Last week, the Irish were lucky to escape at home against Boston College in their first victory over the Eagles since 2000. The Irish went on the road to play moribund Washington State the following week, but not in Pullman. Instead, this week marked the first ever Shamrock Series game, and the final victory of Charlie Weis’ tenure at Notre Dame.
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A Novel Concept and a Woeful Opponent
When Jack Swarbrick became Athletic Director in 2008, one of his main priorities was to expand Notre Dame’s footprint. The Shamrock Series was an opportunity to emulate the barnstorming days of ND football and take the Irish brand to some more exotic places. First on the docket was San Antonio and the fertile recruiting landscape of Texas. Notre Dame could not have asked for a better backdrop for the event, especially considering the pep rally was held in front of the Alamo itself.
The Irish could not have asked for a more listless opponent in this game. Here are the five worst power conference teams of the SP+ era dating back to 2005:
- 2015 Kansas (3.3%)
- 2009 Washington State (5.4%)
- 2008 Washington (5.6%)
- 2007 Duke (6.6%)
- 2005 Duke and 2016 Kansas (7.7%)
Coincidentally, Notre Dame ended up playing three of these teams during the Weis era. The Cougars were one of the worst teams of the BCS era and would go on to finish 1-11. Every single loss for WSU was by double digits, including 10 losses by 17 points or more. The Irish were favored by 28 points and looking to continue a moribund season for the Cougs.
Game Highlights
*If you would like to watch the game in its entirety, click here. If you want DownInTheBend’s condensed games from the 2009 season, you can find those here.
Some Thoughts
- This was another game where Weis could have named the score and decided to stop once the Irish reached 40. Notre Dame nearly gained 600 yards of offense for the second time under Weis, trailing only the 621 yards Brady Quinn and Co. put on Purdue in 2005.
- The Irish offense was efficient but not super explosive with the exception of Golden Tate’s Hail Mary and Dayne Crist’s garbage time touchdown. Jimmy Clausen’s ability to downshift from hitting the big throws early in the season to being mind-numblingly efficient was an impressive aspect to his game.
- With Armando Allen out due to his nagging ankle injury, Robert Hughes once again put together a good performance. Hughes ran for 131 yards on 24 carries and generally looked like his competent self. In a way, he reminds me of peak Tony Jones Jr.
- Dayne Crist suffered a torn ACL in garbage time and was out for the year. Whenever Crist played in 2009, whether it be in garbage time or spot duty, he actually looked pretty good. Unfortunately, his ACL tear was the first of two major injuries that would eventually rob him of his confidence and ability.
- Speaking of the Hail Mary, it is one of the defining plays of Tate’s ND career and a harbinger of things to come. His hands were so strong that it didn’t matter that three defenders were draped on him.
- This was the first complete performance by the Irish defense since the opener, albeit against one of the worst teams ever. Future NFL-starter Jeff Tuel was destroyed to the tune of 5 sacks and the WSU offense finished with 202 total yards.
- It’s strange to see ND wearing regular home blues for the Shamrock Series, you can instantly date this game by noticing the lack of an alternate uniform.
The Last Hurrah (But we didn’t know it)
The first Shamrock Series was a resounding success. Notre Dame rolled comfortably and the off-field aspect of the event went swimmingly. For the first time since September, the game wasn’t decided by a touchdown or less. The Irish were now 6-2 and looking towards a decent bowl game, perhaps even a BCS game.
To this point, Jimmy Clausen had a TD-INT ratio of 18-2 on 69% completion percentage and over 9 yards per attempt. The offense had been humming all season, and then came the news that Michael Floyd was healthy enough to play the following week. Along with the return of Armando Allen, the Irish seemed to be getting healthy just in time for the final stretch.
As we all know, certain things would come to pass that would forever alter the trajectory of Notre Dame football. But at the time, it seemed like Weis had steadied the ship after two bad seasons. The team was clearly better than it was in 2008 and the program was continuing to separate itself from the 2007 crater.
They had flashed some incredible survivor instinct, but massive issues lingered. The defense was still shaky, and despite its firepower, the offense still inexplicably struggled in the red zone. The emergence of Nick Tausch as a reliable was a welcome sign, but he had been called upon far too many times. Even the awe-inspiring Irish receiving corps couldn’t break out of the bottom third of FBS schools in redzone touchdowns.
Yet, all of the goals were still on the table. Despite the disappointing losses to Michigan and USC, the Irish had weathered a difficult early schedule. With Navy on deck and a slate of winnable games ahead, it looked like anything less than 9-3 would be a massive disappointment…
Other Things that Happened that Week
- #5 Cincinnati beat Syracuse 28-7 in one of their lowest offensive outputs of the season. Even still, Zach Collaros out-dueled former Duke basketball star Greg Paulus in throwing four touchdowns against the Orange.
- #4 USC was wiped out in Eugene 47-20 by Chip Kelly’s ascendant Oregon team. After boasting the best defense in the country before the Notre Dame game, the Trojans gave up 391 yards of rushing to the likes of LaMichael James and Kenjon Barner.
- The Lane Train 1.0 wore black uniforms against South Carolina and rolled the #21 Gamecocks at home. This would mark the high water mark of the Kiffin era in Knoxville.
- #3 Texas was out-gained by #13 Oklahoma State in Stillwater but still killed the Cowboys 41-14.
I believe Kevin White cooked up the idea of the Shamrock Series as part of his brilliant 7-4-1 scheduling plan that he, thank God, didn’t last long enough to implement for more than 2 seasons. He scheduled this game and the ASU game, neither of which made any sense geographically. Swarbrick was able to restructure the idea into something that at least made some sense.
I remember the Tate Hail Mary as being awesome and yet wholly unsurprising. I really expected him to catch the ball as long as Clausen got it near him.
You’re right, although I think it was the Swarbrick regime that officially coined the ‘Shamrock Series’ label.
Correct, we found out it would be called the Shamrock Series like 4 days before the Maryland game in 2011. That was also when they unveiled the gumball machine helmets. That was a big WTF moment.
Why wouldn’t we want 7-4-1 schedules? 7 home games, right?
It made scheduling teams that are any good very difficult given our scheduling constraints (at least one of the four away games was always going to be USC/Stanford, and every other year you’d only have two away games available given Navy). They realized planning on 7-4-1 on a yearly basis was a mistake pretty quickly.
Oh yeah, every year would be tough. I still think it’s an excellent idea to do as much as possible. Probably impossible with our ACC deal.
7 home games is fine but you can’t have a Shamrock on top of it. That’s how we ended up playing, in order, Western Michigan, Navy, Tulsa, then-MWC Utah and Army in 2010. We played seven BCS-AQ teams that year. Seven!!! That’s not how you get to a playoff or get high ticket sales or get high TV ratings.
Admittedly, a bad defense. But it is amazing what you can do when the QB is decisive and you can throw the ball deep. Every underneath route was open.
Even the Crist pass to Goodman was a thing of beauty. Book doesn’t make that throw.
I was at this game and thought that ND was finally shaking loose of the 2007 debacle. Little did we know.