there's a reason why points scored is used to determine the winner of the game and not yards per play.
Unless some freshmen receivers are being worked in during the bye, what you've seen from our skill positions is pretty much what you'll get. Josh Downs is an All-American in the slot, Ty Chandler is a serviceable RB who's also a threat in the receiving game, and Kamari Morales is starting to come on at TE. After that it's been a big pile of meh with a shoddy OL. There's a reason designed runs for Sam have been such a massive part of the offense this year.
yes, and there is a reason why people like professional betters go deeper into the data and dont just do a regression on game scores to create their power rankings
San Jose St Stanford Washington St Oregon St Colorado Utah This is the first remotely legitimate defense SC has faced.
USC was driving at will most of that game. The number of times London was single covered was insane. I'm happy we beat USC, but that was not a 16 pt defensive efforts. On the other side, we left points on the field on offense - so USC is also "lucky" they didn't get beat by more.
nope, NDs defense didnt make the USC offense generate any less yardage than it did, not saying 1 game provides a full set of proof, but not performing significantly better than that list on a yardage allowed basis is not a good thing
The point total for USC has much more to do with horrendous game day coaching by USC and a couple of big plays than any kind of consistent ND defensive performance to hang your hat on. USC moved the ball at will pretty much all night. ND's defense didn't stop London, they got grinded to dust in the run game, etc. If the game were closer, you could argue that ND would have been more aggressive offensively in the second half and could've put 40+ on the board to keep the solid margin of victory - so I agree that ND was clearly the better team overall. But the defense was just hanging on by a thread all night, outside of when they aggressively went after the QB (which they didn't do close to enough). As Wicket is saying, it's an oddity that USC scored so few points on that type of offensive production and if you played that game out 10 separate times with that type of offensive yardage output, USC is scoring more than 16 points almost every time. I still just don't get not maximizing the snaps of your most talented position group on the team. Playing 3 down linemen has been a recipe for disaster all season in a vacuum, but then when you consider how much talent/experience/depth there is across the DL, it just doesn't add up to me outside of Freeman wanting to play his scheme in favor of maxing out the personnel he has.
what in the world is going on here? we whooped our rivals by 15 points (and could have been more if BK wanted to pile it on at the end) and people are still complaining??? It wasn't a close contest and it was clear who the better team was. No team is going to play perfect football (I know ND certainly didn't) and they still beat USC easily. Why can't people learn to be happy
i am happy, am actually really happy, i just disagree with a few others what the thing is that should make us happy. I think we should be psyched that the OL after being a clusterfuck for most of the season is in danger of becoming quite damn near average, which is a huge improvement
Trust me I'm happy. I just think USC is a broken team right now and pretty bad, so I think this is a year that we should've dominated them. To me (and maybe I'm being a harsh critic), that wasn't dominant.
Listening to itg and that surprises me, however they have made no mention so maybe they didn’t know yesterday.
ND was playing SC soft and giving them the run ball from the 15 out. Daring SC to run. They did and beat us up there. I think they had hoped their DL could handle the OL of SC and stalemate the run game some without adding in DBs. It didn't work as well but what they did well is win in redzone. SC got a redzone pick. Held them to a FG early SC squandered pts at end of 1st half. Classic bend but don't break and SC isn't coached well or disciplined well enough to take advantage.
Yeah this is all true and ultimately it was a successful gameplan. It's a results business, so can't hate on it too much and I get it. I still feel like putting more DBs on the field when there's not a strong need to (outside of down/distance situations where you obviously need that type of personnel) doesn't make sense to me when there's so much in terms of raw materials on the DL.
I get both sides of the "you can dig into the advanced stats and we didn't play that well" and "we only gave up 16 points, we played well" argument. At the end of the day, our win probability was over 92% for every single snap in the last 27 minutes of the game and we played the whole second half without Hamilton. I'll complain about the defense a bit, but we all need to keep that in mind that we were never really even close to being at risk of losing that game and were without our best player (too much of a *gasp* to say Foskey is our best defensive player?), which had to impact some of the scheming.
so there is one thing i want to complain about before going back to being super happy we are 6-1 and honestly being straight on course for a 10.5-1.5 regular season finish, which is just awesome. It absolutely blows that this is the one week where the 6pm slate is this awesome, cuz i have commitments i cant get out of. Wouldve loved to see michigan having trouble with the snap
Had no idea Hayne’s dad played for the Steelers and already has a relationship with Bettis. That can’t hurt.
Seems like our two big recruiting weekends were pretty ho hum, lotta laying groundwork for 2023 class but not much effect for 2022. Still looks like ND isn't going to close strong for 2022 minus maybe adding Schruath
Walker Howard, Devin Browne, Allar - keeping working at them and see which one wants to flip and take them...they are all high ceiling guys
I don’t understand how you can see receivers running wide open and also see run gaps unaccounted for and think that the defense is fine.
It’s not fine but it’s college and it happens. They have a lot of work to do but had you told me we’d lose Hamilton when we did I’d think London would have 2-3 td’s. Limiting points wins, that’s what we did.
That used to happen and ND would give up 45 points a game. Not sure what to tell you guys Just be unhappy I guess. I’ve watched a shit ton of cfb this year and outside of anyone that plays Georgia it’s all teams spreading people out and giving up yards. The key is limiting point and well winning, so like I said, not sure what to do.
For reference, the father played RB at Georgia. In addition, he has the quote “You were born an original, don’t die a copy” in his profile tag line. I don’t want to read too much into this but…
I basically refuse to think ND is getting a top 100 skill player from SEC country until it actually happens on signing day like has it ever happened honestly? I can’t remember a time I guess Hamilton and Sneed but those guys don’t have the ball in there hands.
I learned today that Wallace eats mashed potatoes and pineapple before games. Not sure he can be trusted.
Armando Allen (FL) Michael Meyer (KY) Greg Bryant (FL) Dexter Williams (FL) Deion Walker (VA) TJ Jones (GA) I think those are all top 100 guys from SEC territory
Forgot who I was listening I got to but they said Fickell is basically holding out for OSU or ND. Likes the Midwest.