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Is 5-2 good enough?

Relax, we're 5-2, not 3-4. Yes, we'd love to win with more style and more dominance, but is that realistic?

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  1. Weis has got to stop running the ball up the middle from running formations in short yardage situations. ND's defense will look a lot better at away games when the the other team's officials won't be on the field so that holding and pass interference will be more evenly applied to both teams. Clausen doesn't really have the long ball arm the pros and Heisman voters are looking for.

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  2. Great show. My comment to the "a win is a win" crowd is that this isn't the NFL. For better or worse in college you need to win big to impress the voters and move up in the polls - a win by 2 against a mediocre opponent is not the same as a win by 20. This is something that CW has never seemed to understand.

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  3. theodorekasmar are you kidding you said clausen does not have the long ball arm! The kid throws the long ball down the sideling like nobody else in college football his arm allows himg to throw far and accurate with alot of zip on it if clausen is acused of anything its not being mobile. In case you want to know what pro scouts look for i will give you the prereqs in order

    1 ability to throw the ball accuratly
    2 can he move inside the pocket
    3 is he durable
    4 can he throw down feild
    5 does he throw alot of interceptions
    6 can he run

    clausen falls short only in the last one so if you look on a scale of 1-100 hes probably graded at 85. oh yeah payton manning and tom brady excell at all but the last one as well

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  4. On the contrary, the Irish would not need to blow anyone out to be a top five ranked team. The simple fact of the matter is, even with a very weak defense (under statemenet), Notre Dame is just two passes away from being #4. If Forcier had not connected in the final seconds in Ann Arbor, and Jimmy had connected on just one of his final three passes against SoCal, ND would be 7 - 0 and ranked #4. I recognize also that ND could easily be 1 - 6. However, they would not have had to blow anyone out to be ranked #4 in the country.

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  5. Four things, first Mike asserted that ND would be prejudiced in the BCS because of sports writers bias against ND. This is not really accurate as the BCS rating does not take the AP Poll into account - using the AP poll for the BCS ratings was discontinued because the AP complained about it.

    Second, I agree that Jimmy's play should put him in at least the discussion for the Heisman, but he seemed to regress this past weekend against BC. In particular, and I haven't heard anybody commenting about this yet, when pressure would come from the outside, he rolled out right into it instead of stepping up into the pocket. The safety play was one of the worst examples of this. The pressure was deep and to the outside and Jimmy ran right into it, while the middle was wide open. The tackles were taking the outside rushers up the field as they are taught to do, and Jimmy ran right into it when he could have either ran or bought additional time to find a receiver by stepping up. The safety wasn't the only incidence of this, just the most costly.

    Third, I don't know why we abandoned the short passing game in our last two possesions in which BC forced us to punt - which wasn't going well for ND, anyway. I know people complained in Michigan that we didn't run the ball, but the real problem there was the wasted down on the go route attempt and then on 3rd down throwing a timing route to a true freshmen. In this game, the db's were 10 yards off Tate and at the end of the game. A quick toss to him is a high percentage play and likely to pick up at least 5 yards or more if he breaks 1 tackle.

    Lastly, why didn't maust get a chance to come in and punt last week? Turk was awful. How do you shank a free kick after the safety? The competition opened back up this week, but it isn't like putting Maust in would be trying a guy with no experience - after the 2nd or third punt, Maust clearly should have been given a shot. What say you?

    But, it was great to get a win, and even though not perfect, my Sunday was much better than last week.

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  6. waydomer makes a good point about our last two possessions against BC....I continue to think that fan/media reaction does play into Charlie's play calling at times and the criticisms about the end of the Michigan game were at work here. Charlie needs to ignore the papers and the websites, etc. If he did I think we would have seen short ball control passes and a couple first downs at the end of the BC game. -Ed J.

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