Rakes Report #222: Trail's gone cold, here comes the rain, been chewin' on willow bark to hold back the pain (The Louisville Review)
The stakes of the season have shifted dramatically but the lingering issues are very familiar in advance of the Trojans' visit.
~optional musical accompaniment~
1) Winning is the only thing that really sticks in college football. You can do it ugly or pretty, leaning on offense or defense or big plays or turnovers or dumb luck but most if not all of the specifics and context are forgotten after a while as time passes and it becomes a notch in the victory column and a score on Wikipedia. However, it’s still important to keep an eye on the process because it can be a pretty prophetic indicator of what might await you. As we find ourselves starting the second half of Marcus Freeman’s second season, looking under the hood is not a pleasant experience.
Last week against Duke we saw an offensive line that wasn’t blocking well, an offensive game plan that wasn’t coherent and a head coach making questionable game management decisions. There were similar issues against Ohio State, although not as acute. This was the seventh game in as many weeks and the third straight monster matchup so fatigue is a factor but all the issues were the same. Would better wide receiver play and a bye week have helped? Unquestionably, but Louisville did not have nearly as much talent as their guests and looked like the better team for much of the evening. “The other team wanted to win the game real real bad” is not a valid excuse for Notre Dame losing because the minute that stops being the case every single week then we know the program is truly in serious jeopardy.
Let’s speed through this because unless there is a seismic shift in how things are going we’re going to be gathered here in similar conditions in a week’s time.
2) Complete debacle from the offense save for Mitchell Evans, Jordan Faison, Jeremiyah Love (on only five carries) and a couple throws from Sam Hartman, who returned to his house of horrors and had a night to forget. Louisville had been giving up explosive passes through the air all season against marginal competition and the Irish could never get loose. Shuffling the interior offensive line throughout the game, boy I do not know, and nothing to say about the tackles other than disappointing performance. For the second straight game, Notre Dame had a scant trio of third down conversions.
It should not be this hard. Where is the pre-snap motion that worked so well the last few years, to gather more information for the quarterback while potentially placing the defense on the wrong foot? We know Dan Orlovsky is part of the broader pro-Rees conspiracy, but late in the game he noted that the “Notre Dame offense is way way way too stagnant and static pre-snap.” Agreed.
Place that aside for a moment and let’s look at after the snap: Where are the RPOs, or play-action? How is every single short yardage attempt so cursed? I am very sympathetic to and understanding of the reality that it’s very hard to call the Decent Plays, let alone the Good Ones, when your offensive line is caving in at every snap and you have limitations at wide receiver but it’s now three straight weeks of discombobulation1 and if you can’t score in bunches Saturday you have no chance. We’ve seen worse quarterbacks behind similar offensive lines with limited weapons put up more points.
Also, unfortunately, none of this is surprising. From this space in the halcyon days of late July:
If we are at the midpoint of the season, the offense has been struggling and everyone is trying to reverse engineer how we got into this position, the story of “A rookie head coach with a defensive background hired a former colleague to an offensive assistant role and then a year later promoted him to coordinator after failing to secure a different candidate” is as predictable an autopsy as you might find.
It’s one thing for a veteran head coach who’s run his own offense to bring in a first-time playcaller because he can be there to provide guidance during the week and in the heat of the game. It’s another thing when you have a top guy in his second year who has a defensive background and is really going to need to lean on his offensive coordinator. There is still time for Gerad Parker to find redemption over these final five games but if current trends continue apace Freeman will face a tough decision that really won’t be one at all.
(One more note on the Parker hire: Blame whomever you want for the deal with Andy Ludwig falling through, be that Swarbrick, Freeman, Ludwig, whomever reads the fine points of contracts or signs off on the larger checks. It was Freeman who ultimately made the call to elevate Parker instead of continuing the search when there were still other candidates out there.)
2) I don’t want to put too much on the defense. The tackling was slipshod at times as it’s been too often this year, there was a horrific facemask penalty and they allowed two bad run busts but they managed to scrape and claw to hold the Cardinals to seven first-half points. Cam Hart started the second half by immediately getting the ball back but they eventually wore down with the offense failing to sustain anything, just like last week. They didn’t allow a reception longer than 18 yards and the overall numbers were still fine -- just over five yards per play and slightly more effective than average success rate allowed, nothing egregious. We knew coming into the season there were questions about the overall talent at safety and the ability to generate a pass rush without blitzing and while the answers to those questions haven’t been overly positive this loss was not on the defense even if it was frustrating to watch at times.
3) I didn’t take in all the written and spoken commentary on the Duke game and I know I’m obsessive but I was surprised how little focus there was on the horrible process around all the field goals, and we ended up there again: Late in the third quarter, down seven, 3rd and three at the Louisville 35. Run Estime for a loss of one which is a fine play call if you're going to go for it…ah, another 50+-yard field goal attempt. Spencer Shrader connected, but it made a game where Notre Dame needed a touchdown into a game where Notre Dame needed a touchdown.
On the very next drive, Freeman chose to go for it on 4th and 11 from his own 35. Friend of the Report Michael Bryan referred to it as rolling the 4th down decision dice and there’s not a better way to put it. There was the strange timeout at 3rd and 13 in the first half that conserved seconds for Louisville and then the blatantly irresponsible decision to have Jayden Thomas out there in the waning moments of a lost cause when his hamstring was clearly not 100%. There are a great many moving parts to handle as a coaching staff and for as gassed as the team looks at times the sideline appears to be wearing down as well.
4) We’re already going long and I don’t want to get into special teams now but it feels like the Irish are bleeding hidden yardage in every kicking exchange. It was a nice bounce-back game for Shrader as he went two-for-two but every time this team kicks a 50+ yard field goal the rest of the season the athletic department should have to make a donation to charity. From when Notre Dame was 4-0 and before clouds descended so this isn’t second guessing as the kick decisions have become worse:
Individually each of the decisions is defensible but we’re in a situation where Notre Dame has attempted four 50+ yard field goals in the last two games. Maybe need to tweak this process a bit?
5) Winning Is Hard Round Up: Again, really only like to do these after wins but if the Irish are going to lose a bunch more we might have to switch it up and lean into the schadenfreude. Will keep it abridged, but we have to talk about how the Miami game ended: If the Hurricanes had simply taken a knee, they would have defeated Georgia Tech after struggling as a three-touchdown favorite all night. Instead, Mario Cristobal chose to run the ball, it was fumbled and the Yellow Jackets hit a miracle touchdown to win. What makes it funnier is Cristobal lost a game to Stanford as Oregon’s head coach in 2018 the exact same way and also apparently does this all the time. The incredulity of the announcers while it is happening is easy listening, and the cherry on top is the Bowling Green team that blew out Georgia Tech last week was shut out 27-0 by Miami (Ohio) earlier in the day.
6) In the 90s there was a big Batman comic event called “Knightfall” in which Bane2 breaks the Caped Crusader’s back. Because he believed in working smarter and not harder, Bane doesn’t confront his foe immediately, but instead frees every member of the rogues gallery from Arkham Asylum and watches Batman exert all of his physical, mental and emotional energy rounding them up. Once he’s worn himself down to the nub, Bane steps in and easily wins the fight.
Playing the eighth game in as many weeks against a quarterback who has the football equivalent of Venom naturally flowing through his veins makes me feel like Notre Dame is in a similar position. Of course, considering the Irish hold some control over bye week placement, it would be like if Batman and Bane agreed to a duel date and Batman blew Arkham open himself a few weeks in advance to work up a good sweat. To further strain this already sketchy analogy, the way the Irish have played the last couple weeks and current mood around the program it’s like the big guy showing up to find The World’s Greatest Detective already shattered in a heap.
Southern Cal’s schedule is about to get much, much harder, but that doesn’t really help the Irish in this situation. The Trojan defense is suspect and the offense is a lot of Caleb Williams Magic, but considering how poorly the Irish have scored it the last few weeks and how tired the defense might be, that could absolutely be enough for a victory for the visitors. Does this Notre Dame team have anything left, or will this be light flailing before getting to the bye week? Pretty much every winning streak has come to an end so it would be nice to extend the decade of not losing to USC at home a little longer if at all possible.
Win this game and a lot will be forgiven. Lose it and you’re 5-3 with a game in Death Valley where Clemson is totally capable of winning a rock fight still to come. With no chance at the playoff established before mid-October, this season is already about pride so we will see if cohesion between roster and head coach is as strong as it was billed previously. Big picture conversations come later but right now it’s just staying in the fight. One way to get over misery is to drag someone else down to hell with you. Beat SC.
There have been people vociferously defending the Ohio State game plan but if you’re not trying to take shots against a team that talented and only end up scoring 14 points then sorry it’s not a great approach.
It’s unclear how Bane sounds in this as it is a comic, so not sure if it’s Tom Hardy’s muffled madness or James Adomian’s incredible extension of that approach from Harley Quinn.