucky
As of this writing nothing is official but it looks like Irish quarterbacks coach and kinda-sorta offensive coordinator with the powers to turn rooms upside down is leaving to become the head coach for the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. This doesn’t come as a huge shocker.
I’m still shaking my head at how easily Notre Dame fans wanted to fast track Sanford for the keys to the kingdom. I think that colors a lot of our perception of him right now.
Source: Notre Dame assistant Mike Sanford expected to be the next coach at Western Kentucky.
— Pete Thamel (@SIPeteThamel) December 12, 2016
The truth is we kind of don’t know a whole lot about him after two years and the usual limited amount of interviews. That’s only compounded by the mysterious mess of play-calling duties that was awesome last year and much less so in 2016.
Are we saying goodbye to the poor man’s Urban Meyer? Will Sanford now begin a quick rise at WKU, find himself at Boise State in 2020, and then tease Notre Dame before going to coach at a top Power 5 job?
That’s probably an unlikely scenario (coaching is hard, gotta play the odds here) but if Sanford does rise up the ranks he’s shown some genuine appreciation, and dare I say love, for Notre Dame that it’s probably best if he goes out and spread his wings sooner rather than later.
Elko Entering?
With the recruiting dead period now in effect Notre Dame is turning to its vacant defensive coordinator position. The first name leaked through the media as getting an interview is Wake Forest’s Mike Elko.
If you recall, Elko popped up immediately following the dismissal of Brian VanGorder and you can read more about him in Brendan’s post from almost a couple months ago.
SOURCES: #ND to interview #WakeForest‘s Mike Elko for Irish DC job: https://t.co/9ZBnebbOkM
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) December 12, 2016
If I had to venture an educated guess, Elko is going to be the next DC for the Fighting Irish. There really isn’t a huge name like Aranda, Strong, or Orlando left on the board. And Notre Dame is typically really tight lipped about assistant interviews.
With Elko’s name coming out first I get the feeling the negotiations have been on-going for a good while now.
I haven’t read much about it, but wasn’t the announcement, “Kizer is a Captain” next year rather bizarre?
The media was told not to read too much into it, as far as whether or not Kizer would come back.
Then…why bother?
/shruggy emoji
Dunno…
Must be Kelly’s version of the Cleveland video emploring LeBron to stay. Looks like they worked equally as well.
“Please stay DeShone, we really need you”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVtqZgfFKgQ
KIZER’S GONNA COME BACK AND LEAD US TO A TITLE
Definitely. Just weird timing on that whole announcement so early. We all get why they’re trying to turn the page to 2017 as quickly as possible but I don’t get why they needed that announcement right then. Was it some sort of weird, minor, last ditch reason to stay (note that they also gave captaincy to everyone who submitted NFL evals in McGlinch, Nelson and Morgan)? Or just a courtesy nod? Regardless, strange timing.
As highly as everyone talks about Wimbush, maybe he earns the 3rd offensive captain spot in preseason and that’s sort of a reward/challenge the coaches give him to literally go out and become a tangible leader of the team. Who knows big picture what the purpose could have been, I’m sure they had their reasons it just doesn’t seem logical from our perspective.
It was to help persuade Kizer to come back. Kelly also thought that the team lacked leadership in the offseason last year and wanted to name captains early to avoid this. Losing Sheldon Jaylon Joe I guess put the team behind so Kelly just wants to get out in front of losing Isaac and James
Let’s look back at Elko’s qualifications from that post…hmm.
Ah, I see it…”not BVG.”
Looks like a step up to me.
I like Elko. He’s done more with less. His teams are disruptive but still fundamentally sound. They play faster, which can achieve disruption more effectively than overly complicated schemes. Plus, he’s young and fairly energetic. I don’t know if he’s a great recruiter, but I’m sure he’ll be more of an asset than BVG.
I can’t blame Kizer. If you can get first round and make millions, you get to it. He was on the sideline for Jaylon’s injury. That should be all the reason he needs.
I can’t blame Sanford either, and I echo your thoughts on the prospective move. WKU has a nice track record for coaches looking to make an upward move. If he’s ever going to be a top HC at ND, he needs to get started somewhere. If his path goes a different route, so be it. It’s a risk that has to happen, but the more young coaches with ties to ND getting a shot out there in college football land, the deeper and better the pool will be in the future.
Will there be a Tuesday sequel for this thread? Namely to discuss Denson being thrown out there as the potential HC at Abilene Christian? Or Prister supposedly reporting that Booker has been canned?
All I want for Christmas is this:
The screams from Ann Arbor would be so delicious.
It’s his dream job.
I just wish we had given Sanford the keys to the offense while he was at ND, instead of slotting him into this weird three-way system that didn’t appear to have clearly defined roles.
Yeah, three-ways are never as satisfying as one would imagine.
KG is kind of on a roll lately.
Chili-3-way at Steak N Shake would beg to differ
Look, I didn’t downvote that, but had you said Skyline, I would have. I love Steak N Shake, but let’s not get into chili wars.
/throws can of black beans.
//runs away.
As long as you don’t use canned tomatoes in the chili. I’ve heard from a reliable source if you make it with tomatoes its just glorified tomato soup at that point.
hmmm, /disagree
Western Kentucky has been a great gig for upwardly mobile coaches. Great landing spot for Stanford. Their expectations are high now, but he is following a great run of coaches and should have a solid foundation to work with. Can’t wait for him to come back in 2020!
I don’t think we’d fire a head coach after two years on the job.
I am assuming NDN has taken over the Board of Trustees by then and they assume our 2018 hire is too small timey and doesn’t use enough fullbacks.
BOOKER OUT.
I think that qualifies as a no-brainer. It will be interesting to see if BK makes any other changes, particularly if the Elko reports are true. It seems like Elston will have a spot for him regardless, but I think they could quite reasonably get rid of Gilmore and/or Lyght based on the past couple years (Gilmore especially; I’d be inclined to keep Lyght as I think the DBs did pretty well this year after the first few games considering they were backups/freshmen).
If Elko comes in and coaches the safeties that would free Lyght up to work with just the corners…might help his development as a coach.
I really really want this, and feel our secondary has not been nearly as good since we grouped the S and CBs together (like 2013?). We’ve also had very little coaching consistency back there, so that could also be contributing.
I don’t particularly care if we keep Gilmore or not, but he has an excellent track record. He did a pretty good job in 2015, when he had some talent to work with (sort of chicken and the egg), but he just didn’t have much this year outside of Rochell. Not sure there are many other DL coaches out there with as successful a history as him.
One guy I’d be excited about is Tosh Lupoi, but I think everyone lost a chance at him when he got bumped from an analyst back to a position coach for Bama. ND probably isn’t stealing a slightly shady dude like that from Bama without some type of promotion.
I was about to suggest we bring in Justin Tuck (not seriously) but looks like he is getting an MBA at Wharton. Not too shabby.
Would you hope he then develops at Lyght speed?
Wow. I’m embarrassed I wrote that. Sorry.
Lyghten up, Francis.
I was Toddally on board with that.
Quote FasterThanQuick a few comments up, yesterday:
Booker? I hardly knew her.
So, with Sanford out, we’ll be needing a new QB Guru, right?
Problem Solved:
BK always did say Tommy would wind up a coach
Well, they did say we wanted BK to return to his roots but going ol’ Purple Face and screaming at TFR when a QB screws up might be just a little too much
Player-coach. First ever at the CFB level.
Those uniforms!
I would be satisfied with Elko, I hope we get someone in place sooner rather than later.
Just watched College Football Today, both Paaaaaawl & Marcus Spears think it’s time to panic it ND, which I find strangely reassuring. Evidently neither of them have heard of Wimbush. Listening to them, you would have thought Kizer leaving was an absolute shock and that we are left with no QBs on the roster.
I do think the “don’t worry we’ve got Wimbush; we’re good” attitude that some have is pretty optimistic, particularly when you factor in that he is a small dude – i.e., injury risk – and we really don’t have much behind him (either a low-4-star true freshman who isn’t even 6 feet tall or a guy whose best offer other than ND was Boise State).
With that said, I think there is reason for excitement with Wimbush – he’s appears to be dynamic, and his teammates clearly like him. Let’s just hope that he lives up to the hype and that he stays healthy.
better than having two of your top 5 playmakers at QB
“Small dude”? Wimbush 6’1″ 225 lbs. , bigger than Zaire.
Small for a big-time quarterback in D1 college football, yes, particularly given that he is a mobile quarterback. Zaire was also small in that context, and – quite obviously – was also an injury risk.
I will confirm, however, that Brandon Wimbush is not small compared to, say, 5’9″/155 internet commenter me.
He has 10 pounds on Deshaun Watson and 20 on Lamar Jackson, though they are both 6’3″. Baker Mayfield is 6’1″ 210 lbs…
Maybe small for a big time college quarterback who is viewed as a can’t miss NFL prospect. Like a Cam Newton, Andrew Luck or Vince Young.
I would say Wimbush is an average sized big time college quarterback when considering the whole pool.
Not meant as a critique of your comment, those are good counter-examples but I hate the NFL’s reliance on size and physical aspects over college performance.
But if we’re going to go that route, here are the top five QBs this year by passer rating-
Brady- 6’4″, 225 lbs.
Ryan- 6’4″, 217 lbs.
Prescott- 6’2″, 226 lbs.
Rodgers- 6’2″. 225 lbs.
Brees- 6’0″, 209 lbs.
A little taller on average, maybe, but all about the same weight (with NFL training instead of a 20 year old frame).
Plenty of examples of guys who had the right physical gifts but couldn’t cut it. Tim Couch, David Carr, and (ugh) JaMarcus Russell just from #1 picks. Brees and Russell Wilson on the other hand.
Deshaun Watson is not a good example in this context at all, and Baker Mayfield has gotten dinged up here and there (Lamar Jackson is a good counter-example at least so far, but that dude might be Superman).
I’m not saying that he can’t be a good quarterback; I’m saying a 6’1″ 220 running quarterback is an injury risk, which is a problem given our depth. Either they’ll have to keep him from running to protect him (like Clemson did for basically every game against non-top-25 competition this year with Watson) or increase the odds that we’ll have Ian Book seeing important snaps.
It’s football, everyone’s at risk….6’1″ 225 is a pretty solid specimen.
If anything, I worry that he’s a little short. Not Golson short, but 6’1″ is short enough I worry about passes batted down at a higher rate than normal.
Yeah, I can buy that. The injury risk idea is bunk though. As was mentioned, Wimbush is pretty built. Zaire is 20 pound lighter, but he broke his ankle on a soft tackle just because he got rolled up in a bunch of bodies. People pick weird things to worry about when we don’t have real football to watch.
It’s easy to make this argument if you just accept “it’s football; folks are going to get hurt” and “Malik Zaire just got hurt” as your premises, and those are true on some level. But you have to factor in the offensive choices and how those affect the chances that people get hurt – i.e., Malik Zaire didn’t get hurt by a fluke; he got hurt because we were running him around all the time in the UVA game, which increased his odds of somebody rolling up on his ankle (i.e., the offensive choices increased the odds of bad luck).
Why that’s relevant is, as per below, our best offense with Wimbush would almost certainly involve him running around and running the zone read a good bit, and it seems very likely we won’t be able to do that as much as out be desired given our skimpy depth behind him.
I’ll gladly retract the bit about him being small if that’s distracting people from the more general point that, as of right now, our QB situation is not particularly great.
Would agree since we’re one injury away from Ian Book or a true freshman taking snaps. Far from ideal considering the depth of last season.
I don’t think style matters though, a running QB can get injured like Zaire did, a big statue QB like Flacco/Brady/Palmer can get their legs taken out hanging in the pocket just as easily. There’s no real system to minimize a QB injury, barring running an extreme west coast, 3-step drop exclusive type of offense which isn’t going to happen. A smaller QB (Manziel, Tyrod Taylor, Russell Wilson, Drew Brees for the most part) can be very durable.
It’d probably feel better if Wimbush was as tall and strong as a Kizer/Cam/Ben type frame, but it’s not like Wimbush is dainty and there’s not much more that you can plan around. But definite agreement if Wimbush gets hurt, ND is in a lot of trouble. Which most teams usually are if their best QB goes down.
Not sure why Deshaun Watson isn’t a good example. Clemson didn’t keep him from running against good competition… his games with the most carries (17) came against 9-3 Florida State and 9-4 Virginia Tech. Next-most? 14 against 9-3 Louisville.
The examples I picked were the three Heisman finalist QBs. We could do this comparison with plenty of other guys (Jake Browning, Quinton Flowers… heck, Trace McSorley turned around Penn State’s offense this year and he’s tiny with a pop gun arm).
Ah, just re-read the comment that said “non-top 25 competition”. I guess I’m just in furious *someone is wrong on the internet* mode. Apologies.
Point still stands though, I disagree he’s an injury risk and think its a good thing to keep your QB (of any size) extra safe against easier opponents.
Deshaun Watson tore his ACL his first year as a starter (2014) and was hobbled at points in year 2 as well. This year, he did run a good bit in games that were close and did not get hurt, but he didn’t get to double-digit carries in half his games this year in no small part because they didn’t want to run him and risk injury, even though that would be the optimal offense for Clemson to run absent the injury concern (as evidenced by his high-volume usage in the bigger games). We’re going to either be similarly cautious – and, similarly, limit the offense a bit – or risk injury. As a general matter, of course, that strategy makes sense (i.e., why risk injury in games where the outcome isn’t in doubt?), but I don’t think we’ll have the luxury of blowing out teams like Clemson does.
The Heisman QBs are much better comps to Wimbush at ND in terms of type of QBs and offensive style than Browning or McSorley. If we’re throwing the ball deep downfield all the time like UW or PSU (and stop running the zone read), I’d be shocked.
Again, I’m not saying Wimbush can’t or won’t be a good quarterback; I hope he will be and think he may be. I’m just saying that, right now, our QB situation cannot currently be described as particularly good, and it will get worse if (as is the Twitter buzz today) Baylor makes a run at and poaches Avery Davis.
Got it, thanks for the explanation re: Watson. Still disagree about the injury risk, but point taken.
One small quibble re: McSorley just because I’ve watched a bunch of Penn State this year (in-laws are grads). They do run the read-option with him a decent amount. Its just that their passing game is heavily (and quite successfully) reliant on chunk plays.
Davis shot down those rumors.
I didn’t see the bit, but I wonder if they’re interpreting it as Kizer jumping off a sinking ship or something. We’ve all been talking about the possibility so we’re not shocked, but I can see how someone on the outside would be surprised and draw some strange conclusions. After all, 4-8 is hard to say it isn’t a sinking ship, though I think we’d all agree that it’s more about getting paid for Kizer than trying to flee ND or anything.
I interpreted it as more of “slow news day, we need to hype something,” but then I have no respect for the media. Paul threw out his usual “dumpster fire” comment. Seriously though, they both spoke like we had no remaining QBs in school.
Wimbush, Book, Davis, VanGorder, some old looking mustachioed gentleman named Rommy Tees?
I can’t see how any of this could go wrong.
Yeah, losing two talents like Kizer and and Zaire isn’t optimal, but if there’s a position that’s been recruited well the last few years, (besides OL) it’s QB. Sure, you have to replace experience, but that happens everywhere.
I love the narrative about Kizer leaving a sinking ship and this being a sign of how things are going at ND – as if a 4-win season wasn’t evidence enough! Look, thing are kind of bleak for ND football at the moment, but Kizer’s decision is not the best way to judge. He’s a first rounder about to make millions in his early 20’s. He’d probably make the same decision had the Irish just won 10-12 games. What would be the narrative then? From a personal standpoint, his decision had to be made for him and his family, and not consider the present or future of ND.
As fans, and for commentators, it’s easy to lose sight of that, but these are young men with a chance to take care of their families for life. I’v mentioned it before. He was standing on the sideline for Jaylon’s injury. He’s seen how precious this chance can be. If Pawwwwwwl can’t make a determination on ND football by counting to four, but needs to read into Kizer’s decision, he’s dumber than he sounds.
I don’t think any of us here believe the “sinking ship” narrative. You don’t have to convince us. I was merely speculating on what the non-logic was from ESPN.
Ultimately, I’m most disappointed in not knowing which of the guys left at QB are the best runners…and which are the best passers. I really feel the vast majority of the off seasons have been spent discussing those parameters.
Now, I don’t even know what to talk about anymore.
At least we still have Monty, who is the best place kicking holder.