Rakes Report #126: A Case of the Mondays (The Louisville Review)
1) If you are a partisan for one particular sports team, it is very easy to fall into the trap of the protagonist syndrome where an entire season or league is viewed through the lens of your favorite’s story being the only one that matters. Louisville has a really interesting story in itself: They finished 2017 ranked 14th in the S&P+, a slight dip from 9th in 2016 but still really solid. Last year the wheels absolutely came off as Bobby Petrino just stopped doing the things one has to do as a college football coach. For the upperclassmen on this year’s team, they’ve played with a Heisman winner and also watched as everything crumbled around them. Monday night’s primetime game against a top ten team must have felt like a chance to show the nation that 2-10 was a fluke.
It is not surprising that the Cardinals put forth some inspired football from the jump, as playing for Scott Satterfield — a coach with a very good track record — must have felt amazing after everything they went through last year. Seth Dawkins, the Cardinals receiver who had a nice catch on one of the early drives, was the same guy who talked about how he had never been to a coach’s house under the previous regime and how much it meant to him that the staff had welcomed him into theirs. I mean, read this:
“In the four years that I’ve been here, I had never been to a coach’s house before,” Dawkins said. “Coach Satt invited us a few times within the first couple of months after he was hired. He opened his home to us, his family to us, and that meant a lot. He may not realize that, but it means a lot, especially to us older players. We just realized that we never had that sort of compassion before from a coach.”
As far as the Louisville defense, we know there is a post-Brian VanGorder bump and when that was combined with a shaky quarterback performance it is understandable that the Irish struggled at times.
Does Notre Dame have a lot to work on over the bye week? Yes. Was that game sloppy and gross and Very College Football for long stretches*? Absolutely. But here’s the important thing: The Irish won by 18, on the road, in front of a record setting crowd in a game in which they never trailed in the second half, gave up three points after the first two Louisville drives, and led by multiple possessions the entire fourth quarter. They have a lot to improve upon before Athens or they will be maimed but there’s plenty of time to go to work. Despairing over 18-point wins is no way to live life, particularly when the SP+ projected 35-16 and the FEI predicted an 18.2 margin of victory.
* I don’t know if I’ve ever seen three straight plays end in fumbles. Oregon/Auburn had a sequence where the Ducks returned a punt just outside the goal line only to fumble on the next snap and have that returned almost all the way for a touchdown by the Tigers but three straight was special.
2) A major problem from the jump on Monday evening was how poorly many of the captains performed in the early going. We will discuss Ian Book at length below, but he was a mess outside of a few plays (two runs and a touchdown throw, basically). Julian Okwara and Khalid Kareem both had bad offsides penalties that made life easier for a couple Cardinal conversions. Alohi Gilman fell down next to the hole on a long run and Chase Claypool came up a yard short of a first down on a drive that stalled a couple snaps later. It was understandable that the young guys might have some issues in their first big test but there were some season opening jitters across the board. Considering their collective track record, this doesn’t seem like a thing we need to worry about — particularly with Gilman, who locked back in to lead the team in tackles in addition to a forced fumble and recovery — but some missteps combined with the Louisville effort led to the first quarter heartache.
3) Book was pretty bad for most of the night, lacking pocket awareness and showing some uncharacteristic inaccuracy on throws when he wasn’t scrambling. (The toss to Chris Finke on fourth and short that would have been a conversion if the receiver was hit in stride being one standout moment.) I also thought Chip Long was on tilt for much of the game with the playcalling, but maybe that was due to worries with how Book would execute? It also hurt Book that Jafar Armstrong left the game early with a groin injury after a promising start and Claypool left late with what looked to be a concussion but the receiver said after the game he was fine. (We’ll see.) It seems like Kyren Williams’ early drop also knocked him out of the rotation. Offensive line looked dominant at times while also struggling in short yardage situations. Is that bad blocking, bad playcalling and/or Book being out of whack so the defense felt comfortable teeing off? We will find out going forward.
My main concern with the offense is that without a big Dexter Williams-style playmaker or Book getting more comfortable in the vertical game this season is going to turn into a claustrophobic grind. There are a few ways this gets better: 1) Armstrong, Claypool, Kmet and Young all get healthy and join the fray, adding more speed and making everyone’s life easier. 2) Long’s playcalling is more creative while Book is crisper, getting athletes into space against confused and overworked defenses to create the necessary seams. I guess it’s good that the Irish averaged 6.5 yards per play while scoring five touchdowns and it feels bad but there are going to be way tougher tests than rebuilding Louisville.
4) There were some positives, starting with sophomore tight end Tommy Tremble, who had a nice touchdown up the seam and got the game ball. (Tremble whiffed on a block on a third and short run, but hopefully Kmet is back soon and Tremble can be put in a position to play to his strengths.) Lawrence Keys had a couple of nice grabs, including a key third down conversion on a bad Book pass. Tony Jones, Jr. and Jahmir Smith produced on the ground, the former going over 100 yards and the latter notching two touchdowns. Also, solid work from both Jay Bramblett and Jonathan Doerer in their first games succeeding Tyler Newsome and Justin Yoon. I’m sure they will have a rough moment or two over the course of the season and neither was put in a really stressful position — no back-of-endzone punts for Bramblett, no field goal attempts for Doerer— but a nice start for them.
5) The defense could do nothing right early but settled in as the game went on, taking advantage of some Louisville mistakes while allowing just two drives over twenty yards and a single field goal after the second Cardinals touchdown. Both Clark Lea and the team seemed surprised that Jawon Pass, one of the top dual threat recruits in his class, was a dual threat quarterback initially but they adjusted and that’s the important thing. Relatively quiet night for Okwara save for the late sack on the intentional grounding, but the interior of the defensive line started to get some push late with MTA and Kurt Hinish after the Cardinals’ early success.
JOK was all over the place, in ways both good and bad — missing tackles and one clear sack — but also always around the ball, including two tackles for loss. Some positive plays from Drew White, Shayne Simon and Jack Lamb while the folks on the beat who spent the offseason down on Asmar Bilal seem wise through one game, as the senior always seemed a step too slow in a lot of places. Kyle Hamilton whiffed on a tackle at the line but then immediately atoned with a near pick, one of his two pass break ups on the evening. It was really fun to see the idea of Notre Dame having two great back-up ends emphasized on one play as clearly as Ade Ogundeji forcing a fumble and Daelin Hayes, who also had a fun and cool sack, recovering it. And God bless and protect Shaun Crawford, who had a number of tackles that kept medium-to-big Louisville plays from becoming touchdowns. One bad thing was Lea sticking with the blitz a little too long when it was not working, but hey, learning experiences all around.
The defense being a little too amped going up against a great playcaller who was in his first game at a new school (meaning no film of Pass running this particular offense) resulted in an ugly start, but I’m not too concerned about the defense going forward unless we are to believe that a bunch of guys who were previously good at football are no longer good at football and more stationary quarterbacks aren’t going to have any problems against the pass rush.
6) Winning Is Hard/Schadenfreude Round-Up: Week One was a great reminder of how impossibly stupid this sport is because we have a ton of options here if you think winning by 18 on the road is the worst thing that can happen in an opener. Let’s start in the SEC East, where Tennessee was an analytical darling in Year Two under Jeremy Pruitt and whoops they lost at home to Georgia State, a 25-point underdog that went 2-10 last year. By the fourth quarter, the Panthers were just whipping the Vols, who tacked on a late touchdown to make it look respectable against a program that had never defeated a Power 5 opponent. Their division mates also had issues, with Mizzou losing in beautiful Laramie, Wyoming to the Cowboys after a series of crippling red zone turnovers and South Carolina blowing a double-digit lead in Mack Brown’s UNC debut that might mark the beginning of the end of the Will Muschamp Era.
At one point during Purdue’s game at Nevada they were up a couple touchdowns and had tripled their hosts in first downs and roughly quadrupled them in yardage. They still lost, blowing a two-touchdown, fourth quarter lead to fall in regulation. I know the situation at Purdue was bad when Jeff Brohm took over and I am pretty sure he’s a good coach but the Boilermakers are just 2-5 since beating Ohio State with a 31-point loss to Minnesota, a 49-point loss to Auburn and now this. A few more Midwest wunderkinds struggled over the long weekend, with Scott Frost’s offense wobbling against South Alabama, P.J. Fleck trailing in the fourth against South Dakota State and Matt Campbell needing triple overtime to escape Northern Iowa. The Big Ten West is going to be really fun to follow this year, as will the race for third in the Big 12.
Florida State was up 31-13 on Boise State in the second quarter and didn’t score the rest of the way en route to a home loss to a true freshman quarterback. Probably early in Willie Taggart’s tenure to throw around “Must Win” but it would be advisable for him to succeed against Virginia in two weeks. (Also might be smart for him to make sure his team, which plays in the state of Florida, is properly hydrated.) Oregon blew another Big Moment Game (following last year’s collapse against Stanford and first-half no show when GameDay visited Pullman), losing to Auburn’s true freshman quarterback. UCLA looked woeful against Cincinnati. Pat Fitzgerald took a break from scolding youths to score seven points against Stanford. Clay Helton tried to lose against Fresno State but couldn’t, although he did lose quarterback J.T. Daniels, done for the season with a torn ACL. Justin Fuente might be facing some hot seat questions after Virginia Tech lost to Boston College. We won’t get into them all, but a bunch of teams had closer first halves than they would have liked against inferior competition but prevailed. It happens, but it's a matter of how the rest of the season goes if anyone cares or not.
7) Didn’t love the game being on Monday night, and unfortunately, we’ll deal with it again in two years when the Irish open in Tallahassee. I made it through exactly two (2) drives before I muted the television but from what I could tell from Twitter ESPN’s premier announce crew did not distinguish themselves nor mention Armstrong’s injury. Great stuff.
Also important to note: The Cardinals are Notre Dame’s senior day guest next season, fitting into a season-closing stretch of Clemson, at Georgia Tech, Louisville and at Southern Cal. Thankfully nothing else is going on in November 2020 so we should just be able to focus on football.
8) While it would have been much much much more fun to just come out and roll Louisville, this isn’t the worst result. The Irish were tested on the road and they responded with an 18-point win, and now they’ve got a bye week and a cupcake in New Mexico to work out many of the red flags from Labor Day night. If Book still looks jittery and the defense is overpursuing against New Mexico, you have my permission to start freaking out because the trip between the hedges might turn into a snuff film. But we know Book is better than he looked Monday and we know the coaching staff is pretty good at their jobs, so just enjoy being 1-0 for the next week-and-a-half and we’ll hope for a cheerier result when the Lobos come to town.
The important narrative thing is this: Notre Dame could have won by 60 in Louisville and nobody would have cared by the end of the month if they had a poor showing against Georgia. I’m not saying the Irish are going to play well in Athens — again, so much work to do to get ready for maybe the best rushing offense in the country — but the story of this season will be A) Avoiding dumb losses and B) The results of the three big road games. So far so good on A and we won’t know B for another few weeks.
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Couple of notes: I’ll probably do a Monday round-up next week, as between a full weekend of action and whatever better analysis about the Irish comes out between now and then there will be plenty to touch upon. Also, if you’re yet to listen to Jamie Uyeyama of Irish Sports Daily break down every scholarship freshman on the Irish roster, you can listen to those here, via iTunes or via Spotify.
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