Notre Dame Football: Are the Fighting Irish Still Relevant?

I watched last week’s Notre Dame-USC game at a bar in South Boston. As I was going through my pregame warmup of a shot of fine Irish whiskey and a Guiness or two, the Dublin-born bartender asked me, “So, what’s up with your boys?”

As we both had a good deal of Irish blood in us, I told him what any true Irishman at the time honestly believes, “Tony, if we don’t drop the friggin’ ball inside the 10 this team is 6-0 and we’re having a national debate on whether we should be in the BCS title game if we get by USC and Stanford at their place.”

Of course, to drive my point home, Dayne Crist drops the snap from the one as ND is going in to tie the game. USC scoops it up and deposits it in the end zone a half-mile away. Consequently, my tie game with USC on its heels is suddenly a two-TD game as I make in-game adjustments from the pint special to the 32 ounce mugs to compensate for my loss of any real enthusiasm.

As the USC game played out I continued with emergency blood-alcohol transfusions as the Trojans kicked our a**es all over the field, inevitably sparking a beer-goggled epiphany.

You see, as a Notre Dame alumni and fan, I defend the Irish with cold hard facts.

Theoretically, we are now officially three bad plays from an undefeated season. That is my stock response when faced with the haters.

Realistically, we’re one loss away from .500, and we have been for a while.

Losing at Notre Dame Has Become the Status Quo

Although we don’t like to admit it, like it or not, by necessity Irish Nation has become accustomed to losing. A justifiably proud program that has 849 wins and a .733 all-time win percentage is 103-76 (.574) in the post-Holtz era (circa 1996).

For those of us that don’t do math, that’s roughly the exact same percentage as our current 4-3 record. While we like to think we’re better, since the Clinton administration, ND has averaged four wins for every three losses year in and year out.

By those standards, Brian Kelly’s mediocre 12-8 (.600) record is actually a small step up over recent coaching regimes. Trust me, this is tough to take for an alumnus that basked in a national championship and four seasons with Dan Devine’s monotone winning 77 percent of his games.

The current students and recent alumni have never experienced their daddy’s ND.

The social toll this has taken on our ability to talk sports with our friends from other universities is staggering. We no longer boast that we are a legitimate top five team before the opener, and we temper our arguments knowing that whatever we say can and will be held against us at sports bars and man caves across the country.

We are often relegated to smiling incessantly and nodding weakly when yet another preseason ND squad is highly rated before four or five bad losses and a close win in the world’s worst bowl.

We hesitate to offer a high opinion because we’ve all bragged about our team at one point only to watch the wheels come off in disparaging fashion year after year.

This team was supposed to be different.

Defending Notre Dame Football Has Become a Monumental Task

At 4-3, with some definitively horrible play in both the losses and the wins, we are again hearing the blaring voices of the talking heads that ND is over-hyped and irrelevant.

It burns us when non-believers write ND is all blow and no go, yet, the argument against it is becoming harder to support; to the point we are now inclined to simply avoid the discussion if at all possible.

Personally, I never go to a sports bar without inviting the captain of my high school debate team to back me up, as the ammunition for the anti-Irish football contingent is beginning to rival the resources of the US military.

The lack of a signature win haunts the program. Historic home losses against Syracuse and Tulsa get thrown in our face. Other supposedly lesser teams don’t get embarrassed by Navy annually.

We get crushed by Stanford. That’s the same Stanford team with similar academic requirements and historically mediocre teams that is now making a good case for the BCS championship despite graduating half its team and losing 90 percent of its coaching staff to the pros.

Brian Kelly Year Deux Has Not Quieted the Unbelievers

For 2011, despite my aversion to non-alcoholic beverages, I drank the Kool-Aid. The defense looked bigger and faster, and the offense was talented at every position. We had everyone back but the equipment manager and his trusty dog Sparky.

The late-season resurgence on the defensive side of the ball inspired trash-talking that had been gone since the days Lou Holtz charmingly lisped his way through ND fundraisers.

As a consequence, going into 2011 we still expected growing pains, but instead found a recurring tumor, pulling defeat from the jaws of victory time and again. Breakdowns in every phase of the game combined with a horrible rash of turnovers jump stopped a disappointing season after only two games.

Now we are 4-3 and the word mediocre keeps bouncing off the pub walls yet again; and yet again the messengers cannot be disregarded as heretics or haters.

Those of us that argue we have a tougher schedule that is not laced with cupcakes to pad our record have a point, but it is a minor point. South Florida is simply a bad team, and Michigan is not a top 25 team any more than the Bulls were, yet we found a way to lose in embarrassing style.

A close win in a poorly played game against a bad Pitt team sounded an alarm bell that the Irish faithful chose to ignore—lost among the “Rees is 6-1” mantra.

Then after pummeling two bad defensive teams, USC comes in and gives us the equivalent of a public playground wedgie. USC is a good team with talented athletes, but it has a young roster and an average coach, and still stomped all over our team and our pride in our house in convincing fashion.

Frankly, if we didn’t hold on in a sloppy win against Michigan State I believe someone of lesser tolerance might have shot Brian Kelly’s dog by now.

Countering the Arguments ND is Irrelevant

As it currently stands, defending Notre Dame as one of the nation’s elite programs is exhausting, and often requires specious arguments to say the least.

It is not a strong point to explain that no team in 30 years has lost a turnover battle 5-0 and still managed to come within three points of a win. Yes, I have resorted to playing the “we’re so good that even when we play terrible we almost win” card, backed by statistics that even I am not sure can be validated by the Pope.

Explaining the astronomical odds of the 50,000 things that had to go exactly right for Michigan to come back from  a 24-7 deficit to score 28 points in the fourth quarter and win with two seconds left is no longer a relevant argument to those that simply point at an epic collapse and laugh at my counter-points.

Arguing that if Crist takes the ball in against USC, Kiffin feels the pressure and ND walks into the October night with a sweet win rings hallow when Rees serves up yet another turnover and USC runs ND over on the final drive like high school seniors punking a bunch of freshmen equipment managers.

Yes, theoretically, we’re three plays from an undefeated season. That is still my stock response when faced with the learned pundits that scoff at all things Irish.

But we all know the massive amount of mental mistakes, penalties, turnovers and uninspired play cannot be explained away by three untimely fumbles.

When faced with these cold hard facts, I often try to discover the alma mater of the trash talker and toss as many rocks at their team and its history as circumstances allow.

If that fails I try loudly interrupting them with my patented argument, “That sure sounds like something Hitler would say.”

Notre Dame Football Has Issues

While we don't care to hear it: the Irish football program has a number of things to correct if it truly wants to be relevant in both the short term and the long term.

Penalties

In the short term, the penalties must stop. There are only 11 teams in the country that screw up more than we do, and none of them have managed to do it at such spectacularly wrong times in such a wide variety of ways.

There was no better example of undisciplined and bonehead play than Carlo Calabrese hitting a USC receiver that had already dropped the ball on a third-down throw, driving him into the turf and then taunting him until the referees were forced to drop a flag and extend a drive that was a sorely needed stop for a beleaguered defense. It would be nine more USC plays and a USC field goal before ND got the ball back.

You sure told him Carlo.

Football is an emotional game and kids get excited, and the taunting call was borderline, but this is not an isolated instance, it is a recurring theme. As stupid as it was, Calabrese’s transgression was simply a microcosm of the idiotic penalties that have crushed ND scoring opportunities and extended opponents' drives all year long.

While many of the penalties are committed by freshmen and sophomores thrown into the fire, Kelly needs to instill enough discipline to stop this crap right now, even if he has to play the fifth string to make his point.

Turnovers

When you have a bad game or two, turnovers are simply part of the hand dealt by the football gods. When you are 119^th in the country in turnover margin, God has nothing to do with it.

Thank God East Carolina is out there so people can quit saying we’re the worst in the country.

While everyone and their close relatives have pitched in to give the ball away, the great majority of the turnovers have been on Tommy Rees. While I’m not condemning the kid for making mistakes as he learns, the fact remains the turnover issue is simply out of control, and he is at the center of it.

Consider: Rees has been sacked four times all year and fumbled on three of them. Drop in seven interceptions and it is clear neither the coaches or Tommy have made ball protection a priority (or if they have Tommy is just not capable of protecting the rock).

Against better defenses (no one is pretending Purdue and Air Force play defense), Rees has yet to show he can overcome pressure—partly because it’s easy to scheme against an immobile QB that can’t press the deep ball, and partly because he just doesn’t have the athletic talent to escape defenses that can run and hit.

While any offense has to take chances to succeed, giving the ball up is the death knell for any college football team. Kelly’s willingness to ride with a QB that cannot hang onto the ball and throws into double and triple coverage consistently to try to make plays has killed this team, despite sporadic flashes of offensive brilliance against the more average defenses.

Note to Self: Piling up numbers against the Air Forces and Purdues of the world didn’t impress USC’s defense all that much.

Until this staff is willing to sacrifice production for ball protection, this team will continue to suffer against any pressure defense, especially if they insist on playing a QB that is willing to cough it up on a regular basis.

Coaching

By most objective standards, both Kelly and Diaco have been consistently outcoached (see: Pitt, Tulsa, Navy, USC, Michigan, Stanford), and against both USF and USC the team was woefully under-prepared—and seemingly uninspired.

Offense

We can all be arm-chair QBs and take shots at this staff, and in many cases they deserve it. Running an option against USC’s speed on the outside with Tommy Rees at QB was laughable. Opting to have your freshman QB that already has two bad interceptions throw a fade against Tulsa when a 32-yard field goal seals the win is just plain dumb.

Many lesser football minds can use the miracle of hindsight to second guess any play that doesn’t pan out, but nitpicking play calling isn’t the coaching issue, it's a lot deeper than that.

Kelly’s team is exhibiting a gross lack of discipline in turnovers, penalties and special teams—all areas that reflect on the teaching and discipline provided from the coaches (surprisingly, special teams was the only positive coming out of the USC game).

Against better defenses like MSU, Pitt and USC, Brian Kelly’s offense sputtered and had no answer when they rolled coverage or otherwise took Michael Floyd out of play, or brought different pressure packages like Michigan did in the fourth quarter.

The inability to make in-game adjustments is glaring. Kelly seems unable to adjust to defenses and just sucks outright when the O-line cannot completely dominate the defensive front.

Defense

More disconcerting is Bob Diaco’s defense against the better offenses. Against athletic spread QBs his team appears completely lost. Against option offenses other than Army, his defense has been ripped for big numbers every game.

Can someone explain to me after practicing for a week against the Air Force option how the Falcons run an option on the very first play for 28 yards on the way to piling up 565 yards in total offense?

Diaco opted to play a vanilla defense with soft coverage against USC and got ripped for over 200 yards rushing and still gave up 12 receptions, 119 yards and two TD’s to Robert Woods—effectively doing nothing to take away any of USC’s weapons.

What was the plan, boring Barkley into making a mistake?

Giving up 45 yards on 10 straight rushes by the same back to end the game is just indefensible. Okay, so they are running us over—at least make them mix up who to hand it to.

Defensively, against conventional offenses, Bob Diaco has had some good outings. Still, he hasn’t shown that he has mastered the X’s and O’s needed when a team throws him a different look.

As one of my buddies so eloquently puts it, "Diaco seems to take every curveball in the nuts."

It doesn't help that halfway through his second year his teaching skills still result in linebackers and secondary personnel looking like they are auditioning for the sequel to Dazed and Confused.

Overall, Diaco has not shown that he is capable of getting the production and pressure out of his 3-4 scheme that might be expected out of some very talented personnel. Either he can’t teach it or his players can’t run it, because the dominating defense we were told about coming into this year only showed up for the mediocre offenses of Purdue, Pitt and USF, (and to a lesser extent MSU).

Although Diaco is young and intelligent, it just may be he lacks the necessary skill and experience to perform on a national stage; he often looks like he is in over his head at ND, which we all know is not a good place to learn on the job (see: Charlie Weis, Bob Davie, Gerry Faust).

The only good news is that Navy’s defense is so bad my 90-year-old mom and her Euchre club put up 36 on the Midshipmen last week despite a pulled hammy and the rule against walkers on the field.

So Where Do We Go From Here

I honestly can’t tell whether this team is headed upward but has simply been marred by a series of bad plays, or spiraling downward into the abyss of undisciplined and dispirited play. But I can tell you neither the team or the coaching staff has impressed anyone outside of the Notre Dame faithful.

I do know Brian Kelly & Co. need to show us they know how to run a major football program and are not just Big East pretenders.

As for me, I am done making excuses for ugly play and pretending that ND is just three plays away from a BCS contender. I will explain through sign language that I have taken a vow of silence when entering any pub with a TV.

In the end, this staff needs to show us it can do a better job of coaching college football at a high level, and these players need to step up and stop the bleeding.

If they can do that, ND has the potential to finish strong and establish a solid foundation for 2012 and beyond. If not, it will be a long winter and some big question marks in the fall.

In any event, I for one will be laying off the Kool-Aid.