How many times did you give up on the Irish?

·        Was it when the Irish went third and out at 6:05 of the fourth quarter?

·        Was it when Brady was stopped on the ill fated fourth down quarterback sneak with only 2:20 remaining?

·        Was it when the refs called a penalty on the punt with just over a minute to go?

This game was an especially physical game.  It was not the hardest hitting game throughout, but it was physical in the sense that both teams struggled on nearly every play just to get the play off!!  It looked like a Notre Dame v Michigan game, which is not supposed to happen with pass happy West Coast teams especially like the Bruins; but wait a minute, to borrow an expression from Lee Corso, the Bruins snuck up on everyone by hiring a Belichick disciple named Wayne Walker as the D Co-ordinator.  His impact was immediate, but the D’s progress hit a brick wall last week!  When we scouted the Oregon v UCLA game, we saw a porous defense that could not stop a five year old on a tricycle!  Yes, they missed 33 attempted tackles of those guys in the absurd green, yellow and squiggly shaped uniforms.

What a transformation?  Thanks to this game, Coach Walker will be Head Coach Walker soon at a Division IA school.  Or, maybe Charlie could hire him to replace Rick Minter, but WAIT, IT IS THE DEFENSE NOT THE OFFENSE THAT IS SAVING NOTRE DAME NOW!

62 seconds of glory for Notre Dame from Bruin perspective

"We played our butts off today," Davis said (he is the other defensive end, opposite the Hickman Animal)  "But we only played 59 minutes.  In order to win, you have to tackle and finish.  We didn't do that on the last drive."

During the last drive, the Bruins' defense decided to move to a Cover 2 formation, abandoning the blitzing defense that had stifled the Irish's offense all game long.

Instead of facing constant pressure as he had earlier, Quinn was able to sit back in the pocket and deliver the balls accurately down the field.

"We wanted to play a zone defense to prevent the big play," defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker said. "I was planning on moving back to our blitzing scheme after staying in zone for a few plays, but unfortunately we never got that chance."

Are these famous last words, or what?  It seems NFL philosophy may have cost UCLA the game in the end!

Bonehead Calls

Four bonehead calls stand out from the last minute miracle against the Bruins:

·        In what appeared to be developing into the Irish specialty right before the half, they drove to the six, but somehow let a whole bunch of time run off the clock all the way down to 17 seconds.  So then on third down, Brady inexplicably runs a sneak up the middle and then the Irish let the clock run down to 5 seconds.  Watching it, one might have inferred that Charlie was setting up a field goal, but he does not do that in these situations.  We think he was trying to score a TD on the sneak, which is really strange.  The three points were important, but only after TRYING FOR A TD.  Will the real Charlie Weis please stand up?  (After writing these three sentences, we found out that Brady thought he saw a big enough hole in the D line and checked off to the sneak—a gutsy though stupid move.)

·        In the second half Charlie pulls a real surprise, with Brady quick kicking trying for a pooch down near the goal line, except that it goes into the end zone, for a net gain of 13 yards.  Now this decision was absurd, for the Irish gave up a chance to go for a first down on fourth and 5 in return for just a few net yards—13 to be specific!  In short, there was at best marginal utility to the surprise, even if it succeeded.  Big deal!  Sure, he could have pooched it down on the one yard line, but Brady has little experience doing this, and ND needed points, rather than needing to bottle up UCLA!

·        Charlie called up Goia to try a 48 yard field goal.  And, when one considers that Goia has not proven that he can kick that far accurately, the decision seems awfully strange.

·        With a little over two minutes to go in the game, Irish with a 4^th and nearly 2, Brady attempts to convert on a quarterback sneak.  Now the Irish had already converted almost twenty million of these in this game, but the Uclans had never loaded the box, not even once, but this time at the last minute they stuffed linebackers into Brady’s favorite holes in the line, and stuffed him!  He should have spotted it and rolled out.  The result was UCLA ball, BUT the Irish defense stopped three consecutive vanilla running plays, while Pat Haden was imploring the Bruins to roll out and throw for the first down, which of course would have ended the game.

Good points

·        The ND defense rises to the occasion in this game, as in the Georgia Tech and MSU games, but with even more intensity over a more sustained period of time.

·        The D line’s improvement—best game by D line in forever!  Derek Landri and Victor Abiamiri played especially well and with tenacity that was a joy to Behold.

·        Charlie and team have now won the last three down to the wire games after losing the first two to MSU and USC last year.

·        The Irish have David Grimes back—uh, that would be they have three of him back—he was everywhere catching eight balls, two more than his season total heretofore!!

·        Charlie diagrammed the last three plays on the sideline in the huddle, putting these plays in because they were not part of the original game plan—so now we are playing sandlot football at Notre Dame!

·        Brady showed great determination and courage and focus to have the great performance and stats he had without an interception, given that the O line gave him the worst protection he has had since he was a freshman.  Compare his stats to Joe Montana’s in Joe’s greatest comebacks, and you will see that Brady’s stats are better in this game!

Questions

·        Why does Notre Dame wait until the team is in deep shit to go without a huddle and shoot from the spread instead of lining up with Brady under the center?

·        What is wrong with the offensive line?  When asked about it, Charlie says: “Tough day at the office!”  Is he kidding us?  No, he is not, but he has a huge problem with the O line and with the coaches on this one!  The announcers said that the O line coach, John Latina, in the middle of the fourth quarter, was screaming at the players and berating them and imploring them to give Brady some protection.  Then, the O line went out on the field and caved in again!!  This bunch has deteriorated into trying to push the D linemen out of the way.  Ryan Harris is the worst and if it is not corrected immediately, Sam Young will regress by imitating this, sorry to say, cowardly behavior!  (This is the first time we have used the word “coward” and it may not be seem fair, but it looks that way when we see O linemen repeatedly pushing D linemen instead of drive blocking them!!!  Remember Jeff Faine—he would never have done that!!!)  Many of the sacks of Brady occurred after an ineffectual push by one of the O linemen who was not doing his job—the push merely delaying the sack and offering the charging lineman a route around him directly into Brady’s arms!  If Latina cannot fix the problem NOW, then he needs to be replaced.  Relative to the rushing situation: although UCLA might have been one of Darius' less productive games, Notre Dame is now 16-0 when Walker has 20 or more carries in a game. Walker had 21 carries Saturday!!!

·        How can any college game be so bereft of net rushing yards?  The two teams totaled 67 net rushing yards.  How is this possible?

·        In the Internet post game show hosted by Jack Nolen, ‘88 O tackle, Mirko Jurkovic correctly said that ND cannot run!  The entire team looked lethargic on offense for most of the game—why?  Jurkovic says that there should be no such thing!

·        How can ND be so good on fourth down?  What team has ever converted so many fourth downs in a game and in a season?  And, yet at the same time, how can the team be so bad on third down (Notre Dame ended up 4 of 19 on third down conversions), which means that they are terrible on first and second downs too often or third and long would be rare?  Instead, it is the norm and it sets up one disaster after another!!!

·        Where are the Irish?  At this stage, Notre Dame is just not good enough to play for the big one.  I know that this statement make a lot of Irish fans really angry, but it is true.  A long awaited turn around in the O line is the sine qua non of a successful ending to the season!

Unsung Hero

Defensive tackle Trevor Laws recorded his first fumble recovery of the season Saturday, but he felt his most significant contribution was providing Samardzija with a calf massage just prior to the game-winning scoring drive.

"He owes me something for that," Laws said. I rubbed his calves out, told him, 'Let's do this baby', and he did it."

 Charlie

Despite the fact the Irish didn't play well until the end, Charlie Weis was happy.

"I'm not going to feel miserable about this win, I promise you," Weis said. "You want to be miserable, fine. I'm going to be happy. Any time you win a game like that - we're very fortunate to walk out of there with scoring a touchdown inside of 30 seconds to go with no timeouts left. Sign me up."

Weis said the offense – which ran the ball ineffectively with junior Darius Walker and had an offensive line that failed to block well for all but one minute of the game – needs some work.

In all, Weis was happy with only three players on his offense – Quinn, Samardzija and sophomore wide receiver David Grimes, who had eight catches for 79 yards.

History

The victory was just the third time the Irish (6-1) won with a touchdown in the final 30 seconds.  In 1992, Rick Mirer threw a 4-yard TD pass to Jerome Bettis and a 2-point conversion with 20 seconds left for a 17-16 victory over Penn State in snowy conditions.

In the 1979 Cotton Bowl, Joe Montana played with a virus in the first half and sat out the third quarter because his body temperature dipped well below normal.  The Cougars led 34-12 with 7 1/2 minutes to play when Montana, after eating a cup of chicken soup, led Notre Dame to three touchdowns and a 35-34 win.

 The Announcers

Although Tom Hammond and Pat Haden are much better than Mush Mouth and bob davie (sic), they can hardly be heard.  Pat Haden’s voice is to high to be heard over the background fan noise!  And then at the end, one of them observed as how the score was the same as the Snow Bowl against Penn State, but of course that score was 17-16!!  Wrong again!!