Frankus

My Dad played for Notre Dame , I graduated from ND as did my daughter and son in law. If you think ND would fire any coach ever after one year for strictly football reasons, you don’t know a damn thing about Notre Dame. Now I’m going to block you.

If ND fired any Head Coach after one year it would go from a destination coaching job to a graveyard one. With all the restrictions ND has, and with a questionable NIL strategy, it would be disastrous to fire Freeman. We’re not very good, but if Jack Coan was back we’d have beaten Marshall and Stanford. It would be smoke and mirrors like all of Kelly’s teams, but we lost both of those games due to our pitiful QB play, and it’s going to get worse with Clemson and USC ahead.

ND lacks talent at QB, wide receiver, linebacker and safety other than Joseph. I don’t care what high school rankings are, it is glaringly obvious that we need to upgrade the talent.

Good The staff saw a weakness in punt protection and exploited it. The play calling and execution to primarily run the ball on the last two drives to ice the game. Mayer, who can catch passes even when completely covered. Okay. The pass and run defense for the most part. Pass rush the first half. Styles, who has talent, but continues to drop passes. Bad Pyne. Unless he dramatically becomes more accurate we’re going to lose 4 more games. We should have easily scored 60 if he could complete passes to wide open receivers His lack of execution was shockingly bad Our run safeties tackling. Their ineptitude turns 8 yard gains into 60 yard gains.

I talked to a Trustee at a wedding last weekend. He said Notre Dame is only interested in one thing regarding Notre Dame football and that is revenue. They are extremely happy with the financial contracts Swarbrick has signed, where the big money is.

Nice post. Everyone wants Marcus to succeed at least as well as Kelly, but there are a lot of differences between he and Kirby Smart, starting with the years with Bowden then Saban, the best college coach of his generation, where Kirby was Broyles Assistant Coach of the year and then another year the FBS Assistant coach of the year. So, the pedigree isn’t comparable. Then, Freemen was saddled with a relatively inexperienced Rees, compared to Smart’s Georgia Offensive Coordinator Chaney, whose first OC job was in 1997. Smart also inherited a loaded bunch of NFL draftable skill position players, where Freeman does not. Furthermore, Freeman has to deal with Swarbrick and Notre Dame, where Swarbrick sees himself as a GM. How else can you explain him signing Rees before Freeman. Freeman has to hope he can keep a Top 10 recruiting class, find an Offensive Coordinator with at least as much experience as Al Golden, get a proven college QB in the transfer portal and hope to win at least 8 games next year. I hope he can do it,while learning how to motivate an entire team week in and week out, oversee the game plan on both sides of the ball, evaluate assistant coach performance and player personnel, learn when to push the team and when to back off so that it is in peak mental and physical form at kickoff. It’s a tall task, which he clearly hasn’t been up to this season. Swarbrick took a huge gamble with Freeman. Let’s hope he’s up to the task and is learning quickly and decisively how to get better being a Head Coach.

LSU’s for one. Buchner hasn’t impressed me at all as a passer or a scrambler He has only done well on designated runs.

They keep recruiting short QB’s, who aren’t accurate downfield and aren’t particularly fast. Buchner is the fastest , but he’s not SEC fast. Not a recipe for success.

The first thing I’d do is move Patterson back to center. He gets pancaked by tackles when zone blocking and isn’t fast enough to pull and trap defense ends. For a guy with all that hype, he was awful against Stanford. He alone was responsible for some of the lack of execution in the first half run game. Neither Styles or Lenzy adjusts well to intermediate to long passes. I’d replace Styles with Merriwether and replace Lenzy with Styles. It’s time to go youth movement. Even though he’s got the most potential I’d bench Estime for his fumbling. A message has to be sent that protecting the football is imperative. Pyne is too short to see the field on short, in between the hashes throws. Nobody should run those routes if it’s a straight drop back pass, it’s a waste of personnel. They need to move the pocket for him. He needs to be able to see more of the field. Things like Tyree not lining up correctly, which negated the 2st quarter TD pass to Mayer are simply inexcusable. That’s all about preparation and attention to detail. If I’m Freeman, I’m all over Rees, whoever is the passing game coordinator and Tyree for that sloppiness. That kind of sloppiness can’t continue.

Your truth is that you think Freeman is going to have Lou Holtz like results at Notre Dame?

Were you there? I was. There’s no comparison in what Holtz did taking over from Faust to Freeman taking over Kelly. If there is a plausible comparison, it is Faust taking over from Devine. We could parse the comparisons, but from my “I was there” eye test, this feels an awful lot like Faust. I wish I was hopeful, but college head coaching experience is a long learning curve and we not only don’t have that, but it’s pretty clear that Kelly was the de facto Offensive Coordinator.

From a football excellence standpoint, Swarbrick panicked after Kelly left and took a flyer on a guy who has never been a head coach, despite all the data points that that has never ended well at ND. From a Notre Dame perspective, they could care less as long as Swarbrick negotiates lucrative contracts.

Good Pyne to Mayer Pyne’s decision making and accuracy. The D line stepping up and stoping BYU at the end of the game to seal the win. Thomas emerging as a reliable option The running game and a balanced offense overall. Mix The defense, which let them back in the game and the offense that got conservative on 3rd/4th downs. Bad Goldens decision to Safety blitz on 2nd down up 20-8. The blitzing safety was late and the single coverage slot defender left his man wide open with no safety help for a huge gain and subsequent TD which got them back in the game. Rees’ conservative call playing on the goal line in the 2nd half. When you call a run on 2rd down with an unblocked linebacker to automatically fill the hole you’ve wasted a key play. Pyne is resourceful. Give him more freedom to make a play. Then, though I liked the concept of a screen, everyone knew Mayer was getting the ball and they telegraphed it with motion. Throwing to a WR release to the corner would have been an easy TD.

I don’t think USC’s front 7 is any better than North Carolina. We should destroy them with our running game, which will open up our passing game. This is a winnable game.

Good. The offensive line dominated Pyne was really efficient . We hit their QB hard and often, which affected him Our Punt return team gained yards. Bad Our secondary giving a quick TD, late in the game, because our corner sat on a short route, while our safety had to defend both the possibility of a long post and a streak Estime, who was gassed, fumbled in the end zone, when our O line was dominating NC and could have crushed them. Gassed players make mistakes Either Tyree or Diggs would have scored without a turnover

I read and article where Aaron Taylor said that Quinn was a big proponent of pin and pull, but Hiestand isn’t. I haven’t watched closely enough, but it will be interesting to see how Hiestand differs from Quinn.

I’m just looking for improvement in discipline and execution. That will tell me if Freeman -as head of the program-is progressing.

Good The defensive line. More touches for Chris Tyree The running game improved with a few longer runs. Mix Pyne, who started terribly, but then executed the simple throws required of him. Joseph, who played well at times, but was in position to sack Cal’s QB and whiffed. He’s not Kyle Hamilton despite the hype. Bad The linebackers, who can’t get off blocks and whiff on run blitzes. We really miss Drew White. The last play, where they apparently they aren’t coached to just slam the Hail Mary to the ground. Cal’s receiver is going to think about that lost opportunity for a long time.

I don’t need a long lecture from you about offensive football dude. We disagree about why the second play didn’t work. This isn’t worth my time anymore. So I’m out.

Here’s how it’s possible. I read a lot about how in preseason camp they were scrimmaging 1’s vs 1’s. Our defense doesn’t put safeties on the line of scrimmage to do run blitzes and they don’t run blitz with corners. ND’s defense run blitzes with linebackers. So, it’s possible that our slow developing up the gut run with Estime worked in scrimmages. It’s not like Bo Bauer and Bertrand are Roquan Smith or Dick Butkus. So, we play Marshall and they counter our slow power with fast run blitzes by fast safeties and corners. We didn’t block these guys. So it says to me that ND either didn’t practice it at game speed, or didn’t anticipate how fast Marshall’s run blitzes were. There is one other possibility and it’s that Buchner should have seen these run blitzes and kept the ball. He didn’t. So it’s a moot point, but it’s possible.

Marshall used a TE as an H back. Not a fullback. It doesn’t matter what a Notre Dame Te should be able to do. Rees has to call plays based on what is actually happening. It doesn’t matter that there was one less tight end on 4th down. It was the tight end -on the line of scrimmage- that got pushed all the way into the running back as the slow developing run up the middle developed and blew up the play both times. I stand by my statement that given what he saw happen on 3rd down , it was play calling malfeasance to call the same play, despite your assertion that having one less tight end in the formation, made it different. I’ve shown you why one less TE was meaningless in the 4th down result.

You’re wrong. Notre Dame never runs what amounts to a fullback lead play. Never. I have no idea why we’re running 3 TE, but if you watch the third and 4th down plays where we got stopped by Marshall at the 48 yard line, on the 3rd down play Marshall’s DE shoved our TE all the way into the backfield behind the center!!! What does Rees do after (presumably) seeing that happen. He calls the same play! With the same result! And no hard count or anything. This is coaching malfeasance. Plain and simple.

No they don’t. Marshall ran a vastly different scheme with different plays than ND. Notre Dame ran a bunch of 3 TE sets. Marshall used one Tight End with three wide receivers and the TE was often used like a fullback, as a lead blocker or trapping unblocked players. The only time ND has ever done that in the Kelly/Rees era was with Tommy Tremble They certainly aren’t doing that now I agree that players need to execute. But the Kelly/Rees system has always had slow developing inside runs. Now, with two slow running backs, Marshall run- blitzed safeties and cornerbacks in the alley and tackled the running backs before they even got to the line of scrimmage. That’s scheme and coaching. Given their personnel, Reese should never call that play, but he continued to do so with the same results. No gain.

I agree, but let’s not forget that Notre Dame was the first University to leave the CFA, which pooled their television rights , and went for all the money from NBC because of the strength of THEIR brand. Now that the game includes a players brand model, they’re upset? The money won in 1991, that’s capitalism. Now that the tenets of capitalism has been extended to players, Notre Dame can’t claim to be self righteous without looking like hypocrites. It’s going to be interesting, but standing pat is going to put ND in a huge hole. We’re already seeing the best recruits leave. And who can blame them? It takes a long time to become a millionaire, even with a Notre Dame degree. Since college football is now a network driven model, I wouldn’t be surprised if NBC, or whoever offers ND the most money, won’t dictate that ND must guarantee 5 star recruits money, and or bring in transfers. ND’s got a big decision. If they don’t play ball with the new model they’re going to be left behind as a marketable brand.

Cal will do exactly what Marshall did if ND insists on running up the middle out of that heavy backfield formation. They’ll blitz corners and safeties off the edge. The only hope ND has is that the Cal guys are slower than the Marshall guys and can’t get to Estime/Diggs just as they get the handoff. Or, that Rees scraps that and we attack the edges of the defense instead of the middle. Without Buchner’s running threat, unless ND changes it’s run scheme they are More limited. I expect Rees to either throw more on first down, or continue what he did against Marshall, and hope Cal doesn’t have fast safeties and corners. I hope I’m wrong. My guess is that we’re still an offense that will have lots of 3rd and 8 and totally reliant on big chunk long passes. I have no idea if Pyne can throw an accurate deep ball, but he was behind Coan last year who could, and Buchner this year who couldn’t. Unless Rees poorly evaluated Pyne, we’re in a tough spot.