DAILY DOMER, NOV. 16: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS

I saw where a poster on NDNation.com wrote, "Leave the subs to Navy." Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? Well played, my man, well played.

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Except for a few pass-happy teams such as Tulsa and Texas Tech, nothing is more indicative of a healthy offense than the ability to consistently run between the tackles. The Irish did so on Saturday versus Navy. Yes, they are a smaller opponent, but that was the best blocking we've seen from that unit all season. Trevor Robinson, the true freshman, in particular owned people. If they can keep getting James Aldridge and Robert Hughes north-south carries, that would make a huge difference in their future. 

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Barring any real shocks, the "Let's evaluate Charlie" games are over for 2008. The Irish have two games remaining, the first against their second-weakest opponent and the second against by far their toughest. Win. Loss. Bowl game. We'll get no clear signals of true growth before the bowl game.

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Mike Anello reminds me of half my dorm from Dillon Hall. Smart, affable young man. He had a funny line about the excessive celebration penalty following his blocked punt yesterday. "When I saw the flag come out I thought, We can't really get in any more trouble. So I celebated, too."

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This has to be a first for Notre Dame football: Yesterday marked the third time this season a player named Smith has led the Irish in tackles, and all three times it was a different person. Brian Smith had a team-high 10 tackles at Michigan State (though David Bruton tied him), Harrison Smith had 9 1/2 at Boston College and Toryan Smith had ten versus Navy. All three Smiths play linebacker. Can Scott Smith (yet another LB) have the game of his life next Saturday versus the 'cuse? Maybe if Charlie plays him some.

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No word yet on the status of Michael Floyd or Brian Smith or even Terrail Lambert, who injured a leg Thursday at practice. The feeling is that Floyd is done for the season and that Smith may return, but that's simply from assessing them seated on the bench after they left the game. The two were taken off the field simultaneously on the same cart. I hope that cart driver was insured. That's a lot of future NFL moolah being driven off the field.

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Notre Dame's hard-working sports info staff of John Heisler, Brian Hardin and Michael Bertsch were virtually seated right in the midst of the Irish traveling media on Saturday, and it made for a more convivial atmosphere. For example, it has been a rule since Charlie arrived that freshmen football players are off-limits for interviews. But in the second half, one of the beat writers (it was either Neil Hayes of the Sun Times or Brian Hamilton of the Chicago Tribune) reminded them that one of Charlie's go-to cliches when discussing those players' experience come November is, "At this point of the season, they're not really freshmen any more."
"Touche," replied Hardin.

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Again, it should have been 34-7, not 27-21. And you can discuss Jonas Gray's fumble at the five, or the two onside kicks the Irish failed to recover. Or Raeshon McNeil's weak coverage on the long pass that set up Navy's third touchdown. But how about the decision to go for it at 4th-and-3 from the Navy 44 with just over 2:30 remaining? That's a coaching error.

Granted, it was 27-7 at the time. There were less than three minutes remaining. But, you go for it and fail and you still bring in your second-unit defense? That's just negligent coaching.

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Still harrumphing: A defense that plays as well as the Irish defense has for most of the past six games deserves the satisfaction of either a shutout or of holding the opposition to single digits. In the way that QBs love to track their touchdown passes or tailbacks their 100-yard games, defensive players love to record a shutout, or close to it. Sure, Jimmy Clausen is going to tell me that he only cares about winning, and I believe that that is his priority, but he also derives some inner satisfaction from a 300-yard game. And, especially with young players, it's important to help them achieve those moments.

That's why I feel so strongly about essentially just tagging (for you older folks, "spraying graffiti") the defense's effort in the waning moments against U-Dub and Navy. And, to a degree, Stanford. In all three games the Irish had held the opposition to 7 or fewer points through three quarters, even later, and then Charlie pulled his starters (while the opposing team did not). And the defense has some of its joy taken away.

Look at the Stanford, U-Dub and Navy games. In each the Irish led by at least 20 in the fourth quarter. They entered the final period having allowed 7, 0 and 7 points respectively. And yet they allowed a total of 35 points, five TDs, against those three in garbage time of those games using mainly reserves on defense. Thirty-five points, which is more than half the 66-point total they've allowed in the 4th quarter this season. Which, statistically, is their worst scoring defense quarter. Because of garbage time TDs against a group of subs.

Subtract those five TDs and the Irish scoring defense by quarters would look like this:

1st.....26

2nd....58

3rd.....43

4th.....31

Not bad. And the Irish are allowing 20.5 points per game, which ranks 33rd in the nation. However, if you delete those five garbage time gifts, they'e allowing 17 points per game, which would rank 15th nationally. Don't you owe it to Corwin Brown and John Tenuta and the starting defense the fruit of their labors?

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Yes, still harrumphing. If the Irish starters were mostly seniors and upperclassmen (as in 2006), the mass substitutions in the 4th quarter yesterday would have made more sense. Weis could explain that he was giving his future starters a glimpse of live game action. However, if you look at Notre Dame's starting lineup (and I'm going to go ahead and call Michael Floyd a starter over David Grimes, no matter who plays the game's opening play...that's purely cosmetic by Weis), at least half those 22 players are underclassmen.

Most of those 4th quarter subs (Evan Sharpley, Kevin Washington, Paddy Mullen, Steve Quinn) were juniors and seniors. This was not about building for the future. Simply put, Weis was being nice. He was giving the career backups some playing time. And I'm all for that. But why not put Washington in on a few plays with nine to ten other starters? Don't exchange the entire buffet set-up, just mix in a few new dishes.

Ironically, back in '06, Weis rarely played his underclassmen. My feeling is that he kept the senior starters in so much for four reasons: 1) they didn't close out games the way anyone expected them to, especially not the way they had in '05, 2) He was holding out hope for a national championship, which was still in view before the last regular season game at USC (hard to believe that now, eh?), 3) he was doing everything possible to get BQQB the Heisman, and 4) there just wasn't that much talent in the freshman and sophomore class (today's juniors and seniors).

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Freshman tight end Kyle Rudolph seems to have disappeared of late. Rudolph has just seven catches in his last four games, with just one yesterday in Baltimore.

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Take away Notre Dame's taking a knee on the game's final play, and Navy ran the last 14 plays of the game.

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The Irish allowed just one 3rd-down conversion in 13 Navy attempts yesterday, and that came on the Middies' final drive. ND is now 15th nationally in 3rd-down conversion defense.

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Syracuse? The Fighting Rothsteins, as I prefer calling them, rank 109th in scoring offense (18.3 ppg) and 106th in scoring defense (33.9 ppg allowed). Only U-Dub had worse numbers. Just an FYI...Notre Dame last recorded a shutout in November of 1996 (62-0 over Rutgers in Lou Holtz's final home game) and the Irish last posted 40 points in regulation 25 games ago, the 41-9 defeat of Army in the final home game of 2006.

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Finally, I titled a blog post with the Guns 'n Roses-friendly "November Rain" yesterday when I should have done the more specific Counting Crows-friendly "Raining in Baltimore". My bad. You just can't afford those types of mental mistakes when blogging (with all due respect to Stephanie Seymour). I apologize.

p.s. This blog post was nearly as verbose as a Phil Nickel comment.