The good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good:
1. Love - 90+ yard house call.
2. Carr - played a clean game. 2 TD's.
3. Johnson - 2 picks
4. Defense - 12 TFL's
5. Raridon - 3 targets, 3 catches.
The Bad:
1. Price - 9 carries, 12 yards, TO near the goal line.
2. Defensive penalties - too many, need to clean it up. PF's need to go away.
3. Red zone/short yardage offense - it's still a hot mess. When they have to gain a small amount of yardage, they can't.
The Ugly:
1. ND has no kicking game. They won't win out without something from that unit.
2. BC held the ball and delivered a 21 play TD drive during a chunk of the 3rd Q.
3. Team demeanor - the entire team looked somewhat checked out and not interested in playing that game.
Replies to: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Has Denbrock abandoned the wildcat?
How much time was spent on that during camp?
Yes. ……. Thank God
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A team that is "checked out" doesn't hold the opponent to 12 yards rushing. Ugly and uneven
performance, yes, but a weird game where longtime OC Bill O'Brien's dink and dunk strategy ate up some yards but yielded few points. I credit our defense for staying focused and ending that super-long drive with what SHOULD have been a turnover on downs on Burnham's sack but for the phantom face mask, and then BC only got a FG.
A very knowledgeable and accurate post. Against Texas A & M we stopped them too but for Gray's
interference call which gave them four new downs and legitimate but it gave them the opportunity and they got lucky with the no call on Hinish being held.
the red zone woes expose Denbrock’s limited creativity
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There is almost no deception on offense
Not that any offense can rely on end arounds, plays designed to go to backside, drag pass plays when the action is to one side with a throw back in the opposite direction, etc but we need to run these plays, other than when it is obvious we're going to run one, at least as often as we run fake punts.
This hurts in short yardage plays, which means it kills us in the red zone.
AMEN to this. Power running game like ours creates misdirection opportunities -- and we never
run misdirection
Didn’t like Denbrock’s calls with the two offensive series with just a couple minutes left in
the game. ND needs to move the chains and run out the clock. Instead, giving the ball right back to BC kept giving them life support. We are lucky it didn’t bite us in the ass only because it was BC.
I wouldn’t mind if Denbrock and Rudolph found new homes in 2026 along with all these other coaching
Changes in the country
I'll take jump balls to Raridon all day.
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Agreed - you have a 6’7” TE, you can run a play where the QB fakes a quick
dive to Love up the middle (draw the LBers) and toss a quick dump pass over the middle to Rairdon????