Gameday | by Jay

Go Irish! Beat Huskies!

One Final Appearance | by Pat

Believe it or not, Notre Dame plays a football game tomorrow, and its Senior Day nonetheless. With all the news, rumors, and gossip about the possible coaching search, the game itself seems to have become a bit of an afterthought. Granted, a late November game against UConn with nothing really on the line is hardly a stirring matchup, but it's still the final chance for ND fans to see a number of players in their last ND home game.

In addition to the very real possibility that Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate could be playing in their final game in Notre Dame Stadium, it will definitely be the final game for players like Kyle McCarthy, Sam Young (setting an ND record for career starts in the process), Eric Olsen, Paul Duncan, Evan Sharpley, Mike Anello, Robby Parris, Ray Herring, Scott Smith, Toryan Smith, John Ryan, James Aldridge, George West, Sergio Brown, Raeshon McNeil, Mo Richardson, and a handful of walk-ons. Fellow seniors Darrin Walls, Chris Stewart, Dan Wenger, Barry Gallup, Paddy Mullen, Ryan Burkhart, Kallen Wade, Eric Maust, and Leonard Gordon have a remaining year of eligibility, but it is still their last chance to run through the tunnel with their classmates (and play against a former one in Zach Frazer).

So even if you aren't happy with the folks that brought them to ND, raise a glass on Saturday to the class that started to hop on board a Notre Dame program over four years ago that was still reeling and was in desperate need of a talent infusion. They saw more than their fair share of attrition the past few years and overall the class didn't pan out like many had expected, but they all helped to pull the program away from the abyss and get it pointed in the general right direction. They won't go down as the class that put things right at ND, but they did help build the foundation that others will hopefully stand on. So to them, Sláinte.

As for the thought that this could be Charlie's final spin through Notre Dame Stadium too, he insisted he isn't going to waste time thinking about that possibility.

"Not one bit. That would be very selfish for me to do it, to start off with," he said. "I'd have to be very, very, very selfish for me to be thinking about anyone other than those fourth- and fifth-year players. I promise as far as I could ever tell I don't think those thoughts would ever enter my mind."

Prognosis Negative | by Pat

There isn't much to rehash in ND's ugly 27-22 loss to Pitt this past Saturday. It featured many of the same issues that have become all too familiar lately: a running game that disappeared, curious play calling, lackluster defense, questionable interpretations of "indisputable" by the replay officials, some amazing plays from Golden Tate, and ultimately a game that came down to the final drive, this time with ND coming out on the losing side of the ledger. And as the game wound down to the unsatisfying conclusion, Brent Musburger accurately noted that with the loss "the long knives are now out for Charlie Weis".

Out they are as no one in the media (and, to be fair, any ND message board) can resist chiming in on Charlie's future and a possible ND coaching search. From official calls for his job to lists of potential replacements to the always fun and rarely accurate "my sources say" types, it's only the beginning of the media crap storm that will dominate ND-related news the next few weeks, to say nothing of the inevitable brainless op-eds from clueless outsiders on how ND should run the football program and to-be-expected reports of people mentioned as possible candidates suddenly getting contract extensions at their current job. (And as a reminder, when it comes to coaching searches, it ain't over, 'til it's over.)

In the meantime, ND is offering little to no chum to the shark-infested waters begging for an official proclamation.

Q. Charlie, one dreaded big-picture question from me. To your knowledge, has a decision been made with regards to 2010 for your future?

COACH WEIS: Oh, no. I don't think that, you know, that any decision has been made because I probably would know, you know. And I don't know. So with that being said, you know, full speed ahead. That's full speed ahead with UConn, then full speed ahead to Stanford and full speed ahead to going on the road recruiting and that is exactly the way we're approaching it.

And yet, while Swarbrick is offering up generic AD-speak like the following...

"It's not like you don't evaluate during the year; you evaluate all year. But my practice is to make sure I've got the full season's worth of information and then conclude the evaluation."

...it's hard not to read too much in to quotes like this...

"Let's let it finish out," Swarbrick said Sunday. "We said at the beginning of the season that we wanted to be in contention for and in the discussion of the (Bowl Championship Series) bowls, and for a while we were. But we didn't stay in contention as long as any of us would have liked.

...and this.

"I want to be clear: This has nothing to do with Notre Dame saying, 'Oh, gosh, given our resources it's [Charlie's buyout] not a factor.' That's not why it's not a factor. It's not a factor because there are other things more important relating to our goals for the program and the experience of the student-athletes."

So what does it all mean? It means it is extremely likely that another Notre Dame coach, an alum who clearly loves the University nonetheless, has failed and will be fired. Granted, nothing is official and there are still two regular season games left to be played, but those last two statements from Swarbrick are hard to read any other way. And when you add in the rumors that ND did some cursory looking around at the end of the 2008 season before deciding to bring Charlie back, his chances of returning in 2010 realistically seem slim. If the expected does come to pass, this will be the third straight failed coach for Notre Dame, an unprecendented streak in the long and cyclical history of the program. This current nadir has lasted longer than any previous one and with the '00s coming to a close, for the first time since the AP poll started in 1936, ND football will see a decade come and go without finishing a single season in the AP Top 5. Whatever decisions are made over the next few weeks, there have rarely been more important ones made concerning the future of ND football.

Game Day! | by Pat

Go Irish! Beat Pitt and the 'stache!

the Pitt and the pendulum | by Jay

The Pitt game presents an interesting pivot/reflection point on Weis. He cruised into Pittsburgh in 2005 and immediately grabbed the attention of the college football world and the hearts of Notre Dame fans, and now, in 2009, he's returning to Pittsburgh to participate in a contest that, at best, might cast some doubt on whether he can keep his job. Similar thoughts from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

No. 8 Pitt (8-1), with its highest ranking in two decades, will play host to Notre Dame (6-3) on Saturday night in their first meeting at Heinz Field since that memorable 2005 opener, when the Brady Quinn-led Fighting Irish ruined Wannstedt's debut by rolling up more than 500 total yards on the 23rd-ranked Panthers.

"That was a tough game for us," sixth-year middle linebacker Adam Gunn said. "It was a wake-up call."

Back then, Weis was the hot-shot former NFL assistant poised to return his alma mater to national prominence, while Wannstedt was on his way to going 16-19 in his first three years at Pitt.

"We found out real quick that we had work to do," Wannstedt said. "We were probably just a little bit ahead of ourselves."

Both coaches have similar records at their respective schools (Weis 35-24, Wannstedt 33-24), but Weis, coming off a 23-21 loss to Navy, is under fire. Wannstedt is a candidate for numerous national coach of the year awards.

If you had told an ND fan at halftime of the 2005 game that we'd be where we are now upon the return to Heinz Field four years later, they'd never have believed it. Just take a look back at the BGS archives following that game; we Irish fans were positively giddy.

There's also an irony or something in the fact that Weis followed up his heroic debut against Pitt by beating what was supposed to be a very good Michigan team on the road. Meanwhile, this year he managed to lose to probably the second-worst Michigan team in the last three decades.

If you put the two coaches side by side, and set the frame from 2005 onwards, at this point it's pretty tough to consider Charlie the winner. About the only thing that would change that equation is beating the Panthers tomorrow.

Indefensible | by Jay

(First off, I wanted to say I'm sorry I haven't been able to be more active on the blog this football season, but with work heating up it's harder and harder to find that quiet time you need to pull together something of substance and quality. The morning after last night's debacle I find myself with some of that quietude, so I thought I would spill some ink -- although I make no guarantees for substance or quality. I'm rusty. On a related note, thanks very much to my colleague Pat for keeping things rolling while I've been slumming it for the man.)

Losing to Navy is indefensible, and I'm not here to defend it. But winning a football game is about maximizing your possessions more than the other guy, and there are specific reasons we lost this game. On defense...

1. We were out-schemed on the option, with adjustments coming too little and too late. Our defensive staff assumed Navy would play the same reads and keys that we shut down so successfully last year, and when they didn't, we were caught flat-footed. This led to two touchdowns for Navy on their first two possessions of the game. Put this on Tenuta and Brown (and Weis) for not reacting quickly enough: our players were flailing to cover, alternately, the fullback and the pitchman, and by Navy's second drive we were already down 14.

Want some proof?

COACH NIUMATALOLO: "I think the one thing that helped us, and I really hope this doesn't come across wrong, but I think the thing that helped us this year was last year because we knew that they'd line up the same way. We didn't execute very well last year, and coming into this year they did a great job against us last year defensively, so we had a pretty good clue that they were going to come back and do the same things as they did last year, and we had a few things. We were expecting that same defense that we saw last year.

But it was still a grind. I mean, they're still a great defense, and we thought we had some alignments in some of our formations. But it was a grind to get yardage against them even though we thought we had some numbers advantages in certain formations."

Ian Williams: "They just played harder. They out-schemed us, and they just played harder. I know we played our hearts out, I played my heart out, but I guess they just had a better scheme than we did. They watched film and obviously did the right things and made the right changes [from last year's game]. They spotted a weakness in our defense, they knew what scheme we were going to come out in, and they put a great game plan together."

Greg Jones: "We had a different formation and they were keying on the inside receivers. It was a play we were working on all week and saving it for Notre Dame."

2. The third TD for Navy didn't come until late in the third quarter, after a couple of punts and a missed FG. It was a 3-play scoring drive -- very un-Navy-like -- finishing on a surprise pass to an uncovered receiver for 52 yards. Was it a scheme issue, or a player screw-up? Hard to tell. (Robert Blanton thought the Navy receiver was ineligible, but Charlie disagreed with him in the postgame. Either way, you have to cover a guy running free down the middle of the field, even if you think he's ineligible.)

And that was the sum total of Navy offensive scoring for the day. Yes, they ran for 350 yards. But overall yards for them wasn't much more than they usually gain.

On offense...

3. The Irish had 10 possessions in the game. We drove the field relatively easily on all of them; in fact, Clausen completed 73% of his passes. Astoundingly, we never once punted. Yet we scored only three times. On the other seven possessions:

4. On our first drive Parris fumbles at midfield and Navy scores easily on a short field on their first drive of the game. See #1.

5. Two missed field goals by Tausch. Each was within our kicker's range. Neither appeared to be a bad snap. The guy had made 15 in a row. Shit happens.

6. Turnover on downs inside the five. I questioned the call to go for it at that point, even though we were down 14 already. Furthermore, I don't know about the playcalling once we reached first and goal at the two; although we pounded Hughes twice, he had a net -1 loss for both runs. Regardless, Charlie should have found something that worked.

7. Jimmy fumbles on the one-foot line trying to score.

8. Jimmy bounces a pass off Floyd's back inside the 10 that pinballs right to a Navy defender.

9. Finally, there's the safety, a product of poor field position (13 yard line to start), a drop by Floyd, a sack, and then another sack.

---

In summary, I look at all this and I see serious issues with coaching on the defensive side of the ball. I also see squandered opportunities on offense mostly due not to scheme or playcalling, but player mistakes at critical junctures that were frankly quite surprising given the players involved. Jimmy has a career day; Jimmy fumbles on the one. Floyd had a career day; Floyd screws up a play in the redzone that leads to a TO. Tausch hits 15 straight; Tausch misses his next two badly. How did I put it up above? Oh, yeah: shit happens.

Now that we know how we lost, let the wild Charlie employment debate rumpus start-- err, continue.

Unanimity | by Dylan

Game Day! | by Pat

Go Irish! Beat Navy!

Statistically Speaking: Washington State | by Pat

It Came From the Game Notes

• Sophomore LB Darius Fleming's 1.64 tackles for loss per game is tied for 8th in the nation.

• Based on the cumulative record of future opposition, only two schools (Ohio State and Pittsburgh) ranked in this week’s BCS top 25 face a tougher schedule the rest of the regular season.

• Golden Tate is 2nd in the nation in receiving touchdowns, 4th in the nation in receiving yards, and 18th in all-purpose yards.

• Nick Tausch is currently tied for 2nd in the nation in field goals made percentage at 93% and is tied with Golden Tate for 23rd in the nation in scoring.

Battle for 1st Down

Updated table here.

When I started this metric, I really didn't know if it would prove useful. It was just a way to track how ND did against one of Tenuta's stated defensive goals. I have to admit that it doesn't appear terribly useful on a game by game basis. Perhaps over the long run it does a decent job showcasing the ability of the defense, but taking a single game doesn't add much insight without the best of context.

The obvious example of this is this past weekend's game. ND's 1st down run defense was the worst it was all season, winning only 18% of all downs. And it was low before ND cleared the bench too. Through the first 3 quarters it was only a 12% win rate. Compare that with the SC game, where ND stopped 70% of the Trojans's first down runs. Perhaps the numbers can't be terribly trusted against a completely outmatched opponent in a blowout game. After all, ND only won 11% of 1st down rushes against Hawaii, another lopsided ND victory.

Against the pass, ND was far better, winning 58% of the passing first downs. Both of ND's interceptions and two of the sacks came on 1st down as ND won 7 of 12 first downs. That grades out to an overall win rate of 39%, the third lowest of the year. Like I wrote earlier, perhaps this metric can point to why a team did better or worse than expected, but isn't terribly useful on a game by game basis. Or maybe I'm missing something. What do you think?

Drivin'

Updated table here.

As you might expect, the ND offense was able to slice through the Cougar defense. Even with a few dumb penalties and red zone mistakes, ND picked up 85% of available yardage in the first half on way to a game long percentage of 62.14%, the third highest number of the year.

Defensively, it was about what you would expect from looking at the final score as well. The Cougars only amassed 19.66% of all possible yardage. Only the hapless Huskies from last season have done worse in the past two seasons.

Gimme M.O.E.

Updated table here.

It says something about either ND's offense or the defense's that they are facing that ND can be the 5th overall offense in the country and still make so many mistakes. For the 6th time out of 8 games, ND was over the 12% goal with a M.O.E. score of 13%. Just imagine what this offense could do if they toned down the penalties. 7 penalties against the Cougars are the main culprit this week as ND has already picked up as many offensive penalties (33) as they did all last season.

Defensively, the Cougars made mistake after mistake including penalties, sacks, and interceptions. Their 23% score is easily the highest of the season for an opposing offense and was topped only last season by Hawaii.

Season Long Running Stats

Updated table here.

With only four games left in the season, it's unlikely that too many numbers will make large leaps. So we can all start to compare where ND has experienced some of the biggest gains and biggest setbacks, statistically, from last season.

Let your captain regale | by Pat

I'm still wrapping up the Stats post. In the meantime, here's the latest excellent effort from the boys at The House Rock Built as they document the buildup to the Navy game. Good luck getting this song out of your head the rest of the day.

Washington State Photo and Video Galleries | by Pat

Time to post some pics from this week's game. As usual the ND Gameday site has some stunning photos of the whole weekend. Make sure to check out UND.com, Irish Sports Report, and SanAntonio.com for more pictures of the game. As for the picture of the week, how can you pick any picture other than Marcus Marter's snapshot of Golden Tate hauling in the halftime hail mary over three Washington State defenders? Matt Cashore has an excellent shot of Tate elevating a second before hauling in the pass as well.

As NBC covered the "home" game, there are replays up on NBCSports.com and Hulu. Here's the 1st quarter, 2nd quarter, 3rd quarter, and 4th quarter. You can also watch the game highlights, and the band.

Finally, let's take another look at one of the better catches you'll see this year, courtesy of Paul at Classic Ground.