The Rock Report: Irish Rising

Notre Dame is still that gawky teenager growing through adolescence, but is finally starting to look like what we'll be when we grow up. Only five games past last years horrific horror and we're on a completely different plane.

Saturday is another possible stepping stone: on the road against a ranked team. Eventually we're going to have to break through the ceiling and move from a decent team to a good team.

I could almost rewrite the article A Simple Choice: Boys or Men for this week.

As Lou told the team back in the 80s. Paraphrasing, "In 2007 people said the Notre Dame would never win again. We had a group of guys that wanted to win, but didn't know how. The we progressed to a point where we had a group of guys who wanted to win and knew how to win. Then we progressed to the point where we had a group of guys who knew how to win, but didn't always do it always exhibit it... but that's a thing of the past"

Truthfully, we're probably just in that second bin right now, but the signs of growth are every where and we might as well get on with gettin' on with being great.

We've shown signs. Consider that Notre Dame has held a touchdown lead or more in every game this year but Michigan State. In three of those games we've led by more than two touchdowns.

• 21-0 over Michigan
• 28-7 over Stanford
• 28-14 and 38-21 over Purdue

Michigan State was a 6 point game with under ten minutes to go. We've been playing from the front most of the year. That's a dramatic change.

We've improved in so many areas so fast that now the staff can start drilling down on the real problematic areas. In a perfect storm like last season, you can't fix things because once you focus on one area another area breaks down and you look like the Keystone Cops.

Now that we've fixed some of the major problems, we can focus on the smaller ones. We're seeing the little signs that show we're going to be very good on offense and some encouraging signs on defense.

• Notice the dramatic difference in Clausen's pocket presence. He's stepping into the pocket, making small moves and setting himself for great throws even in the face of pressure.
  
• Our wide receivers are running much better routes and creating separation.
• Seniors are rising to the occasion. Pat Kuntz had a "leadership" game last week. Turkovich, Crum, McCarthy and Grimes are playing far past their recruited potential and making key tackles and blocks, great reads and playing with passsion and fun.
  
• We strip the ball when we're in position, we go for the pics we don't have a lot of dumb penalties.
  
• This team cares. The best part of last week's game for me? The psuedo fight at the end when the team came together and started jumping up and down "after" the game. I felt unity and passion that I haven't seen for decade or more.
  

These are all 'little things' but we're improving on the little things because the big things have been taken care of or have at least reached a point where they're not catastrophic. And finally we have depth. Kamara turns inconsistent? There are three guys ready to step in. Crum goes down? Filer steps in.

There's still a long way to go to be great. Stanford showed how we can be one dimensional on offense. Our defense is statistically worse than last year. Our defensive line hasn't shown the ability to get penetration. We still don't have an open field game breaker that opens defense up.

Unfortunately, we may not see much movement on those last two which is why Stockton and Wood are key players to me for next year. Stockton is a kid who can disrupt a backfield on defense and Wood is a guy who makes you adjust your defensive game play. He's the type of back that could run wild in the wide open attack we're moving to.

Back to this year. We're getting there. North Carolina is a much, much improved team that out recruited ND in the senior and 5th year classes.

Notre Dame has more young talent across the board.

There's a reason the Tar Heels are favored by 5-7 points in this game, but there's also a better than decent chance that Notre Dame will grow up fast enough to go to 5-1.

When in doubt in a tight game go with age and the home field advantage.

Ah screw it.

28-21... IRISH!!!!!