Crack Backs Atcha

47 passes. 14 runs.

12 penalties for 85 yards.

I was driving home minutes before the game started, listening to the pregame on WSBT. Brian Kelly discussed the need to stay balanced. This was his comment no more than 20 minutes before the game started. Then he went onto the field and allowed his offense to be as unbalanced as it ever has been, maybe moreso.

In his postgame teleconference, Brian Kelly had this to say about his rushing attack: “We're going to have to keep people honest. I don't know that we're all of a sudden going run it 50 times, but we're going to have to display a running game that keeps a defense honest.” Then he went on to complain about his lack of depth at the running back position. But what Brian fails to realize is that an emphatic commitment to the running game will beget the kind of recruiting success that will solve his depth problems at running back, a lesson that a team like Georgia has learned well.

In that same interview, Kelly discussed the need to tune out the crowd, the need not to be intimidated. When a leader repeatedly tells his players not to let the crowd get to them, the message delivered is that the crowd is intimidating.

I was at the game. The Georgia crowd delivered its own message that it was intimidating. They were right.

The correct message is to have the team revel in the noise. Playing big games in great atmospheres is why they come to Notre Dame. Soak yourselves in the atmosphere. Be in the moment.

Reveling and soaking are fine, but the ne plus ultra strategy for winning on the road is to bring a strong running game and a dominant defense. The Irish were half prepared.

I’m all for a good trick play every now and then. They can be fun. However, a steady diet of tricky play calling tells the team it can’t compete straight up.

Total agreement. It undermines team confidence, and ultimately the tricks don’t work. If there is no core concern for the defense, then the tricky offense won’t find a tendency that it can exploit. When a defense doesn’t respect the run, the safeties won’t cheat up and a flea flicker, to choose just one example, has little chance of success.

My problem with Notre Dame football is that it hasn’t been led well since Lou Holtz left. The players are willing. The coaches lead poorly. Intentionally poorly. I have nothing else to say about the game, the season, or the program.

Echoing another football hero who couldn’t have said it better.

I’ll save Virginia’s Assistant AD Jim Daves the trouble of passing the buck and pin the Cavs’ Hardin nomination caliber postgame note on his assistant Vincent Breidis who explained that Saturday’s game with Old Dominion is the first in their series. ODU will get a return game next season before disappearing from UVA’s schedule which renders the “series” not much of a series.

I’ll nominate whoever is responsible for writing the crawls under ESPN’s college football broadcast. There it was noted that with its 49-10 victory over Southern Miss, Alabama extended its winning streak over unranked teams to 58 games. BFD. That’s what perennial top 5 teams are supposed to do. But I do give the ESPN scribe credit for stealing the Alabama SID’s thunder.

My Pinkel nomination goes to Wisconsin this week. The Badgers beat Ann Arbor’s Cleary University like it was Purdue’s giant drum. At least I think that was Cleary University.

I may need to take one of those over-the-counter male performance meds, but I’m guilty of premature Pinkeling this week. I took note that Kent State, the vector for so many Pinkel nominations in the past, delivered a 62-20 beatdown on Bowling Green on Saturday. BGSU will visit Notre Dame Stadium in two weeks. Notre Dame has no business scheduling such a school for a contest in any activity. We should retire the Pinkel Award permanently.

I fell asleep in the recliner at halftime. Still haven’t watched the second half. Probably won’t.

Pro tip; skip the third quarter.

“We’ll know who we are truly next week,” Kelly said referring to how the team will respond to the loss. I think the players will bounce back fine. The coach? Same old guy.

It generally takes players four years to figure who he is, and by then it’s too late.

Kayo

Bacchus