Brian Kelly is the new Head Coach!

Brian Kelly will be taking over for the Fighting Irish and i could not be more excited. I know i stopped reviewing games pretty early on this past year and i apologize... but honestly, I just got to sick of watching how inept that team could be that I couldn't get myself to go back and re-watch/re-live those games. I don't expect this to be the case at all under Kelly. I can't wait until next season when I get to start reviewing games played by a well coached Irish team. Good luck Coach Kelly! WE ARE ND!

ND-Washington

wow... i'm so glad i got to go to this game... it was absolutely amazing. probably the best game i've ever seen live. i promise i'm gonna get back on track and write up my reviews again... i'm feeling great after this win and will get on it as soon as i have some time. right now i'm freaking exhausted so its not gonna happen... but it will soon!

GO IRISH! BEAT TROJANS!

New Posts Soon

Sorry... i've been a bit upset at the play of the Irish over the last 3 games and as such haven't felt the desire to do my write ups... they'll get up soon i promise. In other news, i will be going to the ND-Washington game this weekend... hopefully the Irish show up...

A Little Behind...

ok, so i realize i'm already 2 games behind and about to be 3... i plan on writing up the games against the michigan teams today but if i don't get to it, i'll do those and the purdue game probably on sunday or monday... i'd say that i'll write them saturday but its a night game and i actually may be going to watch the IRISH as the away team for the first time ever if my buddy's friend still has the extra tickets... fingers crossed cause i'm no longer sold that the IRISH will crush washington (i'm going to that game) and i'd really like to see them destroy someone (in person) this season... especially since the only game i got to go to last season was the damn pitt game... i got to be a part of the longest game in ND history... i also got to watch clausen overthrow a WIDE open floyd for what would've been a game winning touchdown and watch the IRISH then proceed to lose a game that they had absolutely no business losing... i'm sorry but wannstedt can't coach his way out of a paper bag... i really don't like him as a coach...period

pathetic

god that was the most pathetic thing i think i have ever seen... i'm too pissed off to even try to get into it today... review will come tomorrow probably... i really think i'm gonna be sick

weis just coached himself out of a job... goodbye charlie

not a bad first half... ND's dominating every aspect of the game except the scoreboard. expect that to get fixed & the irish roll in the 2nd

Irish send Nevada Wolf-Packing

09/04/2009

ND 35 Nevada 0

So first of all, yes i know the title is horrible. I have a nice/terrible habit of trying to come up with some sort of cheesy joke to include in the title and will continue to do so for the rest of the season. Don't like it? tough. Anyways, on to the game.

I would like to start of by stating that Mark May is the biggest piece of SH*T in all of sports broadcasting. He is so unbelievably biased and will flip his opinion whenever necessary to avoid ever complimenting Notre Dame or making the Irish look good. Before the game on saturday he picked the wolfpack to upset the Irish because Notre Dame would not be able to stop the running game of Nevada. With Nevada's 3 returning 1000+ yard rushers, including QB Colin Kaepernick, the wolfpack were just gonna run wild all over Notre Dame. I believe he also talked about how nevada's run defense would completely shut down Notre Dame's run game (nevada was like 6th in the nation in run defense last year... interesting compliment to the worst pass defense). He also had the nerve to say that Nevada had a far superior Quarterback with Kaepernick and that he would torch the Irish with his legs and his arm. Now, once the game was over and the Irish had proved May wrong on EVERY point he made against them, did he concede? did he admit he was wrong? did he give the Irish credit when credit was due? no. He did a complete 180 on how good of a team was Nevada. Suddenly they're just another WAC team with no real talent. To most people, this game proved that Notre Dame might actually be for real this season. Nevada did have a very prolific offense and a good run defense, yet Notre Dame managed to run the ball rather adequately (better than they have in the past few years atleast) and handed Nevada their 3rd ever shut out in the 25 years Chris Ault has been coaching there. This meant nothing to May. According to him, all this proved was that Notre Dame might be able to compete for the WAC title with Boise State. No Mark... all this proved is that you're a complete and total biased asshole. Holtz might be over the top in his support for ND but he has to be. If he doesn't defend them 24/7 then all anyone would hear is how awful they are... even when they win 35-0...

Ok... that rant went a bit longer than I expected it to... oh well. Now, onto actually game thoughts.

Offense:

Clausen looked good. Really good. 15-18 for 315 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 0 ints is damn impressive no matter what team you're playing against and deserves to get him on the Heisman watch list.

Floyd is an absolute BEAST. 4 catches, 189 yards, 3 TDs... ridiculous.

Tate didn't do much, but he didn't really get the chance cause Floyd took control... however he did have a fantastic block to spring floyd free on that 70 yard swing pass.

Rudolph had a great game catching the ball and hands down looked like one of the best pass catching tight ends in all of college football, however, he needs to work on his blocking. Too many times the guy making the tackle was the guy Rudolph was supposed to block. Showed major potential, but there's still work to be done.

Allen and Gray looked very good running the ball (15 for 72 yrds 1 td and 9 for 50 yrds respectively). However, the guy that i'm really looking forward to seeing run the ball was Riddick. Theo did a good job returning kickoffs and while he only had 19 yrds on 5 rushes, he looked very good out there. He showed some major explosiveness and great vision. He's gonna be a great player for the Irish.

The offense played an all around great game. The o-line wasn't as dominating as I would have liked, but they did a great job protecting Jimmy and allowed the running backs to put up better numbers than ever. The passing game was absolutely incredible and I expect to see that every week. Is there any team in the country with receivers as Tate and Floyd? Not to mention Kamara, Parris, Evans, and Walker... I think not.

Defense:

Manti Te'o. The boy can flat out play. He's fast, plays fast, and hits HARD. I wanna see more of this guy. He's everything that advertised and will be an all american while at Notre Dame.

Toryan Smith played very well. He had a great sack on Kaepernick and stuffed Nevada on a 4th and 1.

The pass defense was definitely good. Holding an offense like Nevada's to 150 yards in the air and no touchdowns is quite a feat.

Run defense needed some work, but outside of USC, should be the best run team the Irish see all year (again, they were 3rd in the nation running the football last season and had 3 returning 1000+ yard rushers).

In general the defense played a very good game (gotta call a shutout a good game, especially since it was the first one of the Charlie Weis era and the first since the irish shut out rutgers back in 2002). Gonna need to see more pressure from the d-line though and need to do a better job stopping the run if the Irish are gonna be successful this year.

Special Teams:

Tausch did a good job kicking PAT's... most went right down the middle. Gonna have to hold off for atleast another week to determine if he deserves to start. Tell you what though, he needs to get those kickoffs a little further... He was supposed to be hitting them in the endzone almost every time and i think the furthest one i saw was about to the 4. Too many short kickoffs (i'm willing to let freshman jitters account for some of those). He needs to improve if he wants to keep his job.

Maust was ok punting the football. Averaged 40.7 yards on 3 punts with a long of 43. In all honesty, I expect to see freshman Ben Turk taking over by the end of the season.

Tate didn't show anything on his one punt return, losing 2 yards, but we know he can be explosive from watching him last year... I expect his stats here to improve drastically.

Goodman on the other hand had a great return for 24 yards at the end of the game. He did a good job reading his blocks and finding the holes in the coverage. He looked like he was about 1 block or broken tackle away from taking that one back to the house.

Riddick also only had one chance at the return game and he took advantage, starting the game off with a 23 yard return. He new what he was doing back there, showed some major explosiveness and read his blocks well. Expect to see him take a couple of those back this year.

Final Thoughts:

Notre Dame owned Nevada in ever aspect of this game. They were dominant on defense and untouchable on offense. If ND keeps playing like this then no one, and i mean no one, will be able to beat them. I expect a tougher game out of Michigan next week, but expect the Irish to handle them. Michigan is still a year or two away from being a good team in my mind. The Wolverine defense is facing a whole different kind of monster against this Irish offense than they had last week with Western Michigan and will definitely be facing a tougher defense. I look for Tenuta to have pressure coming after Forcier or Robinson or whoever is playing quarterback for Michigan all day and expect to see some freshman mistakes out of them.

Well that's it for this week, be back after the Michigan game on saturday... unless I come up with something else to talk about before then...

#18 Notre Dame 1-0

Next opponent: 9/12/2009 - Michigan (1-0)

ND Football 2006

Ok, so just to give an idea of what you'll be seeing in this blog, I'm posting my previous reviews (which happen to be from the 2006 season). Yes, I am a huge Notre Dame fan and can be over the top at times, but I feel like I can be pretty objective when i want to... anyways, here ya go...

9/2/06 - ND 14 GT 10
RAMBLING WRECKED
opening weekend, had a few kinks to work, no big deal though... it was a little too close but they'll be so improved by next week that its not even funny. yeah the National Champs started out kinda rough, but they played a real oppenent, unlike every other top team (Texas vs North Texas; Ohio State vs. Northern Illinios) and a win is a win, doesnt matter how close
#2 Notre Dame 1-0

9/9/06 ND 41 PSU 17
NITS = SHITS
So yeah... this was supposed to be a good game. In my opinion it was. ND beat the living piss out of them. I figured that after the 'off' preformance we had last week, Chas would be pissed off and have this team firing on all cylinders... that he did. Quinn was back in Heisman form and Shark was there making the amazing catches. And so much for our horrible defense. They have given up 3 touchdowns in the last 2 weeks to two rather good teams, and the ones against Penn State were both at the end when the game no longer matter. This defense is good. Very good. And the offense is as amazing as every. With Michigan looking kinda shaky the past two weeks, next weekend should be fun. They don't stand a chance against the Irish.

#4 (soon to be back to #2) Notre Dame 2-0

9/16/06 MICH 47 ND 21

Carr Trouble

Ok, so if anyone really listened to me i said all along that i didn't think Notre Dame would go undefeated. I thought they would lose one game and still make the national championship. The problem is i didnt think it would be this game. I thought it would be to Michigan State. Notre Dame always shows up against Michigan. These schools just hate eachother and the Irish always come out hard and put up a damn good fight. This was not the case this week. Notre Dame just straight up did not show up. This was not the same team that we watched destroy Penn State last week. This was not a Charlie Weis team. It looked like Willingham was back at the helm. If Quinn really wants to win the heisman and be the number one pick in the draft like he's being projected, he really needs to turn it around. He hasn't been playing nearly as well as he did last year or as he is capable of doing. Walker never got going and our receivers have been almost invisible. I don't care if everyone is watching for you, Samarzdija at 6-5 and listed as a top 3 receiver in the NCAA should be able to make some damn plays. And with everyone looking for him McKnight should be able to get open with no problem. For those of you who remember, before getting injured, McKnight was our go to receiver last year and for the past few season. This team has way too many weapons offensively to get stopped that many times and the defense is a lot better than people give them credit for. They just chose not to play this game. On the up side, Geoff Price at punter has been phenomenal, but when the punter is more or less the MVP of the game, there's a huge problem. I'll give it to Michigan this time. They showed up and kicked the living shit out of Notre Dame.

#12 Notre Dame 2-1
next opponent: Michigan State

9/23/06 ND 40 MSU 37

The NEXT Game of the Century

Wow. That is all i have to say... Wow. Notre Dame should probably not have won this game, but i will take it because i HATE michigan state with a passion. Quinn ended having a pretty damn good game, but we cannot afford to have him start out playing as shitty as he did anymore. The one real positive that we can take from this game is that this team does have the talent and can/will keep fighting no matter how bad it looks. Charlie got the boys to rally and make some damn plays. Now i cannot comment about the entire game b/c i didnt watch it all. I watched the first quarter and we looked god awful. If we play like that again against any decent opponent we will not be able to come back. We got lucky. State blew that damn game. No matter how many plays the Irish made, that game was state's to lose and they did. Then next i saw it was 31-21 and we were making a comeback in the 3rd when they gave up a huge run and the game went to 37-21. At that point i gave up. Fortunately the irish didn't. I was called by like everyone i know after the game ended telling me that they won(i'm very grateful for that... it made my night soooooooooooo much better). I watched the 4th quarter on instant classic the next morning on espn classic and i must say i was impressed. That was a totally different team in the 4th than the 1st. They got their shit together and started playing notre dame/charlie weis football. They finally looked sharp offensively and defensively. If they can play like that for the rest of the year it will be very hard for anybody to beat us. Even though it was an unranked team, i really believe that ND should have moved up in the polls after showing that much heart, but oh well.

#12 Notre Dame 3-1
Next Victim: Purdon't

9/30/06 ND 35 PU 21

Boiled Over

So, its about time our offense got back on track and finally scored on the opening drive. Everything seemed to finally click on that side of the ball against purdon't. Of course purdon't does have such a great defense (105th total defense,115th passing defense, and 99th scoring defense; and that was against what was one of the weakest non-conference schedules i think i've ever seen). Anyways, Weis finally followed up on sticking with the run. Walker was the man against the boilers. He accounted for 59 yards of the opening 75 yard touchdown drive. He ended with 146 yards and a touchdown on 31 carries, quite a bit more than he has been seeing. He also added 73 yards on 9 receptions. The screen game finally got back on track and worked beautifully. It seems this year that every team is just determined to shut down The Shark. He hasn't been having nearly as good a year as he did last year, but now he's double teamed almost every play. But what no one seems to have realized is that Shark ain't the only receiver we have. There's a man by the name of Rhema McKnight who happens to be pretty damn good (some NFL scouts have him ranked top 10 amongst senior wide-outs). He was our #1 receiver going into last year until he got hurt. Now he's back and kicking ass (10 catches, 120 yards, 2 TDs). One of these days somebody's gonna start covering him. Only problem with that is Samardzja will them apart then. So I guess its a pick your poison. Now, on the other side of the ball, the Irish did not look very good. Lymon tore them apart. But for what its worth they did shut down Bryant, which probably was their goal coming in. And, in their defense, Ambrose Wooden and Travis Thomas were both out. They happen to be two of our better defenders. T2 adds a ton of speed to the linebackers and Wooden (regardless of all the crap he gets) is one of their best corners and will be playing in the NFL in the near future. Anyways, Brady and the offense were finally clicking again, so there really shouldn't be too much to worrow about. The defense played adequately and that's really all they need to do. The rest of the Irish's schedule is very nice and no team really poses much of a threat outside of USC.

#12 Notre Dame 4-1
Next Victim: Stanford

10/7/06 ND 31 STAN 10

Cruise Control

(i couldn't come up with anything catchy for the title this week... anybody does, let me know... i figured that works cause we did just cruise past the cardinal)
Ok, so this one's coming a little late, but i guess knowing that we were going to win this game going in and then the bye week coming up i haven't been as in to it the last couple weeks. So no matter what anybody says, this game was never close. Forget about the missed opportunities by the cardinal. None of them would have matter. So what if they scored on that dropped pass? ND would have come right back at them with another touchdown of their own. Once the irish took the lead in this game there was no way they would ever relinquish it. I mean come on, we outgained them 437 yards to 226 yards total offense. We had 29 first downs, they had 15. Brady dropped another 3 TD passes and Walker kept it going with just under 200 yards total. The defense played adequately against a banged up Stanford offense. The Irish made some big defensive plays and had quite a few good stops. Abiamiri played very well, dishing out 3 of the irish's 5 sacks on the day. Rhema continues to impress, as long as he catches the ball... his hands still aren't where they should be. Another major plus from this game was the opportunity to finally see James Aldrige in action. 26 yards on 4 carries before time ran out. I'm tellin' ya, this boy is gonna be good... very good.

#9 Notre Dame 5-1
This week: Bye
Next Victim: UCLA

10/21/06 ND 20 UCLA 17

Bruins Stunned When Shark Bites

First of all, eveyone can just shut the hell up. It was a great comeback, directed by a good coach and executed by amazing players. That is what great players and good teams do. They stare defeat in the face and kick its ass. They don't give up on games. That is exactly what BQ and the Shark did last week. Quinn actually did have a pretty good game. Nothing spectacular, but with how little time he was getting and the surprisingly good coverage by UCLA's defense, i'd say he did pretty damn good. Now, that leads me to the next point. The offensive line has got to improve. This is just getting rediculous now. Quinn was hit, pressured, or sacked on almost every freaking play. Young has not been playing nearly well enough for him to merit a starting job in my opinion. He might be good, and i think he will be very good throughout his entire career here, but i dont think he is ready yet. He was getting beat all day and he makes a crucial mistake when he got called for holding (whether or not he actually held) on 3rd and long when they were driving in the red zone. The play would have been a first down and the Irish had all the momentum at that point. They had to settle for a field goal attempt that i'm pretty sure was missed. That could have been very big in the end. Also, with the running game as stagnent as it is, i think its about time that Price, Aldrige, and Schmidt start getting some real playing time. All are very capable (especially Aldrige) of being very good runners. Aldrige might be too much of a power runner to get a lot of time, but if thats the case, put prince in. He's supposed to be the fastest kid on the team. If thats the case lets get the ball in his hands and lets see what he can do. 'cause right now everybody just needs to drop back and cover the receivers (which teams have been doing pretty damn well the last couple games) and not even have to worry about the run game b/c most of the time their front 4 (or even 3) can shut it down. If they don't the linebackers will. Walker just can't seem to ever get long runs execpt against Stanford. Until then his longest run was like 16 yards. Now its around 30. Something has got to be done to change that. There were a couple of things that really impressed me in this game. The first was the defense. Yes, they gave up 2 big plays in the passing game, but outside of that they played an almost perfect game. Plus they really stood strong at the end of the game making 2 big stops to give the offense a shot a winning. The other thing was the poise shown by the Irish on that last offensive drive. They were cool, calm, and collected, even though they were down by 4 with a minute left, no timeouts, 80 yards to go, and their BCS hopes slipping away. That is the sign of a truely great Quarterback. It also shows the amount of trust that everyone has in BQ. Like D. Walk said, "When you look at him, you just get the feeling that everything is going to be alright." I know everyone is gonna say that a truely good team would never allow themselves to be put in a situation like the Irish were (against ucla and msu) but shit happens and good teams and players find a way to win. No matter what. Oh, and its bullshit that ND wins and drops in the polls, being jumped by Clemson (they beat GT pretty good so that almost understandable, but at the same time not at all (AP poll)) and Florida who i guess looked pretty good during their bye week and Tennesse who had a come-from-behind win as well (coaches poll). HOW THE FUCK DOES A TEAM WIN AND GET JUMPED BY A TEAM THAT HAD A BYE. THAT IS BULLSHIT. ok... done ranting.

#9 (BCS... its all that really matters) Notre Dame 6-1
Next victim: Navy

I stopped writing after the UCLA game... not really sure why. Well, those are my reviews from the past and should give you an idea for what you'll get out of me. Now, I've got to write my Nevada review since its a little overdue and get ready for Michigan... GO IRISH!

Return To Glory

Alright, a few years ago I did weekly reviews on how I thought Notre Dame's Football team preformed on the field and included other random thoughts on the Irish... I decided that I'm gonna start doing this again this season. Basically this is just gonna be my thoughts on Notre Dame athletics, specifically the football team and, if i can stand watching them, the men's basketball team.