Our Seniors last game at home. Manti's swan song. Time to get it done early and let some players who haven't gotten in much some playing time. IRRELEVANT AND LOVING IT
A lot of distractions for Senior Day, all the parents in town, a big hoop di doo pep rally with all those parents, the pregame stuff with the parents. Seems like at times we've forgotten that we have a game to play. Under Weis I think they lost the last 3 parents days. The Coup de gras was that awful loss to a terrible Syracuse team with a lame duck coach and Austin Carr's kid at QB who we made to look like an All American that day. Wake Forrest though is a little better than B.C. They actually beat Army and they beat BC by 28-14. I certainly expect the Irish to win, and I keep thinking that this will be the breakout game where our offense puts it all together and we have another game like the Navy game. But Kelly is definitely into long drives and maintaining possession. Total 180 from what he did at UC, where he didn't care about time of possession, now he cares about it. He'll go for some big chunk plays but I doubt if we see the up tempo type of game that he played at UC. Maybe next year with Golson the pace will pick up. I still wonder though if Golson will get it completely. When he's on he looks better than JFF of Texas A&M. He's a better passer, really throws a very nice tight spiral and has a very strong arm. He's also a strong runner, did you see that TD where he was hit by the BC LB at the 2 and carried him into the endzone? Give him another year with Longo and he'll start to remind you of Jarious Jackson running the ball. Recruiting is coming to an end and the Irish are looking very good we are pretty much in the top 5 by all services, and with a couple of key additions we could end up #2, I doubt if we get past USC they have more 5* players than the rest of the top 10 combined. One thing I wonder about, Kelly has clearly rebuilt this program. Does he have it in him to continue to build the program, Lou said at the 2005 Football banquet... Can Kelly continue to build, that's what Bowden did for those 14 years he was in the top 5 and won big bowl games. He never took his foot off the gas for 1 minute with regards to recruiting great players to FSU. Lou did and the ND Admin also stepped in and had him get rid of his top recruiter because they didn't think he was bringing ND men to the football team. We replaced him with a long time coach at ND who was just an awful recruiting coordinator. The great classes stopped at 1992. So do the progress of the program.
Whoa there big fella... you need to take off your Orange colored glasses. Stronger arm? Probably. Better passer? Based on what evidence? Cuz you like the spiral better? Throw some stats up there and impress me... :roll:
Well I can't really point to anything, heck JFF has had a great year and while both are RS Freshmen JFF seems ahead of Golson at this point. I'm not sure that JFF has more talent, it could be the system or it could be the coaching or it could be that JFF has just picked up the things you need to be successful quicker than Golson. But I think that Golson has the better arm and he's really accurate throwing the ball and that will make him the better passer in the end. But they certainly have similar styles. Orange colored glasses would be needed to tout David Ash! There really are some great RS Freshmen out there this year. Besides JFF and the kid at Oregon, UCLA has an outstanding RS Freshman QB. The Alabama QB and the Ohio State QB are both in that same class but played extensively last year of course.
Just one mans opinion but JFF seems to have something special that seperates him from others in his age group....His vision while running or passing is incredible.
No doubt right now JFF seems like a 1 man show...but that kid at Oregon looks incredible, but just has so much other talent around him that he doesn't seem like a 1 man show.
Re Senior Day: I expect like most every Senior Day that I can ever remember, our Senior leaders will come out tighter than a cat's assh*le on the 4th of July looking to impress mom... things will settle down and hopefully we take care of business. At this point in time, style points are irrelevant no matter what ESPN tells you. The talking heads and shitty coach's poll have already done their damage. All we can do is win, take care of business and hopefully one of the 2 above us lose. Re Super RS Freshman QBs: They are all apples/oranges comparisons and they are all great in their own right. JFF does appear to have that extra something and he is a one man show running the spread/air raid offense. That being said, he was bottled by UF and LSU. What I was telling JOCO during the game on the phone is that A&M's overall TEAM is getting better not just JFF and that is why I thought Bama was in trouble. Bama has a much better defense than either the Gators or Tigers, but JFF was able to still do some damage because the guys around him helped carry the torch. The kid at Oregon.. Holy ****, I was hoping someone would mention him. As Terry noted, and I believe Ralph agreed, how can you really quantify that when the entire rest of the team is so fast and good. He's just another cog in the light speed machine that is Oregon's offense. As for our guy, he's doing what's asked of him within the system. We have a helluva defense and when you have that type of defense, you need to protect it.. especially when you consider that we're 1 injury away from Sid playing safety. As good as our defense is, we're really thin in the secondary. We can't just get out there and run the floor. We'll destroy our own defense doing that. Hold onto the ball, score points when they are on the table and make people drive long distances to beat our superior defense... We don't want the offense to do much more than that. We could be flashier, but right now, we're better because we're effective, not sexy.
JFF really has captured the imagination of college football,so much so that everybody has forgotten his 6 turn over game at Ole Miss. If Colin Klein had a 6 turn over game he'd be out of the race.
Lot of chat about the numbers for recruiting being so tight, there are some kids out there that we would really like in this class but in order to be able to take them some guy(s) might not be back. Names include Lo Wood and Carlo, Slaughter is applying for a 6th year. If he gets it that may mean the end for Carlo.
Just for the record Alabama QB A.J. McCarron gets my vote just because of his mom.... :shock: She's in the middle by the way...
ND <t>Well let's see now.....Wake Forest...hmmmm. At this point we are 6-4 right? Wait, wait, wait, waaaaaaaaait! That's the record the EXPERTS, some so-called ND fans and Coach Kelly detractors and various others thought ND would have at this point. Let me look again...Damn! ND is 10-0!!!!!! Imagine that!!! Wow! In that case, it's time for the Senior Leaders on this club to set the tone when they take the field on Saturday and put a butt whippin on the WF team. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what will happen on Sat. 11-0. <br/> <br/> Maybe we be relevant again some day.</t>
Good article on Mike Frank's site on Danny Spond. Pretty clear he's a Kelly RKG. It's a premium article so if you aren't a member you won't be able to read the whole thing. Danny Spond
On a side note... The Oline coach for Wake Forest is local guy. Jonathan Himebauch from Damien High School... http://www.wakeforestsports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/himebauch_jonathan00.html
Pretty powerful story up on und.com, a student interview of Te'o. I got some dust in my eye reading it... http://www.und.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/111612aac.html