It's a long season and I don't expect our defense to pitch shutouts but last night you have to be impressed with how we played in the 2nd half against a team that according to all the experts on TV had more players and more speed. ___________________________________________ Irish defense played out of their minds in the second half. Here’s what happened. First MSU series: Three-and out—tackle for loss, sack. Second series: Three-and-out—sack. Next series: Gave up a touchdown. Next series: 4 plays; big sack on third down. Next series: Three-and-out—big sack on third down Next series: Big fumble recovery on third-and-nine. Next series: Interception returned for touchdown on third down. Next series: Interception to ice the game. Folks, that was some impressive defense and the defense and Minter deserve a lot of credit for this win.
I swear I wrote my assessment for the rest of ND's season before I read this from Mandel: "SI.com college football writer Stewart Mandel shares his commentary, analysis and random tidbits on the latest developments around the country. 9/24/2006 01:58:00 PM Five Things We Learned This Weekend 1) That Notre Dame is headed to the Sugar Bowl. As flawed as that team is, you can pretty much script the rest of its season. The Irish are going to beat their next seven opponents fairly easily. And they’re going to get crushed by USC. That puts them at 10-2; Sugar gets first choice of at-large teams this year. The only remaining mystery is how much they’ll lose the bowl game by."
Right now the media is back to it's TheyHateUs mode. Yeah, you Gators know all about creaming an unworhty Notre Dame team in the Sugar Bowl don't you! Do you want me to point you to all the Youtube entries about that game, there is some great shots of Gator players shying away from contact with the Bus.
Let's analyze Mandel's article ND which has played the toughest schedule to date and is 3-1 will be 10-1 at the end of November. How "flawed" is that? If SC couldn't "crush" us with Bush and Lienart how are they going to do it with lesser talent? Then there's the Sugar Bowl. No problem the host conference is the SEC.
No question Quinn could pose problems for the UF pass defense but I think Auburn's defense would pose more problems for Quinn than vice versa. If we were somehow fortunate enough to play ND in the Sugar Bowl my money is on Meyer...big time...because he is a student of history and in particular ND and UF history. He would have his team very...very prepared and pumped for the Irish. And that is as opposed to Steve Spurrier in the '92 Sugar whose team did in fact take ND lightly and besides ole Steve's teams could definitely lay some pretty good eggs in bowl games.
That picture is AWESOME!!!! I was at my brothers engagement party in Richmond VA and they put out a high def tv out in the back yard for our family to watch the game. Boy was it a struggle to watch it with all the big cheers and high fives when ND was getting drilled. Boy did I pray hard for that one last night, VT fans say they should be ranked ahead of ND so they hate ND. I told them to stop playing your Northeasterns...... Classic too.....any video editors out there, make a tape of MSU coach from the beginning to the end, cheering and laughing to complete shock....I LOVE IT!!!!! LAST THING......Bob Davie sucks at TV analyst too, made my ears bleed.
In case you haven't gotten to read all 5 of Mandel's "things we've learned so far, I'll share with you number 5
ND/Mich St. <t>Just goes to show you you can never count the Irish out!! <br/> I waited 1 year for that rematch with msu and seeing the faces of the dissapointed msu fans when they realized they were beaten made it all worth while. Hurts... don't it now my fine spartan friends? <br/> <br/> It seems that many in the media now assume the boys will win the next 7 fairly easily and then be humiliated by the condoms in the final. They then assume that the Irish will go to a BCS bowl anyway and be smashed by whoever they play. <br/> <br/> My thoughts are that hopefully by the time we get to the last game of the year CW will be able to fix a few of the flaws in the team and I'm also quite certain that a running game will emerge again and some new faces will make their prescence known by then and it will be more than a B.Quinn/Smaj/Rhema show. <br/> <br/> It doesn't matter what the media says, whether it's this year or some time in the next few, the Irish will have another NCAA title whether they like it or not. Another winning season this year means another class of bigtime recruits and we know now that we have a coaching staff that can develope them.</t>
The consensus on Gator message boards Gipper is that the fans just wanted to see Tebow continue the drive because it was he who had led the offense on a 60 yard drive in 5 plays down to a first and goal at the 8. I felt that way too watching on TV but no way would I have booed because it could have been misconstrued as it was by the TV announcers as anti-Leak. The booing then was not directed at Leak personally in truth but in reality it was hard for it not to appear that way on TV so it definitely was a group of stupid fans that were doing it. I would like Bill's opinion on this since he was there.
That's a shame MCG. There he was parroting your thoughts about ND and then he got to the Gator fans. Only then did his opinion go completely off of reality.