Rakes Report #204: I am still living with your ghost, lonely and dreaming of the west coast (The Southern Cal Review)

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~mandatory musical accompaniment~

1) As I attempt to wrap my head around the season finale loss to the Trojans and the 2022 campaign as a whole, I come back to how we’re dealing with some new feelings along with a single persistent experience that’s dogged us for some time now. The new feelings are as follows: This is the first time Notre Dame has lost to Southern Cal since 2016, and the first time they’ve lost the Thanksgiving weekend game* since the fourth quarter collapse in Palo Alto in 2017. Those are really impressive runs that have sent us into December in good spirits and now we have to grapple with the inverse. Frankly, I don’t love it.

* A rhetorical hedge to get around the fact there were two games following the exhilarating Black Friday win against North Carolina in 2020 with the schedule overhaul due to the pandemic.

Another thing that’s new is that in the seven seasons prior to this one, Notre Dame had double-digit wins six times and the single occasion of emptying a carbine into their foot to go 4-8. Having eight wins at the conclusion of the regular season when you have a brand new coach and a backup quarterback and had some really nice moments mixed in with some ugly losses feels extremely normal and middle-of-the-road. Going from consistently being in the playoff race to ending up in some random mid-tier bowl without the option to scream for a head coach firing reminds me of the lament of the late, great Ray Liotta at the conclusion of “Goodfellas”: “Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.” Notre Dame is just a quality win for some teams competing for the playoff but not nearly bad enough to start raising money for billboards. Odd spot for a fan.

The one thing that did feel very similar is that Notre Dame was in a high-stakes primetime matchup and was at a severe disadvantage at quarterback despite Drew Pyne playing out of his damn mind for much of the game. That’s a tough and annoying experience and one that may or may not have an easy fix with the transfer portal. To bookend the season with 11-point road losses to future first round picks who were capable of sprinting all over the place before delivering dimes really provided a tidy narrative arc to the proceedings but again, did not love it.

2) Frustrating game on offense because they played so well overall (slight advantage in yards per play over the Trojans, nearly kept up from an efficiency standpoint) but the early failed conversions and the killer fumble made it all for naught. Pyne really was excellent for much of the night, hitting the easy stuff and connecting on some impressive deep shots to Michael Mayer and Deion Colzie. Continue to love everything about Jayden Thomas and that was probably the best overall Lorenzo Styles game of the season which is damning with faint praise but we’ll take any arrows pointing up.

Here are four offense-related numbers: 263, 66, 281, 90. Ponder for a moment what they might be before reading ahead I’m just filling in some words here in case your eyes are scanning ahead and cheating did you see “Glass Onion” I really enjoyed it but still prefer the original also it’s a crime against cinema the way Netflix is handling the theatrical release okay so those are the Notre Dame rushing totals for the November games, in order, meaning 263 against Clemson through 90 on Saturday night. That makes no sense! Part of the problem Saturday was that for as good as Pyne was the coaching staff had to build a game plan starting with the run first because of Bad Pyne’s sporadic appearances over the course of the season. Remember, part of the reason the Stanford game was lost is Tommy Rees game-planned around a guy who had completed 70% of his passes in three straight games and then suddenly stopped doing that. If they had started the game flinging it around the yard, you, me and everyone else would have shouted what are you doing. Margin of error was small, and while Pyne more than held up his end of the bargain save for one glaring mistake we saw the offensive line not quite overwhelm their opposition while Tommy missed on a couple short yardage calls and perhaps underused Chris Tyree. That’s all it’s going to take when the defense can’t come through with a turnover.

I want to close this section by praising Mayer, an otherworldly performer who will go down as not only the most prolific tight end in program history but one of the best receivers of any size or sort to ever play for Notre Dame. (He sits third in career receptions with 180, just ahead of a gentleman named Jeff Samardzija.) Pyne is ranked a confounding 20th in the nation in passer efficiency rating which is a testament to both him and Rees but also a sign of how good Mayer has been this season and over his entire career. Imagine trying to gameplan for him, I’m not sure how you would even start with mortal linebackers and defensive backs because they will be too slow or too small, even when you throw them at him en masse. On Saturday, Mayer was targeted nine times and converted eight of those into 98 yards and two scores. I remember his freshman year he’d make the occasional small mistake and we wisely said, “Oh, this is well worth it for what he already is and will almost certainly become.” Worth it and then some. Thank you, Michael.

3) The defense felt similar to the frustrations we felt earlier this year, where the opposition was able to just slowly bleed them dry. Every Trojan drive until the waning moments went for at least six plays, just two sacks, no forced turnovers and most disappointingly the tackling was a step back from what we’d seen previously. Austin Jones* averaged six yards per carry and only had a long of 24, meaning the numbers back up what your eyes were seeing with him consistently churning forward for yardage. I understand having Caleb Williams back there zipping about while the refs admire his work and not necessarily look for instances of holding opens all kinds of things up, but it wasn’t the best performance, with Lincoln Riley working over Al Golden multiple times (a couple in the red zone, a couple on third down) with his alignments. Golden not having two of his best three corners with Cam Hart and TaRiq Bracy missing the game clearly hurts the cause quite a bit.

* If you listened to the preview podcast last week, our USC insider Nick Tresnowski spoke highly of Jones’ abilities, which I was mildly surprised by in the moment simply because of Travis Dye’s more heralded reputation but ended up proving very wise.

Xavier Watts missed a couple of opportunities for turnovers but played very well again. If those were the final games in blue and gold for Isaiah Foskey and Jayson Ademilola, they went out on their shields, with 4.5 combined tackles for loss and Foskey not just extending his career sack lead but making an incredible play down the field that almost resulted in a monster turnover. J.D. Bertrand and Marist Liufau played basically the entire game, with just a single snap for Prince Kollie and only 19 for Jack Kiser. That Kollie number strikes me as overly cautious considering his play over the last month.

4) Riley was really wise to avoid punts, having Williams pooch it twice. (Also not a great sign for your defense when the opposition never has to line up for a traditional boot.) Blake Grupe and Jon Sot did not get much work. Brian Mason has done a wonderful job this year but his insistence on returning every single kickoff and viewing every touchback as a failure resulted in some poor field position in the first half.

I feel like the game would have been several degrees less painful to watch if not for the booth, who leaned so hard into the coronation angle while missing simple things (how do you repeatedly confuse the guys wearing numbers 16 and 83?). It’s wild ESPN pays so much money for the rights to broadcast games and for their flagship crew it’s just two guys having a loose conversation about some stuff going on in college football while occasionally commentating on the game they’re attending. With the Trojans heading to the Big Ten in 2024 and ESPN ending their ties with the league, that should mean we never have to deal with this particular combination of venue and announce crew again.

5) Winning Is Hard/Schadenfreude Round-Up: I don’t love doing these after losses but this was the last full slate of college football for 40 weeks and I’ll regret it if I don’t, so: Michigan won in Columbus for the first time in 22 years and Ohio State fans have some serious questions about Ryan Day. Do I like it when the Wolverines win? I do not. Do I like when one of the premier programs in the nation is going to spend the offseason complaining about their coach? Oh yes, you bet, although I prefer some level of stability in Columbus just so they don’t eye any alumni for the job.

Clemson had a path to the playoff despite their blowout loss in South Bend (remember that?) but alas their six-year home winning streak came to an end at the hands of South Carolina. D.J. was 8 for 29 for 99 yards (3.4 yards per attempt), which is not good. They go limping into the ACC title game to face off against North Carolina, losers of two straight after a double overtime home loss to NC State. Dave Doeren has become the protagonist of this section and honestly I’m okay with that. Speaking of losing before playing in the conference title game, LSU’s playoff hopes are formally dead after getting taken care of by a Texas A&M team that played even with UMass for most of last week. That’s a real shame.

Cincinnati lost out on a chance at a final American conference title by falling at home to Tulane on Friday then lost their coach on Sunday as Luke Fickell is taking the Wisconsin job, which is very interesting. Iowa had a shot at a second straight Big Ten title game appearance but lost to Nebraska, which is deeply embarrassing. (Matt Rhule seems like a good hire for the Huskers.) Speaking of the Big Ten, thanks to a dominant performance from the Illini the quest is complete and Northwestern indeed finishes 0-for-the-United States. Congratulations to Pat Fitzgerald and the Wildcats! Will Fitzgerald follow the path of David Shaw, who resigned from his post at Stanford after another poor season? (Don’t look up who the Cardinal’s three wins were against.) We’ll see.

Oregon led 31-10 in the Civil War but got grounded and pounded into submission by the Beavers, losing a chance at the Pac-12 title. Georgia really scuffled with Georgia Tech. UCLA had issues with Cal. Iowa State got blown to the moon by TCU. Oklahoma lost in overtime to Texas Tech and finishes 6-6, the same record as the Gators after a loss to Florida State. Sparty is paying Mel Tucker a lot of money to finish 5-7, which is their record after a season-closing loss in Happy Valley. Miami is also 5-7 after getting walloped at home by Pitt – excellent first season of the CryptoBall tenure. Ole Miss lost the Egg Bowl at home in extremely dumb fashion – love that game more than perhaps any other. Oklahoma State lost at home to a wobbly West Virginia team. Syracuse needed a big fourth quarter against Boston College to avoid six straight losses to close the season.

6) Obviously a giant bummer to lose to the Trojans and while I’d prefer simply defeating them year-in and year-out as has been the recent custom it’s nice to be working against a proper villain again. Williams’ visit to Notre Dame Stadium next season is going to be a great deal of fun and we can only hope the Irish are in a position to match his theatrics in what I assume will be a primetime clash. The last couple victories over the Trojans have not been entirely jubilant celebrations by Notre Dame fans and instead come with some grousing about margin of victory so I’m pleased we’re all locked in again in realizing any win in which you get to take home the jeweled shillelagh afterwards is one worth cherishing. Ideally the next 11 months are spent focused on making sure it stays in South Bend after a brief sojourn to Heritage Hall.

I can’t believe the season is over already. This was a frustrating (a word I keep coming back to) team to watch at times but I appreciate that despite their sundry stumbles they never quit. They could have packed it in after Marshall, or after Stanford, or when Syracuse came screaming back, or after they were down double digits repeatedly in the Coliseum, but they kept coming. If you want to be hopeful about the future of the Marcus Freeman Era I’d lean on that part heavily, because program cultures are ephemeral and can curdle quickly, but he seems to have kept the best of the last half-decade run in place. This is a team that both plays with and is capable of inspiring a lot of joy (as we saw in the final two home games) and that’s something to hold close.

We’ll get into big picture stuff in the coming weeks but that was a solid opening effort from Freeman. Tricky schedule, weaknesses on the roster that were not his fault, a calamitous early injury to the starting quarterback and the ship mostly stayed on course. It’s so incredibly annoying that this is a year where a 2018- or 2020-level team could have a legitimate shot at winning at least one playoff game, but sometimes the cards do not align fairly for our rooting interests.

We had some soul-sucking nadirs over the previous three months but also some glistening highs, and I can’t thank you enough for reading and replying and spreading the good word about the newsletter. I know I am not always correct in this space and we do not always agree on the particulars but I am very grateful we get to talk about Notre Dame football even if it is going to break all of our brains in the end. How else would you rather go? Between NIL likely causing some last-minute signing day twists and the transfer portal, I suspect this is going to be a fluid offseason, but I’m excited to experience it with you all.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Please watch this space next Monday because one of my favorite weeks of the year is coming. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. Go Irish.

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