The Back Corner Fade
One week ago, my fingers were hitting the keys like a concert pianist typing with glee after the huge win against Michigan. This week I feel like I just finished having to endure 3 ½ hours of a 7 year old’s ballet performance when the kid you came to see was only on stage for three minutes. Other than showing up to make an appearance, you wasted time that you’ll never get back.
Pretty much like the game Saturday against Ball St. We’ll never get that time back. What a mess.
I’m really not going to nit-pick into the game. It’s been dissected over and over since Saturday. The silver lining in the whole thing is that I can’t fathom this team playing or being coached any worse than it did. I hope Chip Long learned a valuable lesson: you have to plan for everybody. That was like a high school scrimmage where you don’t prep for the other team and just run your base offense. Newsflash Chipper: the other team is going to game plan for you. You need to have something in mind other than grab bag, let’s give this one a whirl offense. I’ll also be interested to see what Jeff Quinn’s line looks like after maybe as poor a performance as I can ever remember a ND offense line having. Hell, the 2007 line wasn’t even that bad.
What did we learn this past week?
Thirty years from now, Willie Taggart will be sitting back in his chair with his grandson on his knee and the little lad will ask “Grandpa, do you remember your first win at Florida St?” Willie will look thoughtful for a few seconds and say, “I sure do. It was a comeback win against Samford.” “Wow, that’s great grandpa! You beat Stanford for your first win!” Willie looking down, then away will finally look back at the boy and say “no buddy, it was Samford. Now go find your grandma and get some cookies.”
Dabo, you got lucky, buddy. That was clearly a horrible call on the touch back and you know it. Don’t get me wrong, anytime Jimbo can get one stuck up his carpet-bagging backside it’s glorious, but that was truly an awful call. For as much as we’ve heard about Clemson’s front four (and it’s warranted) the secondary is nothing to write home about. Kellen Mond lit them up for 430 yards. That’s an issue.
14 for 116. That’s the number of penalties and yards that Pitt gave up in their 51-6 loss to Penn St. They’re not a good football team.
Congratulations to Kentucky for finally getting over the 31 year dry spell against Florida with their win in the Swamp. Things are off to a roaring start for Dan Mullen’s debut season. They even had a kid up and bolt after the game with a Tweet mentioning, and I paraphrase: “I’m going somewhere were a coaching staff will recognize my talents.”
Can folks please tap the breaks on how good Northwestern is, please? They beat an awful Purdue team (which just lost to EMU this past weekend) and they scored a whopping 7 points against Duke. Sure, they’ll play their tails off against ND, but c’mon.
This weekend finally has some games to really get excited about. Some nice out of conference games and some early season in conference clashes. Here’s what to look out for.
USC fresh off their 3 point performance heads to Austin to take on Texas. UT has flown under the scrutiny radar so far and they really should be more front and center. Tom Herman is supposed to be the savior of their program, and so far in year two they have a loss to an average Maryland team, and if Tulsa would have a kicker (they missed three 3 kicks) would have lost to them as well. I like SC in this one.
LSU heads to Auburn for a critical, early season SEC battle in what I think will be another low scoring contest with defensive speed all over the field. Lost in the mediocre season LSU had last season was that they not only beat Auburn, they totally shut down their high powered offense. Auburn beat an awfully good Washington team week one, and I don’t think LSU is on par with the Huskies. Low scoring as I mentioned, but I think Auburn gets the win in the 5 to 7 point range.
Slowly putting along and torching couches along the way, West Virginia heads to Raleigh to take on NC State. This one puzzles me that WVU is only a one point favorite as of Monday. Will Grier is probably as good a QB in the country that no one is talking about, and they actually have enough defense to at least get in people’s way. Ryan Finley returns for his 8th season at QB for the Pack, but I just can’t see State having enough to get this one. WVU by 14.
Family fun pick of the weak is Boston College heading down to Wake Forest for what really should be a good ball game. You can see all this fun for $3 with help from the fine folks at Stub Hub. Both teams have opened with tomato cans, last week Wake beat Townson and BC won the “Jesuit Classic” trouncing Holy Cross. I actually like BC in this one. Wake has their Super Bowl next week when the Irish come to town so there’s the “looking ahead” worries, and BC should be able to gash a poor defense with A.J. Dillon. I like Fredo by 10.
Vanderbilt comes to Notre Dame for the first time since 1995 when Lou Holtz was on the mend and a young, and well-tanned assistant named Bob Davie was the interim coach. Fast forward 23 years and the Commodores come back 2-0, full of confidence and frankly, after watching that fiasco against Ball St, I’d be feeling pretty good about my chances as well.
Vandy has opened with MTSU and Nevada who both, in a word, stink. Yes, MTSU usually has a decent mid-major program, but this looks like a down year (consider they gave up almost 500 yards to UT-Martin last week.)
Bottom line is this isn’t a team that Notre Dame should lose to. They aren’t as talented and from what I’ve seen from Derek Mason, aren’t as well coached (ok, the guy from Ball U outcoached BK last week. We’ll disregard this statement until after the game.) What I do expect is some different looks on offense that aren’t on film and if Mason and Co have a brain in their collective skulls, would give ND’s offensive line a lot of shifts and force them to make line adjustments pre-snap as much as possible. Ball did that last week with great success, and I’m really going out on a limb here, but Vandy will have a better d-line than the mighty Birds.
If I’m Brian Kelly, I make this week as miserable as possible. Someone has to pay for that horse bleep last week. I remember in ’88 when ND was awful against Navy the week after the Miami win and the announcer saying “I don’t know who I feel worse for, the kids at practice next week or Rice (the next opponent) next Saturday.” The group in general that needs this tough love is the offensive line, obviously. They play like that again, not only will this be a miserable next 3 months, Brandon and Ian might be risking bodily harm.
I fully expect ND to play much better this week. I have an awfully hard time believing that they will be as putrid on offense as they were. There again, to sound like a broken record, it comes down to Brandon Wimbush’s decision making. If it’s not there, take off. You’re feet are your biggest asset whether it be scrambling and/or throwing on the run, kid. Play to your strengths. He’s not drop back QB, and I doubt he ever will be at this point in his career. Play to his strengths and formulate a game plan to match it.
I’m glass half fulling this one, think we play much better football, and ride the defense again to 3-0. Irish 27-17
Beat Vandy.