I don't think we could have stopped the blitz package. We tried that on one series and it was the only drive that Florida State looked good in the 1st half. Winston had all day to throw. By the way, how horrible were these refs? Not just on the final call but both teams held A LOT in this game and only ND was penalized for it until FSU was finally called on a meaningless 3rd and long backed up against their own endzone late in the 4th.. which we were going to decline anyway. Our front 4 beat their OL all night. Both of these teams deserved better officials.
Well, as an outsider, I thought the PI call was correct but it was one of those calls that is almost never made. The only thing I would say is the receiver should have at least made an attempt run a pattern, he just blocked but again, I don't think that one is called very often. Other than that, I didn't see a big disparity in calls, good or bad between the two teams. Just a caveat here before "someone" takes to google to disprove what I have said, I haven't done any research to support the opinion above, but then as "someone" said recently, "irrational? Absolutely, but that doesn't mean my opinion is any less valid." :wink:
I agree KP....but not knowing the rules, to me it was just like a run, and with that in mind, the receivers are allowed to block?....I don't know....but your also allowed to make contact in the first 5 yards also right?
AJ, actually, I think the 5 yd thing is a NFL rule. If the pass goes beyond the line of scrimmage, wide receivers blocking defensive backs while the ball is in the air is pass interference.
Here's a sideline look at the play. It appears to me the Fuller is trying to run a crossing route and the d back tries to hold him. The d back could never had made the play on the receiver who caught the ball. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlX8EhpzwO4
Call was on Prosisse, and I have seen slo mo's and the FSU db comes up and engages CJ, grabs his jersey and arms and basically was trying to prevent him from getting into his route. IMHO should not have been a penalty, just the usual fight a reciever has to go through to try and get off the line and the DB figtting to keep him from getting off and into his route. But the narrative has been established that it was a good call, most of the talking heads are taking that line. The guys I play golf with said the same thing, you guys played a great game last night but I think that was the right call. ND fans of course disagree, but none of those guys I play golf with are invested in ND winning so they just watched the game and when Herbie and Reese Davis affirmed it was the right call. That was it, it was a good call. We've been here before, the Bush Push, the thieving Pac12 refs who took away a TD from David Grimes in a Stanford game, the thieving B10 refs who called Bobby Brown for taunting vs Michigan. And to tell you the truth it's not just us. It happens every weekend out there, not more than 2 weeks ago the Iowa State AD had had enough of B12 refs taking games away from ISU and said something about it in a press conference, cost him 25K. I think the Colorado coach also said something and was fined last month. Oklahoma had a game stolen vs Oregon something like 10 years ago, President of the University basically called the Pac12 refs thieves and said OU would never go back to the Pac12 and play again till something was done. Of course I'm pretty sure Dave and Bill can elaborate on ACC officials protecting FSU. Brian Kelly said something today in his press conference. He can't be fined by the ACC since ND is not a football member. But in the end we have to get over it, move on. We have more games left to play and they are very important games. The worst thing that could happen is we (the team) let this linger and play terrrible vs Navy and lose a couple of more games. The team and coaches need to rise above this and win out and give us a chance to get into the Final 4. Getting into the Final 4 is going to be tough for us, even winning out against some very good teams. ASU, Louisville, USC and even Northwestern are teams we need to respect and one or more of those teams could beat us if we don't come ready to play. We will fight the not having played a conference championship game, not being in the SEC West, etc. We are right now raked 7th and 8th in polls that don't count, the Playoff committee won't release their first poll till after next weekends games. We don't play next weekend so we will most likely stay right about where we are. Key games will be the two Mississippi schools, MSU plays at Kentuck and Ole Miss plays at LSU, Oregon plays at CAL and So.Carolina plays at Auburn. If an upset occurs in one of those games we could maybe bump up a little. It will be very telling who they rank in the top 10 and where you stand in that top 10. Obviously higher is better. But since supposedly they are to rank based on who is the best teams, and take schedule into consideration, it could be very different from the current top 10....or not.
I saw that, Herbie and Davis made a big deal about CJ and Jvan on NDNation posted late last night that the officals confirmed the call was on CJ. But if it was on Fuller it's even a worse call. But bottom line is that the ACC is unlikely to admit that the officals got it wrong and even if they did we still lost and we have to move on and win out. I do hope that Swarbrick has a long conversation with the ACC over this, again not that it's going to be overturned and we'd be awarded the game. But maybe those guys who made the call get fired or fined or something and never work another ND game again.
Q. Wondering if after watching the film you had any more clarity or an explanation as to why the penalty was called at the end of the game? COACH KELLY: Actually, I have less clarity. I guess it was actually called on Will Fuller, not C.J. Just adds more uncertainty as to the final play. Again, the play itself in terms of what we ask our kids to do, it was pretty clear what happened on the play. Florida State blew the coverage and they got rewarded for it. So it's unfortunate. Q. In your estimation was there anything that Will could have done differently on it? COACH KELLY: No. I mean, I think he's working back inside. He did not go out of his way to impede the defender. The official that was furthest from the play that had the ability to see it saw it differently. That's the way it goes.
According to a poster on ISD the official, last name Ryan for heaven's sake is the same ACC official who called Tuitt for targeting and got him thrown out of the Pitt game last year.
Y'all are going to drive yourselves crazy if you blame this loss on a penalty call. You can argue all you want, but at best it is questionable. Move on. :?
kp is right. There are many reasons why we had to play catch-up at the end. We played an outstanding game against a talented and very tough opponent. If a few plays on both sides of the ball had gone differently, FSU would have been the team trying to catch us at the end. It didn't happen. I don't like the call, but I understand it, and I'm not going to lose sleep over it. I certainly am not going to buy into the conspiracy theories that abound here and elsewhere. As the song goes, I'm movin' on. 8)
Yeah that's good advice kp, but we're fans we hold on to things like this. Old time Houston Oilers fans still talk about the thieving refs in Pittsburgh who stole the '79 AFC Championship Game. In fact most fanbases have a long list of games that were "stolen" from them by those thieving refs!
Terry, You know what, I lived in Humble in 1979. I worked at Houston EnRoute Air Traffic Control Center out by Intercontinental. Earl Campbell was a man among boys. The Steelers couldn't take that away. :wink:
Terry, I like Kelly's comment about closing. His words exude toughness. I saw toughness in our team Saturday night, big time toughness. That's why I feel better than I ever thought I'd feel about a loss. IMO, it's like a "lose the battle, win the war" kind of situation. We finally showed the football world that ND is back and hungry. We did it with a young team full of players who are going to be around for a while. We lost the battle Saturday night, but we clearly won back the respect that's been missing since the early 90s. At least that's how I feel about it.
I would not mind a rematch with that team one bit. I got a chuckle out of the announcing team constantly mentioning 'that's a true freshman' to the 2 true freshman seeing action for FSU. We have so many freshman and sophomores starting and playing regularly for our defense, I don't even think about it anymore. I thought our lack of depth in the secondary showed at times as that was the only way FSU had any hope of moving the ball at all. There are very few games that I can recall in which the offensive line was whipped so badly all night and then the team went on to win the game. I liked Kelly's aggressiveness but I do wish he would have punted on the 4th down (maybe 2nd quarter?). That's all Monday morning QB talk, but when we put FSU inside their 20, they were shitting themselves. I think Jimbo has a very good idea about what his team can and can't do. The closer he got to his own endzone, the more his play calling seemed to reflect a fear of Famous Jameis making a pick 6 type of mistake.. which means they run the ball more, which means we just get the ball back. Hegerty was shitty again until he figured out that there wasn't going to be a holding call made. The rest of the OL played pretty well. We had 1 missed block by Folson and of course it resulted in a sack. Speed does that. The thing I took away from all this is the following.. that's the defending NC and favorite to win it again who has the defending Heisman winning QB and I'm not sure I'd trade one single player for one of theirs. Things are a bit brighter under the dome despite the loss.
ND <t>It's taken me about 24hrs to try to make some sense of what happened in this game last night but after reading some of the posts I agree with Corey that things are brighter under the dome despite the loss.<br/> <br/> to be absolutely honest, until I saw that game last night I wasn't 100% sure we were a top 5 or 10 team or that we truly had finally made it back to the upper echelons of college football. It's been so many years and so many twists, turns, false hopes etc. but somewhere in the middle of that game last night I found myself saying we are every bit as good as the so-called defending national champions on almost every level and we do belong back at the top of things in college football. We are relevant again for sure. <br/> <br/> We got robbed but we kicked their ass and they know it today and you can bet they are having a collective sigh of relief that they were given that game in the end. <br/> <br/> We didn't drop that far in the polls and I'm pretty sure if we can win out we can be in the thick of this first playoff. As I see it now with real clarity, there is no one left on the schedule we can't handle and if we do we'll be fine. <br/> <br/> I'll keep this Golson kid despite his miscues and I'll keep our coaching staff cause they are doing the right things. <br/> <br/> I don't really know what the sports media is saying about this yet as I haven't really listened to any of them today but any of them who are still doubting that ND belongs in the top 10 for sure is just plain idiotic or just hate ND so bad they can't admit the truth.</t>
If FSU is top five/playoff material then most certainly ND is too.... agreed. With Winston back there the noles seem like the force to be dealt with but I do wonder if they are as good as they were last season.
Tim, I agree with every point you made in your above post, right down to what you said to yourself in the middle of the game. We must have been channeling each other. :wink: