UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

After an offseason of hearing how we had a QB with a huge arm our receivers were upgraded to the best we’ve had in years we decided to play the offense conservatively and take all these weapons off the table. 95% of the time we only forced Miami to defend 5 yards off the the line of scrimmage and rarely stretched the field. If you have these offensive weapons use them. If you lose using your best weapons so be it. But if you are scared that using your dynamic qb and receivers will cause you more harm than good maybe you aren’t coaching right. I would have opened the game with a play action fake to love and a post pattern to Greathouse. Doesn’t work then second down a long pass to someone else. THAT is how you get confidence in a QB - tell him you believe in him and just as importantly tell your opponents you believe we can beat you in the air. Also gets excitement in your receivers. And opens up the field for your running backs because this defense of seven transfers is now confused and trying to figure out is it a run or play action going deep. That has the Miami D thinking the whole game. When you throw dink passes you are telling both your QB and your opponent we can’t pass and they defend accordingly bottling up your short play offense.

On D we have been told all offseason our DBs esp CBs are amongst the best in the country. Yet we played this soft zone most of the night and let Beck eat us up with easy passes to wide open receivers - I think at one point he had like 15 in a row. Why not go to a tight man defense and bring as many as it takes to pressure him and put him down - he will have little time to make a throw to a receiver who has a man right on him. Force the play instead of sitting back and letting them do whatever works. If he beats you when you are playing your strength kudos to him. The only time we really stopped them was when they had a lead and played conservatively.

Bottom line - if you are going to lose then lose playing with your best weapons on offense and defense. To not use those weapons because you are afraid you might lose usually ends up with you losing anyway.