Sometimes you have to win ugly. Today was one of those days. UGA got bitched slapped and will fall out of the top 5.Shit happens. Ped U lost too. Wake up tomorrow and things will be clear. Now we have two weeks to regroup and beat the anchors. Grab a drink, savor the ugly win and go to church tomorrow morning. Things are ok..
and thought ND was next. Other than that, Pitt is rather mediocre, plays to empty stadiums where 50 yard line tickets go for $10.
However, they just hired and AD who is appaled at Pitt;s paradigm of sports failure/
that has us play down to rather mediocre teams.
Part of Pitt's football program problem is they lost all of the football programs traditions when the tore down Pitt Stadium which was on campus, and moved to Heinz Field which is about 7-10 miles from their campus.
They have very good local high school talent but cant compete with the PSU's, WVU's, OSU's, and Notre Dames of the world.
I grew up about 5 miles from their campus, and have friends, brother, and other relatives that are alum....Even though the Irish won...I'm keeping a low profile today.
Pitt hands at scholarships, looks at tape, and has a S&c program as good as any body else. They cared deeply about this game, mainly because it was ND, and it was nationally televised. It will be the only time they have that big an audience.
For ND, it's another game on an debilitating schedule. The context for ND was entirely different than for Pitt. ND was flat, Pitt was jacked, ergo, the difference from last week at VaTech...
.. instead choosing to make excuse after excuse, year after year for Kelly. It's ok, I'm sure by year 14 or 15 when he still has no championship, 'most' of you will get it.
Isn't winning championships. That no longer applies to any program outside of a very select few. And ND ain't one of them. If ND has a two loss season, given the fact they have to travel extensively to get to games, then it's an accomplishment. Contrast that with Bama that rarely leaves the South, or OSU that also plays in a tight regional format. ND is gonna get on a plane after 10 games and fly to the West Coast for SC. If that wasn't such an issue, then why the fuck aren't the "best" teams doing it? Because those "better" coached teams know that would expose them to losses...
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Pitt is not a good team and Kelly’s comment about having book throw it 50 times isn’t surprising. The OL is going to have to be reshuffled and they got their ass kicked today. Quinn is another one of jerkoffs buddies.
They lost to a really good team that has now beaten 3 top 10 teams "This Season"...on the road.
We were playing at home, vs a 3-3 semi-quality team that lost 51-6 to Ped St and 45-14 to UCF...and it's not even that we barely edged them out that bothers me so much, it's the why and what it indicates going forward that gives me a sick feeling in my stomach.
We looked like ass against an inferior team because of the tone we set on our very first drive...for the life of them, these coaches just can not seem to remember how great our offense performs when the play calling remains balanced. The vast majority of the time that we pass every down, we have short quick drives that end in punts or turnovers and give the ball back to our opponent quickly. It's only a matter of time before one of the teams on our schedule makes us pay for this idiocy, and if we somehow slip through the remainder of the schedule, the elite teams we face in the playoff will embarrass us if we play the game like that.
Auburn will be out of the top 25.
Miami will be close to out of too 25.
LSU was at home today vs UGA.
better?
Fixed it for you.
If you pull your head out it's pretty easy to see the comparison is 'Georgia lost on the road vs a high quality team that has beat 3 top 10s this year' vs 'ND playing at home vs a 3-3 semi-quality team'
I see where you got confused originally, thinking my pause was for LSU beating 3 top 10s, but it wasn't it was for GA lost to 'this caliber team' ..on the road.
OL for me. I think this is something that's been masked all year but showed it's ugly head today.
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pass plays (one being an interception. That's not how you even 'attempt' to establish the run...5 pass to 1 run on first possession, 3 pass (with a pick) to 1 run on second possession.
We iced our own run game by never even giving it an honest attempt...even if we tried and it didn't get going, the fact we were attempting the run would have kept them from being able to pin their ears back against the pass. This would have made the pass more effective and likely kept the offense clicking and on the field, giving us more opportunities to try and get it going.
Pitt was not special today, they are going the same team that got wrecked by Ped State and UCF, our coaching was just anti-special today.
inside early and they were negative to no gain. It happened all game long. On the outside runs, we couldn't even get to the corner. That's a really bad sign. Pitt's DL was 3 yards deep always, all day. We would have gone three and out 4 straight drives if we'd have run it 12 times (yes, I know you would mix in passes; just making a point).
The only run play that worked today. Consistently, time after time was the QB draw, right up the gut. It literally was our best play but wasn't called all that much. Go back and watch. I bet we could have called it 15 times and book would have had 150yds rushing.
Pitt's DL flat out punched in ND's line in the mouth today. And we didn't really respond outside of the late TD.
The template for defending ND is to load up to stop the run. Running into that isn’t the big-picture solution. ND needs to hurt teams vertically so the can’t stack to stop the run. That last TD pass from Book to Boykin is what ND needs more of. Opposing safeties need to be responsible deep instead of attacking the run. If ND doesn’t establish that with some consistency, better Ds than Pitt’s will beat them.
has blown the doors off everything else. I'll take it and this isn't a complaint, but he's gonna have to get at least to 50% on the deep balls. So far, if my memory serves, he's running less than 25% or so.
Knowing how important this is to Kelly. Maybe this is why he had him on the bench forever? I still don't agree with it, but it's the only possible logic that one could make a terrible case out of?
The OL is bad and we don't have an OL coach. Just another one of Kelly's lifelong comrades. So far we've found these guys to all pretty much be absolute duds.
You are correct, running into a loaded box every down isn’t the big-picture solution, but neither is dropping back to pass every down and abandoning the run altogether. There is a happy medium where you run it just enough for visual affect that they have to still honor the run, and that helps open up those vertical passes that will back them off. It's Chess, but Kelly treats it like it's checkers...when you abandon the run, the D pins their ears back for the pass and then your QB is constantly under duress and neither aspect of the offense gets in sync.
Sound familiar..?
comes to game planning, scheme and play calling. He's way overrated. Maybe he was good pre-2008, but he's not good at today's football.
He finds one or two plays he really likes and runs it 3 times to the left, then 3 times to the right and comes back to it every 3rd and 4th down. Not to mention, they're generally terrible plays and easy as hell to read once you've seen it a couple of times. Who are we kidding? Chip Long may be reading the plays to be signaled in, but he for damn sure is not calling the plays.
And on 4th down, 9x out of 10 he runs it right up the center's ass. I mean is this 1950? That hasn't worked in 2 decades.
That's 4 carries in the entire first half for our stud RB...that's your idea of how you give an honest attempt at getting the run going?
Pitt sniffed out and shutdown the edges keeping Dex from getting outside, and they stuffed the middle on him. If anything, we had much much more success early with Jones Jr. He's not near the back of Dexter, but for some reason just the pure smashmouth, roadgrader game worked better when we ran that vs. what Dex brings.
I get you want to count the number of passes vs. rush and try to be balance, etc. It doesn't always work that way and I don't believe it has to. Running it wasn't there today, period. (see the stats below). Yes you need balance but sometimes you have to notice what's not working and figure out another way to do it. Or, do something else that might make it work. We didn't really do that today. Our best runs all day long (numerous) were QB draw up the middle. There were gaping holes and it worked when we did it.
Sometimes the number of times you run doesn't matter. You can't go on a strick count, run vs. pass. It all strictly depends on what does the defense give you and how much of it do you take? Nothing was ever there today and we got negative nothing (except on QB runs and the smash I mentioned), see below.
First Drive / Dex carry (-1yds)
/ Book carry (+12yds)
Second Drive / Dex carry (-2yds)
/ Book carry (+22yds)
Third Drive / Dex carry (+3yds)
/ Dex carry (+1yds)
/ Book (0yds)
/ Book (0yds)
Fourth Drive / Jones (+7yds)
/ Jones (+2yds)
/ Jones (+1yds)
/ Book (+5yds)
Fifth Drive / Book (+2yds)
Link: http://www.espn.com/college-football/playbyplay?gameId=401013148
You can't see the first 2 runs for a stud and decide his fate for the day. How were Dex's numbers before he broke the VaTech game open? The passing game wasn't working early on either, but they kept trying that, if they showed even close to the same commitment to the running game they could have gotten it going and made this an easy win.
But that's Kelly, the best at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...it's in his DNA and it's never going to change, which is why this Kelly 2.0 garbage is such a huge joke. He is who he's always been and who he'll always be...that it will likely end up taking us well over 10 seasons before we come to our senses and replace him is one of the most epic failures in the entire history of Notre Dame football.
granted if you watched the game it didn't actually go that route so I know the numbers are misleading.
I get your point about balance of pass / run on a per drive basis. But, you have to realize 13 carries is a fair number for one guy in today's football. With those 13 he only had 2.4 ypc. Our QB was picking up yards hand over fist (given the state of this game) and he had a 1.9ypc on 19 carries - yes some of that was likely sacks, but the point is very valid. He was the only guy ripping off runs and still was sub 2ypc. The third back only had 3 ypc on 4 carries (this is likely who we should have given more carries to today) and a receiver had two trinket plays for 5.0 ypc.
Net net, when you run it 38 times or 54% of your offensive plays and you only have 80 yards. 80 FREAKING YARDS or 2.1 ypc. The calls and balance aren't the problem... IT'S THE OL. Yes, maybe we'd have ripped of 20 more yards if we'd run a little more but that might have only gotten us to roughly 2.5ypc. There is no way would would have gotten close to 5 in this game. 5 is where you need to be to have a successful run game.
I get your bigger gripe which is that Kelly isn't changed. He's not gonna change and he's likely overstayed his welcome. I could not agree more. Unfortunately, Notre Dame is in the same spot UGA was with Richt. Who can you get to come in and do better? Right now, I'd say no one.
If you do get someone that you think is going to be better, is Notre Dame going to do what UGA did and give the coach a blank checkbook to pay players to get them to come and create a steroid program to be administered. These are the major drivers of the elite few schools. Oh yeah, and classes are pretty much optional.
I don't think these things will fly at ND.
We did not "run" the ball 38 times and you know it...don't lean on a lazy worthless stat, you're better than that.
Look beyond the box score stat line old:
•The team is credited with 38 rush attempts
•16 of those are credited to Book (did you see Book run 16 times by design? No, more like 4, maybe and the rest were designed pass plays where he dropped back, nothing was there so he tucked it and got tackled for no gain or a loss...that's not running the ball, that's a failed pass play that doesn't go in the books because he didn't actually throw it.)
•that right there switches the number you claim from 38 run 32 pass, to 26 run 44 pass
•then if you deduct when we took a knee to run the clock at the end (3 team rushes for -4 yds), that shows the real picture of the balance we had...23 designed run plays vs 44 designed pass plays
•more significantly, Dexter Williams who in his first two games back from suspension (against possibly the two toughest opponents on our schedule) ripped off 161 and 178 yard rushing performances, to see only 4 rushing attempts in the entire first half.. pathetic!! And I don't care that he ended with 13 carries, by the time they came back to him in the second half the tone of this game was set in stone...but he did have a few nice runs late in the game to help us come from behind.
•Kelly set the tone of this game with 8 designed passes and 2 designed runs on our first two possessions...that got the snowball rolling and it was all downhill from there. No superficial misleading final stats can change that.
He's a moron, period.
Kudos to them. I was honestly stunned how well they dominated the line of scrimmage.
Never-the-less, it was disappointing given that they have not exactly played stellar this year on that side of the ball. UNC, UCF, and PSU cut them to pieces.
Yup...
bottoms up.
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Oh yeah...