Last week, the Irish lost to #12 Pitt at Heinz Field and Charlie Weis’ fate was effectively sealed. As this series winds down, we’ll take a look at the last home game of the Weis Era against UConn.
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One Last Time
UConn was 4-5, but had lost every game by excruciatingly close margins. Two weeks prior, the Huskies almost upset Brian Kelly and UC in Cincinnati before losing 47-45. However, this team also lost something much great when cornerback Jasper Howard was tragically killed in the middle of the season. Despite a losing record, UConn was a solid team that would go on to win the Big East the following year.
With the prospect of a resurgent season wrecked by Navy and Pitt, the 2009 Irish would come back home for the final time. By this point, Weis was a dead man walking and there were few illusions as to what would happen to him. The Bob Stoops to Notre Dame rumors had already started in earnest by the time the Irish took the field against UConn.
Despite everything hanging over this team, Notre Dame was still favored by six points at home. With Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate almost certain to leap to the NFL, Senior Day would be played in front of a somber crowd on a sunny November afternoon.
*I couldn’t find the full game online but let me know if it’s out there somewhere. If you want DownInTheBend’s condensed games from the 2009 season, you can find those here.
Some Thoughts
- To this day, I still remember the team walking arm-in-arm with Charlie Weis out of the tunnel. Say what you want about the guy’s coaching, but his players loved him.
- Another day, another 100-yard performance for both Michael Floyd and Tate. However, Floyd had a crucial fumble which prevented the Irish from scoring in the third quarter.
- That hit on Armando Allen at :50. Good lord.
- Notre Dame’s offense scored on two of its first three drives and then nearly went the rest of the game without scoring again. It was probably the worst performance of the year against a defense that wasn’t all that good (#53 in SP+).
- Another week, another special teams disaster. Notre Dame lost at least two games off kickoff returns alone in 2009. UConn also tried to lose the game in regulation by throwing an interception in the endzone and missing the game-winning field goal.
- UConn’s offensive line with the rare “two holds in a row on touchdown runs” on back-to-back plays in the fourth quarter down 20-17. The Irish held them to a field goal before Armando Allen fumbled the ball right back. UConn then missed the game-winning field goal, although it didn’t matter because God hated Notre Dame in the second half of 2009.
- ND’s defense gave up 231 yards at 5.0 yards a carry. The end of the season couldn’t come fast enough.
- UConn’s Offensive Coordinator that day was Joe Moorhead which I find endlessly fascinating.
Senior Day Sadness
“Senior tackle Sam Young, who made his school record 49th straight start, walked out to midfield dressed in a suit after the game and stood there by himself for a while.”
This quote from the AP recap always gets me. Sam Young was one of the highest recruited players to ever attend Notre Dame, started as a true freshman and then played every single game in his college career. Yet ND finished 16-21 in his last three years and lost to Syracuse and UConn in back-to-back Senior Days. I doubt he or anyone had that in mind following the “9-3 is not good enough” campaign.
Does it get any worse than losing to a basketball school in football with a Notre Dame transfer at quarterback? It’s probably not as bad as the 2008 Syracuse loss, but these games had similar themes. Irish blow a double-digit lead, struggle on offense against an over-matched defense and lose in wretched fashion.
To make this weekend more humiliating, Jimmy Clausen was sucker-punched by a fan at a bar after this game ended, proving that college football fans are indeed the worst. His black eye in the Stanford game would prove to be a defining image for his career at Notre Dame.
Randy Edsall declared this game to be UConn’s best win in program history but more importantly, the Huskies finally got a win for their fallen teammate. On the other side, Notre Dame was getting more and more lost in the woods. It would take another year before the Irish would redeem themselves on Senior Day 2010 against Utah.
The strange, erratic 2009 season was finally drawing to a close. After the first Shamrock Series, Notre Dame had BCS aspirations and Charlie Weis looked like he would survive to fight another day. Now, the Irish were staring 6-6 in the face and Weis was essentially a lame-duck coach.
Now with one game left, pride was on the line for the Irish. Notre Dame would travel to Stanford to play the first bowl-eligible Cardinal team since 2001. It would almost certainly mark the last gasp of the Weis Era, regardless of the outcome. The only question was whether the Irish could send their coach out with a win in Palo Alto.
Other Things that Happened that Week
- This was a mostly quiet week, as evidenced by the fact that College Gameday was in Tuscon for #11 Oregon against unranked Arizona. The Ducks won 44-41 in overtime.
- Les Miles had one of his infamous clock management screw-ups against Ole Miss as LSU lost 25-23.
- Michigan finished 5-7 after losing to Ohio State at home. September Heisman winner Tate Forcier threw four interceptions and fumbled in his own endzone for a touchdown. The Game in 2009 was played the weekend before Thanksgiving, for some reason.
- Kentucky beat Georgia in football, which was not nothing.
I think I forgot how weak the schedules were in 08-09. It’s not just that they went 13-12, they did so playing 1 really good team (08 USC) and some fringe top 25 teams and that is it.
I hope this 10 year look back also ventures Into the coaching search. I think I remember at one point Brian billick being mentioned as the favorite. That would have been awful
Weis’ schedules as a whole were pretty brutal. Peak Carroll USC and Michigan teams who were varying degrees of good the first 3 seasons he was here were really the only legitimate teams he played. That’s the main reason he was here 5 years and only recorded one end-of-season ranked win (Penn State 2006).
I’ve got an entire episode planned on the coaching search!
I’m genuinely excited for that, especially the weird infatuation we’d have with any coach who came to Nd stadium and won, thus that one week push for Randy edsall
The B1G didn’t start playing games after Thanksgiving until the 2010 season. Many fans and some media blamed, in part, the long layoff between the Michigan game and the BCS title game for Ohio State getting their asses beat by SEC teams (who played after Thanksgiving and also had a league title game that the B1G at that point did not) in 2006-07, and after that the league moved to play games after Thanksgiving.
It was one of many points of pride with them, along with never playing night games in November, only playing conference games once league season started, and never having ‘affiliate members’ (like ND in hockey), that they’ve sold up the river for mostly financial reasons.
Ah that makes sense, I don’t think I ever noticed that OSU-Michigan was ever not played on Thanksgiving.
Just hate to see it.
Those all seem like very arbitrary things to be proud of.
Indeed they are, I just find it amusing that the conference kicked them all to the curb when it perceived them to be hurting their money train and/or competitiveness on a national scale.