Rakes Report #198: The devil made me do it the first time, the second time I did it on my own (The Stanford Review)

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~optional musical accompaniment~

1) When doing the accounting of who played well on Saturday evening, the first thoughts that come to mind are a reserve defensive lineman, a freshman wide receiver who caught one pass (but ran a great route on another) and the punter. Now, I am thrilled to see Nana Osafo-Mensah, Tobias Merriweather and Jon Sot making plays, but you’re going to need a little more than that, even against a team that appeared to be as bad as Stanford. Same spiel for blame as the Marshall game: This is on Marcus Freeman, then Tommy Rees and to a lesser degree Al Golden, then on the players which reflects back on the coaches again because they’re supposed to teach them how to succeed and then put them into positions to do so. After three straight wins the world is now atilt and anything is possible for the rest of the season, and I mean that in the “We have no idea where the next trapdoor might be” way and not in the “The sky is the limit, dream with me!” way.

2) Parts of Rees’ gameplan seem like he thought Stanford would overload to help its porous run defense against an Irish attack that had been so successful the last 10 quarters and started trying to counter that before doing the simple thing first. This was hurt by the fact that after two excellent games, Drew Pyne regressed severely as Stanford sat on the Irish receivers and he couldn’t make them pay, accuracy and ability to hit on enough middle-to-deep stuff in severe decline. Looking through the play-by-play, it’s a lot of “Pyne incomplete short” and a real cavalcade of errors:

• Before the very first snap of the game, captain Jarrett Patterson false starts. Ominous!

• On drive three, you have the sketchy hold on Michael Mayer and then the ineligible man downfield that took his touchdown off the board. Not sure if that is on Mitchell Evans (who was flagged), Chris Tyree (who was off the line) or Rees (for the formation). That drive ends when Jayden Thomas couldn’t convert the sweep on fourth and short. Good decision to go for it, probably need to throw there? Should have been a check, and there was even a little space if he was able to get up field a little quicker.

• Drive four is what we want, starting with four straight runs (including a fourth and one conversion on the Irish 44, love the aggression) but then fizzles on a couple of incompletions.

• Drive five begins with the flip to Braden Lenzy which immediately put things in 2nd and 18. Doomed from there.

• Drive six is the one where Pyne started to get into a groove in the hurry-up and then for some reason the Notre Dame sideline called timeout, which was loved by only Jason Garrett at the time and remains confusing now. Strip sack on the very next play.

The offense was basically fine after the half, they just didn’t have the ball all that much. The first drive was unsuccessful but started with two Tyree runs for eight yards and then a throw to Mayer (this is a fine formula, although Mayer was targeted on nearly every third down attempt so maybe tweak it a bit) that was incomplete. The next two drives were touchdowns, and the drive after that was humming down the field on the legs of Audric Estime and Logan Diggs to the tune of 54 yards on eight plays when Estime fumbled. The final drive was Not Good, ending on a low throw short of the sticks on fourth down.

Margins were always going to be tight with this offense. Lorenzo Styles was christened as The Guy after a nice second half of his freshman year, but it’s a different ask to be the fourth option on the field versus the lead receiver and when he has a rough game to go with Pyne not being sharp where else do you go in the air? Merriweather looked great, and while similar to Thomas after last week’s breakout it’s unlikely he’s going to be able to do that week in and week out, might as well give it a go at this point to increase our chances of Tall Receiver Running Fast Down The Field. (Amount of points scored by the offense is inversely proportional to amount of questions about Merriweather snaps.) Estime didn’t get heavy touches until late, but then also fumbled late, which was sad. Diggs still looks good, which is a positive. Why not more two-back sets, or efforts to get Tyree in space? There are limitations, but it seems like Rees could be making things easier for himself.

It wouldn’t have been surprising for this offense to hit the wall at some point when the challenges got a little stiffer with the combination of Syracuse and Clemson (they will have one combined loss, to the other, when the Irish play them) but to do so against this wretched Stanford defense is a truly shocking result. Every team the rest of the way is going to stack the box, play man, double-team Mayer on early downs and triple-team him on every third or fourth. If Rees and Pyne can’t adjust to that, things are going to look a lot more like Saturday than they looked in Chapel Hill or Vegas.

3) Much like after the Marshall game, it feels wrong to blame the defense much when they gave up 16 points but that was a rather uninspiring effort despite the low point total. Notre Dame forced a single three-and-out on Saturday evening, had one pass defensed against 38 Tanner McKee attempts, one sack, two more tackles for loss and the lone takeaway of the season remains the wounded duck tossed up to start things by BYU. They had bad fumble and review luck on Saturday but you do not feel this defense in any sense. Multiple times defensive backs appeared to be attempting to tackle the invisible shadow companions of the ballcarriers, which I appreciate during the spookiest of months but perhaps take care of banishing them back to the netherworld after the tangible opponent has been wrestled to the ground. I do not understand how a team can be this bad on third and long, it’s like a running gag at this point.

Much like the situation we found ourselves in last year after Kyle Hamilton went down, there doesn’t appear to be someone who’s going to make a splash play in the back seven, and the roster overall is suffering from attrition. Jayson Ademilola left the game Saturday, Jaden Mickey and TaRiq Bracy are banged up, Howard Cross is playing on a bum ankle, Bo Bauer is done for the season, Jacob Lacey is no longer an option and so on and so forth. Much like Merriweather should play because why not at this point, crank up the Prince Kollie snaps* further and see what happens. If Jordan Botelho is going to play that hard on special teams, why not get him in the mix on defense here and there.

* 21 on Saturday, so already up there. Chris Smith had 61 and Gabe Rubio 44, the interior depth already being stressed with half the season still to go.

Put it this way: If you’re the opposing offensive coordinator, what are you doing special to prepare to play this defense? You’re probably going to make sure you’re chipping Isaiah Foskey, but after that, are you working to avoid anything else? Not really, right? Just going to run your stuff like you would against anybody? Not ideal.

4) Jon Sot remains innocent and since we’ve got some time on our hands let’s get that Ray Guy campaign going. Wish Blake Grupe would have got a crack at a game-winner late. I would have been watching through my fingers but that’s a very cool opportunity he was denied, even after David Shaw had some of the most conservative playcalling you’ll ever see before giving the ball back. Insert Denny Green “and we let them off the hook!” here.

Notre Dame’s previous opponents didn’t cover themselves in glory this week. Marshall lost again, this time to Louisiana at home as a 10-point favorite. Cal gave Colorado its first win of the season. North Carolina almost lost to Duke. BYU gave up 52 at home to Arkansas. Not good.

Both watching on television and hearing from folks in the Stadium, was not a hot crowd. Was this due to trying to cram a Stanford team that hadn’t been playing well into a primetime slot? Not having a whole lot to cheer about for much of the game, particularly at the very beginning? Little of both? Last year wandering around the lots and campus before the North Carolina game I had a feeling it was going to be a dismal scene, but the excitement of that shootout got everyone into it. No such luck on Saturday – very solemn. I imagine the third quarter light show can feel slightly incongruent with the mood in the building when you are losing to Stanford but that’s the risk.

5) Simply a no good, very bad loss. If you were bored with the metronome-like consistency of being one of the best half-dozen or so teams in football over the last five years, congrats on the excitement of volatility, I guess? I know there were midterms but Freeman has to have a better handle on this team, because twice they’ve come off good performances and been completely flat at home against inferior teams. Seasons go by quickly but they can feel long, and keeping everyone locked in when there are so many reasons not to be remains so important.

No more scoping the AP poll also receiving votes or asking the coaching staff if starting Tyler Buchner to begin with was the right idea. At this point the season is trying to survive on a game-by-game basis six or ideally seven more times and rack up as many wins as possible over that time. It’s a shame because Saturday was an enormously fun day of college football and the Irish put a lame cap on it for us partisans, just as this season seems like it could be a fun one but we’re going to be out of the general discourse other than some rubbernecking if the losses continue to mount.

Nobody loves trying to establish grand narratives more than me, but this is going to require patience and we’ll try to tell the full story of the season when it’s over. It’s important to remember that this is the least experienced Freeman will be as a head coach with a roster that’s likely to be the least talented he’ll ever have, which makes any losses this fall only slightly more useful data points in the case against his long-term success than how his press conference and recruiting performances were used to project greatness. I understand it’s annoying to sit here at 3-3 and say “We have a lot to learn” but we kind of have a lot to learn, both on and off the field. Is this staff capable of wringing out consistent, complementary football for more than a fortnight at a time? What’s Rees’ future? Will Freeman and Notre Dame as a whole adapt to the transfer portal? To NIL? Will the 2023 recruiting class (currently ranked 3rd in the 247 Composite after another Top 100 commit this weekend) hold together and provide a further infusion of talent to the roster?

The only way out of this is through, and that starts with the Running Rebels on Saturday afternoon. The Irish opened as a three-score favorite but they’re going to have to come out so much sharper because I cannot imagine what that sideline and stadium is going to feel like if there’s any sort of slow start or early deficit. Giddy up.

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