Been awhile since we've been to the Carrier Dome. Only Charlie Weis and Tyrone Willingham have lost to Syracuse in the Modern Era (post 1970). I hate to see Marcus Freeman join that list but unless he's worked some magic this week in practice it's not looking good to keep him off that list. Syracuse is a very good football team, they play good defense and they have a good QB who has plenty of experience. He can make plays with his arm and his legs. They have a good RB as well. They are favored by a couple of points. They played a solid game vs Clemson in Death Valley, the Irish are not Clemson so I'm a bit surprised that they are not a 7-10 point favorite at home. First and foremost the Irish have to figure out how to get Drew Pyne to play like he did vs UNC and BYU. He was decisive and accurate throwing the ball. Something he was certainly not last week vs UNLV or the previous week vs Stanford. Syracuse is tough against the run, our OL has been getting better every week and RB Logan Diggs has been raking over at that position. But if we can't make them respect the passing game they will just stack the line like Stanford did and dare us to throw the ball. Pyne has to make them pay. Also the WR just have to play better, Michael Mayer is an AA at TE but you can take away one guy if the WR's don't make them pay for putting emphasis on that one guy. Football is a qB driven game if your QB isn't playing well you have little chance to win, just look at Iowa. Look at what happened to Texas last weekend when their QB failed to show up, Bijan Robinson even though he's a grear RB can't do it all. Same for Logan Diggs, running into 8 man fronts is not a fun thing that is likely to bring results.
Last week's effort by Syracuse against Clemson must have taken something out of them similar to our effort against OSU. Hopefully they'll be less that a peak form and lost to an inferior foe.
Mike Frank had an interview with Brady Quinn on the "FUND" that he and a few others set up, the founders are Tom Mendoza, Pat Eilers (who just gave 5M to fund the S&C program), and an alumni named Kevin Klau along with Brady. It's a pretty interesting read but it's paywalled so can't post it. Brady does say that every ND football player including walk-ons, have received NIL funds, along with every Womens Basketball player. He said that they have funded some MBB players and Lacrosse player and hope to expand to women's lacrosse as well and other programs as the FUND grows. The thing that stood out was that Brady and the Board are determined to do things the right way, they feel it's illegal to get involved in recruiting players and won't do it. I have seen rumors, unsubstantiated of course since they are on message boards that players are being approached/induced to enter the transfer portal by promising NIL money. I've seen unsubstantiated rumors that recruits are being paid both to take visits and to not take visits. Brady claims that the ND Collective is not behind other collectives. Excerpt from the article below. “I’ll start off by saying I don’t think we are behind at all,” he said. “We filed back in January, and look at how many people have followed our model? I sat at a desk and talked with Drew Brees and he was telling me about the Boilermaker Alliance that he’s on the board of, and they literally followed our filings. I don’t believe we are behind at all. There are probably six or seven total schools who are providing something for every single football player in the country. Notre Dame is one of them.
Reading the various articles on the game it's clear that most of the gurus feel that the team that is able to run the ball effectively and stop the run will win the game. Personally i don't think we can run the ball effectively unless Drew Pyne has a good game throwing the ball. It was nice to see them run out the clock on UNLV last week by running the ball down their throats in two clock eating touchdown drives to finish off the game. But that was UNLV.
The new ND baseball coach added another recruit this week. I'll give him credit he and his staff are out there beating the bushes to continue the building of the program that Link Jarrett started. Proof of course is in the on the field results. I was a little surprised that a Michigan program was said to be one of the best in the nation. I assumed those would all be in warm weather states. Gipper where and what is Orchard Lake St. Mary's? commitment from Orchard Lake St. Mary’s HS (Mich.) IF/RHP Parker Brzustewicz. The 6-foot-3, 175-pounder is projected to play on either corner of the infield, but also has some velocity off the mound as he hit 86 mph this summer. Brzustewicz comes from one of the finest high school programs in the country as St. Mary’s finished No. 1 in the nation last year with a perfect 44-0 record. In 41 games, Brzustewicz hit .355 with 19 RBI and 26 runs scored. On the mound, the sophomore righty went 6-0 with 44 strikeouts and recorded a 1.75 ERA.
Unbelievable Terry, I have never heard of the program anywhere else in my baseball readings. He certainly sounds like a winner to me.
Something is up, it's being reported on several ND sites that there has been a big move in the spread in the favor of ND, in the last 24 hours
Well I can't be a fix with the officials. All 6 penalties called in the first half were against ND and the refs even stopped play to allow Syracuse to substitute even though the Irish hadn't. Irish should have an even bigger lead but poor tackling led to the Cuse TD and Pyne has been awful. If we can score on the opening drive of the second half, we should be able to run all over them the rest of the game.
The Good: Estime got back on the field and had a great game and held onto the ball. The Bad: Syracuse's backup QB moved the ball well against what should have been a well rested defense. The Ugly, Pyne's passing. No way we hang with Clemson with that kind of QB play (unless we block 3 punts.)
I opted to play golf and tape the game today, so just finished watching the game. The OL and the running game looked great, Audric Estime and Diggs ran hard and smart. My favorite play was when Estime gave a brutal stiff arm to the Syracuse DB and ran over him. Also as noted Pyne was mediocre at best, with that kind of running game and protection he should have been able to complete 65% or more of his passes not 9-19. If you believe Greg McElroy a lot of his downfield misses came at the expense of wide open players in the flat and those downfield passes were well defended. Does he not have good field vision? He seemed to see the field very well against UNC and BYU. What's happened to that guy? The defense was good enough, they did give up a lot of plays when the Syracuse back-up qB came in the 2nd half although that last TD was given to them, that WR clearly (to me at least) stepped out of bounds before making the TD. Didn't matter we still won and were on the cusp of tacking on another 7 to make it 48 when they came up with a goal line stand when we had the #2 QB in the game just doing straight handoffs and they didn't have to worry that we were going to throw a pass. Watching that Syracuse backup QB made me wish we had him, he threw a nice pass, was mobile and appeared to have a good strong arm. What would this offense look like if we had a QB like that instead of Drew Pyne. This comes from somebody (me) who really likes Pyne and wishes he was still playing like he did against UNC. Steve Angelli? Who knows, he's at least taller than Pyne although I don't think size is why Pyne is struggling. Kyler Murray, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson, and Ian Book didn't struggle with their passing game because they aren't 6'3. I have to give props to the ST coach, we've now blocked 5 punts this year. That's amazing, 1 might just be lucky but when you do it 5 times that's game planning and coaching. I think we all remember how those old VaTech teams coached by Beamer were so good at ST and it helped them win games. This was a very good win, one that the team needed for their psyche with Clemson coming to town and it was a good game to watch. While many loved the 56-19 run/pass mix, in todays modern college football you can't really do that against the better teams. You have to be able to pass the ball and have a much better mix of run/pass. Even Saban acknowledges that you have to be able to pass the ball very well in order to win at the highest level. It's not 1992 anymore. The best teams throw the ball a lot. There is a reason why no matter how great a running game Air Force has and they win a lot of games, they don't win against the better teams that they play.
Guru comment on the passing game. *** Pyne had another rough outing. He made a few throws, and he was money on the last drive of the first half to give the Irish some distance (21-7), but outside of that he had a rough game. He missed two throws on easy screen passes that would have gone for really good gains. He missed Jayden Thomas twice on third down for plays that would have been conversions, and Thomas was open both times. He also locked in on Michael Mayer on a seam throw that got tipped for an interception. Just too many late reads, missed reads and off target throws. It really stunted the offense, which could have easily scored 50+ points in this game.
I wonder if Haynes King will be a graduate and in the portal? Irish really need to bring in a QB, I am also wondering if Hudson Card will graduate and also be in the portal. He'd be my choice he's mobile, tall and has a good arm, just not the Lambo and the Mullet!
The Card kid sounds interesting. Imagine our record with just an efficient QB? Give me a 60% passer who doesn't turn the ball over and with this run game we'll be good for now. Pyne just isn't gonna work. If we could get Angeli into maybe the BC or Navy game I'm sure he would do better than Pyne.
When you rush for over 200 yards you will win a lot of football games. That's a given. It also camouflages the fact that you have virtually no passing game. Pyne, on a good day will throw a 50% completion rate for about 150 yards. Most high QBs do better than that on an off night. Can they run for 200 yards against Clemson? We'll see.