If you consider yourself a hardcore Irish fan chances are you’ve watched this video in the past. The year is 2000 and it’s the first week of October. Notre Dame is in year 4 of the Bob Davie era and is a mere 15 months away from hiring, then firing, George O’Leary before settling on Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham.
It just so happens on this day the Irish are hosting Willingham’s Stanford team inside the confines of Rock’s House. The Cardinal were riding high off an 8-win season the prior fall where they took advantage of the worst Pac-10 season in modern times, lost to Texas by 52 points, fell to San Jose State at home, and still made the Rose Bowl where they promptly lost Wisconsin and Heisman-winning running back Ron Dayne. It’s hard to believe but THAT is the season that put Willingham on the map and which would lead to disastrous decisions by Notre Dame and later Washington, too.
Stanford came into this game 2-2 (losing to San Jose State again, but beating Texas, college football is nothing but outrageously weird) and still somehow the Notre Dame administration remained a little smitten with Willingham. For their part, the Irish came into the game also 2-2 with a devastating overtime loss to No. 1 Nebraska in week 2 and a close loss to Michigan State. Spirits weren’t exactly high but this would end up being Davie’s best finish at Notre Dame (15th in the AP Poll) even after a complete and utter destruction at the hands of Oregon State in the Fiesta Bowl.
This was year two of the Kevin Rogers OC experiment (current Irish assistant Mike Sanford’s dad left for the San Diego Chargers to create this opening) after he came over from Syracuse in 1999 following a successful stint running the Donovan McNabb offenses. Sounded good in theory but as we’ve come to realize even a good assistant can flounder under a poor head coach. After 16 games in charge things weren’t looking great for Rogers–case in point the Irish nearly shocked the Cornhuskers in week 2 but did so with just 224 total yards and 3 completions.
Elsewhere on staff there was a 36-year old wide receiver coach working his 5th and final season in South Bend. His name was Urban Meyer and within 6 years he’d have his first National Championship as a head coach and also win 154 out of the 181 games to start his career.
So the story goes, the players begged and begged and begged Bob Davie to let Meyer call plays for the offense. On this fateful October afternoon Davie relented and gave Urban the keys to the offense for the opening series. It was basically a mean-spirited tease. Meyer would give the keys back to Rogers and become head coach at Bowling Green 56 days later, forever leaving South Bend in his rear-view mirror despite an even worse tease half a decade later prior to taking the Florida job.
Then we have true freshman quarterback Matt LoVecchio making his first career start after Arnaz Battle went down with injury and converted tight end Gary Godsey proved insufficient. LoVecchio would entice winning his first 7 starts to close out the 2000 regular season but it was against a ghastly schedule for Notre Dame standards and the Irish would eventually get their comeuppance in the aforementioned Fiesta Bowl. The Bergen Catholic product lost the job after 2 games in 2001 and eventually transferred to Indiana.
On this day though, Irish fans got a glimpse of what could have been. While Big 12 powers Oklahoma and Texas were opening up and scoring buckets full of points, Oregon’s high-flying offenses were maturing on the West Coast, and a young coach at Grand Valley State was embracing the benefits of the spread the Notre Dame offense would be left in the Dark Ages of offense for another half decade.
Not for this first series, though.
That’s 124-pound Joey Getherall giving everyone a near heart attack with the way he fields the punt at the 5-yard line. To be fair, this was roughly 42% of Notre Dame’s offense at times, so you take the good with the bad. Also, this gave Meyer the chance to march 91 yards for a touchdown.
Remember this phase Stanford went through where they tried to look like Nebraska? Meanwhile, Notre Dame looks fresh to death (RIP pro-style socks) in one of my favorite uniforms in school history. I’m a stripes lover so the trim on these jerseys from Champion grab my heart. Plus, the dome on the collar, too. From a distance just your standard Notre Dame uniform but up-close full of character and uniqueness.
The second snap for the offense sees a read option go for 10 yards. Remember when defenses literally could not stop this play in the early days of spread-mania? LoVecchio isn’t even a good athlete and he gets the edge for a first down. Look at him running!
He looks like your skinny teenager cousin got dressed up in a Brady Quinn uniform and somehow was playing quarterback for the Irish.
Shotgun NOT on just third down? Going 5-wide from under center? Yeah, it was crystal clear how different and well-rounded Meyer’s philosophy would be compared to the normal Irish offense. Gavin Hunter (#21) would lead Notre Dame in receiving in 2001 but his 21-yard sweep out of the slot would be his only carry for this 2000 season.
From 5-wide to the speed option out of the I-formation, to a naked bootleg out of the wishbone. The diversity is amazing.
A big third down near field goal territory and again Stanford is just flummoxed by the read option. LoVecchio looks terrified to run the ball, almost like he might perish from earth if he’s hit too hard.
One of the best aspects to Meyer’s offense is how he lulls teams to sleep with a bunch of underneath passes and runs and suddenly a receiver is wide open down field for a touchdown. That, was basically the Tim Tebow offense in a nutshell. I’m not sure if we can give Meyer all the credit for the touchdown on this drive but it’s still classic Urban. For some reason, Stanford thought it was a good idea to blitz 8 against 5-wide leaving David Givens about as wide open as anyone in school history.
Again, this was a 91-yard touchdown drive and Urban Meyer went back to being just a wide receiver coach again. For the rest of the game the Irish mustered only 175 total yards and scraped by Stanford 20-14. Five years at Notre Dame and this was the biggest spotlight for Urban Meyer. Eleven plays and the dream was over.
Wow. Is this just easy to see in hindsight or could even in the moment, and with what Rogers himself did with this talent otherwise, this be seen as great? I’m surprised that the players were pleading for Urban to call the plays, i.e. what did they see in him that they wanted it? And why didn’t the coaches see it? Would it have been just too big of a deal to let him keep calling plays as the WR coach without firing Rogers?
Yeah, you’d need to fire Rogers to do something like that. Texas promoted their WR coach last year after firing their OC, so it happens.
Davie apparently wasn’t all that great at fully harnessing the talent on his staff. Urban Meyer, Charlie Strong, Dan Mullen, among others. Everyone left for bigger and better things.
You probably could have stopped at, “Davie apparently wasn’t all that great”. i never knew that drive was called by Meyer til now, but i do remember screaming at the tv wondering why we couldn’t move the ball for the rest of the game. Davie really should have handed the playbook back to Meyer and worried about the politics after the game. Granted, ND won anyway, but trying to lose was commonplace back then.
That Bob Davie coaching tree sounds fairly impressive…. wtf?
Yeah, Urban is a hell of a coach. He’s also sleazier than a snake oil salesman. He really is a hell of a coach though.
Great piece Eric.
So we hire Tyrone Willingham away from Stanford (who apparently was glad to have him, 6 years). Stanford then hires Buddy Teevens for 2 years and Walt Harris for 1 year, and then Jim Harbaugh. Willingham had a .549 win percentage at Stanford. What in the world were we thinking?
We weren’t the ones not thinking…that was Kevin White’s faceplant.
We don’t appreciate Jack Swarbrick enough.
May god grant him the grace to carry on as the AD at ND for a long long time.
From what I recall reading, it was more on Malloy than White.
I think that was right when Malloy was moving out of his role but hadn’t fully yet? I try not to think about it.
Wow, I didn’t know this drive had more completions than the Nebraska game.
To me, it seems that Notre Dame goes through spasms where it almost deliberately wants to destroy its football heritage. It feels almost like it’s embarrassed to have a good football team, and so it goes out and shoots itself in the foot. Those last few years with Lou (I felt like they ran him out of town), and then the long period in the wilderness with Davie and Willingham (the Weis/White era was just inept management) felt like they weren’t particularly interested in winning (not all costs, mind you, but I think Kelly is showing how we can be successful without cheating and recruiting bad guys, ala Baylor).
You wonder how a young Urban Meyer must have felt, seeing his game plan work like a charm, but despite that success, being shunted to “wide receivers” after that drive. Maybe his dalliance with ND after Willingham’s termination was his big middle finger to the school that buried him under Davie’s mediocrity?
I am curious. How do people know that the team begged to have him call plays? And if this is inside information, what do we know about the justification for not letting him call more plays?