All Hands on Deck

It has taken 48 hours for my heart to return to a normal rhythm after the near disaster Saturday in Baltimore. After controlling the game and dominating for 55 minutes, the Irish - including many walk ons and second teamers who played most of the last 5 minutes - had a sloppy finish that almost cost them the game. Most of you watched the ending, so I will not recount what happened. In short - the Irish 2nd team offense fumbled on the goal line, which then prompted a long Navy touchdown, followed by 2 on side kick recoveries and a touchdown sandwiched in between. Navy had the ball with a minute to go and a chance to score a game winning touchdown, but thankfully failed.

This game is your perfect "glass half full or half empty" or "Jekyl and Hyde" or whatever other cliche you wish to describe contrasting good and bad performance by the Irish. Here is your bullet style attack from the Vatican:

Good Irish . . .

• Irish rushing attack racked up 230 yards against a solid Navy rush defense (previously 30th nationally, giving up an average of 116 yards per game). I realize this was Navy and this should happen, but it was nice to see the Irish pound Navy with success throughout the game (and outrush the #2 rushing attack in the country). All 4 Irish backs had their moments, as James Aldridge, Robert Hughes, Armando Allen, and even freshman Jonas Gray all got in the action. A solid effort by the backs and especially the offensive line. Hopefully this will build confidence in the rushing game.



• 2nd Half Offensive Adjustments - A credit to Weis and his playcalling for simplifying the 2nd half gameplan, using only swing passes, screen passes, and the running game. Why throw forward passes when Navy's defensive backs were giving a 10 yard cushion, their safeties playing deep zone coverage, and the linebackers played the short zone? Navy was doing what most teams have done against the Irish in the 2nd half of the season - make them win via the short stuff, not the quick strike deep passes that the Irish feasted on against early opponents. Take what they give you, and don't try to force passes into triple zone coverage (Ahem, Jimmy).



• Irish defense held Navy to 120 yards less than their rushing average. Other than the 2nd teamers in the last few minutes, the Irish defense once again had a fantastic effort, forcing Navy to punt 8 times. Navy's option attack never got going in the game, despite what the score may indicate. The Irish held Navy to 7 points through 58 minutes, and even some late fluke touchdowns cannot erase the efforts of the Irish defense. Kudos.



• Irish Punt teams - The Irish blocked a punt early and scored a touchdown when Mike Anello broke through the line and made the block. This was clearly the play of the 1st half, and a play that let ND take a sigh of relief while the offense wasn't yet clicking. On the 3 punts that the Irish made to the Middies, Navy only was able to return 1 of them for a loss of 1 yard. A solid day's work on both sides of the punt coverage.

Bad Irish . . .

• 5 Turnovers - Nothing more needs to be said. 2 interceptions, 3 fumbles, versus only 1 Navy turnover. For the season on the road, the Irish turnover margin is something like 20 to 1. I am pretty sure the road game turnover margin was 15-0 against the Irish when the game began, but no matter what the specifics, its a sad picture. You simply cannot turn the ball over that many times on the road and win football games. The Irish better get this part together, otherwise USC will beat us by 50.



• Clausen's passing performance - awful. He continues to throw passes into the zone coverage most teams are playing against the Irish. Defenses know that ND's best attack has been the deep pass, and so defending this pass has been priority #1 the past few weeks as Pitt, BC, and Navy have all displayed a similar strategy. When there are 7 men in zone pass coverage, there are only going to be so many holes. Clausen must take what the defense gives him - even if he is throwing the short swing passes to Armando on every play. The only way to get the defense out of those coverages is to beat them to death on the short passes and the running game. Take the 5 yards per pass and move on, and stop forcing passes into triple coverage.



• Brian Smith and Michael Floyd injuries - Unfortunately, two of our brightest young stars will be out up to 4 weeks, missing the Syracuse and USC games. Both were taken out early in the Navy game, both with knee strains. Navy likes to chop block and they did this on Smith, while Floyd was the victim of someone falling on his knee. Its going to be that much more difficult to have a respectable showing at USC with these guys out.



• Hands team is fired. The two onside kicks that Navy recovered were awful displays of how to attempt to receive an onsides kick. The unit looked tenative, scared, and worst of all, very poorly coached. The front line of a hands team always blocks the oncoming kicking team, while the 2nd line gets the ball. ND's front line stood there, not blocking or grabbing the ball, and the result was a Naval assault that Douglas MacArthur would have been proud of. On the very first Navy onside kick, Irish hands teamer Robby Parrish batted the ball out of bounds. He smiled and was excited - clearly not knowing he had committed a penalty of "batting". The fact that the hands team did not know about this rule was evidence to poor coaching for this extremely important play. This may be the only time this season where the Irish need to use their hands team, and it was almost a fatal performance.

As for my 4 game predictions, 3 of them were decently close while 1 was way off. Clausen did not pass for 250 yards and 2 touchdowns, but less than half of that plus 2 interceptions. The Irish defense and rushing attack both did significantly better than I expected, a great performance for each. I picked the score to be 31-21 Irish, and I was just 4 points total off the exact score. Certainly I didn't expect Navy to score 14 points in 30 seconds late in the game, but the prediction was close. My season prediction record in Irish games is 7-3 straight up, 6-4 when predicting who covers the point spread.

This week the Irish need to get healthy, and pound hapless Syracuse this weekend. Playing well against USC is priority #1b right now, even with beating Syracuse this week being at the forefront. Hopefully the Irish can start gameplanning now for the USC game, without short changing the Syracuse game preparation.