Rakes Report #197: It's a groovy night and I can show you how to use it, come along with me and put your mind at ease (The BYU Review)
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1) I say the following with the benefit of hindsight and knowing it was a win and not as a reflection of how I felt for much of the final quarter: Was it frustrating to see the chance at a gaudy final score that properly reflected how well the Irish played slip away for the second straight game? Yes, of course, but I would like to think that having things go so well, starting to see everything spiral and then being able to slam the door and get out with a big primetime victory in the desert will be helpful in the long run. Notre Dame dominated a respectable BYU team for most of the evening and it’s a gift that we can lament a win away from home for not quite being as clean as we’d like. Look at us, a month after losing at home to Marshall, getting back to our old ways. A great sign for the season that what we thought was going to be an autumn of simply trying to survive has the potential to be far more fruitful. That blowout we all want? Hopefully coming soon.
2) Much like Kyren Williams last year, we must make room to pause and honor Michael Mayer, even if he makes the incredible seem routine. 11 catches, 118 yards, two touchdowns, another record, and we are in the process of watching a guy who will go down as the most prolific tight end in the history of a school that has had so many greats. It’s fun to laugh at BYU for just leaving him open so often but that’s what happens with elite players no matter what your scheme is and he’s the elite of the elite. What an absolute joy to watch and a rightful Mackey favorite in a just world.
Drew Pyne, wonderful*. He completed 79% of his passes for more than 9 yards per attempt, which is great, but just as importantly he threw a couple beautiful balls 30+ yards in the air to Mayer and Jayden Thomas. I also want to highlight his great run with 9:30 left in the game, when the Irish only led by five and were facing a potential three-and-out. Nobody was getting open downfield so Pyne turned on the wheels and did it himself to spark the final scoring drive, just as he did in the early going in Chapel Hill. Also loved the nifty little flip to Audric Estime. His progression is (probably?) not going to be a straight green arrow up for the rest of the season, but his improvement over the last 10 or 11 quarters has been immense.
* Pyne now sits 17th in the nation in passer rating and 7th in completion percentage.
Do you know what makes a quarterback and offensive coordinator look really good? An offensive line that’s blowing holes open for the running game left and right. Estime and Logan Diggs combined for 190 yards on 31 carries (six yards per) while Pyne spent much of his outing blissfully unaware of the idea of a pass rush. Thrilled that the Hiestand cultists are looking correct and that Jarrett Patterson and Diggs both look healthy. They will have the test of tests in a few weeks but they’re ramping up quite capably to prepare for it.
Offense has a lot going for it now considering how dire things seemed. I don’t expect Thomas to be able to do that every single game, but his progression from really struggling at the season’s start to being productive with a couple easy catch-and-runs against the Heels to becoming the big bodied downfield threat this team desperately needs has been so fun to watch and a testament to him and Chansi Stuckey. If Thomas can approximate that most weeks, and Lorenzo Styles keeps popping, and Mayer and Pyne and the run game can keep it up, this will be a really productive offense the rest of the way. That’s a lot of ifs and the margins for error and good health remain teeny tiny but much like last year it seems to be an attack finding itself.
Quick note on that throw to Thomas: It came on 3rd and 3 at the BYU 30, which I assume meant it was a “go for it on fourth down” situation if it were incomplete, setting up the perfect time to take a shot. Excellent work, Tommy. Also, good work by the whole coaching staff and team as that was another quality end-of-half effort, with that score followed by the defense snuffing out any sort of one-minute drill from the Cougars. Would not have gone for two in the first half - unnecessary at that point in the proceedings.
3) Jayson Ademilola, what a game, with three monster plays (tag-teaming with Jack Kiser on the safety, stuffing the Cougars on two consecutive short-yardage attempts late). His performance level has become so much more important with Jacob Lacey announcing he’ll be redshirting the rest of the season and Howard Cross dealing with an ankle injury. One of the preseason concerns was whether the Irish would be able to hold up against a power run attack and we now have some data points to lead us to believe that worry could/should linger.
Let’s give some laurels to TaRiq Bracy, who opened the game with Notre Dame’s first takeaway of the season (hope he heals quickly) and to Prince Kollie, who had an awesome sack and whose athleticism might make it difficult to keep him off the field. (Recruiting high school Butkus Award winners: A good idea.) Overall, the Irish defensive effort was excellent, harassing a really good quarterback into one of the worst nights of his career and generally keeping BYU off the field.
The limited bad: Allowing that third and long conversion late was inexcusable, I don’t even know how you go about doing that. Need to sit down with Al Golden and have a real heart-to-heart about these safety blitzes. Thus far the rewards have been very limited versus the realized risks of long touchdowns being very much a problem. Do we put that score on Jaden Mickey? He certainly wasn’t burnt in the traditional sense, as he seemed to be handing off Kody Epps to no one, which is not good for at least one person not knowing the call but not really a reflection on his coverage ability. Still would love to see more overall from the linebackers, but was nice to see Bo Bauer help out at the goal line.
4) The uniforms looked great, as did the entire scene in Vegas. Is there any reason Notre Dame shouldn’t set up at least a triennial or biennial visit to Sin City for a game? Permanent Shamrock Series location? Is there any chance fans become bored with that as a destination? Let’s drop Stanford from the annual schedule and start playing a random Pac-12/Big 12/high-end Mountain West team in Vegas as the second West Coast flag plant. Very cool to see them honor Jackie Young, the coolest person alive.
Those endzones were gorgeous, and if we wanted to get rid of the stripes at home for some paint that would not be a bad model to follow. I haven’t written about the new NBC booth here because there were larger issues following Marshall and I was in attendance for Cal but so far the experiment of pairing a young play-by-play announcer with an inexperienced color guy has not proven super effective. There’s the possibility of growth but if Notre Dame can do what we hope over the next three weeks then Clemson is going to be a legitimate Big Game and we do not have evidence that NBC is going to be up to the production task. Would love to be wrong.
5) Winning Is Hard/Schadenfreude Round-Up: No. 1 Alabama nearly lost at home to Texas A&M, but survived after Jimbo Fisher ran a confounding final play. The Tide will now travel to play Rocky Top, who annihilated LSU in Baton Rouge, putting their new head coach’s first year officially on tilt alert. A real shame.
Washington lost to Arizona State, and perhaps we gave a little too much credit to them for beating Sparty, who was blown to the moon by Ohio State. Northwestern was wrecked at home by a Wisconsin team that just fired their coach, and the dream of the Wildcats going 0-for-the-United-States remains alive and well. The beginning of the Brent Venables Era is not going so hot after Texas won Red River 49-0. Miami lost at home to North Carolina for their third straight defeat. San Diego State needed a late field goal to beat a bad Hawaii team as a 24-point favorite.
Florida State lost to NC State’s backup quarterback without him completing a pass, and the Noles are now on a two-game losing streak and have Clemson next. Iowa State lost another close game, this time to Kansas State. Cincinnati had waaay too much trouble with South Florida to be comfortable. Ole Miss was down double digits to Vanderbilt before turning on the jets in the second half. Memphis led Houston by 13 with 80 seconds left and lost. Tulsa gave up 53 to Navy somehow. My beloved App State Mountaineers were a nearly three touchdown favorite at Texas State and got handled. Iowa scored 6 points in another loss and the Ferentz family’s war crimes against offense continue. (Congrats to Illinois – over 4.5 wins ticket has hit already!)
Arkansas provides us with a great example of how a good team can have their season go sideways in a blink. They were Top 10 but via a long fumble return and a field goal doinking off the top of the goal post fell to Texas A&M. Then Alabama came to town and managed to pull away with their backup quarterback to make a second straight loss. And then the Hogs’ quarterback goes down and they get dusted by a Mississippi State team playing good ball. Such a promising September and now they’re going to have to scrap to finish 8-4. Tough sport.
Want to close with a gross but wonderful game from Friday evening. Colorado State rolled into Reno with the nation’s longest losing streak and facing a grudge match, as their new head coach, Jay Norvell, had bolted from Nevada to take the job in Fort Collins. The Rams won, 17-14, and here is how they scored their points: A pick six, a fumble return touchdown when the tailback tried to lateral it for no discernible reason and then a field goal at the buzzer after a running into the kicker penalty negated a previous miss and moved them five yards closer. Beautiful.
6) After the first three games there were legitimate concerns that this team would not just be bad but it would be boring to watch as it lost a bunch. The last two outings have been a nice counterpoint to that fear, with Marcus Freeman’s first squad not just winning but doing it with an offense that has figured a few things out while playing physical, fun football. BYU may end up being unranked by the end of the season (we’ll see how they do against Arkansas on Saturday) but they’ve been a good team under Kalani Sitakie and the Irish took care of business. And as mentioned above, North Carolina is now 5-1 and Ohio State has been bone-shattering every single opponent to a degree the opener looks like even more of a positive outlier for the Irish. All good news.
The Marshall loss remains so annoying and frustrating, but the more we feel it the better it means the season is going. If that cursed home opener ends up being the difference between a New Year’s Six game and the Cheez-It Bowl, or God willing a New Year’s Six Bowl and the playoff, it means this season is going exceptionally well. The worst-case scenario was we just tossed that game into a big Jurassic Park triceratops-level pile of shit because everything was going so wrong. The more it stands out in a negative way, the better.
I think we’re all pretty accepting that this is a silly sport played with an oblong ball by college students and as such there can be random results on random Saturdays that aren’t indicative of anything other than us all making poor decisions about our hobbies and emotional investments. That being said: You cannot, cannot, cannot lose to Stanford this weekend. They showed some life before having their hearts ripped out by the Beavers’ backup QB but they’ve yet to defeat an FBS team on the year and I would like to keep it that way. If the running game continues to hum like it has been there’s no reason the result shouldn’t be a brutal walkover. This team has been on the verge of a blowout for the last two games and I can’t think of a better time to put it all together then against our old friends from Palo Alto.
Go Irish, Beat Cardinal.
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