Rakes Report #176: Just goes to show that the blood you bleed is just the blood you owe (The Virginia Tech Review)
~optional musical accompaniment~
If you were forwarded this email and would like to sign up to receive future editions, you can do so here.
1) I was debating whether to make this edition 500 words of shrugging at what transpired Saturday evening in Blacksburg or ten times that amount futilely trying to explain and I think we’ll fall somewhere in the middle with an attempted lean toward brevity. Brian Kelly opted to start Jack Coan on the road, which was a thing very few Notre Dame fans wanted to see. The decision was immediately proven wrong, with the Irish offense averaging two yards per play before Coan was replaced, but then Kelly was also totally validated by Coan’s play when he came back in cold and resembled 2019 Joe Burrow, rolling Notre Dame down the field twice to win the game. Both of those descriptions of the starter choice are accurate and I am not quite sure how to go about reconciling that dichotomy. You could do worse than “Didn’t work, but also worked, and Notre Dame won” as an epigraph for the Kelly tenure.
The decision not to play Tyler Buchner looked really silly when he reinvigorated the offense and staked the Irish to a lead with three touchdown drives, but then you remembered he was a freshman with the passing game bottoming out and a pick six that put the Irish behind. With the quarterback situation veering wildly it would have been nice for the defense to be stable, but no, they were also inconsistent, forcing five three-and-outs but also repeatedly giving up long third-down conversions due to abysmal tackling and some playcalling decisions late that allowed two quarterbacks who couldn’t throw to repeatedly convert.
Oh, and by the way, in this game Notre Dame was without the focal point of their offense with Michael Mayer sidelined. Chris Tyree missed time as well which meant the debut of true freshman running back Logan Diggs, who was in the backfield with true freshman Buchner, who was being protected by fourth-string true freshman left tackle Joe Alt, making his first career start. The crowd was hyped, the referees were incompetent and Notre Dame looked hopeless at times.
A maddening experience, but here the Fighting Irish sit at 5-1 and by the time they play their next game there’s an outside chance they’re back up in the top ten of the AP poll considering the rate of attrition around the country. With all the drama and narratives swirling around this sport sometimes you can forget that the entire point of college football isn’t to get flowery headlines written about you in the offseason but to simply win as many games as possible in whatever ways you can. The season is halfway over and I can’t comfortably say Notre Dame is Good, but I know they’re not Bad, and that’s something in this current landscape. They could lose to any team remaining on their schedule (even Navy is frisky of late), go 11-1 or anything in between and I wouldn’t bat an eye.
Idiotic sport. Love it to death.
2) As confused as I am about everything with Coan and Buchner, I truly don’t understand the Drew Pyne situation. Pyne has looked solid in his time on the field and seems to blend the full playbook knowledge of Coan with enough of Buchner’s legs to add a little spice to the offense, but the staff is reluctant to play him. It is worth noting that seven of Pyne’s 26 pass attempts have been broken up, a rate that would portend quite a few picks, particularly if that’s what the coaching staff is also seeing in practice. But then of course on the other hand, Coan and Buchner have combined to throw four interceptions over the last two games, so could it be that much worse? (Football Gods, absolutely do not answer that.) It doesn’t seem like Pyne is in the mix at this point which makes so little sense I am just assuming there is some puzzle piece none of us can see. I dunno.
Ian Book appreciation sidebar: Irish quarterbacks have thrown six picks so far this season. Over the course of the 2019 and 2020 seasons, Book threw nine total.
3) Let’s shout out some skill guys: Kyren Williams is a monster, and it was great to see him start to cook, going over 100 yards from scrimmage with scores via the ground and air. Avery Davis came through again in a big way when Notre Dame needed him. George Takacs, Braden Lenzy and Logan Diggs all had big catches in the final two drives after quiet nights until then. And Kevin Austin bounced back again after a poor showing against the Bearcats, dazzling with a big catch down the sideline for Buchner and hauling in Coan’s lobbed two-point conversion attempt. It’s probably really hard to go from “Barely playing for three years” to “Hey, you’re the number one receiver on a team that has playoff expectations – make sure you perform every week!” but he’s come through more often than not.
Perhaps most importantly, the offensive line was a lot better. The team rushed for 180 yards on 43 attempts and didn’t give up a sack after allowing two on the first three drives. Even better, after five games where tailbacks had to fight just to get to the line of scrimmage, no negative rushing plays for any of them or Buchner. Andrew Kristofic did a solid job at guard, as did Alt at tackle after getting worked very early. If the offensive line can be a little better, that buys you more time with Coan, who is definitely going to continue playing considering all of Kelly’s postgame comments and the fact he got the game ball. Still, I would try to wring as many snaps out of Buchner as possible, as his legs threaten the defense in a way that makes the other 10 players on the field more capable and dangerous as we saw on the Good Drives Saturday evening.
A fun thing about the offense is whatever they end up doing after the bye week with quarterback snap allocation, scheme and offensive line alignment has a good chance to look pretty good based solely on quality of competition diminishing. From Florida State through the Hokies, the defenses the Irish have already played this season rank 71st, 25th*, 32nd, 2nd, 9th and 46th in the latest SP+. The six opponents they play after the break? In chronological order, they’re ranked 83rd, 57th, 66th, 82nd, 47th and 95th. (If you prefer FEI to SP+, those defensive rankings will be available here later this week.) With all of Notre Dame’s issues and the randomness of college football, at least one of these remaining games will be a gross slugfest regardless of what the stats predict, but it’s something to consider.
* Toledo is also ranked 25th in last week’s DFEI so this isn’t some crazy SP+ outlier. The Rockets are either good at defense or tricking computers.
4) Defense, hmm. They had seven tackles for loss and a gorgeous pick from TaRiq Bracy, the front seven snuffing out any sort of run game from the Hokie tailbacks. However, Bracy and the corners in general had a miserable night tackling, including a particularly bad Cam Hart whiff on a third-and-seven to start the second half that would have allowed Notre Dame to immediately get the ball back and potentially extend their lead versus falling behind 16-14. I would reduce the blitzes of Kyle Hamilton on third-and-medium/long, because if you’re blitzing him he’s only here (imagine me motioning to a very narrow portion of the field) versus if you let him roam he can cause havoc all over the place (me motioning to a much larger area of the field). It was nice to see Kurt Hinish back in action, he rules, and Isaiah Foskey and Jayson Ademilola continue to impress.
One goal for the bye week: Get Prince Kollie playable for a dozen or so snaps a game so J.D. Bertrand can get more of a breather.
5) Notre Dame has played in two true road games, both at night in frenzied stadiums, and in both of those games Jonathan Doerer has calmly hit the game winner, doing so in Lane Stadium despite those nerds trying to target him with a laser. When his career is complete the retrospective of massive kicks will be a fun one to look back upon.
6) Winning Is Hard/Schadenfreude Round-Up: Man.
For much of the season the Texas A&M quarterback situation hasn’t been great, struggling to score against Colorado and losing at home last week to Mississippi State. So it makes perfect sense that Zach Calzada, a three-star junior, would light up Alabama and hand them their first loss since 2019 while ending their 100-game win streak against unranked opponents. The Tide were 17.5-point road favorites partially because they’re Alabama but also because Texas A&M lost at home to Mississippi State last week. Alabama still one hundred percent can get to the playoff if they win out, but this is a true shocker.
(A&M is a good example of how not taking care of business as a favorite not just sucks in the moment but also deprives you of bigger opportunities. If they had kept their nose clean against Arkansas and Mississippi State, they could talk themselves into stealing the division from Bama by getting through the rest of the slate with just one loss. Now they need to win every remaining game and get another Tide loss, which seems like a narrow path. If the Aggies lose a couple more, they’ll be 8-4 with one awesome win, so basically Pitt-plus.)
I understand we are all frustrated with the loss last week but for a second please imagine yourself as a Texas fan: You are playing your rival, undefeated Oklahoma, and you have a first-quarter lead of 28-7, a late third-quarter lead of 41-23 and you end up needing a late touchdown drive just to tie things up before you lose in heartbreaking fashion. Crushing. Penn State had a 17-3 lead in Iowa City in a battle of top five teams but couldn’t hold on after their starting quarterback was injured. I am excited for all of the columns from James Franklin’s vanguard in the national media to discuss why he chose not to develop any sort of quarterback depth at a program that had playoff aspirations – seems like a good idea but who knows I’m not the favorite for the USC job.
Arkansas lost to Ole Miss 52-51 on a missed two-point conversion in a battle of top twenty teams – no shade for that, neither team could play defense but I respect the call. Undefeated BYU was a mess against a Boise State team that had been struggling this season, falling to the Broncos at home. Speaking of the USC job, the Trojans got crunched to pieces by Utah in the Coliseum. LSU lost to Kentucky by 21 and the fact nobody is really that surprised probably sums up why Coach O won’t be there for much longer. The North Carolina Tar Heels – a preseason top ten team! — were a 17-point home favorite over the woeful Florida State Seminoles and needed a cosmetic touchdown at the end just to lose by ten. Wanna read a Mack Brown postgame quote?
"My expectation is to win every game, so three times we've met it and three times we haven't. The national media expectation, the expectations for us to be a top-10 team, were wrong. So I guess we should all be critical of the media for picking us too high because we’re not that good so you guys all screwed it up."
Cool! Michigan had all kinds of trouble escaping Lincoln with a win. Scott Satterfield and Louisville managed to blow a 30-13 fourth quarter lead against Virginia. Neal Brown was a well-liked hire in Morgantown but West Virginia is in a bad place right now, getting roasted by Baylor to fall to 2-4. Our beloved Toledo Rockets fell at home to Northern Illinois. Wisconsin won 24-0 at Illinois and you might be thinking “Oh, so Graham Mertz is fixed?”, but no, he was 10 for 19 for 100 yards and a pick. The Illini had 93 yards of offense in a full regulation game of football. Oregon State was starting to get a little bit of momentum and a potential Top 25 ranking but lost to Washington State, just as Texas Tech gave up 52 at home to TCU when a victory would have gotten the Red Raiders to a surprising 5-1.
7) As addressed immediately above, we are in a Chaos Season, where Notre Dame’s wild comeback was maybe not within the top ten most interesting things to happen on the day. This team is not a legitimate national title contender as currently composed, but it’s definitely capable of getting to another double-digit win total and continuing the great recruiting momentum which will allow the Irish — in a perfect world — to continue winning almost all of their games while raising the ceiling of the program to the point where some of those victories come in the playoff.
This team fights. It’s not pretty but through six games they have three fourth quarter comebacks and an overtime victory, and while the loss was incredibly frustrating and not anything we want to remember, they scrapped and clawed a 17-0 deficit to 17-13 against a really good team when they easily could have packed it in. They didn’t have enough juice to finish the job, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort, and as you see teams collapsing all over the place it’s nice to have this current culture established and a 5-1 record at the break.
Goal for after the bye: Get to January and have casual college football followers say “Will you look at that, another quiet 10/11 wins for Notre Dame, that program just keeps humming along” even though every single Saturday has caused heart palpitations and group chat meltdowns. The last time there was a Chaos Season in 2007, the Irish were a main character in a very bad way, so if they cede the spotlight for an autumn and cruise along with continued competency in a rebuilding year while the polls burn around them I’ll take that.
Some house-cleaning before we go: There will probably be a bye week edition of some sort. Due to travel, both the Southern Cal and North Carolina editions could potentially be delayed versus the usual Monday morning deliveries, but you’ll get them. On the podcast front, Jess and I had a great conversation with The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach about a bunch of big picture college football stuff, including why it’s so hard to keep your quarterback room filled and the future of Notre Dame’s independence, which I highly recommend. If you’d like my thoughts on the Virginia Tech game in even less coherent fashion, Greg Flammang of UHND.com was kind enough to join me following its conclusion to try and piece together what happened on an instant reaction episode. (We failed, but it was fun.) You can listen to all of those on Apple (leave a review if you want) or Spotify or wherever you get your pods.
That’s it. Weird season, but it can be a weird, good season if they beat the reeling Trojans in Notre Dame Stadium for the fifth consecutive time. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other.
If you were forwarded this email and would like to sign up to receive future editions, you can do so here.