The Wildcats are not having a very good season to say the least, with only 3 wins and currrently on a 4 game losing streak. But they did go to Happy Valley and beat Penn State and they did beat Wisconsin at home. The Irish are big favorites 14-16 points, and I hope that we do in fact have a big win. But I fear that the habit of turning the ball over is addictive and sometimes no matter how much players and coaches say they are working on it and going to fix it...it just keeps happening. So if we turn the ball over we will most likely have a close game and probably still win but not a very fulfilling win. Sort of like the Navy game, we won...great but we made it harder than it had to be. I don't know anything about Northwestern, do they have injuries to key players or not? I don't know what they do well? Do they have an athletic QB and do they run an up tempo offense? If I were them after watching teams who will sellout on the blitz like ASU or even Syracuse did have success in creating turnovers, I would get off the bus blitzing the Irish.
Just think Joel if we'd joined the Big 10 we'd probably play them every year! You'll have a good year with the ND schedule in 2016 when Navy and Army are on it!
Pretty cool story about a Northwestern Football Player. http://247sports.com/Bolt/A-veterans-day-Active-Navy-SEAL-plays-for-Northwestern-32815160
They throw the ball all over the place. Generally, they don't give up and try to keep the game close. They'll steal it at the end if you let them.
TOK, Here is a scouting report on Northwestern courtesy of Mgoblog: http://mgoblog.com/content/preview-northwestern-8 Corey, I really do not see NW presenting a great aerial threat for ND. Due to injuries, their wide outs are probably the slowest you will play all year. Their offensive line has not been good in pass protection all year. Basically, I think their game plan will be to try and keep control of the clock by running the ball and short passes, but they are going to have a hard time dealing with the speed and talent of your defense despite all of the injuries ND has sustained. As far as their defense goes, I, in contrast to the scouting blog, think the strength of their defense is their dbs. But, they have not faced a team with receivers as talented as ND. NW also has not shown the ability to put a lot of pressure on a passer so I suspect Golson is going to put up some sizable numbers in the air. NU, Minnesota and Iowa dominated the line of scrimmage against the Wildcats and ran through NW. ND's huge line has the capacity to do the same but I have a hard time seeing Kelly shifting from his usual strategy of attacking a defense by the pass as opposed to grinding down a defense with a power running game.
ND <t>Well if we have 2 or less turnovers by Golson we win. more than 2....who knows. that's what it has come down to.</t>
I listened to Mike Franks Power Hour, and they compared Jimmy Clausen and Brady Quinn's numbers regarding turnovers to Golson and Golson in his first 2 seasons has 2 fewer turnovers with similar number of snaps (actually a few more snaps than either but it was pretty close). Still doesn't make me feel very good about his taking care of the football. If Northwestern can't pressure Golson as Bobda suggests then we should be fine and Golson should be able to rock and roll. But if they are smart with nothing to lose in this game, Fitzgerald will come up with every sort of blitz package he can dig up and sell out to put pressure on Golson. Syracuse did that and it worked and that was the first game that Golson started turning the ball over.
Under Golson and Kelly the Irish play a very up tempo offense. So we score fast and turn the ball over fast. As a result, we find ourselves in very high scoring games and our defense seems to always be on the field. Golson's turnovers seem to always come in big bunches. I think he is maybe 6' tall and he has very poor pocket management skills. Defenses are blitzing more and more becuase the net result is that the entire pocket is forced back and Golson either gets caught up in the backwash or gets his passes batted down at the LOS. The irony is that he throws a really nice ball and is a very good runner with exceptional speed for a QB. In my opinion, ND needs to pass off the run again to slow the rush down. Kelly sold out on the run against ASU and it cost us the game.
Off topic, a week early re: Louisville. Their QB, soph Will Gardner, is out for the season due to a knee injury suffered in the BC game. Our situation could be worse. I'll take Golson and his correctable issues.
I've only seen him play vs FSU and he was on fire in the 1st half and came back to earth in the 2nd half.
Sid, I agree with you, What I'm saying is that one player holds the entire fortunes of this team in his hands. That is unusual. We sink or swim with Everitt Golson. There is no Plan B.
George, my comment about correctable issues was not at all related to your comments. I agree with you that he holds our destiny in his hands. Oops! :lol: Seriously, you are correct in your assessment. I was referring to how a QB injury can change a team's fortunes, as it may have done with Louisville. Of course, I know nothing about the backup. I was saying that I'd rather have Golson healthy with his problems than not have him at all.
Bobda, I agree entirely. I was speaking in generality about the Northwestern offense year in and year out. They'll try to go short and hold onto the ball. You're spot on about how to beat them, and a possible conflict our HC may have in doing that. George, The frustrating thing about teams blitzing us with success is that Golson can run. They are conceding the 5 yard bubble underneath and Golson needs to return to making teams pay for that.
Interesting article on Kelly's (and ND's) use of social media for recruiting. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-notre-dame-football-spt-1112-20141111-story.html These kids today live on Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat. If you remember one of the Frozen Five posted his fairwell to ND and it's fans ( a classy post) on Instagram. They frequently tweet out their top 5 during recruiting on their Twitter feed. I've read that facebook is out for these kids, it's now for old codgers like Krebs and Joel!!
Turns out that you have to goole "notre dame's unlikely recruiting weapon" and then click on the Trib link to get past the Digital Subscriber thing. Sorry about that.
Terry, when I encountered a Chicago Tribune article here on Skybox about a week ago, I clicked on the "Sign Up" link and found that one of the options was for 5 articles per month for free. I signed up for that option and thus was able to pull up this article with no problem.
Sid, Amazing what some of us who have retired, have a little extra time to explore the true depths of the Internet! :roll:
Don, Haha! I can assure you that I am NOT techno intelligent. I guess that it helps to be a little "daring" sometimes to click to the next page. :lol: