At the this point it’s hard to understand how a realistic fan could have confidence that Notre Dame will improve to championship caliber under Weis. Yes, the talent pipeline is stocked and Notre Dame will be a power two years from now (that’s what happens when good players mature,) but is Weis capable of taking the team over the threshold? Right now, I’m not even sure we’ll run the table against Navy and Syracuse.
We’re not in a position of strength coaching-wise to make the leap which at this point isn’t from Good to Great, but from Poor to less Poor. We’ve lost three out of our last four games and six straight to Boston College. Saturday offically busts the positive trendline that started forming at the end of last season.
It was a big risk to promote Haywood to offensive playcaller while calling Weis’s scheme. It’s halfway there and a wing and a prayer.
Last March, I wrote in If Weis fails that, “Haywood is completely unproven as a playcaller. If he were turning the playcalling over to Chow, that would make perfect sense. If you think about this (and this is scary) we now have a completely inexperienced offensive coordinator, a defensive coordinator with one year of experience and a special teams coach with little experience and a track record of under performance. This is Notre Dame Football?”
In short, and yeah this is part 20/20, an experienced coach probably wouldn’t make this move (see Pete Carroll.) We “still” can’t pass protect against a three man line. No one needs a fancy offense, look at Alabama. Now granted they don’t have all true juniors along the OL, but simplicity works when you have good players. Execution > Scheme.
The bottom line is that after almost four years, Weis is throwing darts. He’s still a coach in training and there’s little assurance, other than stockpiling talent, that he has what it takes to get it done.
Of course the flipside here is what happens to Notre Dame if we go in another direction, swallow the buyout and end up on the short end of the coaching carousel again. I’ve yet to see a “good” coach hiring process from any team and making a move without having anyone lined up could be disastrous… and Weis hasn’t yet proven he won’t make it.
But at this point, the odds are against him. Some losses are tough to come back from and Saturday’s might just be the dagger. Tough to tell yet, but the debacle in Boston might just be the psychological tipping point for Charlie Weis.
The book isn’t closed yet, but fans like this subway alum are going to be tougher to come by. Everyone still wants a winner, but fewer are expecting it and that’s a sad state. And after a 3-9 season and dead mid-season stall, everyone has to be a skeptic.