I don't know how you score 49 points and feel like you sucked the whole game. As always a lot of credit to the midshipmen, those guys just keep coming at you in waves. I really was pissed at Kelly in the 4th qtr when he got two take aways that gave us the ball at their 30 yd line and he just didn't stay aggressive, which he said you have to be with Navy. Result was two 6 plays about 5 yards and two wounded duck field goals that went nowhere. Defense, man I hate to see Schmidt on crutches with Arz State on the horizon. I did like much of what I saw of Nyles Morgan, that guy is big and fast. I liked what I saw. But damn it seemed like when they wanted to run outside we got caught up inside and couldn't get numbers to chase the pitch man. I thought their OT's going out and blocking on our safety's coming to run support was very interesting and effective. Over all I give the defense a C-. Sadly with a 49-39 win that was in doubt till the last minute. I could see both Baylor and Arz jumping us if Arz defeats UCLA. I would not at all be shocked if they kept Ole Miss ahead of us. Oh win and move on. Beat ASU>
Old Miss belongs in front of us. And we may well get passed from behind. That win was only slightly better than a loss. And I don't think we are going to like the injury report either. Uncle Rico got taken down a few pegs tonight.
Our young guys made a lot of dumb plays and we still won. As T mention, Kelly took his foot off the gas and the team seemed to follow suit, which again let Navy back in the game only to see us pull away again. Arizona went down. Ole Miss went down. East Carolina went down. TCU damn near went down. Georgia went down. Arkansas gave Ole Miss all they wanted. Just win and move on. There's a lot of football to be played.
On injuries: James Onwalu possible concussion. Jarron Jones has two bad ankles. He had one before the game started. Sheldon Day has a bad shoulder but they are not too concerned. Joe Schmidt. They are not saying yet. All on defense.
Golson spent all that time in Calif and one of the things that was going to be changed was he was going to grip the ball on the laces. Can he get a refund?
1. Stanford UGH Epic Fail 2. WVa Oh so close, if only their coach had some cajones 3. Oklahoma State EPIC Fail 4. Arkansas Oh So Close 5. Arizona State BINGO..Big Game coming UP
ND <t>Like I said, even when we win our players get hurt. I say again? I hate this game.<br/> <br/> Terry,<br/> <br/> As long as Golson keeps playing like he did in this game he cand grip the ball any damn way he wants.</t>
I still lurk on the BGI boards because the fans are very amusing. This morning they are whining about Navy being a dirty team who hurts us every year. Even more hilarious than that, they are blaming Golson's INT before half as the reason the game was ultimately close. They ignore the fact that he accounted for 6 TDs and completed 72% of his passes. And in the "Twilight Zone" category, some of them are actually pining away for Bob Diaco. I used to pay $9.99 per month to follow that nonsense.
That late interception in the first half did seem to change the momentum in the game. It resulted in a potential 6 or 10 point swing. Worse however, was our D backs being beaten for a long pass setting up the Navy FG to end the half. The injuries were just football. Some were self inflicted. I fear we've lost Schmidt for the year. One of the things that the triple option does is prevent defenses from blitzing the QB. Navy throws on non passing downs and runs in third and 9 situations. At the end when Navy had to throw we were all over their QB. OF biggest concern to me is the breakdown in our FG kicking game. Brindza's first miss almost went out of bounds. Terrible performance by him and the special teams.
INTs are never good but at some point the defense has to cover mistakes. ND had one turnover. That should have been long forgotten after half time. That game was close because Kelly tried to keep it that way. Navy gives us the ball two consecutive times on their own 30 and Kelly runs three conservative plays and goes for the FG. That could have cost the us the game.
Tough loss, Joe Schmidt. Too bad Grace never recovered from his broken leg. I guess we won't see him at all this year. Both he and Schmidt will be back next year. I hope they are both 100%. Terrific opportunity for Nyles Morgan, who has a ton of physical talent but as a true freshman is likely to be making some what's he doing type of plays and some whoa look at that type of plays. Of course on all the boards so many fans want us to stop playing Navy. But that's not going to happen, you can take that to the bank.
Who in the hell would want Diaco back instead of Uncle Rico?! I mean, Diaco's defenses were stout against Stanford, but everyone else it was a bit of a grab bag. I can't imagine that anyone is that big of a fan of consistency (because we were consistently given up yards) that they'd be pining for Diaco. The loss of Schmidt really hurts. I recorded the game (because I slept through most of it) and watched the replay twice. Morgan is a monster, but he doesn't make the correct read all the time. Schmidt really set the tone back there. That's just a shame. I guess we'll have to hit people harder now to cover it. Thankfully for us, Arizona State is as stupid as they are talented.
It's funny how this season has played out. Before the season, in early August, just about everybody figured that we would be very dependent on the offense that the defense was too thin and too young. That we would have to outscore a lot of teams. OK so what happened. Well it started with that shutout of Michigan, people started to think BVG and this defense had some potential to be really great. But they were still young, playing freshmen all over the place, playing a former walk on at the Mike LB position and making him the defacto captain on the field. Some big plays vs Stanford and we're thinking hot damn we're a much better defense than we expected. Then UNC torched us and Jameis found his stride in the 2nd half and now Navy just ran all over under and around our guys. Inspite of string of turnovers that Golson had, in the end it's been the offense that has been what has us at 7-1, or more specifically it's Golson. So right now we are what we thought we would be, a young thin defense that really needs the offense to score a lot of points.
re: Navy I agree with Tim. I hate this game and we lose important players every year, and yes, I know that we will always play Navy for historical reasons. I don't know who cares about this game. The stadium appeared to be empty, but we will always play them ......sigh... re: linebackers I was worried about our LBs early in this game. The only guy who knew what he was doing was Joe Schmidt. The others were right out of a high school all-star game. Greer Martini is an 18 year-old freshman monster...,but sometimes he got caught inside, because he took a wrong step. I used to play LB and it's a trapped feeling. Imagine you just stepped into a telephone booth and no one will allow you to get out. Inside LBs can't step the wrong way, they have to know where to go. Jaylon Smith (soph. age 19) did the best, which is no surprise, but his speed has been covering for some mistakes in previous games. Against an option team, you can't play sideline-to-sideline. You have to stay on one side and trust the guys on the other side. James Onwualu was trust worthy on the other side, but he got hurt too. We will really need him now. He's been improving... Nyles Morgan, another 18 year-old frosh, is an all-world athlete. He's almost as fast as WRs like Fuller, but he hits as hard as anyone on the team. He's a future superstar, but unfortunately he's needed right now. I lost count of how many times he was sucked into the middle to stop the run on the option, while the Navy simply continued around the (his) end. Many times, he simply appeared to be lost out there. He would come running up to the pile after the whistle had blown...looking around...wondering who he was supposed to hit. He was totally clueless without Schmidt and Onwualu out there and now he has one week to figure it out. This is the scenario we feared. Line backer was the one place that we couldn't afford injuries. The young kids are better athletes than the older players, but now the Irish will have to play them all at the same time. Mistakes will be made: just like all the mistakes that you see among the safeties with Collinsworth gone... re: ASSU These guys are stupid. Corey has them pegged. Every week they play dumb and seem get away with it. In last year's Holiday Bowl, I watched Texas Tech split out three WRs and THREE times ASSU sent out TWO Dbacks to cover them......except for the time they only sent out ONE Dback and their coaches called time out... One of my grandsons will be at this game and I have no idea who's side he will be on. When they played UCLA, he cheered for the Bruins while wearing his ASU gear, explaining to his animal house brothers that, "I have friends who play for UCLA." At the ASSU-USC game, he had field passes and stood on the USC sideline......wearing his gold ASU cap and SUN DEVILS shirt. Trojan fans were screaming obscenities at him and his pal Leroy throughout the game. When they began throwing things, the police had to escort them out there and he missed the Flutie-bomb which won the game for ASSU. When I asked him about publicly disregarding the opinions of so many people he said simply, "Fork 'em." Among the intellectual Lilliputians at Arizona State, my grandson is a comparative wizard of cleverness and reason. He's majoring in marketing, so whatever happens, I hope he can sell himself well enough to talk his way out of trouble... I think we can out-smart these guys; even with freshmen linebackers...
I still like this defense. We are young. WE were hit hard by 'Paper gate.' At the same time, they make plays. The truth is, our offense does not do a very good job of protecting the defense. We're going to have to gamble, bring pressure and hope to accomplish 2 things. 1) Get off the field 2) Create timely turnovers. Despite all of the losses on that side of the ball, they've done just that. ND fans don't always take the most realistic view of their opponents. North Carolina is a team that can only be blown out one way, by keeping the ball from them. That's just not something we do very well. We score, we get yards, but haven't really been able to just run the ball down someone's throat. We fumbled twice, losing both and threw an INT. We did this to a team that regularly drops 30+ points on teams. We still won. Famous Jameis is the deserved (on the field) defending Heisman trophy winner on the defending national champion who has never lost a game at Florida State. We had that dude rattled. He found his stride, but it should be mentioned, that he only found this stride when he was on the other side of his 35. Anytime he was inside the 35, Jimbo had to throttle down the offense because he was afraid of our defense and/or the mistakes Jameis was going to make. There was 1 time they tried to open it up deep taking advantage of a ND turnover, and he threw a pick to Schmidt on the 1st play. Jimbo never trusted them deep again. Look at FSU's last possession. It was shooting fish in a barrel. That was a game in which we were officially losing players due to suspension for the rest of the year, while Florida State was removing suspensions for players so they could play. That was also a game in which ND threw 2 INTs and fumbled twice, losing none, but killing the play. That stuff hurts. Navy was the first game in which I really felt our offense won it for us, and it's also the game in which the injuries/suspensions finally caught up to us. It was against an opponent who runs a very specialized offense and seemingly does this to us every single year. It's easily their #2 game on the schedule and it's a team we just don't care about until it's almost too late. At some point in time, our offensive line is going to have to take over a game and ice the damned thing. We had chances to do that against Navy but let them back in the game. To me, it all gets back to our offensive line. I also think the turnover battle looms large in these next few weeks.
Kelly commented that the defense played better when Navy had to start throwing the ball and they could play more base defense. We of course won't see another offense like Navy till we play Ga.Tech and Navy next year.
I have a question for those who want to blame playing Navy for injuries. I might have missed something. What injuries were specific to how Navy plays?
The answer is none. I get tired of this every year. ND fans whining about Navy and not having anything to gain by playing them and how they hurt us every time, etc etc. They spot us 40 lbs a man. They are all day tough, fundamentally as close to perfect as you will see and have not one ounce of quit in them. IF they are too much for us to handle we should drop them. But then don't talk about NCs or anything like that.