Rivals Summary Of CW

[Donjuan]

http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=874019

[GermanyDomer]

http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=874019

Its a shame but Rivals is right on the money. Charlie is an elite recruiter but not an elite coach. His heart and effort are in the right place but a good coach would destroy these teams we are losing to. I hate to say it but some of the coaches we criticize on this forum would crush the competition with the talent we have and Im not talking about Ty. ND is loaded with far superior talent than any of the teams we lost to and their guys are young too. The best thing in the world for me would be if Charlie proved me wrong. Hopefully we end up 7-5 and get a bowl game the Irish can win and give us something to cheer for.

[Guest irishrick]

Sorry , i don't buy this , cw is getting the job done , some of the staff need to go , then things will get better once and for all. Should wait till the season is over. Go irish

[Guest SirJohn]

I do agree, once again, with Rick. In this day and age of instant Internet posting and news we all tend to get impationt, disgruntled, and upset. It takes 9 months to deliver a baby. Long, long. long forgotten In football by our ND fans is there is something called "A sophmore wall." It's where they regress from the sparkiling Freshmen production. I believe that is what we are seeing here. As I said in another post Charlie will say we decided to go in another direction (Minter and Vaas) and that will be done at conclusion of the season.

 

Charlie takes the hit on the chin, which is admirable, vs you name Davie or Ty doing that?

 

It's reported JC has the flu and I am unsure at this point in time how long it takes to recover. For me it was 3 weeks and I could barely crawl out of bed then.

[lawton_irish]

I too agree with Rick. For some reason I still believe Weis can be a great college head coach. In fact, I think the whole program can be great again if the following is done:

 

1) Fire Latina at the end of the year and hire a good Oline coach.

2) Demote Haywood back to RB coach (if he wants) and hire a new offensive coordinator. I realize many want Charlie to call the plays, but I would rather him continue his efforts of being a head coach.

4) Hire a new special teams coordinator.

 

As you see, I pretty much want a "shake-up" of the entire offensive and special teams staff/philosophy. Our defense will be fine, and I like our defensive coaches.

 

Coaching is like running a business...your people make you great. When you get better people, you get better business.

 

Fix the offense, and we a great again....it's really that simple.

[Guest SirJohn]

Well said lawton IMHO. Changes are coming as Weis said he will get more involved in the Offensive category again. Also people forget in their rush to gas chamber someone, we had nothing but Fresh and soph last year 3-9.

[IrishGuy]

I too agree with Rick. For some reason I still believe Weis can be a great college head coach. In fact, I think the whole program can be great again if the following is done:

 

1) Fire Latina at the end of the year and hire a good Oline coach.

2) Demote Haywood back to RB coach (if he wants) and hire a new offensive coordinator. I realize many want Charlie to call the plays, but I would rather him continue his efforts of being a head coach.

4) Hire a new special teams coordinator.

 

As you see, I pretty much want a "shake-up" of the entire offensive and special teams staff/philosophy. Our defense will be fine, and I like our defensive coaches.

 

Coaching is like running a business...your people make you great. When you get better people, you get better business.

 

Fix the offense, and we a great again....it's really that simple.

 

My problem when it comes to Charlie Weis is that I cannot remove the Blue and Gold colored glasses. I believe in him. He just needs to learn that he really is only one man, and no amount of overtime / sleepless nights will fix that.

 

There are not many coaches in the world that work as hard as Charlie does. There are few that recruit as well as he does. There are still fewer who truly love their employer as much as CW does.

 

My largest criticism of CW is that it takes him a year or two to make corrections in the coaching staff. As much as CW watches tape, I would assume he has seen how our S&C is not on par with other schools. Our Lines are not on par. Our Special Teams are not special. If CW is not willing to make major coaching changes before spring ball rolls around, THIS will be his undoing. ND has no chance of completing with good teams with a HC that doesn't no his roll....and with our players being mis-coached.

 

Our players can't develop the "fire" until we start winning games against teams of equal talent as ours. Until we can actually start blowing teams out. We need to have a game where CW has to search for problem areas....not have 10 of them obvious by halftime.

[lawton_irish]

Good point CJ. I would not mind Weis calling the plays again if it did not have an affect on his overall ability to be the head coach.

[potownhero]

Some college coaches have seemingly gotten around this problem by just having really simple (some say gimmicky) schemes. For example, look at Urbie. They don't do anything complicated and pretty much every defense knows what's coming; they just can't stop it. Once teams adjust to it though, the scheme is over and Urbie will have to completely reinvent his offense. Weis' system shouldn't have that issue, but requires the players to learn a whole lot more. There are flaws with every method, our current one takes time to implement.

 

Awesome, so they'll be ready to win when they graduate?

[Guest SirJohn]

PS. I don't trust any Rival article on ND football.

[Pregame]

PS. I don't trust any Rival article on ND football.

This one is spot on SirJohn

[potownhero]

Not quite that far, but kind of. It should be great once we have older guys. One guy will graduate, and another will simply fill in with little to no difference. We can also change strengths depending on the current crop of players. It should also get a lot of guys drafted highly, since their learning curve will be much less.

 

 

And so we're screwed if there is any injury or a guy leaves early? Heaven forbid we have a bad year or two at recruiting or evaluating recruiting b/c we'd be screwed 3 and 4 years down the line. Sounds like a losing strategy. I'd rather have a more basic scheme and do it well than have such a complicated scheme.

 

Can someone tell me whether our OL has poor technique or is it weak or both? Thanks.

[ND FANATIC]

Can someone tell me whether our OL has poor technique or is it weak or both? Thanks.

 

They are both. I can remember the last time I saw a major college football program get pushed off the line of scrimmage so easily, hell we had a better OL under Willingham.

[IrishGuy]

I'd also like to add that our current crop of linemen had no upper-classmen to help them get better. Listen to our receivers talk about how much Grimes has helped them. The staff can't be correcting every player at all times. If you have a senior that knows what he is doing, he can point out problems that the staff may not have noticed because they were pointing out a different problem.

 

Coaches are supposed to help in this area. Period. ...and this statement is just not true. Each one of our starting linemen has been around ND for 3 years. In 05 and 06 we had Jrs and Srs playing. Sam Young has been starting since day one. We have the veteran players......we DO NOT have the coaches.

 

Our line is out-muscled, and out-played each week for 1 reason.....and that IS NOT the lack of leadership on the line.

[irishwavend]

I second that CJ. I'm tired of a bunch of people whining about sophomores and freshmen saying CW can't coach. I forget...who took us to two BCS bowls with only 2 classes of players to work with? That was Ty right? No? Davie? No? Oh, that's right, it was Charlie. Seriously, people, this is one game where the wheels fell off. Our players in the other games have been acting like young players. It's what young players do. I do agree that Haywood sucks as a playcaller. Latina sucks at the O-Line. Charlie, however, is a good coach who can get it done. Remember, the only reason we didn't compete in the BCS games was because Minter was a crappy Defensive coordinator.

 

We aren't expected to do much this year, so why not let Weis try out new stuff? Why not let him learn his lesson about playcalling versus delegating playcalling?

 

Some of our people sound as bad as NDNation's braintrust. We need to get off of the fire Charlie crap. Things are wrong, but CW will fix them. He's not an idiot. You have to get through the season, though. Some of these coaches have relationships with recruits. You can't just throw them out and let those recruits go. You have to maintain consistency until signing day. Then, you can make the necessary changes. It's good Charlie is taking over playcalling.

[IrishGuy]

have you noticed 2005 was CW's best all around year? In 06 our line started to look over-matched, and team started to figure out our offense. Last year was the worst in the HISTORY (including TW and BD) of Notre Dame.

 

There is no excuse for what we are going through. Last year should NOT have been that bad. I know CW can be a good coach....but he needs to understand teh differences between teh NFL and college, and surround himself with coaches that can actually HELP him.

[potownhero]

have you noticed 2005 was CW's best all around year? In 06 our line started to look over-matched, and team started to figure out our offense. Last year was the worst in the HISTORY (including TW and BD) of Notre Dame.

 

There is no excuse for what we are going through. Last year should NOT have been that bad. I know CW can be a good coach....but he needs to understand teh differences between teh NFL and college, and surround himself with coaches that can actually HELP him.

 

I remember B Quinn taking quite a beating. And I think you are correct in saying that the OLINE blocking hasn't shown much progress if any. Like I said in a previous post, the only noticable difference between this team and last years is the play-making ability of Floyd, and an improved Tate. If we played last years schedule, we very likely end up with another 3-9 season.

 

Something needs to change.

[IrishGuy]

Until our line can actually block someone....I refuse to acknowledge any improvement.

 

We have sacrificed the ability to run so we can buy JC another second to throw. We have not improved in our ability to block. We have made our linemen position themselves in such a way that it just takes longer to get to the QB.

 

Watch the Pitt game. 3 DL were able to eat up our line. Against BC, 2 DTs controlled the game. Our linemen get absolutely thrown around. I do not remember the last time we actually saw a "pocket" for JC to step up in to. Maybe once or twice a game.....being generous.

 

In my honest opinion, our line has progressively gotten worse each year. ...and I was actually one of the ones talking good about our line early on.....but then I started to pay attention.

[Guest SirJohn]

Quote: Some of our people sound as bad as NDNation's braintrust. We need to get off of the fire Charlie crap. Things are wrong, but CW will fix them. He's not an idiot. You have to get through the season, though. Some of these coaches have relationships with recruits. You can't just throw them out and let those recruits go. You have to maintain consistency until signing day. Then, you can make the necessary changes. It's good Charlie is taking over playcalling.

 

Ahahah Wave I do agree. And all too often NDNation's position and posters are way behind the curve. (I'm banned by the way by some obscure Mod over there.) after a dissagreement on a post I made. I quit reading it and prefer IE or DD. They only wanted their Idea, and theirs alone. Noting else tolerated..

[Irish Chris]

Does Tenuta count as someone that will HELP him?

 

I agree that Weis has made many mistakes. I think he has attempted to rectify them as soon as he is sure he has made one. What he definitely doesn't do is jump to conclusions. We have no idea what happens in coaches meetings, nor how much freedom Weis is giving to Latina and Tiny. He obviously sees that we can't run the ball straight down the opposition's throat and will attempt to correct that. If he sees that as their fault, they will be gone.

 

Rather than say our line sucks, can everyone associated with it, I am trying to look at it from a different point of view. The pass protection has improved immensely from last year. Does Latina get any credit for that? How much better would the protection look if Jimmy stepped up into the pocket when it's there? Does the run blocking look worse because our plays are telegraphed? Is that a problem with the play-calling, or the plays themselves?

 

Hell yes Tenuta counts as a great coaching hire.

Him and Corwin are the reason that Charlie can now sit back and take on the offense so completely again.

In Charlie's first years, the defense was always the problem with this team.

The O line has ran a steady second.

The defense has improved every year, especially with the amount of depth we've been able to build there.

 

Now it's time to for Charlie to step back and fix our last, glaring problem.

As far as I'm concerned, he's already made himself O coordinator again.

We just won't know for sure until tomorrow morning.

 

You're right cj, the pass protection is much better than last year.

In fact, it got better as the year went on last season. Pass protection is also the easiest thing for an O line to do.

Jimmy probably could do a better job of stepping into the pocket, but there was no pocket for most of the game against BC.

Those D tackles put a whooping on our line, period.

I consider Eric Olsen to be a pretty bad dude, but watching him get pushed around was pretty sad. Whoever Wenger wasn't able to double on was getting so much push it was ridiculous.

This IMO is a strength issue, and a technique issue.

 

Charlie has spent 3+ years trying to make this a running team, and we have gone backwards every year. There has to be a shake up.

Change is good.