next year should be undefeated If i recall wash st, nevada, uconn, navy, stanford, pitt among other pussys. Actually starting in 2010 its a big scheduling downgrade. ( Army navy uconn among others). I say drop the admission standards and start scheduling big time schools again!!
I'm hoping we can get Coastal Carolina and Temple on the schedule Joel, are those big time enough? :wink:
I'm impressed, Joel. You went to the trouble of looking up our future schedules. You really are a closet fan. It's because of Charlie, isn't it?
He's a fan because of me. Several years ago I gave him a framed photo of Ty Willingham and he's been giddy ever since. Joel O"Feinberg.
Mike Frank predicts a Notre Dame win on Saturday so does John Vannie. Neither has a ton of confidence in their picks though. I hope the team breaks out of the doldrums and really lays the wood to the Middies.
What.. <t>Is there to say. This program sucks from top to bottom. This offensive line is as bad as any I have watched. Beyond embarrassing first half.</t>
Not that it means anything. But Lou had some trademark crappy first half performances. Not excusing this team here but... we're not to the 'style points' level yet. Walker just hits another FG... that's improvement... Now our OTs whiffed on 2 blocks that led to 2 TDs... that's not improvement.. Let's see how we finish out. The most frustrating thing for me to watch is our passing games (read QB) commitment to the deep ball. The reason we were able to hit so many deep balls earlier this year is because we dink and dunked folks on first down. Our WRs are athletic enough to break tackles and command safety help.. But since we've gone all "Doug Williams" out there, we don't check down anymore.
Dont get nervous for gods sake cory..this is NAVY they are playing!! Imagine next year with army navy uconn etc!! LOL!
who is nervous? I think you'll see a far more calm tone to my posting. All I've ever called for with this offense is patience. Both in building it and in executing it.
Well.. <t>We woke up at halftime and did what should be done to a Navy team with size limitations, run the football. No game balls to anyone from me on offense today but kudos to Corwin Brown for having his guys ready to play a solid defensive game to shut Navy down. That was refreshing.<br/> <br/> Oh by the way Michigan just lost again so it has been a good day.</t>
Can <t>We pretend I didn't post a few minutes ago?<br/> <br/> Brown cleans the bench on defense and Navy goes right through them like it was 11 on 7 then we go sound asleep on special teams and McNeil lets the receiver get three yards behind him for a catch and a quick TD. Nice job McNeil as you deserve a kick square in the a.. you fraud of a DB.<br/> Next onside and it is easier than the first one for Navy. <br/> We have to hang on to win vesus Navy.<br/> <br/> This team plays just like its head coach looks on the sideline, lost and clueless.<br/> <br/> Lord what a mess in South Bend.<br/> <br/> On to watch the Gators.</t>
No Larry, I didn't pretend you didn't post. I just disagree. Your points are valid. At the same time, we had what was possibly a phantom catch at the 1 that was initially ruled a TD. The ruling of illegal forward batting is the first time I've ever seen that called. They also gave Navy a time out with 30 seconds left that they didn't actually have!! You can see that for the negative or the positive. Navy isn't a crap team. They beat Wake Forest this year (1st place in the ACC Atlantic). They've lost close to every good team they played and didn't win with the exception of Pitt. The one true negative of this game, that I hope Charlie turns into a positive (and we've read this here many times) is his notion that he refuses to pile on teams. I respect his opinion, but I disagree. He's gotta just keep scoring on teams when up. We're not talking about throwing into the end zone when the game is out of reach, but clearing the bench of diving into the line 3 times is a dead practice. That damn near cost him the game and it didn't cost him all momentum.
I agree with Corey, this was an example of Charlie not understanding college football. I think it's noble that he didn't want to run the score up on Navy, but maybe he doesn't understand that Navy wasn't going to quit playing just because he put in the 2nd team offense and defense and refused to throw the ball. In todays world of college football, he could have put up a couple of more scores and nobody would have said he was "piling it on". He should have gone deeper into the 4th qtr with the 1st team offense running the offense and the clock. Navy is a decent football team who would do pretty well in the MAC or CUSA or any of the other mid-major football conferences. As Corey pointed out they beat Wake Forrest, one of the top ACC teams. So while the game was closer than it should have been, it's not a shame, I give a lot of respect to those guys. When they play the Irish they never quit. I remember a Navy game when Lou was the head coach and he was trying to run out the clock and not score and we were up by a lot so there was no hope of them comming back, but they wouldn't let us run the clock and kept calling timeouts so they would have gotten the ball back in their own end of the field with 20 or 30 secs left down by 3 or 4 scores. So Lou just had his QB (Powlus I think) toss another TD. Navy never complained but Lou took a beating in the press. The shame is that our head coach is the special teams coach and they allowed not 1 but 2 successful onsides kicks. If I were Syracuse I'd consider onsides kick to open the game next week. We looked pathetic. I don't know the rules but I never knew that if part of your foot comes down inbounds and the rest of your foot comes down out of bounds that it's a good catch. That's a new one on me. Also on the extra timeout, I'm guessing that there is no penalty, like there is in basketball, for calling a timeout that you don't have. So by the time they sorted it out, if there was no penalty provided in the rules, it didn't make any difference. It seems like there ought to be a rule, but then it's really on the refs to keep track of the timeouts and not grant a timeout that they don't have. I was encouraged by the running game to a small extent, but I have to temper that to the fact that we just have bigger, faster players and once the 1st team got rolling the Middies really just didn't have the beef to stop it. I'm also encouraged by Walker seemingly finding a groove as a kicker, he's only a soph and if he's got it mentally and physically going now then that's a big plus. I hope that Michael Floyd isn't seriously hurt, he's is such an incredible talent and it would just be a shame if he was hurt and couldn't play again this year. Fortuneately for the Irish we are pretty deep at WR so while he'll be missed we should still be in pretty good shape. It's just been that kind of year, we're a little better than last year and last years team would have lost this game. But still if Charlie doesn't call off the dogs so early we should have beaten them 34 or even 41 to 7. Charlie said in his press conference that he would never embarass the Navy in a game. Well Charlie you'd better get rid of that stinking thinking because every other coach in america would have had no problem putting up 41 points when you had them down. I doubt if Navy would have considered it that we were trying to embarass them.
Also I'll give the defense it's kudo's, those guys are pretty young and only see that offense 1x a year. It's all about keeping your cool and playing assignment football. They did an outstanding job of doing that today. That 2nd Navy TD was against the reserves and the 3rd TD was against a 1st team defense who had to go find their hats and get back mentally into the game after they thought they were through for the day. They were averaging 300+ yds/game rushing and we held them to 178 and they only got 11 first downs. Defense played a very good game. I really was worried that Navy would be able to run the football in long drives against us, but they didn't. Let me add that the defensive effort was so much better this year due no doubt by the addition of Tenuata to the staff. Corwin Brown, had no clue how to stop the Navy option last year, I believe Tenuata's depth of experience in college football was the difference. Terry