Reaction To The Charlie Weis Debacle: Notre Dame Is Firing The Wrong Guy

As I remarked in an earlier piece on offensive attacks , Notre Dame's administration—in firing Charlie Weis at year's end —is canning the wrong guy.

Weis' offense is clicking. Jimmy Clausen just threw for 425 yards and had the most completions of any Notre Dame quarterback in school history. Golden Tate and Michael Floyd are absolute studs, impossible to keep up with downfield, splitting triple coverage for touchdowns. Between Theo Riddick and Jonas Gray, there's at least one future All-American in the ND backfield.

In spite of the brand, Notre Dame doesn't just recruit itself anymore. We found that out in the Ty Willingham era.

But against an even worse record than Willingham's, Weis has absolutely cleaned up, pulling in top-15 recruiting classes for the past five years.

Manti Te'O, Clausen, Dayne Crist, Floyd, and Tate have become household names, and Shaq Evans, Robby Parris, and Kyle Rudolph are close behind.

The coach the ND administration should be firing is Jon Tenuta. Tenuta's overreliance on the blitz hasn't proved successful at all in disrupting a team's ability to score. Notre Dame's scoring defense is ranked 49th in the country, after finishing 42nd last year.

The Irish gave up 38 and 34 points to Michigan and USC, both of whom were starting true freshmen at quarterback. How the Irish offense allowed those teams to score that much, especially given the offensive ineptitude of both teams since, is truly remarkable.

Now, the myth of Tenuta's chaos-creating blitzes has been dispelled. Listen to coach Ken Niumatalolo's comments after the Navy game . Niumatalolo said he knew his offense would be successful against the Irish defense because they "...had a pretty good clue that they were going to come back and do the same things as they did last year."

For the coaches to have a defense predicated on surprise figured out that well in advance, it's no wonder Notre Dame can't contain true freshmen, let alone the triple option.

Given that the gun is pointed in the wrong direction, it's worth wondering whether Notre Dame will consider keeping Weis on as an offensive coordinator, and whether Weis would be open to coaching in such a capacity.

After all, Weis' family has settled down comfortably in the South Bend area. Weis has expressed the hope that his son would enroll at Notre Dame. The ND administration has been supportive of Weis' situation with his autistic daughter, and his wife's and his foundation, Hannah & Friends.

Is the case for Weis' arrogance overstated? Would he be willing to take a pay cut and work underneath a lead dog to coach the offensive players to whom he's made promises?

If the rumors are right, we'll find out, once the Irish finish up the regular season at Stanford on Nov. 28th.

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