WatchND highlights:
Michigan State had 501 yards of offense today against Notre Dame. That’s the most MSU has gained against ND in 60 years.
@chrissolari The 501 total offensive yards are the most by Michigan State vs Notre Dame since Oct. 20, 1956 when it had 521. #MSUvsND
— B Tripi (@btripi) September 18, 2016
Michigan State ran for 260 yards. They averaged five yards per carry, and that number was 6.5 before Mark Dantonio took his foot off the gas with his team ahead 36-7. They also averaged 9.3 yards per pass attempt despite essentially playing Tommy Rees with a weaker arm at QB. (No disrespect intended to Tyler O’Connor, who does what he’s asked to do quite well and, after all, has a road win at Ohio State on his resume.)
If there’s any tiny silver lining to be gleaned from this crap show ND gave us Saturday night, it’s that Brian Kelly has stopped pretending that there aren’t major issues that have to be corrected.
Brian Kelly right in his DC’s face: “What the F_ _ _ are you doing?”
— Nick Baumgardner (@nickbaumgardner) September 18, 2016
“We’ve got to clean up the whole deal. This is everywhere, and this is on me.” – Kelly
— BlueandGold.com (@BGInews) September 18, 2016
I don’t know why Kelly was so conservative throughout the third quarter as his defense gave up huge gain after huge gain. I have no idea why he called a timeout and then punted with 3 minutes to go in the game when he had to know his defense was unlikely to give him the ball back (the second time he’s bet on his defense over his awesome quarterback, even though DeShone Kizer was pretty bad himself until it was comeback time). I don’t know why Cole Luke is so bad at everything about football, making a ridiculously blatant pass interference penalty, getting burned repeatedly, and then deciding, you know what, let’s not cover MSU’s best receiver with the game on the line.
But most of all, I really don’t know why Brian VanGorder is still Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator.
Of Notre Dame’s last 19 Power 5 opponents, 12 have put 30 points on the Irish defense.
— Irish Illustrated (@PeteSampson_) September 18, 2016
I don’t have much to add here. Mostly just facts in this instant reaction. Notre Dame is a mediocre football team. They’re almost certainly going to lose to Stanford (dear God, Stanford’s O-line against this team) and Miami. They’re probably even money at best against USC and Virginia Tech. NC State won’t be a gimme. Hell, Army looks pretty darn good. I don’t think we have any right to assume that’s a win either.
I’ve yo-yo’ed on Brian Kelly more times than anyone that’s ever been involved with one of my teams. I would stop short of outright calling for his head right this moment just because that won’t solve anything right now. But with ND almost certain to be 8-4 or worse for the 5th time in his 7 seasons, and very possibly the most fundamentally deficient team of those 7, you end up asking these questions after another wasted Saturday.
ND has essentially nothing to play for. They have a lame-duck defensive coordinator, a horrible defense with very little hope of improvement, and a really good QB that is being wasted in this program. I don’t know what the answer is. To some extent my knowledge of the causes is even limited. All I know is I’m sick of watching Notre Dame lose.
There is no moral gain from the fact that they went from 36-7 to down by 8 points. I’m far more concerned with how the hell ND fell down by 29 points at home to a MSU team that, while good, is not great, and is absolutely not more talented. I don’t care much that they didn’t roll over. I didn’t expect them to. It’s time to fix whatever is going wrong with this team. I don’t care how that is done or who needs to go. The season ND is headed towards is not what they claim to want. So now we see if anything is – or can be – done to change it.
I’ve basically written off this season in the sense that I don’t expect ND to have a good year or make a marquee bowl. I’ll still watch because of loyalty and masochism and anyway I left open a lot of Saturdays on my fall calendar due to the cruel lie known as hope.
BUT:
Yes, they have looked pretty crummy in two out of three games, but really, who knows how things will turn out. Right now, sure, it seems like Stanford will beat them by so many points. But after Northwestern beat Stanford last season in week 1, I was pretty sure Stanford was going to have a bad season. After Texas beat Oklahoma last season, I would not have guessed OU would somehow get into the playoff. Heck, I didn’t even think ND would beat GT last year after looking awful against UVA. Lots of things change over the course of a season. Maybe ND finishes 9-3 and then wins some random bowl, and the program has some momentum going into 2017. Maybe they finish 6-6, and we have a bunch of high-profile decommits, and we all cry forever. Who really knows? I didn’t even get to watch the first 55 minutes of the Music City Bowl (why are these games taking place during work hours??), and I was super shocked ND was competitive in that one.
Shorter: let’s see how it all plays out, one week at a time. Longer-term/bigger picture, things need to change obviously. But there are still games to be played, and maybe we’ll have moments of joy here or there. Granted, maybe there is only darkness.
Nightmare scenario: We win the next 9 games, finish 10-2, but all games are won 50-48. We keep BVG because “hey, he did the job well enough to win games.”
Nightmare scenario, continued: We then play Louisville in a bowl game.
KG, you can rest easy–your scenario will definitely not happen, although I’d love to see it. Exciting football, THEN they can fire whoever they want to. This team will not be 10-2. Its nowhere near talented enough and its coachin on both sides of the ball is poor.
The nightmare scenario of a 10-2 or 9-3 season is worse because that will necessarily mean Kizer had a great year, thus ensuring he goes into the draft early.
Don’t sleep on BW.
After the Texas game, there were folks saying that it wasn’t clear that BK made an unequivocal mistake in retaining BVG after last year. Anybody left for that position?
I’d say both need to go. Finally have given up on Kelly.
We were on the very cusp of the playoff picture 10 months ago before going to Palo Alto. In 2012 we were playing in a national championship game. We have had a tremendous home winning streak up until last night. Now I whole heartedly agree that BK has been completely outcoached against Texas and Mich St., but I sure don’t think this is a time to give up on Brian Kelly. He’s a talented coach. He has made a fatal mistake in retaining BVG, and it looks to be derailing his reputation. But let’s start at BVG. As it was clear tonight, BK is finally tired of him. He finally acknowledged that he has to coach better. Get rid of BVG, bring in a more experience DB coach rather than Lyght, make a better hire, and let it ride. I don’t see a benefit of turning over an entire staff while having this much talent offensively.
And outside of those two seasons, he’s been a 8-4/7-5 coach. He’s a slightly better Weis.
Setting aside his successes, he’s only a bit better than the guy he replaced!
He hasn’t cratered like that no-nothing fatass idiot because he’s an actual football coach, but the point still stands. The most damning thing is Kelly’s record since 2012. Before that he was still trying to recover from Weis’ awful roster management, but after the BCS championship game, he has had one good season and now three embarrassments.
I follow the trajectory theory of supporting a coach. Davie and Willingham, the trajectory was pretty clearly down when they were let go. Weis as well, though I’ll admit I was more forgiving of 2007 after 2 BCS bowls–it took two more years of losing to Navy and Syracuse to accept that he’d gotten Willingham’s team to work, only to break it again. With Kelly I see the trajectory as up from Weis, with high points possible when things break right, but most of the time pretty flat. Not down, just hovering at 8-9 wins. A good, solid program, one that can be in the top 10 in years with depth and experience like 2012 and last year, but one that’s going to drop back to fringe top 25 (or worse this year) when the cycle comes back around to inexperience.
I honestly think that with Kelly we can be a consistent top 10 team and occasionally top 5, which is about what I see the program ceiling for any coach. But he’s honestly effed it up by keeping BVG and making some other stupid decisions. And this is what I worried about–by not fixing the obvious problem and just hoping it would get better, he’s cost us this season, and we don’t have the margin for error to lose 5 games and have a mediocre recruiting year. If Kelly stays, even if we fire BVG, we’ll have a down cycle, then the next 2 years might be a bit better and we’ll spike again when all the freshman getting experience are leaders as juniors/seniors, but then we’ll cycle right back down. And frankly, that’s not good enough. It’s better than his three predecessors, and I’m scared sitless that there aren’t realistic options that can do better, but if he doesn’t pull a rabbit out of his ass and at least make it to 9 wins, it may be too late to stop the cycle. We can’t get to where we (and he) want without improving our recruits each year.
Anarch: maybe the best post eva!
I was sitting on that fence. Not anymore, BVG has to go.
I just watched some of BK’s presser. He seemed pissed off too. He kept talking about coaches needing to coach better. He restated that these are our players, we recruited them, we have to get them to play better. He seemed very upset about the play Cole Luke screwed up.
I actually feel a little better after seeing that BK shares our frustration. I guess he might be feeling the heat, but he mentioned having kids that battle, regardless of the score. He might be figuring this thing out. I’m pretty confident the staff will see changes after this year.
I know most of you are frustrated with a head coach that is still figuring things out after several years, but things do get in the way sometimes. Anyway, I’m just hoping for improvements throughout the year. I want to see us win out and end the year with no other teams wanting to face us in a bowl game.
There is definitely hope for the future, at least in terms of the talent on the field. If we can somehow convince Kizer to stay next year, we don’t lose a ton (if all we lose in terms of genuine production are Rochelle, Onuwalu, Jarron Jones, and Folston, that’s a very small year-over-year loss for a college football team). The problem is that BK screwed the pooch on the future by not installing a new defensive coordinator *this year*, so that in 2017 the system would have had a full year to be digested.
We should have known that this hire was bad from the start (when fans of schools where BVG coached were like “lol wut” when he got hired), had strong indications after 2014 (though, admittedly, not fireable after that year), and had basically no hope for the future after last year. And yet he was retained. Awful.
We’ve gotten outcoached in two games. At least Kelly says that’s on him. Let’s see what that means.
I realized I forgot about Cole Luke on this one… well, ok, point still stands.
My takeaways: 1. We were badly outcoached on both sides of the ball, and it was clear early on that MSU was better disciplined, better fundamentally, and just a very well coached team, much better than is ND. 2. Kelly does nothing to rally or inspire his team when he stands there with a disgruntled look on his face, arms crossed, pouting almost. I have finally given up on him. He’s a manager, not a leader. 3. Lets say BVG’s scheme sucks. MSU runs a very complicated defense and their guys seem to not only “get it”, but can execute it. Why cannot ours? The schme didn’t make Luke let the MSU guy pluck the ball out of his hands in the end zone, miss many tackles, get beaten on routes, and completely blow coverage with the game on the line. Fire BVG and Lyght, by all means, but don’t tell me Luke is as talented as the guys playing for Texas and MSU. 4. We have some virtually useless defensive players. Trumbetti made zero plays that I saw. Tillery is wildly over-rated and has made almost no impact. Coleman is Coleman. Smythe made a good catch–yippee, rest of the game he was flat out weak. 5.The interior of the Dline in general is so bad I can’t tell if our linebackers are just average or the Dline puts too much pressure on them. None are difference makers though. And if I were Rochelle, I’d consider going on strike until the rest of the Dline stepped up.. 6. ZERO sacks still, not even close to one. 7. Eric described Luke as “serviceable” a few columns ago. Tonight he was just plain incompetent, supposedly our best and easily most experienced defensive back. 8. Saying Studstill is our best safety is a condemnation (true though) of the rest of them. He will be good, and isn’t bad (mostly) now, but the rest of them cannot play top tier ball and win. 9. Anybody still think we have one of the best Olines in college football? I don’t. They are OK (but inconsistent) in pass blocking, but lousy at run blocking in general. I’m sure Heistandt (sp?) teaches it, but they are consistently outmuscled on run plays. I don’t know why, but one of the things that infuriates me is seeing linemen miss blocks then eagerly run over to haul our RB or our QB up off the ground after they get crushed. Just make the damn block already. 10. Kelly famously said “I guarantee we will be able to run the ball this year” in his last pre-season press conference. I don’t know how many run yards we got tonight, average per rush had to be low. The running game (except for Kizer a few times ) was pitiful. 11. Is it just me, or the weak Oline, or are our running backs just average? THE GOOD STUFF: 12. Tori Hunter showed himself to be a complete receiver tonight. 13. Kizer had a couple of weak quarters,… Read more »
So THIS is where everyone is at. Glad I found the site. Good to be here – wish my post game mood was different though 🙁
@kiwifan: look at the recruiting rankings. Yes, it’s obvious that MSU played like the better team, but that’s why we’re so pissed. We’re getting average output from well above average recruiting rankings, and much more on the defensive side of the ball.
I’m not backing down from fire BVG, but after I went to bed, it occurred to me that we did turn the ball over three times. Plenty of reason to fire BVG from other games (zero sacks, for example), but when you’ve only got seven points of offense that late in the game, there are other problems. And that timeout into punt sequence was just an abdication of decision making.
Not ready to throw the O-line under the bus yet. Hiestand’s lines always struggle in run-blocking until game five. They weren’t great last night, but they were where they usually are in the season. I think they could still be good.
Staring down 6-6 (or 5-7) is a really scary prospect, but that’s where I think we are.
Orlok, recruiting rankings are guesses made about how high school boys will play when they get to college. I believe what my eyes see.
Which of our players could start for MSU in place of their current starters, for instance? Kizer, maybe Hunter and Rochelle? Saunders could return kicks. That’s it, I think.
Trumbetti’s issue ,for instance, isn’t coaching, it’s talent.
same applies for our coaches. I’d take the MSU staff over ours hands down, top to bottom.
You persist in misunderstanding what people are arguing. The whole complain is that ND’s staff does less with more, not that our players as they currently execute are better. As for recruiting rankings, they correlate strongly with success, both individually and for a program. Thus, when a team with good recruiting performs below the level of their recruiting, it is reasonable to charge the coaches with failing to develop talent.
And it’s not just the defense. This game alone a holding to negate a kickoff return and the really inexcusable touch/fumble on the punt. The last one is really bad. Well coached teams don’t have players in the position that Boykin was in, or at least have it built in to have Sanders damn sure call him off.
I don’t persist in misunderstanding anything. You persist in emotionally thinking we have the same or better talent than the other teams. True of the Nevadas of the world, definitely not true of the top tier teams.
NONE of our defensive backs is good enough to play for the championship level teams. Most of our front seven could not. Heistand is supposedly one of the best Oline coaches in CFB, yet our guys get pushed all over the field by the likes of Texas and MSU, not to mention the Bama, OSU etc crowd.
recruiting class ranking’s and the star ratings themselves are subjective guesses by guys selling their guesses to fan bases. I can assure you Saban, Meyer, Dantonio do not make their decisions based on star ranking’s, but on their evaluation of how the athlete will likely perform in their system. I doubt that they pay attention to class ranking’s at all.
i believe what I see on the field. Is some of it coaching? Sure, see my comments above. But mostly ND is at a distinct disadvantage in recruiting and keeping the creme de la creme of college talent. That’s indisputable.
You continue to conflate talent and performance, when it’s clear that those you are arguing with are not. That our players are not performing doesn’t mean that they don’t have talent. That’s one possible explanation, but it’s also possible that they aren’t being coached well and that their potential is being wasted.
If you are going to completely dismiss recruiting rankings, there’s no point in discussing this with you, since you are ignoring the evidence of the initial quality of players each coaching staff has to work with. Furthermore, as has been thoroughly shown elsewhere (including the old site), recruiting rankings correlate with college success. 5 star players, for example, get drafted at a very high rate compared to all other players in college. For those of us who recognize the predictive value of recruiting rankings, it’s worth noting that ND has out-recruited MSU every year since 2010, according to Rivals.
Every coach, including Kelly, evaluates talent on their own, rather than just relying on star rankings. However, their evaluations often coincide with (and subsequently influence) recruiting rankings.
“But mostly ND is at a distinct disadvantage in recruiting and keeping the creme de la creme of college talent. That’s indisputable.”
If you’re comparing ND to Alabama, sure. If you’re comparing ND to MSU, then your statement is demonstrably false.
OK, I’ll play that game. IMO, there are multiple disconnects in your thinking.
I agree that 5 star rankings get drafted by the pros at a higher rate than non 5 stars. So what? There are only a relative handful of 5 stars every year, sought for by all the key FBS schools, and the championship teams like Bama, OSU, FSU etc get the cream of the crop. We get very few. Many 5 stars never achieve their expected level of performance. At ND, Manti and Jaylon did achieve what was expected. Redfield did not. That’s it for the number of 5 stars ND has had in the Kelly years, unless Crist was one, that I recall who actually stayed at ND for at least 3 years. We don’t get anywhere near the 5 stars that the top programs get, thus we get our asses kicked when we play Bama, OSU, etc, and have not won a major bowl game in forever. So we do indeed have a recruiting disadvantage where it counts, i.e. being able to compete successfully for the national championship, which we supposedly aspire to win. We can have good teams and have surprisingly good runs occasionally (e.g. 2012, and we know how that ended) but if we are going to aspire to winning championships, we must get better players, the equal of the championship teams. And, as we have seen since Lou, better coaching.
As for class rankings, you present MSU as your proof that these are determinative, when in fact the MSU story contradicts your premise. Per you, according to Rivals (by the way, how many of their people that rank players were successful coaching for a living??) MSU has been well down the totem pole vs ND in class rankings since 2010. Yet they are the BIG champions, went to the playoffs last year, have won major bowls while we have not, but per your belief they should fare worse than ND because our classes were rated better by Rivals. I don’t buy that.
And I’ll ask again, which of our first string O and D would beat out MSU’s first string this year? Damn few. One of the saddest images from the game Saturday was the MSU running back going 70 yards through the middle of our D line, linebackers and DB’s without a hand being laid on him. The TV shot back at Cole Luke and Tranquil trying to catch him was emblematic. Luke is running hard and not gaining a step, and Tranquil, God bless him, is straining with all his might like the Little Train that Tried, but clearly outclassed.
One more example, then I gotta go, is Houston. They landed their first EVER 5 star this year, a Dlineman named Oliver. They will likely end up higher ranked than Oklahoma (whom they defeated), despite OU’s much loftier recruiting rankings.
So we disagree, respectfully, about how realistic recruiting rankings really are once the cleats hit the field.
Where we can agree is that ND needs better coaching. I maintain that’s at all levels, not just the DC.
I’ll try to make this is simple as possible.
1. Recruiting results are generally predictive, both of individual performance (e.g. the high rate at which 5 star players succeed in college and are drafted) and of team success. This has been well established.
2. In individual cases, it is easy to explain the exceptions: some guys are overlooked, some were overrated. Some make dumb choices in life and school that keep them from success on the field.
3. At the team level, another explanation should be sought when the results are vastly different from those predicted by recruiting rankings, since it is unlikely that any one team would randomly get all the overrated players and knuckleheads (or, on the flip side, all the underrated players). Coaching is the likely candidate for blame or praise.
4. Thus, MSU’s coaching staff is considered to be outstanding because they have done more with less. In contrast, BVG has done less with more. I’m not contradicting myself here, I’m offering a reasoned explanation for exceptions to a general trend.
I don’t see what is difficult for you to understand about this argument.
Thank you for your condescension. Is this your normal approach to people who disagree with you? “Shut up, he explained”?
I note that you still don’t care to name the talent on this team who could start for MSU, you keep scurrying back to class rankings, “nothing to see here.” Nor have you told me where I’m wrong about our 5 star history.
When two teams line up and everyone knows what’s coming and the front 7 just get pushed all over the field, that’s a talent/strength issue. Texas did that in spades. MSU kept running at and around Trumbetti, when they didn’t feel like running between the tackles. I’m assuming he’s the best guy we can put on the field at that position. I could go through the same regarding the entire secondary etc. You can’t win at this level against strong programs when you have a secondary like we have to field this year.
Our Oline got outmuscled pretty much the whole game on running plays, so we became one dimensional on offense. Are they more talented than MSU’s front 7? IMO, they aren’t. Every Spring and Fall we get excited about how big and mean our Oline guys are, forgetting that the other top teams are also big and mean.
We haven’t won it all in over a quarter century. I can’t remember the last big bowl that we won, but have lots of memories of high profile blowout losses, some of which I attended in person. I know facts are a pain in the butt, but they are what they are. Notre Dame plays by a different set of rules, and has become a coaches graveyard as a result. I’m fine with firing BVG. I’m fine with Kelly going too. Who was the last truly top talent in coaching the ND has been able to recruit as HC? Lou was. None of the undergrads at ND were born when he last coached here. It’s no longer the dream coaching job that lured the likes of Ara and Lou.
So who is the sure fire next rising star that everyone thinks we will be able to get if/ when we fire Kelly? Wasn’t he supposed to be that when we hired him? For that matter, who’s the top dog DC that we can hire? Eric listed the paltry pickings out there. This is not an argument against firing either of them, but unless/until ND changes its approach to football, which many do not want to see happen, not much will change IMO.
I also sense that for many, our goal should be winning 10 games a couple years in a row, plus an occasional major bowl win. I think that should be achievable. That’s not the goal stated by “official” ND and much of the fan base though.
You do realize that his whole argument is that our players who “wouldn’t start for MSU” would in fact start for MSU or whomever because they would have improved and gotten better through coaching, rather than not improving and being placed in bad positions by bad coaching?
Take Cole Luke as just one example. 4 star kid, .9325 composite on 247. I’m not a recruiting head, but that seems reasonably good for most top 25 teams, maybe not Bama level. Yet his play so far as supposedly our “best” corner has been pretty bad, and “woudn’t start at another team.”
Yet had he gone to, say, Michigan State, he’d have 3 years before now in a different system, with different coaches. The recruiting argument is that while other staffs do a good job with the talent they recruit, ours does not–and therefore, the same players who we’re saying “have no talent” could potentially have been good players with different coaching. Given the recruiting rankings, this could apply to just about anyone on our starting defensive team, minus maybe Martini.
Talent isn’t the only determinant of good or bad play. Talent is the raw ingredient that gets shaped and molded by a coach, then employed in a scheme. It’s incredibly simplistic to say “well we just don’t have the talent” and basically gives the coaching staff a pass. If we don’t have the talent, then why? And if we do, why isn’t it performing better? You cannot argue that we have lesser talent (base ingredients) than teams like Temple or BC last year, or MSU this year, because the evaluation of those base ingredients from all angles says ours SHOULD be better. And yet, they aren’t. I’m fully convinced if you put our defensive players on MSU’s team, many of them would start. Almost ALL of them last year would have started for BC or Temple. And yet, those defenses are all better than ours. If those DCs can take hamburger and make it into steak, our DC takes steak and makes it into Taco Bell meat.
Edit: put another way–if we keep swinging and missing on 5-stars we recruit, is that because we just happen to have bad luck getting 5-star kids who shouldn’t be thought of as highly ranked recruits? A few here and there, sure–it happens. But at some point you have to ask why consistently highly-ranked recruits come to ND and do very little. It can’t all just be “bad luck”
If you don’t understand the arguments, I necessarily have to simplify them.
How many of our players would start for MSU is irrelevant to my argument. I’m not arguing that they’re better players than MSU’s right now, but that they (by such measures as are available to us) had more raw talent when recruited than did MSU’s players. Thus, if MSU’s players are better now, it is because of poor coaching on ND’s part compared to MSU, not an inability to recruit talent compared to MSU.
The way to attack my argument would be to examine ND’s players (specifically the defense) and explain why they aren’t as talented as the recruiting rankings say. For example, you could point out that Tranquil was a Purdue guy (IIRC) whose ceiling just isn’t that high. That while Tillery was a high-ranked recruit, it was on the O-line, and flipping him to defense negates his high ranking, at least for a while. You could note that some of the underclassmen being pressed into service might be good in the future, but that an MSU 3 star with 4 years of college development is still likely to be better now than a 4-star freshman. Etc…
Pre-season, I had been dreaming of 7-0 when I head out for the Miami game. 4-3 would be great now.
That was a depressing performance last night.
Eh, I’m not as dour about the loss.
The early turnovers were killer. When you’ve got a terrible defense and turn the ball over like that, you get down 36-7.
Mark Dantonio is a machine. He’s done some great things with that program. There’s no shame in coming away losing by a touchdown/conversion. One thing to keep in mind about Dantonio is that MSU went 22-17 in his first three years. It might have been tempting to call for him to be fired after his 6-7 season in 2009. But every other season, he’s produced double digit win totals.
Programs don’t become excellent by firing talented coaches. Kelly is a talented coach. It’s unfortunate that playoffs are already out of reach this season, but that’s the way sports goes. You put together a good squad and hope that the dominoes fall your way – they did in 2012, they will again. But it was going to be a long shot that it was this season with the lack of impact players on the defense and just how bad BVG is.
This team is just a couple of bad breaks away from being 3-0 rather than 1-2. Hopefully the Irish will get those breaks the rest of the way, this team finishes 10-2, and playing in a major bowl game. That’ll be tough with how bad the defense is – it’s also certainly possible things cascade like they did in 2014.
So that’s the longwinded big picture rant. Small picture – I really wish Kelly went for it on fourth down the stretch rather than putting the crappy defense back on the field to pull off a stop. C.J. Sanders is the greatest player in the history of the world. He didn’t actually fumble, the ball was just confused about him being tackled and didn’t know what to do with itself. Kizer may be the best quarterback I’ve ever seen in a ND jersey. If teams threw deep on ND every play, I’m not sure ND could stop them – the corners are just constantly on islands deep and there’s no pressure on the throw.
All right Notre Dame. Go win 9 in a row – do that and this season will look just fine in the rearview mirror.
The defense was in total free fall, but BVG is far from the only problem with this team. The offensive play calling is the pits right now. Kelly’s proclamations of being most sure that this team will run seems really bad at this point. But I guess he was basing that on his own defense, which makes sense, anyone can run on them. All teams have to do it put a hat on #5 or push him out the way and it’s a 8-20 yard gain up the middle every time. How’s Tranquill playing after getting benched for playing poorly?? Even when he diagnoses run he can’t make the stops on non-option teams that have the better athletes, and that’s supposed to be his strength because coverage sure isn’t. Hate to pile on individual performances negatively but I think it speaks more how the coaches are putting the players in positions to fail.
Lot of questions and little expectation for answers. They should have turned Kizer loose way earlier. And the punt with 3:30 left on 4th and 7 really felt like punting the game away. When will Kelly learn to trust Kizer more than the defense that’s failed on every occasion? Would have rather gone down swinging.
The decision to punt was truly baffling.
I have no doubt that we would have gone if Kizer hadn’t been sacked for a 5 yard loss on third down. That was brutal. You’re on your own 32 facing a fourth and seven. If you miss it, it is almost certainly game over. They can practically kick a field goal from there to ice it.
Personally, I thought we should have called a QB draw on 3rd and 2. If he had run earlier, he would have made it.
Risk/reward of a 4th and 7 > punting with 3:30 (and 2 timeouts) and hoping to get the ball back and then having to drive back down.
Either way it’s a tough situation, but based on the way that game was going, I’d put a bet on the offense getting 7+ yards on a single play way before betting the ND defense could quickly stop a MSU-caliber offense.
I thought the same thing last night..thought it was wrong to punt. I’m just saying that it wasn’t an indefensible decision. I can understand the logic that went into it and I have no problem calling a timeout to think it over. The clock was ticking on the sack and you had players all over the field.
I’d have gone with the offense too given all we knew at the time. I might even have tried an on-side kick when we got to kickoff from the 50 yard line after what, as I recall, was our final TD. Ballsy calls either of them, but it was clear we needed to make things happen on offense at that point.
So, this didn’t end up mattering much, but can anybody defend Kelly’s decisions on going for 2 in this game? There was one that I think is quasi-defensible but wrong and the other is indefensibly wrong and stupid:
1) We should have gone for 2 when we got a penalty for the TD that put us down 16. Shorter play = highest percentage chance to get the two that we were certainly going to need if we were ever going to tie the game. Still, this was outside of BK’s “I’m not going to go for 2 until we have three possessions left” rule (I note that’s a bit of a fake-objective test), so at least it’s quasi-defensible.
2) Not going for two when we scored to be down 9 with 6 minutes left is completely indefensible. At that point you’re within Kelly’s 3-possessions test, for one thing. For another thing (or perhaps it’s the basis of the 3-possessions test), at that point in the game you need to know how many points to score to determine what you’re doing on the next kickoff – i.e., if you’re down 9 because you miss the 2-pointer, then you onside kick; if not, you know you only need the ball once.
Was anybody else screaming at the TV at those two points (especially the second)? It was just so, so stupid. Can’t we get somebody to help BK with clock-and-score management? That stuff is basically objective – i.e., there’s a right and wrong way to do it. And he often goes the wrong way based, presumably, on his gut.
The only defense is that last year, at Clemson, he did pretty much what you’re asking, didn’t get it, and got roasted for “chasing points” and going for it too early. I agree that it’s different situations and there’s a good justification for having gone for it, but apparently the criticism was so bad last year he wouldn’t deviate from his plan.
Except he *did* deviate from his stated plan on the final touchdown. It was like he was coaching so scared that he was coaching stupid.
I had no problem with the decisions to kick XP’s. Smart not to chase points until you have to, and the sad reality is they didn’t score enough to have to chase them.
As far as your point #2 goes, going to for (and failing) makes it still a 2 score game with time running out to realistically believe ND would have a chance to score 2 more times than their defense would allow. Getting the XP at least took it down to a 1-score game. I can support that decision-making.I don’t think they should go for 2 until they have to. Aggressively going for 2 cost them a lot in the Clemson game, for instance. Better to take the XP and extend the game as long as possible
The last touchdown was an instance where we needed to chase points, though – that’s the whole point. There was basically no shot at that point of getting two scoring drives without recovering an onside kick, but we needed to know then if we needed two scoring drives or not (i.e., if we were or weren’t getting the 2-pointer). Instead, he put all the eggs in the basket of scoring at the end of the game and getting the two point conversion. If in an alternative universe we had scored a touchdown and missed the two with 40 seconds left in the game, he would be getting absolutely roasted, quite rightfully.
I don’t think that would rightful at all. In this hypothetical, either way, if the team doesn’t get the 2 point conversion, they’re almost certainly going to lose. I believe it is a wiser decision to make the game a 1-score game when the opportunity was possible.
You’re right that going for 2 early does say if “we needed to know then if we needed two scoring drives or not”….But the problem is- they’re not going to get 2 more scoring drives with that defense and such little time left. Going and failing essentially loses the game.
And, this decision wasn’t the failing moment. The team got the ball back with 4:10 remaining and down 1 score. They still had a chance at that point until more bad decisions led to a 3 and out and punt. Of course, if they score a TD on that drive they have to go for 2. And if they don’t get it, they lose. Just as if they didn’t get it early, they still lose.
Further, even if they would have gone for 2 and got it, guess what, they still lost. This decision didn’t make or break anything. And, I don’t think it was wrong.
What you can look back to is the Clemson game. Kelly chased points early, failed and that led to them “knowing” they had to go for 2 on the last TD, and they failed again. It’s hindsight but it’s also true that just kicking gets the 2 points that would have tied it. No need to chase points until it’s absolutely essential. At no point last night was this the case.
I was at the game last night and was basically screaming at my wife asking why they weren’t going for 2 way early in the game.
I guess the way I looked at it was this:
we were down by x amount of touchdowns/extra points +1 point
If we didn’t ever go for 2, we were going to need an extra score somewhere to win.
We could have unsuccessfully gone for 2 once before the math changed.
So basically, we had a freebie to drop a needed scoring opportunity before it put us back into the position we were already in to begin with.
It makes zero sense why we didn’t at least try to go for it once.
Between that and the punt at the end, I was baffled. Add in the balls Kelly showed to try to score at the end of the first half, and it doesn’t add up.
Frustrating game to watch live. Wish I could have seen it on TV.
See Clemson last year. Kelly went for 2 points waaaaay too early, and because of that he had to go for 2 at the last second to attempt to tie the game, as it turns out only because he didn’t take the XP.
Granted, the math for this game was different since MSU converted a 2-pointer and neither team kicked a FG, but the thought process and game theory remains the same. Take all the easy points possible until the very end when you would have to force the issue. ND would have been better off if Kelly did that vs Clemson, and they weren’t hurt by his XP/2pt decisions last night because they didn’t get enough scores (and stops) to make it an issue.
It’s interesting to see Kelly getting burned by his caution this season. Obviously there are the in-game decisions late against Texas and MSU, but the main ones were in the off-season, when Kelly chose to let Kizer and Zaire settle it on the field rather than naming a starter, and chose to keep BVG on instead of nudging him out.
Each of these decisions is defensible, especially in isolation. Regarding the QB battle, I can understand Kelly worrying about the fallout of being perceived as having not given Zaire a fair chance. We’ve had plenty of opportunity to see how QB controversies can play out under Kelly, and it’s clear why he wanted this settled on the field.
Likewise, with BVG, changing coordinators disrupts a program and shouldn’t be done lightly. There were excuses, and promises of improvement, and again it’s understandable why Kelly wasn’t eager to make a change.
And yet, in hindsight, the team probably would have been better off with Kizer the clear starter before Texas, and BVG shuffled out. I don’t want Kelly gone, and think he’s done a good job restoring the program, but his caution may have cost this season.
The theme of this season is complacency. Kelly is loathe to make any decisions that could be controversial, and that’s screwing him. For whatever reason, he’s coaching scared.
This, I agree with.
complacency >< scared
Just some thoughts after reading all the comments and digesting last night…
While I do think that BVG should go (OK probably not mid-season), I do think BK has been doing a pretty good job of keeping ND in the picture. As Jaden said above, just last year we were a last second field goal away from being in the playoff (possibly) and lost to the team that played in the natty by two, on the road. I always thought this year was 9-3. If we got some good breaks, maybe 10-2. If we didn’t, maybe 8-4. 10-2 seems unlikely unless something changes, but I don’t see how any dramatic change right now would all of the sudden make things better. I was off the rails last night about BVG (other site), probably somewhat unfairly and probably because I had a few too many IPAs. I still think 9-3 is possible depending on how the coaching staff and players respond to some early season adversity.
On a positive note, DeShone Kizer is unreal. He’s so smart and can make throws all over the field with ease. Love what he’s doing. I don’t see him staying next year which is sort of a bummer as I could see them being really good. Lot of young guys this year that will be back next year with valuable experience. That’s the way it goes I guess.
Anyway – that was a little long winded but I’m glad I found the site here. Missed the great analysis and commentary participation by you all.
Go Irish
Has BVG been fired yet?
@ Kelly can’t risk alienating or jarring the star place holder in-season. @
This is my first post on the new site, and I want to give major props to Eric and the rest of the old OFD crew for creating another place where we can objectively discuss ND football. My main point of contention from last night is not exactly the fact that the defense isn’t bad (they are), but they are at their worst when the game is on the line. When we needed our defense to get a stop down 36-28 with three minutes left, they couldn’t do it. When we had Texas on the ropes up 35-31 in the opener, they couldn’t get it done. Last year Stanford was able to drive down the field to get a field goal in 20 seconds, and we had several close calls against poor offensive teams like Temple, Boston College, and Virginia. It’s been that way since BVG has been here, and I don’t foresee that changing. Simply put: we have the least clutch defense in the country. If you decide to play an aggressive defense that gives up a lot of points, then you better be disruptive and take the ball away. If you prefer to be more conservative and concede first downs, then you better be solid in the red zone and force field goals instead of touchdowns. Our issue is that our defense does neither of those things, and even more concerning is that there seems to be nothing that they’re particularly good at. The 2012 defense was the perfect embodiment of bend-but-don’t break, and at least our D last year was good at forcing three and outs. What can we hang our hats on this year? I’m just kinda defeated watching Ohio State obliterate a 2015 playoff team while playing a roster primarily comprised of first-time starters. They even lost their defensive coordinator and are making it work. Does Urban Meyer recruit at a higher level than we do? Absolutely. But he squeezes every ounce of talent out of his teams and he’s able to weaponize his most dangerous players. His defense lets Raekwon McMillan cause havoc everywhere, and BVG couldn’t do that with Jaylon Smith last year. Instead, he essentially turned a generational talent into an eraser for everyone else’s mistakes, and now he doesn’t have that luxury this year. Boston College churned out an amazing defense last year with the worst offense in the FBS and minimal “talent.” Ditto for Temple, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and other non-powerhouses that had elite defenses last year according to S&P . When they have injuries, their backups step in and play well. I refuse to believe that can’t be the case here. It sucks, we’ve essentially turned DeShone Kizer into 2009 Jimmy Clausen. He’s a phenomenal talent at quarterback who is saddled with an inconsistent/disappointing run game and he pretty much has to score every single time the offense gets the ball because the defense is so bad. I don’t understand what’s going on with the run game, but Josh Adams doesn’t seem to have moves in the open field… Read more »
I couldn’t have written this post any better. Well done.
Not sure I agree about Adams, but other than that, bravo. Here’s what it comes down to: does anyone really, honestly believe that IF BVG was the DC of a team that had Bama’s players, or tOSU’s, or Clemson’s, he’d all of a sudden have a great defense? Better than the 2016 Irish–yes, possibly/probably. Talent can mask many things (Jaylon as the “eraser” is a great example.) But there are chef’s who can make great meals out of ground chuck, and there are those who can ruin a filet mignon. Great ingredients may mean you don’t have to be a great chef, and being a great chef may mean that you don’t need to have the best ingredients, but a crap chef is going to ruin the dish no matter how good the ingredients are. That’s where we are at. And the look BK gave BVG at the end of the game is him having to take a big ol’ bite of the crap sandwich because he didn’t fire the cook.
I think a competent coordinator could make a decent defense out of this collection of players, who were mostly highly recruited if not “5 stars”, and coach them up enough for us to succeed. We’ll still get into shootouts, as it happens even to Bama. But if we limit the “ole” tackling and simply play smarter, we’ll win those shootouts more often than not.
Agreed on the Adams talk. Prosise was best on the jet sweeps and going to the outside. Plus he had a Martin (or two). Give Adams the same and he would give some results- much like last year..Adams didn’t suddenly get slow or less explosive or anything like that.
The OL has been average at best. I personally think Mustipher has been serviceable or better. The left side hasn’t been as dominant as hoped for, but they’re still good. The right side is the weak link, especially RG. OL has to have everyone working in concert and they’re not really there yet. Could be a work in progress, and it’s OK. I don’t think the OL is near the biggest problem on this team compared to run defense, secondary, defensive coaching, offensive play calling, special teams gaffes and general execution.
Agreed on the offensive line. And I should clarify that I definitely don’t think that Josh Adams is bad, but he’s a pretty awkward runner. His biggest strengths are his vision and the ability to accelerate through holes like he did against Stanford last year. He’s just not the best at taking out a defender in the open field. Prosise on the other hand was excellent at doing that. The line has been shoddy at times this year and that hurts Adams more than it would hurt Prosise. My opinion, of course.
The 2015 offense ranked #1 in rushing S&P. There was literally no team better at running the ball than us according to the advanced stats. So I’m not surprised that this line doesn’t live up to that lofty standard, but I’m just a little disappointed that that this has been kind of the worst-case scenario for them so far.
And speaking of worst-case scenario, that’s how I would describe the entire season so far. It’s almost unbelievable how every little thing we thought could trip us up has. Lengthy QB battle ends in disaster? Check. Secretly bad defense has been openly terrible? Check. Offensive line has trouble replacing talent? Check.
What is your evidence that the right side of the o-line is the weak link? I think they’ve all been equally mediocre.
I have the same opinion, Al.
I could be mistaken, I don’t have any data or anything. But even reading between the lines of Kelly’s pressers (left-side isn’t living up to his high expectations) seem to point to the right side not having the same performance or output as the left.
I don’t think anyone on the OL has had a great year so far, by any means. So by all accounts, improvement is needed across the board. I don’t see it as a huge stretch given the skillsets to say the RG spot is still the weak link though.
Jesus Christ. Kelly consistently gets out coached, to an embarrassing degree.
Not trying to be snarky, but when was the last time you saw MSU play anything but press coverage? It’s not like we knew that they were suddenly going to lay off and let us have underneath pockets. Couple that with a still inexperienced receiving corp and that’s what’s gonna happen.
I should also mention that Kizer did throw for over 340 yards, so there’s ample evidence that we adjusted.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect MSU to play press, to practice as if MSU is going to play press, and then have to make an adjustment when they’re not pressing every play. Press coverage is kind of what they do, historically. The Furman game didn’t exactly provide us a blueprint to MSU 2016. I’m not excusing anything, they played like crap for a good portion of the middle of the game, and bottom line teams are going to try to show one thing then do another. But I’m not sure I agree that practicing against something a team is known to do–that’s practically their secondary’s identity–is an example of bad coaching.
He’s just outcoached constantly. There are so many instances of Kelly trying to explain “well we didn’t anticipate that”.
It is possible to lose a game and not be out-coached.
Yes. That happens. See, e.g., Ohio State game last year.
However, that hasn’t happened in our two losses this season.
Yes I understand that. But the idea that this happens “constantly” is a bit much.
But we play teams that don’t play press all the time–why was the adjustment so hard to make when they didn’t press?? I don’t get it.
And that’s a fair criticism. I’m responding to Publius’s criticism. “They practiced against the wrong thing, that’s poor coaching” when “the wrong thing” is “what that team has done for the last decade” isn’t really a legit criticism. Totally makes sense that they prepared for press coverage. As you said, what doesn’t make sense is the inability to adjust once in the game. Calling that bad coaching would be legit.
Yep, I agree, KG.
And even with that horrible performance, it’s looking like Donovan Jeter is getting ready to commit to ND. I will never understand what these kids are thinking.
I’m tempted to say he wants a first class education.
Obligatory: (what’s sad is that I can’t even use this as a burn against my fOSU friends, sigh…)
Maybe I’m still scarred by attending ND in the black hole of football that was 2006-2010, but none of Kelly’s mistakes has ever made me want him to be fired.
Kelly makes some boneheaded calls in game (why trust a defense you know to be bad to get you the ball back when you need to tie when it’s already in your hands?) and he wavered on some management decisions (not naming Kizer QB1, not firing BVG after last year) but the program is in so much better shape than at any time in my memory. I see no sense in risking another Davie-Willingham-Weis type run by rolling the dice to fire a good HC on the hope we can land a great one.
The problem in Kelly’s first years was a horrendous QB depth chart. That’s fixed now. The problem now is the defense. We know we can field an above average defense, and we know the solution is coaching (just look at how much better the D was is Diaco’s first year compared to Weis’s last year, using the same players). It’s frustrating that BVG wasn’t fired after last season, but this is a mistake we’ll have to eat. Firing the HC and hitting reset on the program is an extreme overreaction, and one that will leave the program much worse off.
I’m terrified of cratering again as well, because
ND forced Lou outLou retired my junior year, leading to the Daviehamweis era. I agree we have to just eat this year. My calls for Kelly will come if this doesn’t get fixed. He’s got 2 strikes.Hi all,
I just had a long conversation with Lou Somogyi, a friend for a couple of decades, who despite never being an X and O guy has a very nice feel for what we might call the bigger historical picture. His column of yesterday on us being stuck in a sort of hard to escape, Elmer Layden like purgatory with BK (not heaven, not hell) which he wrote reluctantly, rings very true.
Anyway, he evoked something which I knew to be true but had long forgotten – one year under Ara, we lost to Purdue big (Mike Phipps went off the charts as I recall) – something like 38-20. Anyway, Ara announced to the coaches that, nothing personal, but he was going to take over coaching the defensive unit that week. Much to the dismay of John Ray, the DC (and a good one). That even led ot a practice field brushup as Ray pushed back against a typical Ara bitchy correction. Worth noting the defense improved…
For me, that is BK’s best of a bad set of alternatives – de facto, take over the D, leave the O to Mike D and Sanford. Probably sideline light and bring Elliott out or semi returement. he does not have to announce any of that.
Interesting. I do respect a lot of what he writes.
I wonder if Kelly has the defensive chops to run the D? And whether he does or doesn’t won’t change the guys who shouldn’t be playing this year in the secondary, nor make Trumbetti, Martini and others capable at this level. Or somehow make an effective pass rusher materialize. Or make Lyght suddenly know how to coach the dbacks.
That’s all on him and his staff for the way they’ve recruited, so I’m not excusing him, BVG or anyone else. Just saying it is what it is at this point.