Rakes Report #171: Something told me I should bring my butt to church (The Florida State Review)
~essential musical accompaniment~
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1) With most of the non-Alabama teams scuffling over the opening weekend, Notre Dame came into their first game with a few different paths. If they struggled to pull out the victory, it wouldn’t stand out all that much. If they looked great, it would have been an early season sign they were closer to reload than rebuild and deserved additional consideration as a playoff contender. The only option they absolutely had to avoid was opening with a loss. In the end, Notre Dame looked impressive for stretches, awful for the final third of regulation and tried very hard to lose, but they survived and it’s always much better to be figuring things out from 1-0 than the alternative.
I’m going to get into all the places this went wrong on the field, but the Irish did overcome a ton of potential narrative disasters. You had chaos deity Joe Tessitore calling McKenzie Milton’s miracle comeback in a Sunday night road tilt where Bobby Bowden was honored, the sort of win over a Top 10 Notre Dame squad they would have celebrated in Tallahassee for the rest of time…but no. I think this also provided an early reminder that college football games are not sterile exercises in who has more talent prevailing but sloppy disasters we are all silly enough to care about. Other teams also try really, really hard to win and the losses are more than willing to find you. But at least through one game, Notre Dame stays unmarred and we all raise a glass to Jonathan Doerer.
2) Let’s talk about the defense to start. The Irish haven’t won many offseasons lately despite their many actual victories of late, with their last couple coordinators being internal promotions of the linebacker and quarterback coaches. With Marcus Freeman they absolutely won the offseason, but their new defensive chief nearly let things slip away in his debut. After the Irish offense had turned the first Kyle Hamilton interception into a halftime lead, the Seminoles started their first possession of the second half backed into a 3rd and 8. In a “The only thing you can’t do is give this struggling offense a big play” situation, Freeman called a single high safety formation, put Houston Griffith in man coverage and gave up a 60-yard bomb. Not ideal.
After another Hamilton interception and a fourth down stop after Mike Norvell went on wildcat tilt, the Irish offense had scored a few more times and it was 38-20. At that point, Freeman veered too far in the “No big plays” direction and went into a three-man defensive front that allowed the Florida State rushing attack to get rolling. Then he just stayed in it, seemingly spooked from being too aggressive to too cautious and being unable to find the balance. The Irish defense held to force field goals on the final two possessions of the game, but after that performance Freeman will now be treated as a living, breathing coach by Irish fans, which is for the best.
(Another minor note/complaint: On the second Noles score, I understand there are a lot of moving parts in a goal line defense and even just leaning the wrong way can be fatal, but shouldn’t you have someone accounting for the very mobile quarterback bootlegging?)
The good parts of the defense were very fun, though. Hamilton had two incredible interceptions and is going to give the opposition nightmares all season. When they weren’t conceding the front, the Irish defensive line churned out havoc in the first half, including a pair of sacks from Isaiah Foskey, which is a very promising development for the rest of the season after the subpar reports on his August camp. Corner play was solid but not standout and D.J. Brown missed a tackle on the Seminoles’ first score so we will continue our watch for a second standout defensive back. Not going to overreact to tackling in this one, first games of the season can tend to be unrepresentative in that regard so Drew White struggling is not something I will lose sleep over unless it continues.
Overall, some of the stuff the Irish were trying on defense was so odd and confusing that it seems like an easy enough fix to just simplify things a bit, in addition to just wrapping up better when they’ve asserted themselves in the backfield. I also wonder if losing a number of second-level players over the last couple weeks threw off rotations and plans, as there were some linemen playing in space at times which doesn’t seem like the best way to utilize their skillset. Still, first game with a new system and the staff will hopefully be able to refine rotations and assignments as we go. Fingers crossed.
3) On offense, some good and bad. The good is Jack Coan threw long third-down touchdowns to Kevin Austin (a gorgeous drop in the bucket) and Joe Wikins (a beastly play to come down with it), Braden Lenzy made a couple nice grabs and Michael Mayer*, Kyren Williams and Chris Tyree reminded us why we were so high on them. Tommy Rees came out aggressive, going empty on the first snap of the game and quickly going for it on fourth and short. After that, Rees was too conservative calling early down running plays while his team failed to execute on third down, at which point there was maybe the worst third-down call of the game in a designed run for Coan. The Irish could and should have built a bigger lead in the early going, but I think we can assume some level of improvement in both play-calling and execution.
* I know Mayer is shouldering a big burden with the offense both as a receiver and blocker, but the drops are just killer. Overall, though, nine catches for 120 yards and a fourth-down score to open the game is Objectively Good, just needs to continue to cut down on the mistakes.
The offensive line, though? Troubling start. Blake Fisher exited the game early and the transfer defensive ends feasted. The running game never got much of a push, with the longest carry of the evening going for just 12 yards while plenty of snaps saw the rusher barely get back across the line of scrimmage if they were lucky enough to get that far. Jarrett Patterson and Coan had some miscommunications on some snaps that were luckily corralled to avoid further disaster. All in all, this is the biggest season-long concern for me following one game and I’m not sure any other group is close.
Despite being under heavy pressure all night, Coan didn’t turn the ball over (I’m not counting the hail mary at the end of regulation) and had some sizzling stretches, including going 8-for-8 for 175 yards and two touchdowns in the third quarter. He underthrew a couple early deep balls but calibrated better as the game went on, a trend that hopefully continues. I do wonder if Rees had to scrap more two-running back formations with both C’Borius Flemister and Logan Diggs missing the game, limiting the depth chart for the opener. If the offensive line can hold up enough for Coan to continue getting the ball out to his playmakers and Rees can gin up some creativity in the run game, this attack will be just fine.
4) Just want to shoutout Doerer again: He struggled at the end of last season but was two-for-two tonight, including the clutch game winner. Kyren took punt returns and the staff was very conservative on kick returns. Jay Bramblett had one bad punt early and got maimed late, but solid night from the specialists all around. Officiating was awful, per usual, and I took great glee in Norvell icing his own kicker. Also the aforementioned wildcat-wildcat-going for it on own 33 that allowed the Irish to get the 18-point lead was puzzling considering how well Norvell had otherwise adjusted.
5) Injuries are already piling up: In a brutally unfair situation, Paul Moala tore his other Achilles and will miss the rest of the season. Promising reserve tight end Kevin Bauman is out for six weeks with a leg fracture, Shayne Simon is being evaluated and Fisher’s injury may keep him out for a stretch. We were lauding the program’s depth but with Marist Liafau already missing the season the coaching staff might have to go deeper into the roster than we realized. Prince Kollie, welcome to the fray.
6) Two guys who probably are appreciated a little more after last night? Clark Lea and Ian Book. Lea got smoked in his Vanderbilt debut by East Tennessee State but Irish fans were quickly reminded what they lost one day later and I hope he knows he will always be respected in this space. Coan played well but Book’s legs would have been awful nice to have in a game where the Seminoles were getting pressure and bailing out behind because they knew the quarterback wasn’t going to hurt them on the ground.
7) Winning Is Hard/Schadenfreude Round Up: This is going to have to be an abridged version because it was a big weekend for near misses and we’re already running long. Big 12 playoff favorites Oklahoma and Iowa State beat Tulane and Northern Iowa by a combined 11 points at home, needing late stops. Pac 12 playoff favorite Oregon needed a fourth quarter rally and a bunch of turnovers to survive Fresno State. Speaking of Pac-12 favorites, If you thought Jimmy Lake was going to have Washington on the come-up, well, they lost at home to Montana and will not be making the playoff. Shout out to the Big Sky Conference and also “Big Sky,” returning September 30 on ABC.
Wisconsin had a series of red zone meltdowns crossed with blown coverages and lost at home to Penn State. Clemson and Georgia combined for six offensive points. Ohio State trailed late into the third quarter against Minnesota. Miami was not up to the challenge versus the Crimson Tide. Mack Brown and the Tar Heels lost on the road to an unranked team for the third time in their last 10 games, falling to 5-5 overall during that span. LSU got handled on the road by UCLA, while Indiana felt the slightest bit of preseason respect and self-immolated at Iowa.
Opponent watch: Stanford stinks. Navy stinks. Georgia Tech lost at home to a bad Northern Illinois team as a 19-point favorite. Good work by Virginia Tech, Virginia, Purdue, Southern Cal and Cincinnati, though.
8) This game’s legacy will be decided by how well both of its participants play the rest of the way. If the Irish go on to have a good season, this will have been a blip, an acquisition of sea legs to start the campaign after major roster turnover that was too close for comfort but a win is a win is a win. If they lose a bunch of games, it’ll be the game where we all saw the dip coming. I also want to see how Florida State plays moving forward, as they certainly seemed better than last year and their next six games are Jacksonville State, at Wake Forest, Louisville, Syracuse, at North Carolina and UMass before a brutal closing stretch. Is this a 2016 Texas situation where the Irish elevated an opponent in the opener to look better than they actually were, or is this like 2019 Louisville when our foe was better than we realized coming into it?
As I said often this offseason, this Notre Dame team lost a lot and while it’s a very talented group it’s not at a level of roster composition where you can just roll the ball out every week and they’ll cruise to a victory. On Sunday evening we saw things we expected to be good live up to that hype (Hamilton), things we hoped might be good fulfill those dreams (Coan and the receivers), things that were questionable remain so (offensive line) and one thing we expected to be a strength fall well short (the run defense). There is a lot to like and just as much to build upon.
Thankfully college football teams are not static so the Irish squad we see in mid-October will be different from the one we just saw and the one we see in November. While there’s no guarantee it’ll be for the better, the track record of this program of late gives me hope. Rees needs to balance aggression in the pass game with scraping enough from the run game that it’s not fully abandoned. Freeman has to find the right combination of pressure and big play prevention. All possible but nothing guaranteed, with work continuing in a few short days against the Toledo Rockets as the Irish seek their 18th win in the last 20 games.
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