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)