Corey, thanks for putting in writing what I feel about Weis.. Where would we be without our franchise QB? Without Weis we wouldn't have him..or Crist.
Vic, You're welcome. I think there are areas in which he makes mistakes. Somehow over time, the ND fanbase...perhaps moreso than any other seem to forget the mistakes and losses of coaches that are held in high regard. (the NC coaches sans Devine). Ara is practically a Saint on the ND campus and no one seems to remember that his career record vs Purdue was 7-7. He was 3-6-2 vs USC btw. Lou Holtz did a masterful job of dominating annual rivals, at least according to the NDNation crowd.. but he was 5-5-1 vs Michigan. He was 2-2 vs Miami (Fl) who was an annual rival for the first half of his tenure. Lou also had a way of losing that mind boggling game to the team we should have beaten and that loss kept us out of the NC race. The bottom line for Chuckles is that he has to win a NC. He simply has to and there is no way he'll ever get any benefit of any doubt until he does. Our recruiting (dating back to the last few years under Holtz) had begun to decline. At first it was a small slide... Under Davie it got worse but he still managed to nab a few quality players. It vanished under Willingham. There was a perception that had gone on more for than a decade that ND simply could not recruit nationally with the big boys anymore. Charlie turned that all around within a few years. The depth we are building now hasn't been seen in some time. As a HC Charlie needs to trust in that talent he's recruited...more than anything, he needs to learn from the mistakes he's made in the past. I think he will. I just don't know if he'll get the time.
This is the classic glass 1/2 full vs glass 1/2 empty. I think many who came into the season really wanting Charlie fired after last season, were also pissed at the thought that because of the weaker schedule this year that he could achieve a 9-3 record without really doing any better as a coach than he did last year or the year before. So what we have is a lot of people who under different circumstances would be going a win is a win, thank you very much, spending most of their time finding ways to denigrate the win itself. To this group, not being 4-0 is inexcuseable, not beating both MSU and PU by big margins is inexcusable. They fear that Swarbrick will give Charlie a pass this year on another USC loss because of the injuries. They fear that they will miss their chance at finally getting Gruden and that we'll have Charlie for 10 years and hang around the top 25 win mostly 8 or 9 games a year and never really be that complete team that can challenge for the NC. As for me I sort of agree with Corey, I give CW a lot of credit for being able to cobble together an offensive game plan to win this game. I give CW credit for getting the team to play tough, esp on offense. In the loss to UM it wasn't the offense, they came back from 2 scores down twice, they came back against MSU, and they finished off Purdue in dramatic fashion. I think CW when he has the talent, is obviously a great OCoord. The quesiton is does he have it as a HC? In 5 years he's rebuilt the offense from the Quinn/Samardja bunch to the Clausen/Tate/Allen/Floyd bunch. But the defense is the question, are we going forward like Texas Tech all offense no defense (or not much). That's the tough spot in college football (or any level) is as a HC to put together a complete team. In college since you can select your players to some degree, it's a lot about getting the right staff/Coordinator. Mack Brown went through a lot of DCoord before he got to Chizek and Muschamp. Stoops has been fortuneate to not only have great OCoord who can implement a terrific scheme but a Great DCoord and they have been tough on defense as well. Can Chuckles do that?
T, I agree. The thing that gets me about Tenuta's defense is that as time goes on, I can see the improvement. I can see the scheme. We were literally all over Purdue with the exception of the blown read by McCarthy on the Purdue TD to go ahead. What is driving me nuts is that we force them to throw to the guy we want them to throw to with our pressure. The issue now is that guy breaks 3 tackles and gets a first down. That has to stop.
BTW: I can't say enough about Jimmy Clausen. If you thought he was just some overhyped Calif surfer guy who's all about me and cares only about the NFL, you're wrong. Jimmy is a real ND QB. The guy has cajones and heart, I'm a fan.
You guys are right about Weis, the OC. Her does a hell of a job. It's Weis the HC who is overmatched most weeks.
I am too, and as most of you know, have been for some time. I'm reading much angst and gnashing of teeth over this victory in the face of a great deal of adversity - on the field and by way of injury. My two cents worth, just win baby. Nothing else matters.....congrats on the victory.
turning point of the game. Our D was going to give up the go ahead TD eventually. McCarthy's error let them do it with over 3 min. left. Unlike in the Mich. game, JC had enough time to pull it out.
Sid Your thoughts about the coaching situation are the same as mine. I was impressed with the offense in the 2nd qtr. but we really needed to score on the last posession of the half. We've won the last two games by making big plays in the last minute of the game. That's been lacking for a long time.
I appreciate Corey's and Tim's and Terry's comments. In fact, Terry, in his 7:01 post about "1/2 full glass vs. glass half empty", is saying exactly what I've been saying all along about life in ND world. I'm glad to see such passionate commentary in support of our program. It convinces me to hang in there and back off of my anger over last night's poor performance. I didn't get much sleep last night, which likely influenced my state of mind this morning and had something to do with my rant. We got home from the game at 2:00 AM and up at 6:00 AM to take my two house guests to the airport. Corey, I do want to correct you on your apples-oranges attempt to compare this era's Purdue teams to the teams that Ara's teams played. Come on! I understand your intent in making those comparisons, but there is no resemblance of either this era's Purdue teams or ND teams to those of the 60s and early 70s. I was there. Trust me.
Excellent observation, Gip. At the game, when it happened, Brian didn't hesitate. He immediately turned to the rest of us and said, That's great! It gives us 3 minutes to try to score. He has a great mind for analyzing the game, and obviously so do you. :wink:
Sid, Scholarship restrictions have leveled the playing field and brought many once obscure schools to national prominence. The game is different. This is about beating your regular rivals. Wins and losses. These coaches aren't graded on anything more or less. And while I appreciate the history lesson, it's still not telling the full story of Purdue during the Era of Ara. Ara was there from 1964 to 1974. While Purdue did have good run from 65 to 69, they were horse sh*t to average the rest of the time. Purdue- Year-Record-Teams that beat ND 1964 6-3 1965 7-2-1 * 1966 9-2 1967 8-2 * 1968 8-2 * 1969 8-2 * 1970 4-6 1971 3-7 1972 6-5 1973 5-6 1974 4-6-1 * Looking back at it... Ara beat one Purdue team during their 'reign' of awesomeness... Of course, aside from one year (67 I believe), the Big10 was still dominated by Ohio State and Michigan.
Corey, Nice research. You make a good point. Because of my aging memory, I erroneously stretched PU's good years into the 70s. It actually ran throughout the 60s and came to a screeching halt. I recall being there for the 1970 game after PU had beaten us something like 9 out of the prior 12 years (including the pre-Ara period) and the past 3 in a row. We were winning 48-0 and marching deep into PU territory with time running out. I screamed, "Kick a field goal and make it 51!", thus venting my frustration from the prior decade. Not one of my finer moments. Little did I know that we were embarking on an era of complete dominace over a program in decline.
Sid, If you had the chance to say that about USC this year, I'd bet you'd do it again and I wouldn't blame you I honestly had no idea that Purdue was THAT good during that run in the 60s, but you forced me to dig a bit deeper into the research They were way better than I thought they were. Ara was human as was Lou... sometimes we lose perspective from being too close to things and other times we lose it from being too long ago. Lord knows I am guilty of that. I watched some ESPN Classic Holtz games and Lou made lots of silly calls himself.. Not a lot of them, but he made them. The thing about Holtz is that you'd make a lot of money betting on him taking the safe route rather than gamble.. There's a lot to be said for that. At the same time, many now calling for Charlie's head were calling for Lou's back in the day as well.
Good point by Priester on the Hope timeout which was criticised by the broadcast crew, the Irish didn't need to spike the ball with 36 seconds left. Hope taking the timeout prevented his defense from being confused as much as it gave the Irish a breather. But either way, ND didn't need to spike the ball.
Great post Terry. Somethings never change do they? I've always thought that there is no such a bad win. PJ in Jersey GO IRISH