The honeymoon is officially over. Brian Kelly has lost a game. What that truly means for this year’s football team is yet to be determined.
All football programs, no matter how storied, lose games. The thing that sets great teams apart from mediocre teams is how they rebound after those losses. In years past, the Irish have struggled to come back from tough losses. If Brian Kelly is to be the coach that restores Notre Dame football to relevance, he will have to change that.
Notre Dame fans ought to be weary of becoming overly critical after a single loss. With that said, it is troubling how Notre Dame’s loss this past Saturday to Michigan resembled so many past Notre Dame losses.
Michigan is coming off a terrible season in which they won only one game. Granted, the star of Saturday’s game, Denard Robinson, did not play all of last year. The argument can be made that he is such a dynamic player that the Michigan team of last year is in no way comparable to the current Michigan team. However, Robinson is still only one player, so it follows that our eleven defensive players should be able to handle him.
Saturday’s result begs to differ. Robinson ran for over 250 yards and averaged 9.2 yards per rushing attempt. In addition to killing the Irish on the ground, Robinson threw 244 yards. This is the main reason why the Notre Dame defense gave up 532 yards of total offense.
Another aspect of the defense that troubled Irish fans was how tired the team looked in the fourth quarter. As football season approached, those in the know regarding Notre Dame football loved to discuss how rigorous Irish practices under Kelly were. This instilled in fans a hope that Notre Dame would always be the more conditioned team on the field. That did not appear to be the case on Saturday.
Brian Kelly discussed this fact in his post game press conference. “Obviously they didn’t have much left,” commented Kelly. Notre Dame’s head coach went on to say, “We obviously were fatigued and it might have been just being on the field a little bit too long.”
Possibly the biggest reason why the defense was on the field as long as it was actually had more to do with the Irish’s offense, namely a first half injury suffered by starting quarterback Dayne Crist. Crist went out of the game after a hit to the head. Coach Kelly commented on Crist’s injury: “he had some blurry vision. He was fairly lucid.” While such symptoms point to a concussion, Kelly stated, “We didn’t consider it to be a concussion at all or we wouldn’t have brought him back in the game.”
During Crist’s absence, the offense floundered. The Irish first turned to freshman quarterback Tommy Rees. After throwing a costly interception on only his second pass, however, he returned to the bench.
On the next offensive series, junior quarterback Nate Montana was handed the reins of the offense. But Montana had a shaky start, completing only 8 of 17 passes and throwing an interception to boot. Montana had a chance to throw his first career touchdown just before halftime, but his pass sailed out the back of the endzone.
A promising aspect of the Irish’s play Saturday was the effort of freshman wide receiver TJ Jones, who finished the day with 73 receiving yards and one touchdown reception. His touchdown reception against Michigan enabled him to do something no other Notre Dame freshman receiver has ever done: score a receiving touchdown in each of his first two games.
Since Jones has proved a reliable receiver, the Irish are optimistic about their chances against the Spartans of Michigan State this Saturday. The team expects that with a healthy Crist, receivers as productive as Rudolph, Floyd, and Jones, and a dynamic running game the Irish offense will be too much for the Spartans to handle.
Brent can be reached at mmodak@nd.edu. He is from Atlanta and is a former resident of Zahm House. I wonder why he left…
