ND's final touchdown drive was one of the most clutch of the last decade or so. (I think the Stanford 2012 drive may be my favorite). If Jones keeps running like he did against USC, the only big criticisms of the offense you'll see on NDNation will come when Kelly interrupts our rhythm for a horizontal pass.
Based on in-game comments on Romper Room and elsewhere, I think some fans got frustrated with the conservative defensive approach of the second half. Although complaints about it since then have been fairly muted.
Lea has built up enough goodwill with me that I'm not going to nitpick his approach to the USC game. And I've been too busy smiling this week to feel like writing a negative post.
It's surprising to me that there are intellectually dishonest people on the Internet who would cherry pick message board comments and present them out of context. All the people on the Internet are fundamentally charitable, fair-minded, and decent.
the progress of the program as a whole relative to the top teams. Seeing the defensive game plan that they felt they had to use against SC because of the talent of their receivers left me feeling like we aren't getting that much farther ahead. If they think USC has dangerous skill position players, I'd advise them to not watch Alabama, because SC doesn't have many players who would make the two-deep there. But always glad to beat the Trojans and should I should be enjoying it more. Twelve years ago I was wondering if we'd ever be able to beat them again.
but USCs wide receivers would start just about everywhere.
It wasn't unique to this board.
1. A passive defense that couldn’t get off the field in the second half was frustrating. A defensive, game-winning “strategy” that actually included “getting the onside kick” was fairly cavalier and risky. Ask Aaron Rodgers what he thinks about the perils of the onside kick. It cost him a trip to the Super Bowl.
2. An offense that had multiple opportunities to put that game away but blew up far too many drives with stupid play calling. This, despite some excellent work at times by Long and his players.
USC has talent but they’re not a good team and Notre Dame pissed away a lot of opportunities to win comfortably. It just didn’t leave a great taste in many people’s mouths. You left that game thinking, not that ND had won, but rather USC just ran out of time.
As one poster eloquently put, “Kelly and his minions, turned a blowout into a nail biter.”
At the same time, it’s also good to have these complaints after a win, that’s for sure - but they’re still real and valid.
that ruined potential NC teams, and the fact that I grew up in California, beating USC means far more to me than any other game. Many of those losses to USC were to teams far worse than the team we played on Saturday. Several were because of completely botched/corrupt ref calls. Every win over those slimebags is reason to celebrate.
Lou's complete dominance over southern cal was one of my favorite things about that era.
( Oh and Michigan SUCKS!)
That - and the excessively cautious approach on defense - left a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully it did the same for Clark Lea.
Of course I am always happy with a win over USC. And I was pleasantly surprised by our running game and kicking.
with a coach who has gone 8-10 since the beginning of 2018 (now 3-3 in 2019) and is now playing under an interim AD. The game was still in doubt until the failed onside kick attempt.
This, against a team that came into the game ranked 38th by FEI whose leading rusher has had knee soreness all year and is now done for the year. This is not the USC of the 60's and 70's.
I think somebody mentioned it recently, but since 1994, we are 4-39 against teams that finished in the top 10 and we haven't won such a game since 2013. We haven't won a major bowl game since 1/1/1994.
It's hard to be excited beating a mediocre team by 3 points at home.
EDIT: Fixed misspelling.
In more USC games than not over the last decade.
Slovis wasn't 2013 Andrew hendrix out there. He made some really good plays.
They all have more four stars than ND and their second string QB is probably better than their first string QB. With the right coach USC could be great tomorrow. It’s a mistake to undersell them. That said, they are not well coached.
believe SC's three WR's are as good as any in the country. 2) SC did beat Stanford and Utah, two substantial teams. 3) Sagarin ranks SC, even after the ND loss, as the 26th team in the country and SC is only about 7.5 points behind ND (80.74 and 88.10) on his scale. 4)ND versus SC is a rivalry game. Emotion plays a larger role than usual in such games. 5) Going on the eye test here but the SC QB who played most of the game is a solid QB in my view.
to get to southern cal this spring. He, Daniels and Fink split reps heading into the season.
He’s played 5 games and is 19.... 162.5 qb rating...
find that shtick consistently funny. Sometimes slightly disingenuous in presentation, but overall well done with a good batting average. They get a lot of mileage out of less articulate posters parroting Across or comparing everything to Holtz. Plus it's funny that their fan boys don't understand that one paragraph has several unrelated quotes.
It's also true that the negative posts focus way too much on the butt.
It's also true that we beat USC after tying one hand behind our back by wasting the first three offensive series with dink and dunktastic Kellyball.
to have beaten these jerks 3 years in a row. And get this through your heads, Southern Cal is ALWAYS loaded with talent. They can stay within 30 miles of campus and fill their roster with HS All-Americans.
for adding it to my post.
I don’t see how the logic changes without the link.
I have no idea what prompted this post and would have lived a perfectly fulfilled life not knowing that someone, somewhere, thinks we’re negative.
JVan assured us of a 4-point win not a 3.
Seriously. We beat a talented team that didn't beat themselves with a bunch of turnovers and a slew of dumb penalties (dumb coaching notwithstanding). They've got a talented QB, RB and receivers.
We ran the ball very well. Kicked a 52-yard field goal. Book made good decisions with some great runs (though I really, really, really wish he'd throw the ball away rather than run out of bounds for a loss...but hey...other than that...)
Count me in on happy.
won. If people want to say USC was going to win but ran out of time, then probably they went to Michigan.
Holding Pittman to 29 yards should garner a statue.
This game you can always throw out the records. Doesn’t matter how well we are playing, there are always some weird plays. For instance, the whistle nobody heard. So overall, it was a great win. Even the purple faced rant on the on sides kick didn’t bother me so much because he was at least trying not to lose the game. Probably not too bright, but whatever.
there was some jackass in the southwest corner of the stadium blowing a whistle all night in a pretty obvious attempt to disrupt the game. The odd part was there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it--it happened both when ND and USC had the ball.
It was odd that they did replay that one down considering that it happened all game. In fact, in an earlier play in the series, you can see that Okwara stops his pass rush because he thinks the officials blew a a whistle.
Why not grab the damn whistle away from him? Or call the ushers? Or punch him in the face and jam the whistle up his ass?
where 4 guys get paid to act like assholes in public
As I stated in my pregame writeup, the matchup made me nervous. I wish we had dominated them but I knew it would be close.
On the plus side, our depth wore them down as I expected. The only negative I saw is the defense stopped blitzing in the second half and became ultra conservative even though we had mixed it up with good success earlier in the game. The biggest bonus, which turned out to be the difference in the game, was the performance by Jonathan Doerer.
All things considered, I cherish every win over SC and hope they don't hire a great coach this winter.
is how often people go running down the hallway flailing their arms at one of your posts. You've only been putting out the most accurate previews in the business every game (except for fill-ins) for longer than a decade. One would think you might have built up some kind of pattern of accuracy or something. Yet, you post another opinion and people lose their shit. It's comical. I laugh every time, but most especially when some jackass thinks he's on some higher moral ground or some dumb shit. Please keep doin what yer doin, because it's damned entertaining!
A result of JVan's excellent insights about the team.
El K has some kinda random function per post that makes what's in the post completely batshit. You know how each post currently features:
(Oh, and of course, Michigan sucks)
His other feature is random. Almost all the time, you read a post (you Bruno, not the royal you), and you understand it. However, every 80th poster reads the same thing, and it's like a Twilight Post where Crispin Glover plays that Vampire chick.
El K has never confirmed this - it is only my theory. I just cannot understand how so many fucking clowns read the exact same thing as us and go running down the hallway flailing their arms like that Twilight Vampire Chick.
I think that Sc is a shadow of their former self, but it is still good to beat them. I think that I would prefer to see a different scheme and that a lot of things get overlooked (such as an emphasis on proper blocking). I actually deviate from the mainstream here in thinking that our defensive strategy was sound and the correct one to take (you can see what would have happened had we played zone more by watching Sc's last drive).
I'm just surprised that these guys are able to devote an entire blog about this stuff, especially after the 2016 election. (oh, and all of the concussion/brain trauma issues as well and the fact that it's really just a bunch of kids throwing the ball around and did you expect us to be competitive in 2014 vs Sc? I didn't.)
But there's never been a shortage of people who have a weird obsession with us.
Personally, I have no time to spend reading websites I don't enjoy.