That losing feeling is back. If you got your hopes up from the off-season changes and the new staff you couldn’t have written a better script on how to bring those hopes back down to earth. Another big game, another loss. Another close loss. If you’re counting at home that’s now 11 losses in the last 16 games.
PASSING OFFENSE
Before I really lay into the offensive let me say that the pass protection wasn’t that bad, especially given the opponent. The 7 QB hurries allowed certainly isn’t great but the 3 sacks surrendered actually felt about right with how one-dimensional (well, possibly zero dimensional?) the offense was on the night. It just so happened 2 out of those 3 sacks were ugly and resulted in lost fumbles–the last effectively ending the game.
I will stick up for Wimbush in this one area: The Georgia front seven will likely be in the conversation as the best the Irish have faced in the Kelly era. It’s a SEC front with speed that’s full of almost 10 developed high 4 and 5-star talents.
Having that said, Wimbush should be deeply humbled by his performance. He actually stayed relative calm given the lack of production but it was one of those weird calms with too many long stares. To date, Wimbush has shown top-notch leadership and composure–after Saturday it’s clear there’s still plenty of room for growth when facing adversity.
Granted, you have to make some wiggle room for the opponent but after last week’s throwing performance and now this against Georgia the passing abilities of Wimbush are officially a concern. He threw 40 passes for a paltry 210 yards and should’ve had a couple of interceptions. More of a possession-style of passing game clearly isn’t working (Wimbush is at 52.9% accuracy through 2 games) and the explosive passing game very clearly isn’t working either (Wimbush is at 5.6 YPA through 2 games).
Alize Mack and Josh Adams tied for the longest receptions of the game at 32 yards which is plenty enough said about the receiving corps. Just half of Wimbush’s completions went to wideouts. Anyone who thought the absence of Kevin Stepherson wasn’t a big deal is surely reconsidering that notion right now.
In our preview we wondered whether the offense could get itself into enough manageable passing downs and the answer to that question was an emphatic no. On third down the offense had 2 short-yardage, 4 medium-yardage, and an abysmal 13 long-yardage attempts.
On third down Wimbush was 5 of 13 for 47 yards with 2 conversions via flags and 2 via the quarterbacks arm.
Next week in his first road start against a decent Boston College defense I think we’ll have to see at least 62% completions and a really smart performance from Wimbush to get his season going in the right direction.
RUSHING OFFENSE
We were told the running game would be the strength of this team and in just its second game of the season it turned in, pound for pound, perhaps the worst effort of the Brian Kelly era.
| Player | 1st/2nd Yes | 1st/2nd No | 3rd/4th Y | 3rd/4th N | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adams | 6 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 36.8% |
| Wimbush | 2 | 8 | 0 | 3 | 15.3% |
| Jones | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0.0% |
| Book | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0% |
We threw the ball a lot during the spring game and we threw the ball a lot in the “New & Gold” scrimmage right before the season. In each instance, the running game didn’t look great in the rare instance they did carry the ball. All over the web I kept reading, “The offense knows it can run the ball it’s fine.”
No, it’s not fine.
Saturday’s run success rate of 26.4% against Georgia was the 4th worst of the Kelly-era trailing 2013 Stanford (26.0%), 2015 Clemson (23.5%), and 2014 Stanford (16.6%). The offense was only successful on 1 out of its first 12 running plays. A week after massive explosive big plays the longest run was 8 yards (twice by Wimbush, his only successful carries of the day) and 7 yards by Adams versus the Dawgs.
This may be a bit of an overreaction after averaging over 8 yards/play last week (Temple barely sneaked past Villanova on Saturday, by the way) and facing probably the best defense we’ll see all season but it’s starting to make more sense why everyone in our pre-season poll voted unanimously in favor of Mike Elko being the more impactful coordinator.
The Irish ran the ball 42.4% of the time on first down and 48.0% overall. This offense will never approach anything close to run heavy. Combined with the utter lack of production on the ground there’s a large target on Chip Long’s back right now. He’s quite inexperienced, threw the ball a lot at Memphis (but he didn’t have a good offensive line, right??), and these RPO’s don’t look like a magical solution to unlock the pass game. Should we have been much more skeptical of things changing under a new coordinator?
This is the most depressing on-field part of the loss. Long called a really bad game and your supposed biggest strength of the team looked entirely inadequate. They should be good enough to rebound and play well against 8 or 9 out of 10 opponents but deep down we know when that one tough defense shows up we won’t be able to count on the offensive line and running game.
Immediately after the game Kelly was asked why Dexter Williams didn’t play and chalked it up to a coaching decision. During Sunday’s phone conference he deferred to the fact that Josh Adams is too good, more or less. Sure, that’s true about Adams but no one is shocked that the Irish aren’t running the ball enough to spread the carries around or managing 3 supposed quality backs well.
The issue isn’t Adams–although he’s at 38 carries already which he didn’t hit until the middle of the 4th game last year and there may be some issues with breaking down later in the season–it’s Dexter vs. Tony Jones, Jr.
It’s not like Jones is playing a ton, either. Still, he’s received 11 targets or touches through 2 games (and something ni the neighborhood of 4x to 5x as many snaps) and totaled 27 yards. We know he’s a step or three slower than the other backs and we damn well know the Irish weren’t going to overpower Georgia. So why not try out your fast and super quick running back?
PASSING DEFENSE
I thought the Irish held serve here, at worst. Fromm clearly wasn’t very productive (141 yards on 29 attempts, 4.8 YPA, yikes) but never really looked bad or was the main reason why Georgia was playing poorly.
There were a couple sacks and 5 quarterback hurries, solid but not spectacular numbers.
The secondary held up reasonably well, especially limiting yards after catch and tackling soundly. However, the Dawgs just don’t have the receivers and certainly the QB to make a really strong case for a great performance from the Irish defense in defending the pass.
RUSHING DEFENSE
Now this was a legit admirable effort and encouraging sign for the future. I thought we’d hold up pretty well due to Georgia’s offensive line being poor, and while the Dawgs put up 193 non-sack rushing yards they were limited to a success rate of just 39.4% by the final whistle.
Notre Dame should win every game it hold an opponent under 40% success running the ball–looking at you Irish offense!
The issue with Georgia was that they broke off just enough long runs to keep their offense afloat. While the Irish didn’t have a single run over 8 yards the Dawgs had runs of 11, 12, 13, 17, 30, and 40 yards. Just 6 carries for 63.7% of their total rushing.
Still, the front seven and tackling from the secondary completely get the Irish in this game. In fact, this was one of the best tackling games from Notre Dame in quite a while.
SPECIAL TEAMS
Quietly this was one of the more fundamentally sound special teams games of the Kelly era. It’s such a shame that paired with the defensive effort (back-to-back sub-4.6 YPP defense games for the first time since the 2nd and 3rd games of 2014) the offense spoiled everything.
We’re done criticizing Yoon at this point, right? He’s started slowly in each of his first 3 seasons but has proven to be a very good college kicker banging home all 4 attempts on Saturday. Imagine if he had missed a couple? He’s way, way down the list of our issues for 2017. By the way, Yoon is on pace to kick the most field goals in school history (needs 26 more to pass Kyle Brindza) and he’s currently on pace (80% career success) to beat John Carney’s current school-record 73.9% by a good margin.
TURNING POINT
It’s tempting to choose Okwara’s personal foul for pushing Fromm a split-second too late. That did lead to a Georgia touchdown but that was with over 6 minutes left in the 3rd quarter and Notre Dame would eventually re-gain the lead.
My pick is actually crucial back-to-back plays on Georgia’s second-to-last non-kneeling drive. First, Sony Michel juked out Daelin Hayes on 3rd & 1 and then Fromm hit Javon Wims for 31 yards down the sideline to get into field goal territory, and ultimately setting up the game-winning kick.
3 STARS
- Drue Tranquill
- Josh Adams
- Justin Yoon
FINAL NOTES
I thought Andy was spot on that this is just more purgatory for the Irish. Records can be important but this was another missed opportunity to make a statement and win a big game. Realistically, there were going to be 4 “big” games this season: Georgia, USC, Miami, and Stanford. Now, you’ve only got 3 games left and if we’re being real this team isn’t beating USC even if it’s in South Bend.
That leaves Miami (still don’t know much about them yet) or Stanford (who just got dominated by USC) for quality wins. An 8-4 season with a likely top win over Navy is just as frustrating as it can get. Making matters worse is that in 49.5 weeks time Michigan is likely to cave in Notre Dame’s offensive line in the opener for an expected loss.
A 9-4 season season with a loss to Michigan to open 2018 would be losses in 15 out of the last 28 games. I don’t blame anyone for feeling like we’re just marching ahead towards a future that is neither bright, fun, or entertaining.
For the immediate future it’s going to be a long slog until that USC game. The next 3 out of 4 are on the road and with the abysmal record away from home in recent years at least that offers some chance to correct an issue that has lingered for far too long. Still, no one is going to be impressed by wins over BC, Michigan State, Miami
I’ll start by saying I listened to the game on the radio and haven’t watched it yet (probably won’t). It was a disappointing loss, but I’m happy we are discussing the offense stalling instead of the defense blowing tackles and being out of position.
With the group ND has on the field, it’ll be easier to get the offense on track week-to-week than it would be to fix the defense (again). Think of OSU the year they won the championship. Their offense was anemic in their loss to Va. Tech. Once their O got rolling, they were unstoppable. I’m not saying ND is that good, but I’m relieved that the defense held their own against one of the top rushing teams in the country.
Now that’s a good, optimistic evaluation! Let’s hope there’s some truth to it. Could everyone be so wrong about the O-line? Didn’t people say that Wimbush looked great even when compared to Kizer last year? Josh Adams holds ND rushing records already, he’s pretty good, right? I think the pieces are there, the question is whether Long and Kelly can get them working smoothly. Hopefully, these next four games will allow them to do that.
I’m not writing him off yet by any means, but the possibility that Wimbush is a great practice player has entered my mind. It’s a small percentage in there right now, but I do have concerns about it. Camp reports were unanimous about his accuracy and delivery – even the harder graders among the beat guys talked about his 90%+ completion rate. Obviously nobody expected him to play *that* well in games, but seeing such a stark drop-off to game day performance is concerning. Hopefully it’s just a rookie shaking out the bugs.
Georgia made a conscious effort to keep him inside and it worked. Not adjusting is on Long and Wimbush. I think that part of Wimbush’s problem is the bad WR play (other than St. Brown). Personally, I believe a large part of 4-8 last year was on the WRs. Kizer clearly didn’t trust them, whether it was dropped balls or bad routes. He took too many sacks, fewer YAC because the ball arrived late, etc. We are not seeing much better, and if anything, it has gotten worse. Kelly’s comments about talent not getting you on the field, attention to detail will, seems directed at the WRs. It seems to be the only position where talented players are seeming to languish behind less talented players. The coaches have to get the talent to pay attention to detail. After seeing Smith, and what little we have seen of Canteen, the other WRs must be awful at detail. Sanders, McKinley, Claypool all have talent. Sanders is a playmaker, he needs to get the ball. The only way Finke scores on a 17 yard crossing route is if it finishes in the end zone. One missed tackle and Sanders can score from anywhere. If a second WR does not emerge, St. Brown will disappear because there will always be a safety next to him.
I don’t know that Sanders is all that good at getting open – he’s been on campus for a while and even saw a pretty substantial number of snaps last year, but he hasn’t shown much production. Finke doesn’t have the YAC ability that Sanders does, but he seems to at least get open.
Claypool is raw. He needs to run the right routes and hang on to the freaking ball. FWIW, he had some recurring issues with drops in camp as well; he’ll get there, but he needs a lot of polish.
Canteen doesn’t look like a contributor at this point. McKinley was reportedly not quite 100% yet in camp. Haven’t heard anything about him in weeks, I think, so I have no idea where he stands now.
I think Smith has actually been OK, but he looks much more Chris Brown than Will Fuller. That’s not really going to draw any attention away from anyone else. He looks more like the type of guy who can benefit from other people getting attention.
I have some high hopes for what the passing game might look like with ESB and Stepherson on the outside and Smith in the slot. I think *that( lineup would force defenses to make some uncomfortable decisions. What we have now, not so much.
Now that you mention bad routes, I recall Flutie talking about, I believe Fink, on one route that he should have flattened which would’ve given Wimbush a better window to deliver the ball through UGA’s zone which didn’t happen. Can’t remember if that was his bad drop that would’ve given the Irish a first at some point in the 4th quarter. Yes, he did make up for it later. But if he is playing and that type of detail is an issue, I imagine it may be worse or I guess more inconsistent from more talented players? Hope the light comes on for those guys and they get on the field.
In the two games I’ve seen a few plays (pass and run) where I wondered if Wimbush knew the down and distance. He’s not the only player that has me wondering what the summer hype was about but, he’s one of them. He certainly doesn’t seem very comfortable yet.
I wonder if it is going almost two years without really getting hit?? I know he said he wanted to get hit in the first game, but he is getting his real game experience at the college level now. Hopefully it’s just a transition. I would like to see his pocket presence improve.
I guess I feel this loss was more along the lines of FSU and Clemson than the loss to MSU or UT last year — meaning the team is close. Probably not a playoff contender, but if they grow into their roles, a good season is still attainable.
Most rational analysts predicted 8-4 or 9-3 for this team. Why does a close loss to a good SEC squad change that and make everyone predict gloom and doom? If the defense was still a disaster, I’d agree with the gloom and doom. Get K. Steph back and find another good receiving option (Cam, Alize, Chase or Finke) and I think this offense can still roll up the yards against 8-9 more teams on the schedule.
When you consider yourself a top-tier college football program and you have the opportunity to hire a 33-year-old with one not-particularly-successful season calling plays in the AAC as your offensive coordinator, you gotta do it.
In the wake of the Elko hire, I gave this one the benefit of the doubt. But yeah, now it looks dumb.
To drop the sarcasm for a bit, and to go with something that is superficial yet concerning: I’m afraid Chip Long got hired because he reminds Brian Kelly of Brian Kelly. Bad managers often hire younger versions of themselves (sometimes consciously, sometimes not), and, well, look at them. Chip Long looks like Brian Kelly minus 25 years.
Bingo. It feels too much like BK was told he couldn’t call plays anymore so he did the next best thing in bringing in a Kelly clone.
Benefit of the doubt though, I did think the playcalling was great Week 1. So we’ll see which performance is “true” Chip Long.
Playcalling always looks better when there are holes for the RBs to go through. When the holes are not there, the playcaller looks stupid. The problem is that he did not know how to react when they took away what he wanted to do. There was no Plan B.
Exactly. Like I hinted at in my overly-long comment below, this reminded me so much of Diaco’s 2010 Navy gameplan. Diaco had no Plan B for Navy, so there was nothing to switch to when they adjusted to what we were doing. Game over.
There are some weird downvotes in these comments.
They also didn’t play Dexter Williams, and basically said after the game that there was no reason that they didn’t. They just didn’t.
Come on. He didn’t say there was no reason, he said it was a coach’s decision. In the Sunday conference he said that Adams played more because he’s better (no argument there) and Jones played more because he’s better at blocking.
You don’t have to like the reason – I don’t – but he did give a reason. He’s not just deciding to screw Dexter because he doesn’t like him.
I get the disappointment in the run game, I definitely share that disappointment, but what plays do you call when your O-line is getting dominated by the defense? GA was behind the O-line for the majority of the snaps. If you can’t run or pass, what plays do you call? I agree with the criticism of the offense, but I can’t think of any plays to run when the opposing team lives in your backfield. I think of this as my re of a preparation thing than play calling.
I think we should’ve dropped the zone read completely and just called some straight ahead runs. I hesitate to sound all NDN-y, but let the OL just fire off and see what happens. The zone blocking was getting destroyed, might as well try something different. Hat on a hat and see what you can do.
Basically, I would’ve liked to see us try *something* different. Anything.
I tend to agree with this. I was at the game, and it was obvious that Georgia’s defense was way too fast for our guys to try to get outside. There was a play, maybe during the first quarter, when Wimbush kept the ball and it looked for all the world like he would get the corner…and then like 3 dudes were there to stop him for a 1yd gain. Now, Wimbush got the corner later and scored the TD, but it was a near thing. I’d have liked to seen the run game stay between the tackles (not that our guard play was any good either).
I dunno. It was a tough day for the O.
The old saying is you beat speed by running right at it. I was hoping to see some power runs with a TE lined up in the backfield. (we did it vs. Temple) It might not have worked but, I would liked to have seen it tried a few times. It was obvious the read option was toast.
Not sure why you got downvoted. Exploit the overpursuit.
You really shouldn’t worry about down votes on the internet.
Man, that 15 out of 28 stat is frighteningly depressing. A top win against Navy is my worst nightmare for the season. 8-4 with no signature win is just so blah. Great that we won 8 games but we didn’t beat any of the top tier teams on the schedule. Having said that, I think they’ll win one of those remaining 3 (USC, Miami, Stanford). Let’s just hope they don’t lay an egg against someone else. On a positive, I really did like the way the defense played. Tackled pretty well, didn’t seem way out of position, and they looked like they were playing fast.
Edit: ok my worst nightmare is losing every game and everything falls apart. But, other than that…
I wonder how long it will be before the temptation takes over for Kelly to call plays again. Sort of an “if I’m going down, it’ll atleast be on my own shield” type of thing and I wouldn’t blame him for it.
As shown above the read-option stuff was atrocious. Could be wrong but I don’t think they even tried that many honest to goodness straight up runs to the left. Just line up and push em back and go. Gameplan almost seemed too fancy but perhaps that’s a simplistic hindsight call.
Looked like Wimbush got a little rattled going into the deep waters when it wasn’t working. All of his second start, not a blame on him, just the sad state of affairs that he has little experience, one good option in ESB and then good luck kid.
Not a big fan of the “attention to detail” type of excuses from Kelly to not use Claypool, Boykin and Williams…And I assume Sanders too, with Stepherson the cherry on top. I doubt that mentality will change, nor the frustrations.
Sucks to lose any game, at home, by a point but it was to a legit good team. Hopefully the train doesn’t come off the tracks here, will be very telling for how or if they can put this in the rear view and get ready for next time. Big picture, go 5-1 heading into SC and that’s a good place. Lose one (or more) of these next few before that and it’s probably more evidence that something is irrevocably broken and in need of a change before the results will.
The read option plays just seemed to develop SO slowly, giving Ga plenty of time to bring their LBs down and stuff any anything before it could get going or slide over and cover whoever the option player was. Perhaps more quick hitting runs would have been more suited to our O-line and might have opened up the other plays? (Based on the HS football I played over 35 years ago, that make sense to me.)
As is obvious from my other comments in this thread, I was also extremely frustrated by those runs. But I’m guessing part of the slowness could be that the reads were getting messed up by how much Georgia was destroying the interior of the line. Nelson and Bars did not have a good day, unfortunately. I’ve seen split opinions on Mustipher and I don’t know enough to assess him myself. But the guards had a really rough day.
The read options also didn’t work because Georgia always covered the QB keep. They brought a man up to fill the middle and the end always stayed home. Flutie for all his flaws was right, a play action off the read could have made them pay for that.
Not only were they slow developing, so often Wimbush made the wrong read. It’s like he doesn’t really understand what the ZR play is supposed to do. He’d hand the ball off when a lineman was standing alone on the outside of the formation instead of handing it off, if the DL crashed down and plugged the middle, he’d hand it off and adams would get stuffed.
Including the loss to Stanford at the end of the 2015 season, ND has lost 9 of 10 one score games. That has to improve… right??
Not without a coaching change.
At one point Kelly had won 11 or 12 straight one-score games at ND. At that point the narrative was about how good a coach he was in close games. Now being 1-9 in our last 10, it’s switched completely. Fortune is a fickle mistress indeed.
(No, I’m not saying it’s all due to bad luck. It’s just a good saying.)
Honestly, yeah it should. Unless you’re losing all those one score games due to absurdly bad clock management or something else, it should all come out in the wash. There’s a certain amount of bad luck involved (after riding some luck in the 2012 season).
Legit criticism of Kelly should focus on why a lot of those games were close enough to lose in the first place.
I think chalking up losses to USC, Stanford, Miami this season and Michigan next season after two games with a brand new offense, defense, special teams, starting QB is asinine. Why even play the games if we already lost, right? Unfortunately, this isn’t the dumbest overreaction I’ve read on this site today.
You’re right, your post is actually the dumbest overreaction on this site today.
Eric was just outlining what the most frustrating situation would be, not predicting it.
If someone predicted 8-4 before the season should we still play the games?
I apologize for my frustrated response (gotta love the irony of complaining about an overreaction by overreacting).
I just think two games into the season after so many offseason changes is too small of a sample to project where we’ll be by the time we play USC, Stanford and Miami. I just think we should evaluate the Georgia performance on its own without thinking that it’s indicative of the rest of the season.
Our defense and special teams performed very well, IMO. The offense looked really bad but considering, like I said above, that this is a new QB in a brand new system going against the best defense on our schedule, I don’t think we should be too worried about a 1 pt loss.
There’s plenty of time between now a USC to work out the kinks. I taking the optimistic route in thinking that our offense will never look that poor for the rest of the season.
Again, I apologize and I appreciate the work you guys do here.
No worries. I think we’re all understandably salty after that game.
I am extremely interested in your and the board’s assessment of how the playcalling was so bad (I mean to say, what shaped your assessment? I have never been very much knowledgeable about the nuances in this area, and in addition I was at the game and focusing on different aspects. I would very much appreciate insights because that to me is the most concerning of all the problem areas ID’d above. All I remember thinking was dim thoughts like, well, they are sticking with the run, BK would have gone back to all passes and empty sets two quarters ago, I guess that could be a good thing, wish they could run better though
I think running a lot of stuff that developed slowly and went east-west rather than up the middle seemed like a bad idea against such a fast defense. Of course, I don’t think our o-line showed an ability to overpower up front so that could’ve failed too.
Also, take some shots deep. That throw to ESB early could have set the tone. Completing just one of those in the second half keeps their safeties back and opens up a little running room.
Yep. With a defense built on speed, you need to either go straight at them, or use it against them with counters/jet sweeps getting them thinking and moving one direction then switching and going another. We did none of that. Wimbush didn’t have time to read, and when he did, he read wrong. I’m about done with any RPO stuff, because we never pull it off, and that’s now 4 QB’s we’ve tried it with.
No, we decided to run laterally and pass to the flats, which is exactly what I was worried about with Chip Long.
Regarding play calling/personnel, I’m really lost on why Dexter isn’t getting the ball. I understand the excuse is basically that “he’s not a good pass blocker”. Well, ok, who’s fault is that at this point? He’s too good an athlete IMO to not get some touches. I just have a hard time thinking he can’t get better at blocking in 3 years or however long he’s been here. That really only leaves a lack of development/coaching. Maybe I’m way off base and someone who knows more X’s and O’s can help me here.
The vast majority of running plays that we ran on Saturday were read option plays. The biggest issue with our read option is that we’re not “optioning” anyone. It’s basically just a delayed handoff. If you watched Josh Adams on those plays he would take 1 or 2 stutter steps towards the QB from his offset position when the ball was snapped. He is now going East-West instead of towards the line. The point of this is to give time to allow for running lanes to open so that the QB and/or RB have “options” on where to run. Think of it this way, what do we always say is the best way to stop the Navy option? Penetration by the defense, because it disrupts the flow of a play that is based on timing. It’s the same principle, if a defense is able to hold position and clog our running lane there is no “option”. Towards the end of the game we ran a few straight power runs to the left side and they gaines 3-5 yrds each. I would have loved to see a lot more of those with Dexter running the ball.
Thanks very much. This makes sense in conjunction with mlafort’s above, and helps me process much of what I saw (had good seats on the 30, east side, and I do remember our backs coming towards me and not towards Georgia – and boy, those Georgia LBs can fly). I also remember a couple of plays twds the end where Josh ground out 5 yard gains; they were straight up. Wonder about trap blocks, were the Georgia DT’s pushing forward enough to get vulnerable to that?
This was one of Bill Simmons’s “Level 4 Gut Punch” losses or whatever he calls them. Just brutal. So much hanging in the balance and with the game in our control, and still… I physically wobbled for a second when Wimbush lost the ball at the end. That’s how much of a gut punch it was. A few takeaways for me: – I don’t need any qualifiers about Georgia’s weakness in this or that area to say that this defense played phenomenally, and is far, far ahead of the defense we saw last year. Absent one flat-out wrong late hit call and one questionable review overturn, they likely would’ve given up 9 points and bottled up two very good running backs. They were in position, they tackled well, and they forced turnovers. We’re averaging 8.5 TFLs per game compared to 5.1 last year, and with Bonner’s sack on Saturday we’ve already equaled the number of DL sacks (3) we had all last season. – Coleman was fantastic. Tillery was fantastic. Jay Hayes was excellent again. Tranquill was at another level. It was fun to watch. I think the defensive future is very bright. – The offense… I’m not surprised we struggled early. Georgia has a ton of athletic talent in the front seven, and I expected them to stymie us initially. I also expected us to adjust, which we seemingly never did. The first drive of the second half showed a little life, but then it seemed like we went right back to the same stuff that wasn’t working. I’m bitterly disappointed in Chip Long’s contribution Saturday. He needed to change something up dramatically, and it never happened. I hate to complain about play calling because it’s such an easy target and we usually lack so much context around it, but I know what banging your head into a brick wall looks like. – Wimbush had a really bad day but he wasn’t helped much by his receivers. Georgia pretty clearly blanketed ESB with abandon, and nobody could make them pay. Cam Smith supposedly is one of the fastest guys on the team, but I don’t think we took a deep shot at him. We took one deep sideline shot to Canteen and he slowed down too soon and then had to extend too far. Thanks, bud. Mack had another bad drop. Claypool had a horrific drop on a bubble screen that was set up well. Game 5 can’t get here soon enough. – Wimbush had a really bad day. Ugh. He looked like he was too amped and then never settled down. If we see more of the same against BC, my concern-o-meter will officially spike. – I’m completely bumfuzzled at why Tony Jones, God love him, is getting touches over Dexter Williams. Jones can block well? OK, well, he also couldn’t beat anyone to the line of scrimmage the other night. He shouldn’t be getting carries over Dex. Full stop. – We couldn’t run the ball at all,… Read more »
Brendan – very good post. Helps me crystallize my own thinking (much confused by similar anguish). – Actually, I was sitting not far from where I was in ’93 when BC kicked the field goal that cost us Lou’s 2nd Natty, and like you on that strip sack I too felt a real gut punch, only for me it was deja vu. I was absolutely confident after Wimbush hot the pass on the last drive that we would get 25 more somehow and Yoon would make it 22-20.
BTW – beat BC, there is always goodness in that!
Yeah, that completion to Finke had me pretty psyched, I thought maybe were finally going to get something going. And about 20 seconds later…
I agree with all this Brendan. And yet while the score was close, Georgia also left some points on the board. Missed FG (it’s not like we blocked it), penalty called back the return TD (and didn’t look like the penalty really affected the run), and the drop of the deep ball with the WR beat us bad.
Well, so did we. We missed the deep shot to St. Brown to open the game. That third down throw to Adams in the flat on the first drive – if Wimbush had put touch on it and put it down the field more, Adams might still be running. The first strip-sack of Wimbush was in field goal range (and right after Mack’s drop, btw).
I hear you, but teams miss stuff from time to time and it generally evens out. Especially in college ball, where everyone is generally less proficient at everything than they are at the next level. Hell, Diaco’s entire defensive strategy was to draw out drives because you can expect an offense to make a mistake every X number of plays. The missed plays are highlighted in close games, but I expect some of those by each side. It’s all the other stuff from Saturday that drove me bat-poop crazy.
Good points. The drops definitely fall into that category of leaving points on the field to no fault except our own. The strip-sack I take to not fall in the category because we got beat.
Maybe this looked different on TV, but sometime in the 3rd quarter Cam Smith had a screen pass that he cut back across the field and ended up drawing a penalty. From my spot in the stands, it looked like he may have had a TD (or at least a huge gain) if he just followed his blockers up the right side. Was that just because of the view I had, or is there some truth in that?
Yes, I remember that play, and I remember jumping up and down and yelling in the hotel room. and do you mean him following his blockers after the cut back?? because he had a chance for a big gain if he didn’t break it to the outside after his cutback.
I meant following the blockers before the cutback.
Tirico said that without the Georgia guy grabbing his facemask he might’ve scored on the reversal. I don’t think they said anything about following his blockers.
Is this the play you’re talking about? I don’t see how he could have gotten anything out of this. GA had this locked down:
I didn’t re-watch the whole game because I didn’t have time, but I watched the drive at the end of the 3rd and top of the 4th that resulted in a field goal. There were definitely points left on that one even though they did get a field goal. The Irish were moving pretty steady, but the false start making it 3rd and 9 resulted in a more conservative play call on 3rd down that the Irish didn’t convert. I really wish they would have went with a more “aggressive” call to convert the 3rd down. With offense struggling all game, you never know when they will get that close again. If the 3rd down failed, it was still in Yoon’s FG range. If they converted the 3rd down and kept driving, a touchdown there would have been a back breaker (imo).
I cant find a return TD in the play by play…do you know about when it happened?
Can’t remember when it happened, but it wasn’t actually returned for a TD, I think UGA returned it to the 10. Not sure if that helps.
Brendan,
great post. As it relates to Long, this game reminded me of the Clemson game a couple of years ago. It was like some point in the middle of the 4th quarters, Brian Kelly actually adjusted the play calling and what do you know?? An offensive explosion occurred. It was too much too late as we all remember. Of course in the UGA game, that adjustment never came. Hopefully, Long just got caught with his pants down and it will be a learning experience for him. Yes Long is green, I would expect there would be some growing pains as long as he is learning from his short comings. At least this happened early in the season.
Hopefully. I’m disturbed that we kept running the same zone read play that took forever to get going, though. That should be an easy change. We have to have runs in the playbook that aren’t reads, so freaking try some of them, man… Same with the screens. Georgia was destroying them because they took so long to develop. So stop running them! I get that ideas that worked were hard to come by, but at least stop trying the things that are guaranteed not to work.
The worst part was that the second half looked no different. I can understand coming out with the wrong game plan – I would be frustrated by it, but I get it, it happens. But it looked like we made very few, if any, halftime adjustments and just kind of hoped things would start working.
Also, Finke should’ve played more. He was much more effective at finding space in limited time than anyone else was.
Yes, the lack of adjustments was atrocious. I remember one play in the 4th quarter where Wimbush lined up under center and handed it off and they gained maybe 4 yards. I got excited like man, maybe the OL has been wearing them down! Don’t think I saw that play again. I thought I would have saw a middle screen or double screen at some point to take advantage of UGA’s rush and aggressive pursuit, but maybe they are just saving it for USC?? lol
I wanted a bubble fake with an outside go or something like that. Georgia was sooooo aggressive on the screen passes and we had so much trouble getting open deep, it seemed like a good way to take a shot. Flutie, bless his heart, thought we should try a double pass. Yeah, because we were protecting so well on single passes. Doofus.
They did a flea flicker on like the first play right? That’s when I said oh boy, in for one tonight.
Yep. Pretty awesome opener. I don’t know how much of the end result would’ve changed, but it would’ve been really nice to hit that one.
Don’t you mean The former walk-on now on scholarship? Flutie says it after every time he is targeted or catches a ball so I assumed he changed his last name too.
Lots of time left in the season, but I think we can preemptively hand Finke the Joe Schmidt Memorial Guy Nobody Ever Lets You Forget Used to Be a Walk-On award.
The award is a lunch pail
The play action pass calls had me frustrated. Georgia was not biting on the fakes, so the net effect of the call was to have Wimbush waste time with the fake handoff before getting a chance to look downfield. By that time, the rush was on top of him. I couldn’t understand why we kept doing that right until the end.
I was also frustrated by how many times we attempted screens. They were either not executed well – drops or bad throws, or else they were sniffed out by the D. I get that you want to establish something, or whatever. But for the most part the screens felt like banging your head against a wall.
Both these are based on impressions I had from watching the game in the stands. Have not looked at the game summary yet to see if my impressions are borne out by the numbers.
I watched it on my TV and I’m right there with you, I thought the exact same thing about both of your points. Georgia had no reason to care about play action because we couldn’t run the ball. And the wide screens/swing passes in particular were absurdly obvious and thus clearly doomed to failure. It was seppuku.
One other thought that’s very troubling… I can pick six games off the top of my head that I would consider the best overall performances of the Brian Kelly era:
2012 Oklahoma
2012 Stanford
2014 Florida State
2015 Clemson
2015 Stanford
2017 Georgia
There are others in the discussion – 2014 Michigan, 2014 Stanford, and 2015 Texas come to mind – but those all turned out to be pretty average teams, and that dulled their luster somewhat.
Anyway… Six games. Four of them are losses, and both wins are the oldest games on the list and happened five years ago. That’s distressing. He’ll probably have two, maybe three more shots this regular season to add to that list. It better be with some wins.
I don’t know… 49-16 against Temple counts as a better “overall performance” for me than Georgia. We’ve had a few of those but not enough, sure.
If the category is “played well against a legit good team” then I’d add 2010 Utah (better than the borderline teams mentioned), 2011 Michigan St, 2013 Michigan St (best win in the Kelly era IMO), 2013 Arizona St, maybe the Music City Bowl, 2015 Temple (again, better than Texas at least), even Miami from last year.
Honestly, I don’t think our performance in one-offs against good teams has been terrible under Kelly. The issues are losing to teams you shouldn’t and a couple spiraling ends to the season (2014/2016).
Yes, by “overall performance” I meant “looked good against a legitimately good team.”
2013 Michigan State belongs on the list. The 2014 LSU team that went 8-5 doesn’t belong on the list. I don’t think the 10-4 2013 ASU team that got spanked by Stanford and Texas Tech to close the year belongs on the list either. 2011 Michigan State, eh, maybe, but their 11-3 season was helped greatly by going against Fickell and Hoke instead of Meyer and Harbaugh.
As far as performance against good teams, here’s Kelly’s ND record versus end-of-season ranked teams:
2010: 0-3
2011: 1-4
2012: 3-1
2013: 3-2
2014: 0-4
2015: 1-3
2016: 0-3
2017: TBD
8-20 overall. That’s not a pretty number There are reasonable ways to explain each bad year – 2010-11 was getting his system in place, 2014 was Injury-Palooza, 2015 the three ranked teams we lost to happened to all be end-of-year top four, and we were reeeeally close to beating two of them. 2016 was an all around cluster. But still, 8-20 is not a pretty picture. At some point even I, the eternal optimist, have to acknowledge a trend.
2016 wasn’t a spiral to end the season, either. The entire season was a spiral, from camp to the final whistle of USC. I admire your positivity, but let’s call a spade a spade.
Yeah, I don’t know if we’re necessarily disagreeing. That’s a good starting argument for change pre-2016. I guess 4-8 and other losses to mediocre teams are higher on my list. Not trying to be too positive either, I think the way 2014 ended was pretty disappointing even with how banged up that defense was.
6-18 vs teams finishing in the AP top 25. I like Kelly, but it’s just not where ND needs to be.
Whoa, how is Georgia in that group!??
Operating under the assumption that they finish the year strong. If they don’t, and their defense isn’t the elite unit we made them look like, it’s just another garden variety loss to a mediocre team.
I agree. The game on Saturday looked like it was played between two rather flawed teams (reminded me a lot more of the ND-Texas game last year than, e.g., ND-Clemson 2015).
There were definitely read options during that game where we were blocking the end man on the line of scrimmage, right? I wasn’t imagining that we were reading absolutely nothing on a lot of those plays.
This game was frustrating to watch. From someone who has supported BK over the years…maybe it’s time to try someone else. He has moved the needle in a positive direction from the previous regimes, but maybe a fresh voice is needed to move it even further. It seems like every big game is either a “close, but no cigar” performance (UGA, Clemson, FSU, etc.) or a “ND doesn’t belong on the same field” performance (Bama, tOSU, USC).
I give UGA credit – great athletes and defense, and their offense played well enough to win. I also give credit to Elko and the defense for a solid game.
However, the ND offense looked really bad. Wimbush’s (lack of) accuracy worries me, makes me wonder if Book (or Rees) would have been better in there, with a game plan of hitting the TEs and running some quick hits to Finke and Claypool over the middle. Off the top of my head, the best plays of the game were a cross route by Finke and a max protect package with Mack slipping out for a decent gain.
I was hoping you would help me feel better Eric but you didn’t. I agree completely with you and Andy. Very disappointed in Wimbush but I’m not writing him off after 2 starts. Is Long to blame completely for the play calling? Was Kelly involved at all? It was dreadful. When we were up 19-17 with the ball in the 4th, that was the time to take a shot deep. I thought we would lose if we went 3 and out there.
Actually I might have been too harsh on the second-half adjustments. I’ve heard some analysis by armchair guys that I trust that says we actually did change things up and go to more quick-hitting stuff, and it just didn’t feel like it at the time because things stalled here and there.
To wit: We gained 162 yards on our first four drives of the second half at about 6.5 yards per play. That’s actually pretty good. We were killed by Hainsey’s false start on 3rd and 4 in the red zone, the first strip sack of Wimbush, and the three bad drops by Mack (just before the sack), Claypool (on the well-designed screen), and Canteen (on the sideline throw that he misjudged). And Wimbush not getting to the sticks on 3rd and 2 – I’m still not sold he would’ve gotten it with Natrez Patrick right in his face, but all the same, that was a killer non-conversion.
Got tix for the Princeton-San Diego game at noon, so I’m glad they moved the BC game to 3:30.
Thanks for the alert. I didn’t see they changed it.
Those gifs from UGA’s go-ahead drive are rough. We had the FB fake HB toss well covered with our most athletic DL and he just got out-manueved by a really talented back. Then they go deep down the sideline and Watkins is in good position but gets out-athleted.
And on top of that, Hayes almost tapped the ball out of Hardman’s hands – actually knocked it loose and Hardman re-gathered it. So, so close. Did I mention this was a gut punch?
You guys have made some awesome points here. I have to go because I’m on vacation and not supposed to be wallowing in sadness, but let me leave you with this. Unlike some of the most frustrating losses I’ve seen under Kelly (every game last year except USC, and Northwestern in 2014 as my all-time rage peak), we did not beat ourselves. Yes, guys dropped balls and there were some questionable playcalls. But I didn’t see bizarre stuff like Kelly switching quarterbacks. I didn’t see us dropping defensive tackles into coverage. And Wimbush getting blind side sacked is less painful to watch than Tommy Rees throwing a ball that’s off by ten yards and intercepted.
I don’t know how good Georgia is, but I think that defense is pretty darn good. I think our offense can get better (though we really need Stepherson). For me, the question mark is the O-Line. How do they recover? Is Georgia the exception or the rule? But when I look at this team, I think – if these guys don’t beat themselves, we’ll be good.
We’d better hope we don’t know anything about this team until we’re 5-2 post USC. But I’m not writing us off, either [provided we do go 5-2 through the first seven games].
I’m with you. The good news on Stepherson, from this point forward at least, is that the offense should still hum without him against BC and MSU, and he’ll be back in time for the road game at UNC. Phew. That assumes he can lay off the doobies until then, of course. Please, dude. Please. We’ll all kick in for a new stash next summer. But not now, man.
If we can reel off three convincing wins, I’d even be willing to consider some optimism about USC. But we need to get the offense right fast.
This is fairly small in the grand scheme of things, but in a 1 possession game where your offense can’t move the ball, it could have had an impact: we seem to have returned to the John Goodman punt return playbook. Eric has written many times about how rare it is to actually have a gamebreaker at punt returner in today’s style of college football, but if the offense struggles all season against good defenses, I have to assume Kelly will get a little more aggressive in the punt return game (including giving the return job back to Sanders and playing less defensively on the returns).
Their gunners were right on top of Finke. Every. Single. Time. A couple of times he didn’t fair catch and I was waiting to see his head come rolling out of the pile. That was very frustrating to see. Just stand in front of a guy and slow him down for a second, for God’s sake.
Or else try to block it. If you aren’t going to return it, how about a block? Hell, if it was a fake punt the gunners would be wide open with nobody near them anyway. What do you have to lose?
Yeah, I’m really confused by the strategy against punts. Is Kelly that scared of a fake (or a muff) that he’s given up completely on a return? Seems like a wasted of a play.
To be fair, their punter was launching the ball into the air. It seemed to hang forever.
Anyone else see this? Sigh.
Kelly mentioned it in the presser today. Stopped short of explicitly criticizing the call, but he said they’re not getting on Okwara about it and told him that next time he has to not give the ref the opportunity to make that call.
I’ll come right out and say it, as I have about a million times since it happened: It’s one of the worst calls I’ve ever seen. Not only did it not meet any of the elements for a late hit or roughing the passer, it wasn’t even *close* to meeting *any* of the elements. He barely took one full step, Fromm was 1-2 yards inbounds at contact, and the contact was to the shoulder.