If the spring game is included in the population of Notre Dame football games to be played in 2021, it is at best a biased sample --- rules are different, goals are different, length of game time is different, opponent is different, composition of offensive line is different, 2 of the 3 QB's could not be tackled, etc., etc. etc. At worse it should not even be included in the population.
It is, of course, a mortal sin of sampling theory to generalize from a biased sample, much less to do so with such confidence and in such detail.
To throw the towel in on next season following the spring game?
Kelly can't adapt and it is hopeless to think he can get one of his offenses to be explosive and among the nations elite.
He has failed on all levels from an offensive perspective:
Offensive Scheme.
Hiring of offensive assistants.
Failure to move on from his poor hires.
Recruiting--especially QB and WR.
Evaluation.
Development--look no further than the current roster. Plenty of failure there.
The only real hope is that the next HC can be what Kelly has always proclaimed to be: an offensive guru.....or at least have the brains to hire one if the new hire is a defensive-oriented coach.
We will have to wait for the next HC
....into student section season one.
for his first collegiate pass. I was at the game, and it confirmed what I thought about him from his Cincy days...small timey. The '11 Michigan game just confirmed it...it was the dumbest football game I've ever watched and I would have said that if ND had won.
It looked shaky for much of the day. There weren't many holes for Williams and Tyree. Lots of missed blocking assignments resulting in tackles for loss. The second and third teams on the DL are clearly better than their OL counterparts. The comparative first teamers are more even but the DL has an advantage there, too.
That said, I believe Patterson will solidify things when he returns. Once the coaches settle on the starting five, they should be more than adequate.
Coan should be a competent QB. He's just not a star and has thrown a disturbing number of interceptions this spring. I wish Kelly would go all-in on Buchner this season and grind through whatever development pains there are with him and the young linemen. The defense is still good enough and the schedule shitty enough to get Brian his precious ten wins.
We know that won't happen though.
His snaps were crisp,buckle high,and on a line to the QB.....
Unless he was promised he could play tackle to increase his value, I think he should play center. He had a great season there.
equivalent is in a bowl game and then we'll get hammered with stats about how "historic" the five year stretch of double digit wins is.
How was Blake's footwork?
Did Pyne hold on to the ball too long?
Did Lenzy start trying to catch with his body rather than his hands again?
How were Keys' breaks on his routes? Is Tyree a legitimate threat as a receiver out of the backfield?
Can Cam Hart start for 4 years?
Does Michael Mayer's hair ever get messed up?
I don't think you can look at this as a team thing. It was a mish-mash of crap, all while showing nothing on offense and Mr. Freeman perhaps getting a bit too liberal with his blitzing and stunting on defense.
Granted, I'm not saying you're wrong. We've all seen enough of BK to know once Tommy starts to stray too far Brian is going to reel it back in; but I don't think that happened yesterday.
Everyone knew the defense was going to dominate this game, particularly the DL. There are legitimate critiques to make, but I'm not selling Tommy or the offense yet.
He flat out admitted that they weren't going to show jack squat on offense during the game - specifically mentioning having to open on the road against Florida St.
It's the Blue-Gold game. If Junior Jabbering the shit out a good performance yesterday would be total nonsense, it works the other way too.
I put zero stock in anything I saw on that field yesterday.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. You and others may disagree. That's fine.
Yep.. It's Spring practice.. Not the first game of the season.
But wait . . . maybe by keeping them secret, we're really tipping our hand as to the secret weapons we have, by their conspicuous absence. But Kelly would know that the other coaches are looking for that, and fool them by not throwing to receivers that aren't secret weapons. Let the real secret weapons dive for catches and come up with strawberries and turf burn! Ahh, yes . . . the strawberries . . . that's where we had them.
to throw off 3-6 FSU before the big game next year. Some triple reverses, flea flickers, fumblerooskis, and Statue of Liberty plays too. Have the defense wear black shoes and run 10% slower than they really are. Let the kick returned and punt returners score.
a lot of confidence if either Patterson or Mayer get injured. I think the defense has much more depth right now, which is going to make the talent gap even more visible when you split up the units (OL split up, Keys and Davis split up). We are going to need some young players to develop very fast on the line and also may be relying on a player (Kevin Austin) that has never kept healthy to... stay healthy
I really don't think much can be gleaned from the Blue and Gold game. (I didn't watch, but if the number of WR snaps skewed old as you say then I do agree that that is at least a window into to whom the coaches are giving the first shot.)
I'll never forget how lost Kizer looked in the B/G game and then that fall came in when Zaire got hurt and was awesome.
Williams barely touched the ball.
Patterson was out, and the OL was split. Spindler looked like a freshman. Some good, some bad. I had worried that Fisher was ahead or that the others was bad. Tosh Baker should have been collecting tolls, at least he would have gotten something. I was kind of hoping Lugg was not not going to be one of the Top 5, but he clearly is. So are Zeke and Fisher. Figure Patterson gets back in there, and then you need one more.
It is not the coaches who call the targets, it is the QBs. They make the reads and throws. Gold team had the better OL, but never ran. Coan clearly has confidence in Davis and Wilkins, not so much in any of the others at WR.
For the blue, I think Buchner only threw it to Keys. Payne leaned on him a lot too. They did throw to Lenzy.
Styles got a could of targets, so did Watts. Johnson had one, and it was a lousy throw at that.
The D as a whole was much better than the O. They did however give up a lot of long passes.
The problem with the BG game is that the players know each other well. There is a certain zero sum element to it. For every time Keys was open, it meant that someone wasn't good in coverage.
If the OL can gel, the team can be competitive in the big games and win the ones they are supposed to. I think the corners looked fine. Same for the safeties, especially adding back Hamilton.
And the best of all, Buchner showed enough to create QB controversy.
Is it my imagination or do our pass plays consistently fail to produce YAC?
Most of our pass plays fall into 4 categories:
1. The pass route is such that the WR is tackled immediately after the catch.
(See 0:22)
2. The ball is under thrown so the WR has to stop his route to come back and get it. (See 1:43)
3. The ball is thrown such that the WR had to dive or run OOB to get it. (See 0:50)
4. INTs (ugh, multiple)
Again, I only saw the highlights. But if there were a single play of a long pass caught in stride with a good chunk of YAC, they didn't include it in the highlights. Which is hard to believe.
Kelly had a short list of nationally-known OC candidates. He picked Tom Rees. There must have been a reason for that that is related to on-field excellence.