Suggestions For Charlie Weis: Week Six

The clock clicked to zero and the players on the field began to jog into the locker room. It was halftime and Notre Dame was beating up on North Carolina. The score was 17-9 and by that alone, you couldn’t tell that the Irish were playing some of the best football I’d seen all season.

The Notre Dame defense held the North Carolina offense to three field goals and the Irish offense was moving the ball fairly well against a stout Tar Heel defense.

I was too comfortable.

I had come to expect such production out of such a young team for, as the previous two weeks indicated, the Irish were fairly explosive on offense.

However, I knew they had a tendency to implode and let a turnover or a mental error snowball into nearly costing them a couple of games. Which is why, when Charlie Weis was leaving the field he said to a reporter that they needed to come out in the second half and get an early score, I leaned over to my wife and said, “They’re going to have to protect the ball.”

Such prophetic words had never been spoken.

With that, the Irish came out in the second half and proceeded to neatly wrap the game and give the Tar Heels an early Christmas present. This single interaction between my wife and I is what personified entire afternoon for Notre Dame.

On Saturday, Notre Dame was their own worst enemy. When they had a big play on offense, they negated the play with a penalty or a turnover. When they stopped a run on defense, they allowed the Tar Heel wide receivers to reach the first down marker—one step forward, two steps back.

Sure North Carolina is a decent team, but the Irish had the ‘Heels on their heels (pun intended) going into the half.

What the Irish couldn’t do for Stanford one week earlier, they managed to do for North Carolina.

The Good

Receivers are Getting Separation

If there’s one thing that has been fairly constant throughout this entire season, it’s that the receivers are clearly the strength of this offense. They were arguably the second weakest part of the offense last season, second only to the offensive line.

However, with the emergence of young talent like Mike Floyd and Golden Tate, the entire corps has become very reliable. Additionally, they seem to be the one unit on offense that is committing the least amount of mental errors. Sure, some routes haven’t been run correctly, and that botched lateral by Mike Floyd at the end of regulation cost us the game, but they are one of the most consistent parts of the entire team.

Not only that, but the receivers are getting a decent amount of separation against their defenders. The only reason that Golden Tate is able to perform fade routes so well is his speed, and he uses it well to get separation from opposing cornerbacks.

Mike Floyd is one of the most nimble freshman receivers to come to Notre Dame that I have seen. . He reminds me of Maurice Stovall or Derek Mays, but with a bit more muscle.

He is a freshman and already, he is able to contort his body, stop and start quickly, or turn on a dime in order to catch the football. It’s amazing what these two will be able to do for this offense when Tate is a senior and Floyd is a junior.

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