I am so disappointed in this defense. They just ran the ball right down our throats. Ihad a lot of hope for them, but they are either poorly coached or our players are over rated
Can't put this on Tommy Rees. I really like that kid. Neither turn over was his fault. The ball to Floyd was right on. The lateral should have been cought. All this in the absence of a consistent running game. This in the face of incompetent? officiating. Calling false start when our guy didn't move. Obvious interference on Floyd ignored.
USC's time of possession was 2x our's. Their total yards were just shy of 2x ours. On the other hand, we had 2x the penalties and turnovers that USC had. And we had twice as much time to prepare. We were strong favorites coming in based in large part on the perception that both of our lines were far superior to theirs. We found out that the reverse was true. Our lines were easily dominated all night. Kelly's decision decision to bring in Hendrix on the goal line as Crist was driving us down the field was one of his worst in his tenure here. It served no purpose other than to confuse Crist. If Hendrix had run on the field carrying a placard that said "I'm running!" it could not have been more contrived. A horrific coaching decision that brought back memories of Tulsa last year. Given the time we had to prepare, the recruiting scenario, the obvious attempt to gin up a more contemporary atmosphere with the towels and the Ozzie Osborne music and the a wide open Top 25 waving us in , we came out of the tunnel flat and played lackluster and that is where Kiffin took Kelly to school.
Wow. What a mess. - Kiffen coached circles around Kelly and his daddy coached circles around Diaco. This was the coaching mismatch of the season. Talk about a decided schematic advantage! Just wow. USC's Oline hasn't been able to move the ball on anybody all year...not even Minnesota. The Trojan tailback is listed at 5'7" 165lbs, and he's not that big. He ran right by our Dline, which was usually over-pursuing in the opposite direction. All of our defensive keys were wrong. The other Trojan tailback was playing with a separated shoulder....he obviously didn't have much fear of being hit. This was the Navy game all over again. I wondered why Little Kiffen was sneering at Kelly all week. Now I know. He called Notre Dame's offense "simple" and he called the Irish defense "very simple." From the look of this game, he probably wrote out his solutions on a napkin before breakfast on Saturday morning. An inferior USC team waltzed right past everything Kelly tried to do. "Pathetic" is the only word that describes the game planning on our side. Wow... - Who's idea was it to play a night game? Were they aware that USC plays most of it's games at night? - If we're not going to use Hendrix, can we please sign Kiel's kid? Tommy can't beat the best. The second biggest mismatch of the day was Rees against Barkley... - Yes, the 12Pac officials were horrible. If the game had been close, we would have had a great excuse... - The kickoff return problems are solved with George Atkinson and Austin Collinsworth back there. Now we need to get some punt returners...but first we have to make them punt... - It's hard to make teams punt when your Dbacks play so far off the line that you're conceding 5-8 yards on every pass attempt... - Has anyone at Notre Dame ever heard of Robert Woods? If Michael Floyd isn't the best WR in the nation, then Woods is. Big Kiffen had a solution for Floyd, that he probably got watching the Pitt replay. How is it that the Irish weren't as concerned with Woods? - What was Carlo thinking? Did he really believe that he could out-trash talk USC? Wow... - I don't understand what the Irish were trying to do on either offense or defense in this game; how in hell am I supposed to analyze it? What was the game plan for Hendrix? Do you really put him in there as a "change-of-pace" on the goal line for the backup QB who hasn't taken a serious snap since opening day? Wowza... - The Irish have a better team than USC this year...and they were better than Michigan too...and they were MUCH better than a very average South Florida team...and none of this matters... Wow.
To the victor goes the spoils. This is qualifies as spoils... SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- A number of USC players and coaches were peeved that Notre Dame didn't use its three timeouts late in the fourth quarter in an attempt to force the Trojans to get first downs or a score. USC got the ball with 6:43 left in the game and had Curtis McNeal run the ball 10 straight times to end it, getting all the way to the Notre Dame two-yard line before time expired. With two-score margins, teams typically use all of their timeouts to force their opponents' hands, but Irish coach Brian Kelly chose not to, evidently. "At the end there, when they didn't call those timeouts, they just quit," USC linebacker Chris Galippo said. "And that's what Notre Dame football's about. They're not anything like USC." Galippo has a history with Notre Dame. He has often mentioned, during his USC career, his official visit to Notre Dame as a prep, when he came along with Jimmy Clausen and felt virtually ignored by then-coach Charlie Weis and his staff, and he'd kept that moment with him throughout his college career and used it as motivation Saturday. "We're coming halfway across the country to play these guys," Galippo said. "They hyped it up. This was their Super Bowl. They had 26 or 27 official visits this weekend. "This was it for them." from ESPN
If I read one more ******** complaint about our crowds on any of the ND boards I'm gonna puke. We had the loud music. We had the fans standing the whole game. We had the noise, plenty of it. And it meant NOTHING. Blaming the crowd is just looking for an external excuse for bad football. INSPIRED BAD FOOTBALL IS JUST AS LOUSY AS UNINSPIRED BAD FOOTBALL.
I suppose it's easy to blame Kelly for everything last night but at one minute we complain about the time of possession and we seem to forget that some players who can't keep their mouths shut, gave the ball back to the Trogs with taunting after they were stopped. What kind of idiot is into taunting when his team is getting it's ass handed to it 14-0? I'm sure if Rees was in Kelly would have tried Hendrix in the same situation. Maybe Tommy wouldn't have been so confused. Taking the snap is really complicated. I just write it off as another early Crist-miss gift for the opposition. I hope Slaughter found his jock. Barkley pulled the old fake pass trick and the kid bit like a piranha giving up a critical first down. If you wondered what it would be like when Floyd and Teo are gone, last night was a good example. They were all but invisible.
I'm just jumping to the end of this thread and will go back to read: 1. I have zero faith in Kelly and our offense is a joke. For those that don't follow my gameday twitter feed, Notre Dame football is the My Little Pony tricycle with pink streamers flowing from the grips. We can't get the tough yard, we continue to turn the ball over. By design of the play, when we turn it over, the risk of the ball going the other way for 6 is huge. 2. Diaco... I almost believed in you. 3. Rees is terrible.. I mean friggin terrible. He stares down WRs. He locks in on Floyd almost exclusively, which makes staring down the WR issue even more glaring. During one replay, actually there were several, they showed USC covering Floyd with 3 defensive backs... USC always rushes 4 at least. Would you like to bet me how many players were WIDE OPEN on that play? Which brings me to... Even during a Rees 'highlite' where he threw the ball to our TE for a first down... watch the play of that again, we have a WR (TJ?) running up the sideline and the DB had dropped coverage to a safety that wasn't there... that kid was uncovered. yes, we got a first down on the play... Had Rees read the defense correctly, he could have throw that for a TD left handed. 4. Can we find a way for Atkinson to get the ball more? 5. They kicked our ass. 6. There is a face shot if you watch the replay of the game in which USC was fully expecting us to use our timeouts.. it's the competitive thing to do. We were stopping the run... The close up of Kiffin shows him saying while shaking his head 'I don't know what the f*ck that guy is doing?' I am in the minority here of thinking Kiffin is a bad coach. I think he's an asshole, but he's not a bad coach and he's better than the guy we have. Make no mistake.. we have a better OL, DL, LBs and RBs... I'd call everything else a wash.. there's no reason to lose that game, none. They whipped our ass, end of story. This may well be Kelly's signature game.
Don't have much to add to what has been said here. Lots of criticism for everybody, Kelly giving up on the run too early, Kelly mismanaging the goal line when Tommy Rees was on the bench. The defense playing like pussies. The Coaches for this mess. I thought it was interesting that Kelly refused to "fall on his sword" and called out the team to a certain degree. They deserved to be called out, while the coaches have their share of the blame this was also a performance where USC just hit them in then nuts a stood over them an laughed, that's on the players. All the hoopla surrounding this game in the end sort of worked against us, there are a lot of good players on that USC squad, and they were big underdogs, the analysts were saying we were tougher on both lines, and they wouldn't be able to run the ball. Put a chip on their shoulder and they came out on a mission from the 1st snap, while our guys were too busy reading how good they were forgot to actually sack up and play. I'm not ready to say if we'd have scored and tied the game at 17 we'd have won, but I'd sure liked to have had that opportunity. Also a lot is being made about those final 6 minutes and not calling timeouts, I honestl don't know what to say about that. I'm sure Kelly will be asked about it in his press conference today. I don't expect that he will say he was wrong though.
Any time you lose a game and go to the locker room with a pocket full of time outs you've got some explaining to do.
Kelly on Sunday. Not much new here, he was asked about the post game crowing by USC players. He was also asked about Dayne Crist... I thought is was pretty interesting, given how much he has said about Dayne in a positive mode since he pulled him at the half of the USF game. Kelly on Sunday
Go get your barf bucket, Gip. :wink: I've addressed the issue here by acknowledging that our crowds are second to none for the big games like last night. For me, that's not the issue. When we show consistency, i.e., the same level of enthusiasm for Navy, Air Force, Pittsburgh, Tulsa, etc. that we show for Michigan MSU, Southern Cal, and BC, then I will be the first to say that our crowds are consistently the best in the land.
Hey Dayne, meet the bottom of the bus. For you lads who were there, is is true that the students had an Ur-ban Mey-er chant? I'm done with Kelly. I've continued to turn the other cheek from the get go on things that I just find reprehensible as a coach. Perhaps it's just my own personal feelings on the issue or the fact that I never wanted the guy from the start... I fully understand that I'm not in the locker room or out there on Cartier to see the ins and outs, but I keep seeing red flags that, as a coach, bother me to no end. I don't mind yelling, screaming or profanity.. It's the HOW it is applied. Unless he brings in a real OC, I can't see this guy making it... but I'm done with him.
Sid my point is that whether or not the crowd screams it's asses off or no makes no difference in the outcome of the game. Last night was a perfect example. I'm so tired of people writing that if we had music, stood all game, were loud, loud loud, it would make a difference. It didn't and it doesn't. It's a red herring and an external excuse for bad football. "We'd have won if only the crowd made more noise" (yeah, ********)
It's pretty difficult today to navigate this minefield of exploding heads, but I'll try. Let me be clear. I feel your pain, believe me. This was a heart-wrenching loss. Plus, everyone is entitled to their opinions. That what this bulletin board is for. But for goodness sake, if you are going to use quotes to crucify the coach, please put them in context. For example, don't print Kelly's two final one-line replies regarding Crist without printing what he said at the front end of the interview: Now if you want to interpret the one-liners at the end as throwing Crist under the bus, that's certainly your prerogative. I don't see it that way.