I could throw a bunch of stats at you and no one would’ve believed Notre Dame lost this game. Stanford only scored 16 points. The Cardinal were held under 5 yards per play. Their top running back had 21 carries that were not successful. Stanford seemingly fumbled 9 times and recovered every ball on the turf, even with some help from the officiating. All of this happened and Notre Dame couldn’t figure out a way to win at home during a night game.
Yes, it was the Notre Dame offense that comes away with deep, deep shame while putting together one of its worst performances in recent memory.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | TREES |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 14 | 16 |
| Plays | 61 | 81 |
| Total Yards | 311 | 385 |
| Yards Per Play | 5.09 | 4.75 |
| Conversions | 5/16 | 7/18 |
| Completions | 13 | 26 |
| Yards/Pass Attempt | 5.59 | 7.57 |
| Rushes | 34 | 42 |
| Rushing Success | 53.1% | 37.5% |
| 10+ Yds Rushes | 5 | 0 |
| 20+ Yds Passes | 2 | 3 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 25.9% | 24.5% |
This was so damn ugly. All of the positive vibes surrounding the offense, and by extension Drew Pyne, have been nuked into another world. They were able to put some decent things together in the 2nd half but 8 of the 11 drives during this game went for 27 yards or fewer. It was a punt fest with major problems finding answers.
Offense
QB: F
RB: C
TE: C
OL: B
WR: C
Was the story of this game the inability to adjust quickly to Stanford’s defense? It sure felt like Tommy Rees & Co. came in thinking the Cardinal were going to roll over on the ground and when it didn’t happen the Irish remained stubborn in their approach while trying to force-feed tight end Michael Mayer (10 targets for 60 yards, yuck) on a bunch of short routes.
Then again, what was Drew Pyne prepared to do in order to lift up this offense?
Tobias Merriweather caught a beautiful 41-yard touchdown pass on his first career catch to spark the offense–outside of that completion Drew Pyne was 5 of 11 for 35 yards in all other targets to receivers. He also lost a horrific fumble in the pocket having the ball smacked right out of his hands. I just don’t think we can continue this blank wide receiver offense and expect to beat a lot of FBS teams with decent talent. Even with teams like Stanford who are struggling–this type of offense will bring them right into the game.
To be clear, the running game should’ve been better. Potentially much better. However, the success rate was north of 50% but there just wasn’t quite enough explosiveness or timely runs to get Notre Dame out of bad passing situations.
Pyne started the game going 3 of 7 for 31 yards on 3rd down throws with only 2 conversions. It was just bad.
Rushing Success
Estime – 5 of 8 (62.5%)
Tyree – 3 of 8 (37.5%)
Pyne – 2 of 4 (50%)
Thomas – 0 of 1 (0%)
Diggs – 6 of 9 (66.6%)
Lenzy – 0 of 1 (0%)
This 100% looked like a gameplan where Rees thought the run game would be good enough where Pyne would easily dink and dunk his way with really quick and easy reads. Stanford seemed to know this is exactly what the Irish would try and came up with a plan to stop it. Receivers were jammed, left on islands, and it didn’t matter.
Pyne had long pass plays of 41 yards (mentioned above) and a 21-yard completion to Mayer. Outside of those throws he was 11 of 25 for 89 yards. In a performance that didn’t include an interception this was one of the worst games from a quarterback I’ve seen where the window was open to make so many plays that never came.
Defense
DL: C+
LB: B
DB: D
Notre Dame’s defense was fine in this game, certainly not worthy of all the scorn the offense will get this week. Stanford scored on their opening drive (yeah, that was bad all around by Notre Dame) then the Cardinal spent the rest of the game being mildly frustrating while converting some big plays but not really threatening to put many points on the board.
The biggest knocks were that Notre Dame’s pass rush didn’t get home nearly enough and allowing 288 yards on 26 completions is definitely sub-par. If the offense for Notre Dame actually showed up this was probably one of those games where we’re a bit proud of the defense dealing with so many personnel losses up front. Such is life.
Stuffs vs. Stanford
Bertrand 5.5
Rubio – 3
Ademilola, Justin – 2.5
Smith – 2.5
NaNa – 2
Liufau – 1.5
Mills – 1.5
Foskey – 1
Ademilola, Jayson – 0.5
I really don’t have much more to say, although the tackling was pretty poor in spots. At times it looked like the defense was going to be so opportunistic (how did we not get any fumbles!???) and it just never unfolded properly. It felt like the Irish caused a few turnovers and then you look at the box score and there was nothing.
I’m not sure this defense is very good, and clearly they are starting to feel the pressure of injuries, and decisions to redshirt in order to transfer, while simultaneously trying to carry the offense. Any opponent who has a pulse on offense will probably be able to keep themselves in a game against Notre Dame, which likely means, gasp, things could be dicey next week against UNLV.
Final Thoughts
Marcus Freeman lost for the first time since becoming a Catholic. Now we’re really screwed!
JD Bertrand, somewhat quietly, had a big game on the scoresheet.
Notre Dame probably doesn’t lose if Estime doesn’t fumble. He has to feel terrible.
The Irish totaled 36 yards in the 2nd quarter. You also wonder how things play out differently if Notre Dame kicks that field goal in the 1st quarter instead of running a sweep to Jayden Thomas, my goodness. Give me that field goal, a proper alignment on the Mayer called-back touchdown, and the McKee fumbled called properly and this game looks a bit different.
I have to chuckle at Stanford’s running back carrying the ball 32 times. That’s some 1970’s level absurdity. He was very slippery at times and his 11 successful runs were just enough to keep their offense running smoothly enough to spring the upset.
Stanford receiver Michael Wilson (who got injured late) was the best athlete on the field. Alternatively, this was a tough performance from Lorenzo Styles (15 yards on 6 targets) who just cannot get any consistent performance put together.
If you haven’t checked out by now, it’s probably time! As fans, it would be nice to see Angeli at quarterback, start playing a lot of the kids, forget about the record, and just figure some things out on the roster before trying to make a huge push in the off-season to get better. But of course, that’s not how things operate in real life.
Seems like the only thing that matters at this point is keeping the recruiting class from further deterioration. Obviously winning helps in that regard, but this season is already a wash. Only thing we can do of note with this football team is ruin Clemson’s season and, really, who cares? (Also, they’re probably going to beat us by 20+.)
Unlike a lot of my fellow message board rabble, I don’t think Tommy Rees is a bad playcaller. He’s fine (though the consistent second and long runs up the middle really could be shot into the sun). But he’s so bad at everything else. I kind of think getting rid of him right now to just give people hope might be worth whatever we’d lose in playcalling for the rest of the year, because it’s not like he could possibly remain the OC after this season anyway (right?!).
Hey hey, ND09hls12 — I was just talking with my older son, ND 09 -14 (he had a gap year in there), so I presume from your moniker, a virtual classmate of yours and like you, a genuine veteran of the Tommy Reese era. Inspired by yours above, I brought up the ferocious anti-Tommy discussion. Ray asked me to ask the board — what has changed for Tommy? Isn’t he the very same Tommy he has always been, with guts, loyalty, maximizing the talent he has, with 85% pretty damn good results within his range — and 15% “Tommy, NOOO…” before his next interception? Ray and I hope he lands a super good job in another program where he can continue to grow, and ideally learn to cut down on those bad plays.
I do suspect that the post I read here about BK carrying him has some merit — perhaps more that he was a good binome with BK, and they worked together to get some mileage out of marginal QBs (Ian Book, where were you Saturday night when we needed you?)
I think he’s a football nerd who is pretty bright and completely non-charismatic, which is basically the same as when he was a player. What we had no way of knowing was that he is terrible at high school QB talent-identification.
Eric – good synopsis of a very bad performance. I don’t know how you writers are able to write so objectively while having to be so angry/frustrated/annoyed/etc as fans/alumni. Kudos to you guys for that. I certainly wouldn’t be able to do it.
I don’t have much to add about the game after sleeping on it. It’s bad. Really bad. I’m not even sure where to go from this point. Can they turn it around? Sure, but I don’t even know what that means at this point. Bowl eligibility? Is that the bar now? What a roller coaster of emotions this has been through 6 games.
As nd09 already said, the recruiting class is the biggest point of emphasis at this point. I think the program/university/admin is going to have to take a hard look at the transfer policies – both graduate AND undergraduate. ND just isn’t playing the same game anymore between NIL and transfers (free agency) and I don’t know how or IF they will be able to keep up. I know this is easier said than done, but something has to change if they truly want to compete for national championships in my opinion. If they’re content with top-20ish being the ceiling, then I guess I need to really reset my expectations. Not getting a WR or QB this past offseason is borderline inexcusable.
Last rambling point – Freeman looked completely exasperated at his press conference. What really concerns me is that he seems so frustrated but doesn’t know what to fix or HOW to fix it. That is a really bad place to be. Sigh 🙁
RE Freeman, I like him as HC but worried that he’s proof positive of ND should never be your first HC job.
Alas if only we had 90 years of evidence warning us about that.
It can be very hard sometimes! For me, expectations dropped a lot once Buchner was hurt. The last couple games were a pleasant surprise. Still can’t lose to Stanford like this, though.
As far as what/how to fix: call Jack this morning and demand to be unshackled from Rees as OC. If hiring Freeman was a calculated risk, hiring him along with a green OC was AD malpractice. Especially the way it was done, where Rees was secured before Freeman, completely tying his hands. In spite of talent deficiencies, systematic problems, and a head coach learning on the job, we could be undefeated right now if we had an offense capable of producing FBS average amount of PPG. There are problems with the defense undoubtedly, but giving up 16 to Stanford is not why we lost that game
Overall, the defense played a decent game – if this was a win, we’d be okay with that side of the ball. We’d still be wondering why they can’t seem to get a turnover and would think that they need to improve their tackling and stop giving up big plays on 3rd and long. But overall, they were okay.
The offense…Pyne is just bad. Stanford seemed to use the obvious gameplan: key on the run, don’t let MM beat you, and don’t worry so much about the receivers. I have been a TR supporter thus far, but the state of the QB room is really bad and that is on him. In a game when Stanford is focusing on the run and MM, it should not be this hard to complete passes to the receivers.
My biggest problem with Rees is who he recruits at QB. You have to do better than Drew Pyne. I don’t understand how Rees looked at him and saw a top shelf college QB. Buchner’s had bad luck and who knows on Angeli but, ND should have better options.
Pyne is not bad. Pyne is limited and undersized and he’s here because Tommy Rees recruited him to be here. Pyne is a capable — not great, but capable — QB when he’s supported by a strong running game and his coaches. Pyne is a capable QB when the offense isn’t constantly behind the chains and in obvious passing downs. Pyne is a capable QB when we aren’t in empty sets half the time. We have all seen that. We have all seen him play like that. There is a way for ND to win games with Drew Pyne. Our coaching staff, for whatever reason, chose not to take that approach last night.
Tommy Rees has been in charge of ND’s QB roster for five years.
I’m not giving Rees a pass but, Pyne was not good last night. Not by a long shot.
He was not but he is here and he is our starting QB solely because of Tommy Rees. There is literally no other reason our QB room looks like this.
Agree 100%. It makes me a bit skeptical of CJ Carr.
It’s so unfair to Carr and yet I find myself agreeing with you. Supposedly Rees picked Buchner over JJ McCarthy, a colossal failure of evaluation based on what we’ve seen, and now we’ve got this QB room.
That’s not a supposedly; that’s what happened. He also locked in on Pyne very early on for his class and basically did no comparisons because Pyne was going to commit the second he was offered (which was way earlier than he should have been).
The quasi-defense of this is BK had to sign off on these terrible decisions, but the decisions were Rees’s. They’re termination-worthy.
That’s IF Carr sticks with the verbal commitment. I’m very concerned at this point about the current recruits.
Carr does seem like one of those all-in kind of guys recruiting others. Though I do wonder what would happen if Rees were fired.
I agree (I think) on Carr. I just used him as an example from above. Overall, the recruiting does worry me though. There’s just so much going on in CFB now that it adds a lot to an already crazy dynamic.
I did see that Adon Shuler tweeted out today that he got an offer from tOSU…..
Per my like ten other comments, I think it would be fully justified to fire Tommy Rees today for what the QB situation has become (combined with yesterday’s performance), but in fairness even I don’t think it’s *solely* his fault – BK was a co-conspirator in a lot of really bad QB-related recruiting decisions, presumably.
But Tommy is 100% responsible for not bringing in a grad transfer this offseason because he wanted to protect Tyler Buchner’s feelings, which in and of itself is a decision that maybe should lead to his termination given how things turned out.
I drank the Kool-Aid that Tommy was a brilliant OC and BK was just too conservative, and was Tommy could really implement his full plan the offense would be scary.
Turns out Tommy either can’t plan, or can’t match his plan to his personnel and their skills. I’m thinking BK, an offensive minded guy after all, was probably taking Tommy’s occasional great ideas and using his experience to make game plans that college kids could actually implement.
We all got frustrated by the limitations of Jack Coan and Ian Book, but somehow they were pretty effective.
Hi all, to join in from a very crushed and down Paris — I mean, a bad gasoline strike, and energy prices going though the roof, and a screwed up parliament, and now one of those completely disheartening ND epic losses. Yuck. Some points:
Yes, just want to echo that I would encourage the staff to stay engaged because they help us avoid therapy by giving us good articles to comment on 🙂
I’m normally an optimist when it comes to ND football. Even after Marshall and the Buchner injury, I thought “all is not as bad as it seems.” No more. The sky is clearly falling at this point.
I don’t know enough about Xs and Os to know what, specifically, to blame on Freeman and Co. But it’s hard not to want to put it ALL on them.
Freeman’s body language and facial expressions tell me that he is completely at a loss as to how this happened or what to do. Maybe I’m reading him wrong, but it seems like he and his staff can’t even figure what’s wrong, let alone how to fix it.
Everyone is saying fire Rees. And I’m not saying DON’T fire him. By all means, send him packing. But it just seems so much bigger than that. I mean, our perennial 10-win/season BMW just spontaneously combusted and is now being engulfed by 25 foot flames before our eyes. As we look to our HC for some assurance that he has a plan and that this program can be salvaged, we discover the horrifying reality that he is as scared, surprised, and helpless as we are. At this point, yelling “Fire Rees!!” feels a lot like yelling “Replace the transmission!!””
Cardinals fan here, and our long time color guy Mike Shannon was not a great analyst (had great stories tho). But the one thing he said that made sense and has stuck with me is “You’re not as good as you think you are when you’re winning, and not as bad as you think you are after a loss.” Probably made sense because Yogi Berra or somebody else said it to him, but anyway…
We’re not this bad. Took some bad breaks to lose this one, even if we created some of those breaks ourselves. We aren’t that good, but we’re not this bad either. I feel like we definitely have some first time HC inconsistency issues, not unexpected.
I’ll go back to my pre-season floor prediction: Buchner gets hurt, we lose Keeley and one or two other key recruits, and go 7-5. Still think we can do it, but 6-6 is definitely on the table now with Syracuse looking solid.
I love Mike Shannon, but we are this bad. Please do not ignore results. Ignoring results is how we get ideas like the Rams are clamoring to hire Tommy Rees and Buchner is going to be Vince Young 2.0.
Hey, Tobias Merriweather looked like Jamarr Chase for one play! We’re so close to the 2019 LSU offense!
We at least outscored Colgate against Stanford.
We are now the Fighting Toothpaste.
Wow, that literally missed my entire point.
This team went into the shoe and gave tOSU all they could handle. This team went to a neutral site and beat a good BYU team, and also covered the spread on 5-1 UNC.
Are we that good on a weekly basis? Clearly not. Are we “lose to Stanford” bad on a weekly basis? I don’t think we are either.
Sky was falling after the Marshall loss also, and we won three straight. Would it surprise me to win 5 out of our next 6? I don’t know, let’s see the bounce back after this one.
I guess I don’t see your point. The results that we see in real life in front of our very eyes are not reflective of what is actually happening? This team is actually good? We aren’t really 3-3? What are you saying?
Stanford outplayed us in every respect. We would lose that game 9 times out of 10.
I’m saying we are a decent P5 team this year that can play with anybody on a good day and lose to anybody on a good day. I’m thinking we’re 2018 Purdue, who managed to lose by 3 or less to Northwestern, EMU, and Mizzou to open the season and somehow trucked tOSU by 29 points, along with two other top 25 wins.
They also finished 6-6 and got stomped in a bowl. Enough talent to go 9-3, end up 6-6. I’m feeling that kind of year coming on.
OK. Thanks for being direct. I don’t agree and I think we have little chance of playing with Clemson and SC. But now I understand what you’re saying.
I get a bad feeling about USC also, but look at what Stanford just did to us in a rivalry game.
It would be the most ND 2022 thing to lose to BC then turn around and beat USC to get to 6 and 6.
Stanford isn’t a rival and how they played against us has no bearing on how we will play against SC.
Ask yourself this — when was the last time ND had a surprisingly good performance in the Coliseum?
SC is going to do very bad things to us. We’re going to be down 17-0 before we even get the first shot of Tommy looking exasperated in the booth. The good news is that he can just stay out there so the Rams can hire him.
I survived watching second string Arnaz Battle lead ND to a complete lack of offense en route to getting blanked 25-0 by USC in 1998 and losing the bowl game. That outcome is more likely than a USC upset.
Come to think of it, the following 5-7 1999 season is looking like a good comp for this year. Good to great D coordinator promoted from within to head coach following a historically good coach (yes, I’m going to call 5 10+ win seasons historic), bad offense, program probably on the downturn.
Stanford isn’t a rival, but I’m pretty sure their program thinks they are, so they play accordingly. So for purposes of the discussion we have to pretend they are.
Yeah, Jimtown alum here. We always got up for the Concord football game as they were our “big football rival.” And they were like “yeah football whatever, let’s wait until basketball season and we have this Shawn Kemp kid and we’re gonna drop 100 points on you in 32 minutes.”
BYU is not a good team. They’re number 70 in the current SP+ rankings. We need to get it out of our heads that the BYU win was particularly impressive.
BTW, we’re #43. This team is down bad. Worst ND team since 2007, probably.
The team they played in the shoe didn’t have their 2 best receivers. And they still beat us by 2 scores. Our offense is disgusting.
Yeah he’s flat out wrong. Marshall and Stanford are two of the worst home losses of my lifetime, and they happened in the same season. I say this as someone who went to ND during the worst 4 year stretch in school history.
Was it Parcells that said, “you are what your record says you are” ?
… but shouldn’t people get fired if you hit the preseason floor (or worse)?
Yep. We may not be this bad, but we sure as heck can do a lot better.
Who is on the chopping block for you guys?
Rees for sure. He should be gone today and you run with an interim. I said below, but I don’t get the sense that there is any trust between Freeman and Rees. Saw some rumors I think over on ISD that Freeman wanted to bring in a senior offensive consultant like Cutcliffe and Rees shot it down.
As for the others, I think the freshman class and Kollie need to start seeing about 40% of snaps if not more. I’m not saying the defense is the issue, but at some point you need to play for the future. The freshman class especially on defense is an upgrade from a pure talent standpoint and we need to start getting them real game changing minutes.
Lenzy shouldn’t see the field again. Tyree =Armando Allen is so accurate it hurts. I’ve never been a fan of Pyne so I’m fine with Angeli not that I think he’s going to be Jimmy Clausen. We’re screwed for a couple of years because Rees’ QB recruiting has been so bad.
I think for an OC you go after Longo from UNC or Hartline from OSU. If we’re going to go full boom or bust, I dont mind going Hartline. At least you know he’s going to get stud recruits.
On Freeman and Rees not matching up this is my feeling too.
I think there is a disconnect, and maybe it gets worse when they play at home due to the added stressors (home fans expectations, recruit visitors, Mass, and all the weird stuff they are adding before games – Teo rally after walk to stadium for Cal game, while cool, to me was just something else getting in the way of focusing on the game ).
I’ve said it before but a guy like Freeman who was on his way up, one who has done everything he could to be successful, has a detailed plan for the type of team he wants. I don’t think for a second that Tommy Rees’ or his offensive style was on Freeman’s radar at all before last December.
He picked Golden, and the defense functions well enough to win games.
He didn’t pick Rees, but certainly had a hand on the scale hiring Parker, and some others on offense. So maybe now ND has a team with a HC who has an OC he doesn’t click with, and Rees in turn has an offense coaching staff he doesn’t necessarily click with. So…surprise…the offense is totally inconsistent, even more than it should be given its limitations.
Add in Freeman’s first year jitters and its the mess we see.
It was on Pete Sampson’s podcast where they talked about Rees and Freeman not having close to the same relationship that Rees and Lea had. This was an episode from fall camp or beginning of the season. Not to say they had a bad relationship, but I took it as more of it didn’t come naturally and one of those work relationships that you have to work harder at to make it work. At the time it was kind of a throw-away, but in hindsight appears to be a way bigger deal.
Freeman is going to own what will probably be two of the worst losses in program history — Marshall and Stanford, both at home, both in his first season.
I don’t know what to say other than beating the usual dead horses. All of this was foreseeable. All of this was avoidable.
Apologize in advance for the multiple posts, I just don’t know how else to do this.
A couple of weeks ago after the UNC game I did a dive into Rees and the offense compared to UNC, UGA, Ohio State, Wake Forest, and Oklahoma. I looked at 2021 and wanted to see how these offenses compared to the defensive average for Yards Per Play, Yards Per Point, and Points Per Play.
Red means the offense performed worse than the defensive average
Yellow means they performed marginally better than the defensive average
Green means they performed at least 1.0 (or .1 for Points per play) greater than the defensive average.
And that’s 2021! SP+ #68 offense right now in year 3 as OC, with his guys at QB. If he got fired tomorrow, would he be offered a single D1 OC job next year? I doubt it!
Here is Ohio State and UGA from last year.
Rees and ND just fail to perform anywhere close to an elite level here. Sure, they perform ok but rarely even against bad defenses to they perform exceptionally. To actually win in CFB you need your offense to be elite. Look at UGA, everyone talks about how great the defense was, but their offense was dang good last year.
ND and Rees aren’t nearly as good or elite as they think they are. Look at the past 2 games. BYU had 50 put up on them by Arkansas yesterday. We struggled to get to 28.
In my opinion you have to get rid of Rees and his dad. I think it’s clear that him and Freeman are not in lockstep at all. The body language stuff on the sidelines by Freeman appears to me to be more of an annoyance with the offense and exasperated by the play calling. I don’t think Rees wanted Stuckey, Deland, or Parker on this staff. Those guys are all here because of Freeman.
I mentioned it in the instant reaction but there’s no way in hell that Freeman has been impressed by Rees’ recruiting in the last 2 years. A guy who prides himself on having no limits when it comes to recruiting and then looks at the QB room and the skill talent that Rees has brought in. Not a chance Freeman trusts him.
Re: Pyne – He reminds of a good NFL backup someone who when plays well can look like a legit starter but is simply not good enough to do it for a full season let alone season after season. (I’m thinking here largely of someone like Brissett for the Browns this year. He’s had years where he’s pretty good for 6 or 7 games and yet he’s never signed to be a starter for a reason.) So I would expect Pyne to have a couple more games this season where he looks good but no one should confuse him as a legit starter.
It was a very depressing evening all around.
I don’t even know how to fix it, so much seemed broken.
Given what Stanford was doing on D, perhaps a receiver other than 87 was open.
If what Garret said is true, that Rees believes that Merriweather is the best receiver at ND EVER, isn’t it malpractice to not figure out a few plays he can run BEFORE week 6? Speaking of missing WRs, did Colzie enter the transfer portal?
Is there a reason Liufau still plays? Does he have pictures of Freeman and Golden? The next blocker he beats on a blitz will be his first. Speaking of that, given how it never gets home, why do we keep blitzing Bertrand and Liufau? Are we just trying to open the middle of the field?
Rees has a tendency to get too cute. The end around to Thomas made no sense. He is not your fastest receiver. You should be running your best play on 4th and 2, not some cute play that may work. The end around with Lenzy made less sense.
I don’t think we appreciated that Kelly was really backing up Rees until he lost his support blanket. It may have been more the call sheet than the play calls, but on his own, he is just not there.
Jason Garrett is growing on me, kind of like a fungus. Is it that hard to find someone to do that job well? Perhaps a random fan can be chosen before each game.
At this point, it is time to take some lumps (more?) with the depth chart.
Really hope the Rams come calling for super genius Tommy Rees so that this transition can be as quick and painless as possible. Of course at this rate, the Fordham or Colorado State Rams probably wouldn’t even be interested. But for real, Rees needs to be gone ASAP. Idk who you have calling plays at that point that we have on hand but the season is lost and I frankly don’t even want any opportunities for people to talk themselves into him
A while back, we were talking about the football malpractice that ND tolerated under Kevin White — obviously bad, nonsensical decisions that were based on hope, optics, and little to no real-world evidence.
That is where we are with Rees right now. We have been there for a while. Someone is going to have to be the adult who corrects this mistake.
I will say, between both the men’s and women’s basketball teams falling off, the ACC and Under Armor deals looking pretty bad, and what we were assured as a very aligned Brian Kelly bolting before the offseason and a panicked response, Swarbrick is looking a lot worse than he did five years ago.
The UA deal ends after next year as we reach new peaks of college athletic value and was the biggest in college sport history when it was signed, that one still seems pretty good to me. If you want other bad things Jack has done he did cut the line at Rocco’s once while my party was waiting, so I’m not saying the death penalty is appropriate, but I’m not not saying it.
So if we are hiring a new OC next year – who would/could (realistically) it be?
Also, when should we fire Rees (with the recruiting calendar in mind)?
Here’s a little list I made, based off guys Doing Good Things™ and punching above their weight in certain areas:
Andy Ludwig, Utah
Kasey Dunn, Oklahoma State
Warren Ruggiero, Wake Forest
Jeff Grimes, Baylor
Dan Enos, Maryland
Kendal Briles, Arkansas
Phil Longo, North Carolina
Andy Kotelnicki, Kansas
My gut feeling is any firing with Rees wouldn’t come until January.
I agree about the timeline for sure – both for recruiting but also because Swarbrick pushed for Rees (it would be a pretty bad look if Rees didn’t even make it through the season!).
Michael B. from the Slack chat includes Robert Anae from Syracuse, too.
I wonder how many other top OC positions would be open. You’d think we’d essentially have our pick of the lot too. Freeman would still be in his 2nd year and recruiting is trending up so it would be pretty stable situation with a lot of young talent (think of the 2023 class) to work with if one can either get Buchner working or find a solution in the transfer portal.
Important note: Syracuse hired Anae away from what was a very good Virginia offense last season, which has been absolutely terrible with largely the same players this year (also getting confirmation that Tony Elliot wasn’t actually very good).
Longo I would put #1. His points per play since becoming OC at Ole Miss in 2017 has been ranked 28, 57, 59 (UNC), 12, 18, and currently 13th. Yards per play he’s ranked 12, 10, 32 (UNC), 5, 10, and currently 11th.
Don’t know enough about his recruiting tbh. He’s 54 and worked his way up through the ranks. Can’t tell if he really wants to be a head coach somewhere so you avoid some of that power dynamics with a young head coach.
Ruggiero and Wake Forest run so many plays, I’m not sure I love that mix with ND’s defense.
Some more thoughts a couple days after….
Do we largely agree that Tommy the Recruiter & Identifier in terms of program problems >>>>> Tommy the OC and Play-Caller?
In this thread ACS mentioned that Pyne is not bad, limited, but mentioned him being capable a few times.
Looking at Pyne’s abilities to Rees’ play-calling I would think that Rees wins this comparison in a substantial way, no?
Put another way, we have ~30 games of data that I would say shows Rees is certainly capable and maybe even in the general area of being a good OC.
I think you really have to start stretching the definition of capable when you look at Drew Pyne’s skill-set. I’d guess there are 70-80 other quarterbacks in the country starting right now that ND would rather be utilizing right now. Maybe even more.
The problem is that this becomes (and it’s here!) a scenario where a snake eats itself.
Quarterback talent is by far the biggest problem, which makes operating an offense difficult, which breeds discontent with recruiting, which further heightens criticism of play-calling when things aren’t working out.
If we’re looking at a new OC + Pyne next year or Rees + new QB, I’m probably taking the latter every day, at least in terms of the product on the field. But, I realize the mix right now is getting toxic and it may be a wise move for Rees to move on.
Well it’s not just that the mix right now is getting toxic but one has to wonder whether Rees + new QB can happen or + a QB that’s genuinely better than Pyne anyway and whether it would be a 1 year fix or not. So that even if we could get a transfer (like Coan) that Rees turns into a pretty good offense next year, would it still be better to get rid of Rees to promote better long-term QB talent?
I’d rank things like this:
1) New OC + non-Pyne QB
……
……
2) Rees + non-Pyne QB
……
……
……
……
3) New OC + Pyne
……
4) Rees + Pyne
I think Rees should move on but I also think we can have a good team in 2023-24 (let’s assume for argument’s purpose he stays 2+ seasons) with Rees.
We are going absolutely nowhere with Pyne.
I see. Yea I agree with those rankings. And agree that we can get by with Rees in the short-term if we could have some decent QB talent for him to work with.
Questions about this approach:
-Do you trust Rees to make the correct decision about whether to take a QB from the portal, assuming we can get one?
-Do you trust Rees to identify the best QB to start 2023?
-Whoever the starter is, do you trust Rees to call the offense in a way that makes sense, that maximizes his strengths, and mitigates his weaknesses?
-Why don’t we currently have decent QB talent?
I think so, but I’m assuming Carr doesn’t reclassify and Pyne transfers. The need will be there, and Rees has already gone down this road in the past.
Worst case is Pyne, Buchner, Angeli, plus a new 2023 non-Carr recruit are on campus and we don’t bring in a transfer. This would be very bad.
Are we talking about when guys are on campus or is this a re-wording of your first question? With the former question, yes.
Yes, he’s pretty good at this IMO.
Transfers, recruiting misses, and injuries.
“Transfers, recruiting misses, and injuries.”
It’s not just the misses in recruiting but, who they’ve hit (settled) on.
True, which I think is carrying about 80% of the criticism.
The biggest recruiting errors are misevaluations rather than settling. They wanted Drew Pyne early! He should have never gotten an early offer; he should have been a guy they strung along until a week before signing day if they needed it.
See also Buchner over McCarthy (pretty obviously a mistake at this point, on track for an egregious mistake but maybe that will change); Angeli/Wimsatt over Allar (so far this seems bad, anyhow); maybe taking the Carr commitment while Moore was a silent (reporting is a little sketchy on how much this actually mattered, so maybe weight this one lower). Anyhow, he’s real bad at this!
It seems NIL didn’t help with Moore adding a whole new dimension to the problems (though NIL obviously not really his fault).
I think it might be more lazy even more so than settling/misevaluations. I’m not blaming this all on Rees either and is easily attributed to the previous Kelly regime mindset. But that also makes it harder for Rees to adjust and take on Freeman’s recruiting is the lifeblood mindset.
Yikes, that to me looks like ND settled on Clark and Angeli and then refused to do anymore recruiting/evaluations after Jurkovec, Pyne, and Buchner committed.
To everyone’s point here that is scary regarding Carr as a lot can change with the more football played over 2 years.
Phil J committed pre-Tommy. Clark was a take after McNamara decommitted; maybe could have done better, who knows.
Pyne is inexcusably bad and maybe, to your point, lazy.
But the last two are just seemingly quite bad – and arguably ultimately program-eroding – mis-evals. In McCarthy and Allar they had two dudes who ended up as 5-stars who at one point would have committed to ND on the spot if they were given a committable offers, and Rees instead picked other guys who fell down the rankings over the course of their junior and senior seasons. Appears to be on the same track with Carr, too.
That’s fair, I admit I just looked at their 247 timelines and didn’t remember the actual happenings. And yeah I wasn’t attributing Phil J to Rees and honestly Clark either. Moreso trying to showcase the approach of the Kelly regime and those who worked under him.
I know people didn’t like what happened with Irvin (the rb) this year, but to me that is what should be happening and what these coaches get paid to do. Managers are paid to maximize their talent and revaluate if there’s better talent available.
If ND keeps Irvin, they probably don’t get Edwards and Love to commit. 2 guys who by and large are more highly rated and much faster by all reports.
The problem with Moore’s recruitment is who they ignored while wooing Moore. They had interest from a couple other top QBs but put all their eggs in one basket. Now they have zipp.
I don’t think this is totally true. From everything I’ve heard McCarthy had legit interest in ND but nowhere near the level of being willing to commit on the spot.
Could we have gotten McCarthy…maybe, but that is so hypothetical you just can’t state that. You can say that we should have offered him instead of Buchner, but you simply can’t say that we would have had him absolutely.
Yea that was my impression too. McCarthy was not necessarily a done deal if we had just picked him instead.
I agree with you completely that Rees the recruiter is a far bigger detriment than Rees the OC/play caller.
Because of his poor recruiting I think it’s even more reason to move on from him this off-season, if not sooner. A 29 year old OC who isn’t very good at recruiting and isn’t an elite OC, can’t have that.
Watch Carr decommit if Rees is fired, welcome to ND.
Yea, I wonder what would happen with Carr. He may decommit but he also seems to love ND and is recruiting big time for ND. He seems to visit ND for most of the big recruiting events that include 2024 prospects (like he was there this past weekend).
And while unfair to Carr, if he’s Rees’s handpicked guy, maybe the new OC could/would bring in a better guy (whether or not he’s technically higher ranked than Carr).
Either way, I wouldn’t really be concerned about Carr when deciding about Rees. A new OC should ultimately improve the QB recruiting anyway. And even in January there should be enough time to get an elite 2024 QB.
Right, between the recent recruiting ranking drop and the “Tommy Rees wanted him” factor, there’s pretty good reason to not have super high hopes for Carr either. Things are bleak QB-wise right now.
Touché, I think it’s worth it though. No guarantee Carr stays or is the magic bullet. Plus track record says we land Carr and then follow it up with back to back 3 stars because Rees either doesn’t want to recruit or isn’t very good at it.
I think he would stick, too. But, the dark humor in me couldn’t resist.
And on cue On3 updated their 2024 rankings dropping Carr down to the 12th QB and 139 overall. They seem to be the most up to date and apparently Carr has not looked that great this year (or not a top 100 type prospect good anyway).
Where on the other hand, Georgia’s new QB commit has jumped up to #3 (given his recent performance) even though he’s still relatively lowly ranked on the other sites (who I don’t think have updated their rankings to include much of this year’s season).
Going to touch on this more in my Stanford review, but I think QB recruiting is a little different than other areas. So much of it is about being set up for success at the next level, having a track record to point to, scheme that sets guys up to produce.
And between never really finding and developing that difference-maker so you can put on film and say “this could be you” and the skill position threats to say “you get to play with these guys” I’m not sure how any top QB recruit chooses ND over a Ohio State, Bama, Clemson, USC, hell even Ole Miss. At some point you have to get the ball rolling downhill, and with a defensive HC that puts even more pressure on the OC to make it happen, and we’re still out here praying CJ Carr changes things in like 2025
I agree, it’s way more than just the QB recruiting. Tennessee beat Bama on Saturday because Hyatt was the fastest player on the field. His 247 profile compared him to Will Fuller coming out of high school and it looked pretty appropriate on Saturday. Now it helps that his QB was able and, more importantly, willing to put the ball out there for him to run and get it.
Chase Claypool in 2019 was the last WR to break 1,000 yards and 10 touchdowns. Before that was Fuller in 2015. Also, Mayer is a great tight end but he’s not exciting at all and the kid at UGA is a way more sexy of a sell to recruits.
At some point though the recruiting for the other offensive skill positions is on Rees. Freeman showed up in 2021 and by recruiting rankings immediately upgraded the defensive talent across the board. Rees has been OC 3 years and on staff for 5. The guy Rees proclaimed to be the best WR talent ND has had in many years, it took him 6 games to get him the ball.
Long story short, I don’t see anything from Rees’ time here that says he’s either going to turn it around recruiting or become an elite OC that can scheme big plays for his playmakers to then make it easier to recruit the elite talent. So my feeling is we either need to go get the elite recruiter (Hartline) who might not be a great OC or you go with an elite OC (Longo) who might not be an elite recruiter.
On the other hand, I doubt it was Rees’s call to hold on to Del for so long. So I don’t think it’s quite as clearcut that it’s mostly Rees fault about the skill position recruiting (though clearly he holds some of the blame.
Totally fair and I’ll admit I have some blinders of dislike for Rees on. Guilty of it since he was a player.
Also, will admit that I am strongly in the camp that Freeman is still the answer for ND and most undoubtedly ignoring some faults of his.
Totally agree with all this. I just don’t think there’s a way to fire Tommy Rees as QB coach (and his dad as helping with talent evaluation) without getting rid of him as OC, right? That would be such a loss of face that I think he’d just leave anyway.
I think it’s 70/30 more likely he takes another job somewhere rather than gets fired. I believed that before this season, too.
Do you think Rees will see the writing on the wall a bit and look to take another job partially for that reason or do you think he’s just in for some kind of promotion?
In either case, what kind of job would he be jumping to? Is really going to take a much smaller-school head coaching gig? Can he really get a promotion at OC (like going to the NFL)?
Yes, I think he’s career savvy and likely has a lot of good advice/connections (built through his dad) where he could exit to some NFL gig or lower level college head coach job somewhere.
I think his best hope is an NFL position coaching job, which can be spun as a “promotion” of sorts. Maybe his dad can help with that.
Can’t imagine anyone is going to hire him as a HC.
“Do we largely agree that Tommy the Recruiter & Identifier in terms of program problems >>>>> Tommy the OC and Play-Caller?”
I don’t. I mean, the QB room snafus are program crateringly bad compared to only “leave lots of points on the table and score only 14 against a crappy Stanford team” bad, but I absolutely wouldn’t let him off the hook even if his QB management was ok.
“Put another way, we have ~30 games of data that I would say shows Rees is certainly capable and maybe even in the general area of being a good OC.”
[Press X to doubt]
I don’t know about letting him off the hook but Rees had the 17th and 20th FEI offenses in his first two seasons. If that sucked than pretty much everything about Notre Dame has sucked, too.
There’s one glaring difference between 2020-21 and this season.
I know I’m all over the place here crapping on Rees and should back away from the keyboard. But I’ll play devil’s advocate here. FEI had the 2012 ND offense as the 19th best and the 2014 version as 22nd.
2015 ND (the ND gold standard) was 7th that year.
Yeah, Rees’s boosters often point to two top-20 advanced metrics offenses, but no metrics ever had either season in the top-10, so we’re really talking about the bottom of the top 20, and really how good is that? Shouldn’t that be at worst a normal offense for a team that considers itself as a program competing for the playoffs annually rather than something to celebrate?
Also, uh, not getting a top-20 advanced stats offense this year! Don’t think we would have been particularly close with Tyler Buchner healthy all season, either.
That said, I don’t think he’s a *bad* OC in the way that he is pretty clearly a very bad QB room developer. I think he’s an ok OC; we could do worse. The problem is for us to get over the hump, we need a quarterback that he is pretty clearly not going to be making happen.
This is precisely my point.
If we can’t even admit ‘good’ by any objective measure, and we’re limiting discussions to playoff caliber or it’s crap then I don’t know what we’re doing here as a community discussing Irish football.
I realize people are out for blood and getting emotional but it doesn’t need to be Rock’s House discourse.
I say the only way forward for ND football is to rip up the field turf and bury Jack Swarbrick alive at midfield, followed by a dinner catered by Morton’s. Harrumph.
Also we must create a conference with like-minded institutions such as Penn State and Texas.
And hire Tom Coughlin as OC.
At the very least, ripping out the turf and putting in new natural grass would be a wise distraction by Freeman now.
Fair enough, and I think a couple things can be true all at once:
-Under Kelly, Rees produced offenses that were statistically fine and in line with what Kelly’s prior OCs produced. Not great, but far from bad.
-Without Kelly, Rees is struggling to replicate that and is regressing. This could be a talent issue. It could also be that he’s still an inexperienced OC who no longer has an experienced HC supervising and teaching him. I think we can all see the pitfalls of the combination of a HC with no offensive background and a young, inexperienced OC.
-The QB situation is not acceptable in any respect — talent level, talent evaluation, roster depth management, or development. Rees has been in charge of that situation for five years now and every aspect of our QB roster is his doing.
You don’t have to be stuck in 1988 to think both our offense and defense should more or less be somewhere in or around the top 20 nationally in opponent-adjusted stats most years. It is good relative to, like, the P5 average, sure! It is not particularly good for a program that reasonably considers itself one of the ten best in college football. 2020 and 2021 offenses were not bad, by either standard, but once this year is factored in I think it would be reasonable to call the Rees era offense sub-standard on the whole by what ND thinks of itself as.
We’re not Nebraska or Washington or whatever; we can aim a little higher than that and not be Across.
I was speaking to the 2020-21 offenses and people literally cannot even type the word “good.” You did it again!
And yet, Clark Lea averaged the 17th best defense from 2018-20 according to FEI and as far as I’m aware everyone thought that was pretty good and it landed him a Power 5 job.
It’s a cousin to this argument:
https://twitter.com/greg2126/status/1570219338552180736
Let’s say the ’22 offense does get better and finishes 37th in FEI. I’d imagine most of CFB world would call that a good job of turning things around.
But, we’d have some not calling it good (and likely much much worse) despite thousands of comments about how terrible the QB room is and wonder if we’ll ever score over 10 points a game again.
This is exactly a classic NDN maneuver. It’s not too different than predicting 8-5, laughing at people for predicting 10-2, and when we make the playoffs it’s, “Well, we didn’t win a title and got beat badly in the semi-final is it really that good???”
It’s good enough to make the playoffs (with a similarly ranked or better defense)! We made the playoffs! If he did that every year, sure, keep him around until he’s ready to leave I suppose.
Good enough for that! And I will bravely say that making the playoffs is a good season.
But also: if we’re not trying to do better than make the playoffs, on some level what are we doing here? The whole case for Marcus Freeman was that there was (and I still think there is) some chance he will increase ND’s national title odds, even if he is a huge risk.
(FWIW I’m not a downvoter)
It’s okay, the downvotes don’t bother me. They are Not Good Enough™ 🙂
Didn’t Rees bring in Coan? Does he not get credit for that? Not asking rhetorically. Was that a Kelly thing or did TR have something to do with it? If the answer is that he did, then doesn’t that mean he (1) found a QB in the portal that fit ND (not easy) and (2) coached/OC’d him to a pretty successful 10 win season? Assuming he does get credit for that, and if you add in 2020 (doesn’t he get *some* credit for Book too? I mean he did coach him) it’s hard for me to see that he’s The Problem. Feels like maybe The Problem doesn’t exist. It’s lots of little problems, many of which we’re (the fans) not able to flesh out at the moment, so it’s easier for us to try and find just one thing to blame. Rees is responsible for the QB room from a recruiting and development perspective – I get that. But Coan was also in that room. So he should get credit where credit is due (assuming Coan wasn’t a solo Kelly thing – that part I don’t know). And while I understand that there’s probably some legit blame to be laid at TR’s feet for not bringing in a transfer QB this year (knowing he only had Buchner, Pyne, and a questionable WR group), everything I’m reading online suggests that the portal really wasn’t much of an option this year. Freeman was up against it just trying to get a staff together and cover all the other bases. My understanding is that, given the difficulties with the ND transfer stuff, there was just no way he/ND would have been able to give it any time. From what I’ve read, they almost didn’t land Joseph because of it. Don’t know how legit that argument is, but I’ve read it a few times and it makes sense to me. All this to say, it really doesn’t sound like TR is the fly in the ointment. That’s doesn’t mean he shouldn’t go. Sometimes you fire a good coach because it’s just not working. I’m just saying, the evidence doesn’t seem to suggest that Rees sucks or is a Not Good Enough OC or that firing him would be the silver bullet at this point. Also, it feels like the horror of this season has led some of us astray in terms of expectations. Is it really playoffs or bust? Did we expect that Freeman would make us the next Bama or Ohio St (for whom it seemingly is playoffs or bust)? Kelly brought us top 10-15 teams, a dud or two, some playoffs, a NC appearance, but never a threat to win one. Freeman, I hope, brings the promise of all that plus the *possibility* of winning a big one. I think that’s a fair hope (although it’s not looking good so far, I’ll say that). But I don’t think it’s fair to hope that he’s going to make us the next Bama –… Read more »
What it means to me is that he’s a replacement level OC. Not a good one. Basically anyone at this level should be able to replicate this given the program, so calling him good attributes more merit to Rees than he’s due, especially when you consider the issues with roster management/development under his watch. BVG, on the other hand, would be a clear example of someone well, well below replacement value, but I think Rees is probably trending that way as he has to deal with a new defensive-minded HC in Freeman instead of Kelly.
Rhetorically, insisting Rees is “good” is how we end up having this continuing conversation next fall after no one actually wants to hire Rees away, though hopefully someone is dumb enough to bite thanks to his connections, and we get voices of “oh well you can’t fire a good coach without someone better lined up y’know, and besides he put up slightly better FEIs years ago than Chip Long did.”
There was no Plan B in case the Stanford defensive plan was what could be predicted – stop the run and double Mayer with a LB or S. Pyne needs to learn not to telegraph his throws and look for secondary receivers, though in fairness, I don’t see a lot of our WRs create separation to give him alternatives. We should expect to see a lot of Cover Zero. Clemson and Syracuse have the top two rushing defenses in the ACC. Syracuse’s 3-4 defense could highlight our deficiencies. Clemson returned the entire two deep on their experienced D-line in a 4-3. So some urgency in schematic changes as well as further development of the offensive line is necessary.
I have to acknowledge that my emotions would have significantly changed if we had come away with points and the win instead of seeing the ball knocked out of Estime’s hands. We just should have expected Stanford’s defensive game plan.
I was at this game with friends and it was so heartbreaking. Forget covering the 17 point spread, I just wanted a victory. I blame Rees. I don’t remember any screens which would have boosted Pyne’s confidence and also would have put our playmakers in space. Stanford’s dbs often were playing 8 yards off our WR, why not just toss it to them and let them make a play? Pyne was locked in on Mayer, and I could see it from my endzone seats. I don’t know why we kept running up the middle when Stanford was loading the box, couldn’t we run a sweep to the outside? I know I’m rambling, but I am still frustrated by this game. I think we should give younger players some snaps, I’m not saying to throw in the towel on the season, but we should try and salvage something positive out of this season.