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Notre Dame Football

6 Thoughts on a Thursday

September 15, 2022
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When people talk about talent evaluation in college football, they are almost always referring to recruits. Teams who don’t recruit at an elite level can often be better than other programs that do because they evaluate talent better.

There isn’t enough discussion about coaching and personnel staff evaluating talent within their own programs. It’s become a more relevant topic because of the exponential increase in transfers over the last few years, but even before that, it should have been something that was talked about more frequently.

Evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses are important. When teams have a false sense of one or the other, it can come back to bite them. That’s something that is happening right now with Notre Dame.

What we thought we knew about the strengths of the current team aren’t what’s true at the moment. That can change as early as this week, but Notre Dame's staff can’t afford to wait for that change to occur before reacting to what they have learned about the team so far. If they do that, they could very well start the first ¼ of the regular season 0-3.

While it’s too late to address things like Notre Dame not landing transfers at receiver, quarterback, or at interior offensive line, it’s now or never to address what Notre Dame can and can’t do with the talent they have. They got a bit lucky last year in still managing to win two games at the start of the season despite concerns on both sides of the ball, but they aren’t as fortunate now.

Losing to Marshall is their Cincinnati for this season.

They have to act and act fast to fix the problems. Whatever the Notre Dame staff thought they knew about the offensive personnel heading into the season has to have changed now. Yes, there will be inexperienced players who get better, but Tommy Rees has to help those players get better by putting them in better positions to succeed. He should be able to do that way better than he has in the first two weeks because he knows more about those players now than he did two weeks ago.

Of course, Rees and the staff in general have to coach better. They have to prepare better. They have to make better adjustments. They have to have a better game plan. What’s just as important as that is adjusting to the reality of the talent Rees has to work with. It’s something they did last year and it helped turn around their season.

In the first five games last season, Notre Dame was handing out Havoc plays to defenses like it was candy on Halloween. Then in the next three games they only gave up four sacks and the Havoc Rate was under 10% for the opposing defenses. The philosophy changed based on the personnel that they had and that is what evaluating your own team is all about, even if it happened later than it should have during the season.

We know there is going to be a forced personnel change with Drew Pyne at quarterback replacing an injured Tyler Buchner this week. We’ll see how that impacts how Rees calls the game, but there is likely going to be more tweaks with the personnel and how they are used after evaluating the first two weeks. That could mean anything from getting Chris Tyree more touches to utilizing different schemes within the running game and everything in between, but there has to be adjustments based on knowing what they know now about the players on their own team.

Notre Dame doesn’t get to a do-over with the first two games. They only get a chance to take what they learned about their own talent and use that to help them be better going forward.

2. Here’s a perfect example of learning about what your talent can and can’t do. Braden Lenzy has been targeted 11 times this season and has only two catches.

Five of those targets have been contested and he caught one of them. Last year Lenzy had 10 contested targets and he caught two of them, so over the last 15 games he is at a 20% catch rate on 50/50 balls.

Let’s go ahead and take those off the menu.

Lenzy has been criticized for his lack of production since what looked like a potential breakout in 2019 and injuries have played a part with him. For someone who is in his fifth year, it’s more than fair to have expectations that he should be better in some areas than he has proven to be.

The other side of the coin is that he still is one of the faster players on the team and he is one of the few players who have produced explosive plays on the roster. They need to find a way to better leverage that because they don’t have a lot of options there at the moment.

Throwing the ball to him where he has to win a jump ball on the sideline is not the best thing for him or the team. They need to find other ways to get him the football in situations where he can be more successful.

3. No one would argue that Buchner showed enough in his first two starts that would suggest he’s going to be a star at quarterback for the Irish.

No one would argue that he had that much help either from a depleted receiving corps, poor O-line play, or the offensive game plan either.

It makes it really difficult to assess things with him for the future because it falls into the unknown category. What it does make clear is that regardless of how Pyne or Steve Angeli might play this season or who ends up being the quarterback Notre Dame takes in the 2023 recruiting class, the staff will need to take a proven quarterback in the transfer portal this off-season.

There is too much uncertainty at the position for them not to take someone.

The quarterback room is filled with Tommy’s guys in every way. Buchner, Pyne, and Angeli were all players that he targeted early in the process as players he wanted. He evaluated those guys and the relationship with them has gone on much longer than the time they’ve been on campus because they were all early commitments as well. How much that played a part in them not taking a transfer quarterback for this season is uncertain and they did take one last year so it’s not like he wasn’t open to it in the past.

No matter what Rees wants after this season, Marcus Freeman needs to take a bigger picture approach to this and think about what’s best for the program.

There is a chance that Buchner comes back healthy and becomes the type of QB1 Notre Dame fans have been hoping for. There’s even a chance that Pyne can become a Stetson Bennett, a quarterback who looked like an average backup for Georgia and then broke out as a top-five quarterback in pass efficiency last season. Maybe by the end of year we are all praising Angeli as the quarterback of the future and he’s looking like an eventual star.

Even if one of those best-case scenarios were to happen, Notre Dame would still need to heavily pursue a transfer. There is nothing locked in about the future at quarterback for the Irish and they need to approach it that way.

4. There was this narrative going around this off-season in some circles that with Brian Kelly gone, Rees would be free to run things the way he wants and things could really take off this season.

I always thought that was more of fans hoping that was true so they could dunk on the former coach that they dislike. I think when you consider the current predicament the offense is in, having Kelly as a resource might be pretty good for Rees.

People may have disdain for Kelly’s personality or his failure to win as much as they wanted him to, but his experience is valuable and he could be a sounding board to help with game plan and adjustments. That’s not me saying that I wish Kelly stayed at Notre Dame, but it is acknowledging that he might have been able to help with what’s going at the moment.

John McNulty and Lance Taylor could have helped too. Those were two guys who were a big part of what they did on offense since Rees has been calling plays and maybe having them could have helped Rees when the offense was struggling against Marshall.

Josh Lugg said yesterday that the offensive line needs time to gel, but admitted that they don’t have time. The new coaching staff working with Rees might need time to gel too, but they also don’t have that luxury. Things need to be figured out now.

It’s a lot more fun to work on figuring things out when you’re winning, but losing creates more urgency and that could be a good thing.

5. Confidence is a huge part of individual success in any sport and I’ve known that feeling as a player when my confidence has helped me take my game to another level. I had a frustrating start to my senior year in college as a pass rusher, then all of a sudden something clicked for me. I went from barely sniffing the quarterback to feeling like I was unblockable for a stretch of time.

I’ve never experienced that feeling in basketball of being a hot shooter and feeling like you can’t miss, but I imagine what I felt is a similar feeling to that.

I can’t imagine Isaiah Foskey being a very confident player at the moment. He got a sack last week, but PFF has him credited with only two pressures on the season. It’s not exactly the kind of impact anyone was expecting after posting double digit sacks in 2021.

Just like when a shooter goes cold, it would be nice to get Foskey a couple of lay ups to build up his confidence again to get back on track to be the player we know he can be.

Cal’s right guard wasn’t good against UNLV last week so why not a nice T-E (tackle-end) stunt to get him a favorable matchup? Or how about setting up a pressure that attacks a protection and gets Foskey potentially matched up on a back or a tight end?

He needs something to get his mojo back and I know he can beat tackles, but I think it could get things going for him to run the equivalent of a pick and roll to get him an easy win or two and get the ball rolling in the right direction. Notre Dame needs him to at least be the same guy he was last year and it would help them a lot if he gains enough confidence to be an even better version of that.

6. Charles Huff and Marshall won the game last week because they coached better than Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame. If I was to boil down Marshall’s upset win into one sentence, that would be it.

I wasn’t surprised to see some of the reactions that I saw after the game. Notre Dame had no business losing that game. Fans are right to be angry or upset. With that being said, the idea that losing that game or an 0-2 start means that Freeman isn’t going to be successful coaching Notre Dame or that a coach that players actually like can’t be successful in football is ridiculous.

Freeman’s success at Notre Dame and as a coach in general is going to be dictated by how well he coaches and runs a program. Who he hires matters. Knowing when to fire and replace a coach matters. Having his team prepared matters. Learning from mistakes matters.

That is what will determine if Freeman can win at Notre Dame or anywhere.

Telling people to look at Nick Saban and how he rules his program with an iron fist ignores that there have been plenty of other screamers and fiery personalities who have been failures. Or it’s making it seem like Saban is winning because he’s an (insert curse word here) rather than him being a really great tactical coach and it brushes aside the fact that he has recruited and developed talent better than anyone else.

The guy who just beat Freeman with less talent on his team didn’t do so because he’s like Lou Holtz. He has the same kind of temperament as Freeman. Saying Freeman’s style of coaching won’t work disregards that he just got beat by a guy who isn’t that much different than him.

I don’t know if Freeman will be the next Gene Stallings. He inherited a team who finished as the co-SEC champion the previous year, and lost his first three games at Alabama. The first one was to Southern Miss and they finished 7-5 that season. In his third year, Alabama won a national title.

I don’t know what will happen the rest of the season because he’s in an 0-2 hole and just lost his starting quarterback for the year.

I do know that he and the rest of the staff need to coach better and put the players in a better position to succeed. That’s what players want more than anything on the field. They want to learn and get better. They want to be prepared and know their coaches are giving them the best chance to win the game.

Some players didn’t play well last week, but the coaches didn’t coach well and that’s the number one reason why they lost. That might not make anyone confident in Freeman being successful in the long term, but if the staff coaches well the rest of this season then it can be a different story.

This Notre Dame has plenty of flaws that we know about. They also have enough talent to win most of the remaining games on their schedule no matter who is playing quarterback. Wins and losses won’t be determined by Freeman being a “player’s coach”. It will matter more that he coaches his players better than the guy on the other sideline.

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