Amazing that Freeman & Rees went 8-2 (3-1 vs Top 25) with Drew Pyne starting.
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Replies to: Amazing that Freeman & Rees went 8-2 (3-1 vs Top 25) with Drew Pyne starting.
Very good to excellent supporting cast
Pyne stumbled upon a golden opportunity in 2022.
We had a very good offensive line, with Alt and Fisher now having a year of experience under their belts, along with plenty of experienced veterans elsewhere.
Even though the wide receivers didn't put up great numbers, they were still getting open, and created good mismatches.
We also had one of the best running back stables in the nation, with Estime, Diggs, and Tyree.
Finally, we had the best tight end in all of college football that year in the way of Mike Mayer.
Pyne had several glaring weaknesses.
1) He either couldn't, or wouldn't, look over the middle of the field. Many times, the receivers I mentioned above were getting wide open over the middle and he would either not see them or ignore them.
2) He has very slow feet. While they're noticeably better than Tommy Rees' footspeed, that's like saying someone can beat up a handicapped kid in a fight. His threat on a QB run was minimal at best.
3) He'd lock onto Mike Mayer on the right side of the field almost every passing play, and force a pass to him in double coverage.
4) His arm strength is well below average, being maybe a small tad stronger than Tommy Rees' noodle arm. To ask him to throw a fast pass 20 yards downfield was too much for him.
If Mike Mayer weren't there, I can easily say that there would have been at least two or three more losses. The man was so good, that he could more often than not, beat double coverage and make a catch.
At Arizona State, he didn't have that superstar to throw to along with having to play behind one of the worst offensive lines, and at Missouri, even though they have a pretty good WR corps, he's not seeing them get open.
I'm grateful for his stepping in there in 2022, and managing to win a respectable number of games like Tommy Rees did in 2013, but just like Tommy Rees, his ceiling is simply way too low to be a quarterback at a big time program.
I'm of the belief that Brian Kelly was being too impatient for that Class of 2020, especially after Cade McNamara decommitted the year before, and was simply looking to grab the first willing "right kind of guy."
Pyne played well in relief of Coan and then started regressing
Maybe Rees wasn't as bad as some thought. He had a couple of deficiencies which I'm sure Saban cleaned up.
Rees wasn't very good at all
I don't think anyone gave him an offer to be their OC or even a QB coach after Saban retired, and now he's the tight ends coach for the Cleveland Browns. While he also has the title of "passing game coordinator," that's all but meaningless, since Ken Dorsey is calling the plays, and even Bill Musgrave has more input on the passing game.
Maybe he's getting better, since Musgrave and Dorsey have some pretty good insights into the passing game, but that remains to be seen.
Brian Kelly basically propped him up from 2019 through 2021. As much as I criticized Brian Kelly for trying to defy common sense throughout his time here, he did, more often than not, make the right call. That, plus Ian Book exceeded all expectations and then some, to become a Notre Dame football great. Having a mature, polished Jack Coan in 2021 also helped cover things up.
Once Kelly was gone in 2022, and Tommy Rees was his own man, he tried his best to call games like Brian Kelly would, but without Kelly's decades of experience.
He'd outsmart his own self on all too many occasions. That disaster of a Stanford game (lost 14-16) was where he made all too many bone-headed calls, thinking he could throw the defense off-balance.
That USC game was even worse. We were driving the ball straight down the field with the running game, using straight-ahead north and south running, and blowing the front seven defenders off the ball several yards backwards. That USC defense was getting gassed and beaten up. All we had to do on 4th and short was to simply run the ball straight ahead. Hell, even a simple quarterback sneak (something he truly opposed) would have done the job, even with Drew Pyne's small stature.
Rees then calls what may have been a misdirection play, where he made Logan Diggs run to the unblocked side of the field, and we got stuffed for a loss. It was almost as if USC's defense was beaten up, that they didn't move off the snap count very quickly, and found themselves in a very fortunate position to receive a gift-wrapped present from Rees.
I try my best not to curse while watching Notre Dame games, but that game had me hollering at the TV...