Jesus our backup QBs are terrible.... but Robinson is special and I think you may shock some folks in the Big10.
Michigan did fine and saying their QB had a good day is a wee bit of an understatement. He produced over 500 yards of total offense, on the road, against a pretty good defense. Our problem is obvious. We have one, lone, inexperienced QB and nothing on the depth chart behind him. We can't even allow him to run the ball and running the QB is a big part of Kelly's spread offense. All of our worst fears came true: 1. Crist is a good QB, but he hadn't started a game since 2007 before Purdue last week and his lack of experience causes him to make bad decisions; like overthrowing the endzone on the final play of the game when interceptions don't matter... 2. Montana's kid is not a Div 1 quarterback. He was second string in high school; third string in Jr. College and a non on this level. He needs to become the scout team QB immediately where his daddy can watch him play everyday... 3. Tommy Rees was the worst of the three new frosh QBs and it showed. I don't care if he knows the plays, because he entered school early. He's a deer in the headlights. Get him outta there until he's ready! 4. The best arm in the school is Andrew Hendrix. Pull the red-shirt off of him and give him a small package that he can run right now. Give another small package of Wildcat plays to Goodman so the two of them can give us some offense the next time Crist takes off running... 5. Keep the red-shirt on Massa for now, but put him on the bus too. Let Montana and Rees run the scout team where they belong... ..........JO'Co
ND <t>JO'Co,<br/> <br/> Yep, without Crist we are in REAL bad shape on offense. The drop off after him is dramatic! When I saw Rees come in the game I thought Kelly had suddenly lost his mind!!! Of course I didn't know that Crist was being held out. If Crist isn't out for most of the first half this game probably ends a lot differently no matter what shoelace does. Rees is a long way off and Montana....well he ain't Joe and never will be. <br/> <br/> There were several positives for ND in this game like Carlo, Manti, Allen etc. but for now I'll just wait a couple of days while I get this loss out of my system before commenting. <br/> <br/> Congrats Michigan, nice game for Shoelace.</t>
I did not like the way Kelly yelled at his QBs everytime they ran off the field. The three of them have two games experience between them. Kelly was in full panic mode the entire second quarter and that was a shock to me. Rees looked like he was having an anxiety attack and Montana lloked like "hey, I'm a legacy. they told me I could get a jersey with my pop's number on the back. I didn't think I would have to play!".
ND <t>George,<br/> <br/> I'm not upset with Kelly for yelling at the QBs. If you watch any of the games when he was on the sideline a Cincy he got pretty animated at times and I can remember several times last season where he got all over Tony Pike for some bad decisions. last week against Purdue he was relatively quiet for some reason. <br/> <br/> I don't think he was in panic mode I just think his QBs were making some pretty bad decisions and he let them know.</t>
George, you and I saw Kelly differently. He was COACHING! I didn't have a problem with it at all. Have you forgotten what Lou Holtz was like on the sidelines? He made Kelly yesterday look laid back. If Kelly continues to game-coach that way, I would hope that our backup QBs eventually would improve to the point that they would be reliable under emergency circumstances. All you armchair experts aside, I saw Rees throw one pass yesterday,so I'm not qualified to judge his competence as a backup QB. I also am not going to judge Montana just because he's Joe's kid. I'm going to wish him success and hope he improves with time. I question why we could not adjust defensively to keep the middle closed up on the QB draw, which was wide open all day. Where were the two MLBs? the NG? I like Teo and Calabrese, but I'm not ready to annoint either one of them as indispensable. They are MLBs. They make tackles like all MLBs, even on bad teams. I have yet to see anyone on defense other than Walls last week step up and make game changing plays when the chips are down. Then and only then will I start singing someone's praises. The MI QB certainly is highly talented, but we allowed him to look like the Second Coming. 500 yards of total offense? We have a LOT of work to do with our defense. Having said all that, the game yesterday was winnable, despite the last MI drive. THAT'S what I take away from the loss. It's a young season with 10 games left to play. So far, we are following the exact script from last season. Win game 1 vs. a not-very-good team and get all pumped up, then lose a close one to MI on a late TD drive. I'm waiting for us to write a new script. I hope it happens vs. MSU next Saturday night.
I second what Tim said about Kelly. He treated the ND QBs the same way he treated Pike at Cinncy. Stats are funny things. At the end of the game, after the accolades were tossed at Robinson, the fact is ND had more first downs, more average yds. per play and more yds. in total offense. The big difference in the game was the field position disadvantages caused by the turn overs in the first half. Michigan just seems to have our number which really sucks for those of us ND fans living in Michigan. Richrod is on the hot seat and will have to ride DR as far as he can take him. If the kid can take that kind of punishment for more than 6 games I'll be really surprised.
I get your point fellas but the only decisions those two QBs thought they would have to make yesterday was which party to go to last night. I just thought Kelly exacerbated the situation by yelling at them after every three and out. His job at that moment , in my view, was to calm everything down. And no decision either of them made was more illadvised than Kelly's decision to forego the FG at the end of the half to go for a TD.
George, I had confidence that you and I would find common ground on some point. :wink: I agree with you re: the field goal. Unfortunately, it's one of those 'hindsight" situations. If we had hung on to win, no one would be talking about it. I tend to be conservative in front of the TV. I would have kicked the FG and gone into halftime down less than 2 TDs.
Thanks, Corey. Two different games. When Crist was playing, ND was the better team; when he was out, DR was the better team. I am not sure M would have prevailed had Crist played the whole game as ND was different team when he was out. One thing that jumped out at me was that ND has a lot of talent on both sides of the ball. T'eo and Caalabese were monsters out there. The tough thing for ND now is the immediate schedule. Win or lose, M usually plays poorly after the ND game as the way the two teams tear into each other on the field leaves M a physically and emotionally spent force the next week. Going to East Lansing to play a jacked up Sparty team and then returning home to play Stanford is, IMHO, a rough road. ND's task of playing the Spartans under these circumstances is kind of like a boxer facing an amped-up, big puncher. If you can survive the initial onslaught and not get blown out early, the Spartans may start looking like George Foreman did against Jimmy Young by game's end. As far as M goes, our OL, DL, WR and linebacker play are much improved over last year. Crist showed that our secondary in really vulnerable and ND 's defense showed our running backs to be nothing special. We could do quite well in the B10 if DR stays healthy. In the past two games he has passed and rushed for over 900 yards but has also been knocked out of both games for brief periods and took some brutal hits both weeks. He is really special but RR is going to have to figure out a way to keep the offense clicking without having him run the ball 25-30 times a game as that type of workload will cause him to wear out well before season's end.
Well, for my money that was the best individual effort that I have ever seen. He even kicked a great punt! Congrats Bobda!
Congrats Bobda, that kid really is something. He really is so difficult to defense given that he has developed into an accurate passer with some zip on the ball. You can't really blitz him because he can step around it and take off or hit you with a pass. That's the way Michael Vick was when he was at VaTech, a one man gang. UM should run out to 5 and 0 pretty easily. It's brilliant that he's got that thing with the shoelaces, it'll keep the media right on top of him and people will remember it. It was tough to lose to you guys 2 years in a row on the last drive (essentially). On the game, I don't think Kelly's interaction with the QB's is a big deal it's some coaches style, he hasn't gone out on the field like Lou did to Huntley Backich and grabbed his facemask and lead him to the sideline before chewing his ass out. Spurrier is well known for his fiery sideline behavior, as was Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops. Mack Brown is a little different on the sidelines. As far as the non-FG, I didn't like the decision and ultimately put Kelly in the position of having to drive the field and score a TD, being down 28-27 is a little different when your FG kicker has some decent range, he would have been kicking on that last play for the win rather than throwing a hope and prayer to the endzone ( or in this case into the bleachers) I'm pretty comfortable with the developement of the offense, and think they will get better every week and be pretty formidable by the years end. I don't understand what's happened to Michael Floyd, though. I am however worried about our defense, in spite of the fact that they held UM scoreless in the 2nd half till that last drive. Before we can make the step up to being a better than good team, we have to have a defense that can force turnovers and get sacks, put pressure on the other team to force those mistakes. We aren't there right now, I think we are better than last year but not much, I think most of it is the subtraction of the willy nilly blitzing that Tenuta called on every play. All in all a good weekend, Friday was great, today was beautiful, and it really got down to it was miserable Sat AM and up to around kickoff when the rains stopped. However being true Irishmen we were able to drink our beer in the rain!! BTW you guys do know why Irishmen never clap.... ...they'd have to put down their beer!! bada bump!!
Now that the dust has settled. DR really is a special kid. Aside from Gerald Ford and Bobda, he may be the only 'Michigan man' that I like. I didn't like our defensive scheme, but I understand it. I don't have the hand wringing going on that others at NDN do. We do not face anything remotely like DR for the rest of the year. We'll face runners and throwers, but not one that does both.. not that DR is a great passer, but he's good enough and has more than ample talent around him... The 2 way guys we face after this don't have that supporting cast. On our offense, I don't mind Kelly yelling. Our backups made horrendous decisions. I'm not arm chair QBing. I'd invite anyone to watch the replay of the game and you will see that we had wide open WRs on every play... Crist.. run the GD ball.. I understand the issue of the injury. I understand how bad we look without you... Still, take what the defense gives you and when they drop 8/9, they are daring you to run... Floyd and Rudolph, catch the god damned ball. Carlo, I'm a believer and I do love the fact that he believes that violence is a part of pass coverage. Still, he goes for the knockout hit on every play. There were a few times he whiffed going for the KO when he could have grabbed a leg to cause the play to go for a 5, to 8 yard loss. Still, he's a baby. He'll learn that in time... We have some great young players and he's one of them. Back to the coverage.. we pursue and tackle well... The soft alignment killed us all day but playing a safety short, we didn't have the depth or talent to roll up and go man all day. Motta did a helluva job. M just might give Iowa and Ohio State a run for the Roses. oh ps Kelly... welcome to GREAT college football... This is Notre Dame vs Michigan.. when you get points, you take them... You never know how this game will turn out in the 4th quarter. You get a mulligan on this one.. but it's your only one.
Just read that the Irish played a man short on the coaching staff, Mike Elston the DL and ST coach has some sort of virus that they are trying to figure out and they aren't sure when he'll return. Also backup LB Steve Paskorz is gone for the season with knee surgery. At one point before he injured his knee in Aug he was in the 2 deep at LB.
Gipper and Corey, LOL. BTW, Ann Coulter in a UM Law School grad so there might be one M woman of whom you guys think kindly. As to be anticipated, the Alumni Association does not put her on the list of prominent alumni although they do find the time to mention Tom Hayden and several other boutique revolutionaries. I am sending an e-mail asking that Stu's dad be put on the list. TOK, I hope that RR is saying that to make raise the self esteem of our back-ups and actually does not believe what he said. Also, are there any conspiracy buffs on the NDNation noting the circumstance that Elston, a former M player, suddenly became ill just before the Michigan game? [/b]
I would have considered that until I read somewhere that he'd already given 72 vials of blood for testing to determine what kind of infection he has. At that point I kinda took him at face value on the health issue.