Well it's rivalry week in South Bend. USC coming to town. Longest continuous intersectional rivalry in the NCAA. Incredible history with this rivalry. USC comes to town with the usual incredible skill position athletes that they always have. They have a trio of WR's that are as good as any place in college football. They have had QB injury issues, but all their QB have shown tremendous ability to find their receivers. I don't know who will start for them. I do know it won't be JT Daniels, but whether it's Kedon Slovis or Matt Fink I don't know. Fink was the starter for the Washington loss. Slovis was the starter for the loss to BYU. But they are dangerous on offense. Irish of course are dangerous on defense. We will absolutely have to put the kind of pressure on the QB that we did vs Virginia and Bowling Green. Last year they surprised Clark Lea with a quick pitch offense that had our defense on it's heels for the first half. This year they have had a week off to mend and come up with something new for the Irish. I'm counting on Clark Lea to make adjustments to counter it. Irish offense of course had it's way with Bowling Green, but that's a long way from the USC defense. Irish QB Ian Book needs to have his best game of the year, and the OL/running game needs to show up early. Book has been an enigma to me this year. He's in his 2nd year as a starter now, and his deal is supposed to be quick decisions and accuracy with his passing. Right now he just hasn't looked comfortable or esp accurate even though his completion % is good. His stats from last year compare with his stats from this year are about the same. I just know that his play just hasn't been as crisp and sharp as I expected it to be. The OL only has the center, Jarrett Patterson, as a new guy. the other 4 are returning starters. I expected OL dominance. Jeff Quinn the OL coach is getting a lot of criticism from the fans, maybe rightly so. I don't know. We have 3 healthy backs in Jones, Smith and Flemster. None of them resemble Johnathon Taylor or D'Andre Swift. Also we supposedly will have Armstrong back this week. Having not played a month it's hard to imagine he'll step right in and be what we expected out of him. Here's a video that's been around a few years on the USC rivalry, it's 20 minutes long but reminds Irish fans what this is all about. Go Irish.
Oh and it's official now Kyren Williams true freshman RB is going to redshirt. He played in all 4 games leading up to last Saturday and of course didn't play Sat. So if he plays again he's used a year of eligibility up. Kelly also said they are considering RS Donte Vaughn. Vaughn is a Sr. So if he RS then he'll be coming back for a 5th year next year. Moves that they are talking about is Houston Griffith to Safety and Cam Hart from WR to CB. Hart was a 3 star WR/DB when recruited. I remember reading that he was being brought in as a WR but that moving to defense was a possibility. Kelly said they like his length at CB. CB is a position that we have not recruited well at, unlike LB/DL where we have a lot of good young players.
One of the things most people worried about going into the season, after our young linebackers, was the kicking game. Johnathon Doer was less than impressive last year even on kickoffs, he kicked several out of bounds and sometimes didn't get the depth we needed. He lost the job at one point. But so far this year he's been impressive as a kickoff guy, putting them deep in the endzones when asked and I noticed that they sometimes ask him to kick it high and short to try and force them to catch and run and maybe we can get a stop inside the 20. He's been 100% on PAT's and 3 out of 4 on FG attempts, he's made two from 27yds, one from 36yds and missed a 47 yarder from UVA. He's looked calm cool and collected on PAT's and same on FG's. We haven't needed him for FG's yet, none of his kicks have really mattered. He's not been faced with a big pressure kick. I hope he's up to it. He has the leg to make them but at least in the past he's had a problem hooking them. Punting has been solild but not spectacular in terms of distance. His best game ironically was against UGA where he avg 47.5 yds/kick. Overall he's averaging just over 41 yds/kick.
Well I sure hope we're not planning on playing man defense on these guys. Utah tried that and it didn't work so good.
Ya never really know how these rivalry/hate games are going to go and emotion can play such a big part in it. Lea rarely shows his defensive hand until the 2nd half when you can't do anything about it. I suspect he'll do the same against USC again. Good point about playing man, but then again, I think we may have better athletes than Utah. I guess we'll see.
JO’Co, You’re right but their QBs are just taking two step drops and throwing the ball out without having to think much. Hard to get to the QB
I think this might be our first time to play an Air Raid offense. We've played lots of teams that throw the ball a lot and run uptempo offenses in recent years. But not a true Air Raid offense and Graham Harrell the USC OCoord is an Air Raid guy, having played for Leach at Texas Tech. It's hard to stop an Air Raid offense from gaining a lot of passing yards, but if that was all there was too it then Air Raid offenses would have won a lot of Nat'l Championships. Washington kept USC from scoring a lot of points and I don't think UW is a great defense. I have read that we expect to see Kedon Slovis at QB.
That's pitch and catch, hoping the receiver can break loose for a big gain. I'm not a coach, but I believe it's easier to defend than turning their speed burners loose on deeper routes. It doesn't give the receivers much time to create separation, and it enables us to use 7 pass defenders and keep the receivers in front of us. I wonder if it's because of the inexperience at the QB position. As long as we contain and tackle effectively, I don't think that kind of passing game can beat us. I'm not assuming anything. They have great athletes. A two-step drop passing game alone does not diminish the danger of their offense.
I can't remember who said it but, he said "there are 3 things that happen in every pass play, and 2 of them are bad".
Nobody ever said this about a running play....3 things can happen. You gain yards, you lose yards or you fumble!
So far this season I've been impressed with our ability to make open field tackles. That's essential to stop the short pass offense. KP I think that quote was from Woody Harrelson
If we can get pressure using the down 4, I like our chances. Washington has superior defensive backs which had a lot to do with the way they defended against USC. I can see USC daring us to beat them with the pass. That just seems like the kind of thing that goes on in this series and one coach will play right into the hands of another. I'd like to see us play keep away from the USC offense and establish the run. If we can run, we win.
Tweet from Michael Pittman Jr.: Michael Pittman Jr. was asked what advice he gave to younger players vs. Notre Dame: "I told them to embrace the suck,” he said. "It’s going to be cold. But it’ll be fun when we’re running up the score." Great example of a usc football player displaying his social media skills.
The names are different, but the roles are always the same. The Trojans just don't disappoint in that regard, let's hope our boys fill theirs.
It seems like as long as I've been following ND/USC they have always had tremendous skill talent and speed. Ara struggled with them, his record was 3-5-2. USC of course had John McKay who was one of the great college coaches of his time. They always seemed to have better WR's and RB's than we did, but they also had great OL's. This year is no different. Those WR's are incredible and all of their QB's are capable of making the throws. We are favored, we do have an excellent defense, weakness is probably the CB's right now. I would sure be nice if Ian Book found his game and put some early points up on those guys and our offense would run and pass like we expected. That's been the frustration, we had 4 of 5 OL starters coming back, a newbie at Center, but I think everybody expected the OL to be solid. We didn't have any AA at RB but I think most expected Armstrong and Jones to be a solid duo, and we had talent at WR/TE. But the offense just hasn't found it's game against good competition. Throw out the UNM and BGSU games those were more like scrimmages.