Notre Dame vs Va.Tech

Discussion in 'Sports Board' started by Terry O'Keefe, Oct 28, 2019.

  1. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    That old adage of not letting team X beat you twice, once when you actually played and 2nd when you play the next weekend still reeling from the loss to Team X the previous weekend.

    Since it was a total team loss, there is a lot for this team to do to get ready for Va.Tech. We lost starting guard Tommy Kraemer who was having a good year (except for UM). His replacement will be the 5th year veteran Trevor Ruhland and Josh Lugg a RS Soph who hasn't played a lot, but has upside.

    Michael Young is gone at WR, sadly due to injury he missed several games after having a good spring and fall camp till his injury. He lost his place essentially and I'm sure he could see that he wasn't going to like get starter minutes going forward and decided he needed to move on to someplace he could get the playing time needed to get noticed by the NFL.

    The defense has to regroup from their terrible effort at UM. I think this is the group that has the best chance of regaining form. In spite of everything I think most ND fans feel like Clark Lea is a good solid DCoord who is only in his 2nd year as a DCoord and has a lot of upside. So I expect them to play well the rest of the season.

    It's the offense everybody is worried about, Tony Jones Jr is nicked up a little bit but expected to play. Jafar Armstrong is healthy but hasn't played much this year due to injury. The young backs Jamir Smith and C'Bo Flemster have shown sporadic flashes of being good but again not really enough caries to have a great feel for them. The OL was seemingly getting better every week, hopefully they can regain that momentum if they can we should be fine. The biggest question mark is of course Ian Book, who Kelly has doubled down on as the starter, which personally I think is the right thing to do. But if he falters I hope we aren't afraid to switch QB's. I think our WR's are good enough, we don't have a Will Fuller, Lenzy is the closest but even he isn't as fast as Fuller was and Fuller played quite a bit as a freshman and emerged as the starter as a soph, while Lenzy didn't play last year and has been slowed by some injuries. So he's behind the learning curve a bit. But still if Book can stay patient and the OL gives him the time our WR's are good enough to make the defense unable to just stack the line and dare us to beat them with the pass.

    This team is good enough to beat all the teams on the rest of the schedule, they just have to go out and do it. To perform to their talent.

    That loss not only knocked out of the CFP for sure, but put us on the bubble for a New Years 6 bowl. We'll have to win out of course, and we'll have to work our way back up into the top 10 most likely or we'll drop down to a Camping World Bowl or something like that.

    Go Irish.
     
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  2. Tim Gentry

    Tim Gentry Well-Known Member

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    Right now, I have no confidence this team can win anything
     
  3. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    It certainly will be a gut check time for the whole team. I have to wonder what their mood is right now. You know those guys read the internet, and on a lot of boards they have been called out for quiting, now to be fair most of the vitriol has been directed at Kelly and not so much at the players. But there have been posts that some think the players quit. If they read that, how does it make them feel, mad, hurt, what?

    I hope they come out with a purpose and take it out on Va.Tech. We'll see.
     
  4. Sid

    Sid Well-Known Member

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    FWIW, I don't believe players quit except for one possible reason: They hate the coach. That's not the case here. I believe that they believe they were playing their best and doing everything they were coached to do, but it wasn't working. I don't believe they were coached/inspired to execute with maximum effort and a refuse-to-lose attitude regardless of the playing conditions. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, everything about the team's performance - to me - reeked of inferior coaching.
     
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    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  5. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    I have never gotten the feeling that the players hate or dislike Kelly, of course none of us are privy to anything about the team, but I've never gotten that feeling that the dynamic between the coaches and the team is bad. Now fans are a different thing, the vitriol against Kelly is at a high level right now, maybe even more than after the Miami loss in 2017. Higher than after the Clemson loss last season.

    I have read that many felt like Kelly quit on the team in the 2nd half, just stood around and was waiting for the final gun, did nothing to try to motivate the team, that when the players saw that from him they quit as well.

    No doubt though that when your team fails so badly like they did Sat night, it's such a total team defeat like a big win is a total team win. Coaches are paid Millions to prepare the team for games, they failed and failed miserably. Coaches can't play the game so some blame has to fall on the players. Post game analysis was that Book had open receivers but either didn't see them or wouldn't take the chance and make the throws. But I said before, Ian Book didn't lose that game for us. His play was part of it for sure, but the OL didn't play well, the defense didn't play well and the result was that total team defeat.

    Like I said this is a gut check game. Either they put on their big boy pants and come out and compete to the level that they are capable of competing or not.
     
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  6. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    Assuming we win out, these are our Bowl destinations...per Pete Sampson.

     
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  7. George Krebs

    George Krebs Well-Known Member

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    The Camping World Bowl? Wow. I'll take the contrarian position here. I have no proof of anything but my gut tells me there is some kind of unrest in the background. Last year they were comparing Chip Long to the all time OCs. This year the only time you've seen him is when Kelly is yelling at him. We have quite a few players who are having severe regression from their level of play a year ago.... Book, Eichenberg, Finke, Pride, Okwara come to mind. Okwara and Finke are now non-factors. What happened? I remember in his first year when things weren't going as well as at Cincy; Kelly called a team meeting and basically threw everyone recruited by Charlie Weis under the bus. He said I have my players and the other guys players. Something does not feel right with this team.
     
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  8. IrishCorey

    IrishCorey Well-Known Member

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    It's a shame that the bowl game in Nashville doesn't get more love. There's a great, party atmosphere in Nashville for the week of the game and the stadium has great seating.
     
  9. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    Okwara was rated one of the top 5 DE/Edge Rushers in an article today by Todd McShay and Mel Kiper.

     
  10. gipper

    gipper Well-Known Member

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    I notice in the quote Terry posted that they mention that we played Fl. St. in the 2011 Camping World Bowl. I think it's been renamed from the Citrus Bowl. We played and beat LSU there in 2018. Wonder why they didn't mention that one?

    Interesting stat describing last weeks debacle, for our starting QB, 11 possessions and 8 three and outs.
     
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  11. Tim Gentry

    Tim Gentry Well-Known Member

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    After last Saturday night I didn’t really want to hear or see anything about Notre Dame football. I just couldn’t have been more depressed. I’m really not that excited at all about playing VT to be honest.
    My thinking now is that Kelly has gotten ND to a certain level and he can’t get it any further. We are looking at possibly 10 wins this season. A few years ago I would have really been happy with that but I just can’t now. We have the talent on the team now and should have been able to handle Michigan even if it was a close win. We failed miserably and again in front of a national prime time audience. If Kelly would be honest with himself he would admit he has done the best he can and move on. Retire after 10 years as ND head coach and let someone else see if they can take it to the next level. I’ve lost faith that he can get us there. He has gotten the program back in good shape but now he’s hit a wall.
     
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  12. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    Tim I think a lot of people feel like you do, I don't think Kelly is going to retire though. Not many coaches at Kelly's age do that even after a bad season. They all think they just need to get a few more players, tweak things a little bit, etc. Kelly is 58 y/o, and appears to be in very good health. While I'm sure with the money he's made in his 10 years at ND that he's probably financially comfortable, but he's a football coach and not likely to just walk away at age 58 like Bob Stoops did at OU.

    I also don't think that Kelly is going to be fired, even as bad as the UM loss was for him, he can win 10 games and while many ND fans will focus on the big losses I doubt if Swarbrick will fire a 10-2 coach.

    Somebody wrote an article comparing Kelly to Doug Collins who took over a woeful Chicago Bulls team and did a good job rebuilding them into a winner, but he couldn't get them past the the Pistons. He was let go by the Bulls in spite of doing a great job, they wanted a coach who could take them to the next level and didn't think he could do that...enter Phil Jackson. That's what Brian Kelly is right now, he's clearly better than Davie, Willingham, and Weis...but he's not shown he can beat the big boys in prime time. His biggest road win was at OU in 2012.

    Some point to that he's 7-3 vs our rival USC, but also note that this USC is not the USC that Ara face, that Lou faced, it's a USC that is struggling.

    Bottom line barring a complete collapse by the team, and even with that, Brian Kelly will be here in 2020 and beyond.

    Recruiting for 2021 is doing very well. Recruiting for 2020 is pretty much done unless we add a grad transfer like Isiah Pryor from Ohio State. Numbers for 2020 are very tight.

    As I've said before this game is a gut check game for the Irish, it's really also the biggest game of the season at this point. A good win here will go a long way to getting this team back on track. A loss will be even more devastating than the loss to Michigan.
     
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  13. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    For you Hockey Fans the Irish Hockey team which is ranked in the top 5 at 4-0 travel to Minnesota to open their Big 10 season, the Gophers are 2-5. Still feels weird to think of any Irish team being a member of the Big 10. But truthfully for Hockey it's been a good thing. Hockey East was never a good fit for the Irish. I do wish the old CCHA had not gone under, but that's ancient history now.
     
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  14. JO'Co

    JO'Co Well-Known Member

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    I agree 100% with Sid's posts.
     
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  15. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    When Sid makes a statement like this...

    It's significant, as he noted he does not give up on coaches easily, he's one of the last to throw in the towel. Kelly has clearly worn out his welcome at ND. Can winning out change that, probably but I don't think winning out or winning 9 or 10 games a year for the next 3 years changes it, because most feel that when there is an opportunity to make a big statement win vs a significant opponent that Kelly will fail again. Win a bunch of games against teams he has more talent but mess the bed against teams that have equal or more talent.

    Still I just can't imagine Swarbrick firing Kelly as long as he wins 9 or 10 games.
     
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  16. Tim Gentry

    Tim Gentry Well-Known Member

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    No, Kelly won’t be fired. He will be at ND until he decides on his own to go. Like it or not, that’s where we are.
     
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  17. Tim Gentry

    Tim Gentry Well-Known Member

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    Well if the team can regain its composure and manage to somehow get a nice lead on VT(and I have serious doubts on that) Kelly needs to get Jurkovich on the field and give him some serious playing time. Book has his limitations and that has been established well. He won’t get better.
     
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  18. JO'Co

    JO'Co Well-Known Member

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    I too am one of the last to throw in the towel on our coaches. It's not just winning or losing. It's about a coach's level of competence. You can tell a LOT about a coach just by watching his team perform. On offense the WRs are never open; the OL doesn't know the count; the TBs rarely have a hole to run through......etc.
     
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  19. Terry O'Keefe

    Terry O'Keefe Well-Known Member Administrator

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    Well for what it's worth the weather isn't looking good for Saturday. High will be 41 and there is a mixture of rain and snow possible in the afternoon. :(:(
     
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  20. Tim Gentry

    Tim Gentry Well-Known Member

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    Honestly,
    if we win this game it will probably be on a last minute field goal and a loss wouldn’t surprise me at all.
     
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