Rakes Report #125: Could be learned behavior to fold and call it failure cause you’re terrified of showing your hand (The Louisville & Season Preview)
~optional musical accompaniment~
Louisville is a great example of how quickly fortunes can break bad in college football. In 2016, they got as high as No. 3 in the polls, guided by Lamar Jackson in his Heisman winning season. With Jackson back, 2017 was an effective but mildly disappointing 8-5. Then in 2018 things went boom: The Cardinals finished with a 2-10 record, fired their coach, got spurned by hometown hero Jeff Brohm and ended up with what seems to be a good hire in Appalachian State’s Scott Satterfield. Bobby Petrino left behind abject carnage so while the new staff has a lot of work to do they’re going to have some buy-in from a roster that will appreciate just being coached and respected.
I think the Cardinals defense could put up a fight, at least for a while. They gave up a bevy of 50-point games last season and are really undersized but it should be noted that Brian VanGorder is no longer their defensive coordinator and there are usually post-BVG bumps. In 2012, Auburn went 3-9 with VanGorder as defensive coordinator. After firing him, they jumped to 12-2 the following season. In 2016, the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish went 4-8 with VanGorder as defensive coordinator. After firing him, they went 10-3 the following year. BVG’s replacement is Bryan Brown, who pushed Appalachian State to 20th in Defensive S&P+ last year before making the trek from Boone with Satterfield. The Irish are going to score a bunch behind Ian Book but if there is some resistance early chalk that up to a bunch of returning starters who have traded in scrolls etched in faded Mandarin for real playbooks and a coach who knows what he’s doing.
Offense could also be an issue for the Cardinals. Satterfield’s preferred attack is to go heavy on the run and I’m not sure the tools are there. Four-star and hotly recruited dual threat junior Jawon Pass was named the starter at quarterback but he’s not super accurate (54% completion rate) and was sacked 30 times in 300 attempts last year, which is — remarkably — the best rate of the four Louisville quarterbacks over last year’s dreary campaign. Pass does have some tall receivers to, uh, throw to (Seth Dawkins is 6’3”, Devante Peete 6’6”) so this might be a good game for Donte Vaughn to go to work, although Shaun Crawford currently tops the depth chart opposite Troy Pride, Jr. I don’t think the Cardinals have the line talent to get much done going in the interior run game which means they could turn to a perimeter attack that plays to the strengths of the Irish defense, potentially testing out JOK, Asmar Bilal and the rest of the linebacker corps. This is kind of a perfect test for the Irish in their opener: A Notre Dame team whose biggest question mark might be its run defense going against an opponent that wants to run the ball a lot but might not be very good at it.
I would normally say not to overreact to the first game as teams change over the course of the season, but as others have pointed out the Notre Dame openers under Brian Kelly have tended to set the tone for the rest of the season. The 10-plus-win seasons have all had great premieres, the middling seasons have mostly had middling openers and the cornucopia of dipshittery in Austin portended 4-8. All eyes are going to be on the Irish and Cardinals and it’s a nice chance to set the narrative for the first few weeks. I would like the team to look like they know what they’re doing (contra the Miami/Florida Week Zero cluster) and pull away in the second half for a comfortable win that allows me to start working on the newsletter prior to the final seconds ticking off the clock so you can receive it on Tuesday morning instead of Wednesday. Satterfield has spent most of the offseason talking about how bad the team he inherited is so let’s not allow Labor Day night to disabuse him of that notion.
Then we roll forward.
In an attempt to contain both my excitement and extreme anxiety for the season, I have begun mentally compartmentalizing it into two sections. The first section I am calling “September” because it is comprised of all the games in September. I would like to exit that portion of the schedule with the team healthy and with at the very most one loss. It’s okay if the Irish fall short in Georgia, but the veterans on this team then need to hold things together the following week and also not lose to any teams against which they are multiple touchdown favorites in the first two games. The second section is comprised of the rest of the season, where the Irish will hopefully have Cole Kmet and Michael Young back to do battle against teams with either inferior or approximate talent to the Irish. At that point, they can settle in and do the work necessary to leave a nice gaudy win total in the history books.
One positive note that is so ethereal I would understand if you dismissed it immediately buuuut it doesn’t really make narrative sense for this season to end with a middling result of eight or nine wins. This is a freshman class that walked onto campus and into both a quarterback controversy and imploding defense, immediately thrown to the wolves and 4-8. They have battled back to earn a tenth win on New Year’s Day against LSU followed by a perfect regular season and playoff berth. I am not saying the ending to this story will be a championship or even another playoff appearance, but this seems like the type of story that ends with a fun, gutty bowl win on a relatively big stage. This class has earned that sort of closing chapter, and I hope the college football gods oblige.
I think it is natural to be a little nervous that the last two seasons are some sort of mirage. After all, the Irish won just four games before the recent stretch and we haven’t seen three consecutive double-digit win seasons since the early 90s. The schedule has some potential rough spots, the roster has some question marks and now that all the winning has chained our joy to a higher standard of play the margin for error shrinks. It’s a cliché at this point but the pressure truly is a privilege, as there have been plenty of seasons where we didn’t have to worry about games in October or November due to the whole losing too much thing. Given the choice between this level of stress or the alternative, I’ll take the teeth-grinding trepidation and dread every autumn.
The above words are probably overcomplicating matters, because the reality seems quite simple: If you’re a college football team with a very good quarterback and very good defensive line play, you’re going to win a lot of games. Notre Dame has those things. They also have an incredible starting safety duo, with a freshman prodigy waiting in the wings. They have two senior receivers who we know are very comfortable making plays along with a senior corner comfortable denying them at the same clip. They have consistency of schemes on both sides of the ball guided by two capable coordinators. Those are the knowns to go along with potential positive surprises — a returning offensive line loaded with talent, a deep reserve of polymath tailbacks, a blazing force at rover — across the rest of the depth chart.
It’s possible Georgia deals Notre Dame’s playoff chances a mortal wound before the calendar even flips to October, but that doesn’t end the season nor our potential fun. There are still two glorious months following the match up with the Dawgs for the Irish to drag some of our old friends from Los Angeles, Ann Arbor and Palo Alto straight down that same path to hell, along with whatever damage can be inflicted upon the poor sucker that draws the final game of the senior class’s career in the bowl.
But before we dream of playoffs or upsets in SEC country or running the win streaks against the Trojans and Wolverines to three apiece there is business to attend to in Derby City, on primetime in front of the entire football watching nation. 22-4 since the start of 2017 is cool, but there is work yet to do because the Irish are on the verge of cementing themselves as one of the best programs in the country and it would be very dumb to stop building now.
The last eight months crawled by for what seemed like ages before rushing to this point, but now is not the time to consider our collective mortality and the unending ticking of the clock. Now is the time for Notre Dame football, and for that we should be thankful.
Go Irish. Beat Cardinals. Start this strong.
If you were forwarded this email and would like to sign up to receive future editions, you can do that here. If you want the pod archive, that’s here or here. If you’re looking for merch, that’s here. As always, please feel free to reach out by replying to this email or via Twitter. And again, any shares of this to the Irish fans in your life are greatly appreciated.