While the headlines coming out of yesterday’s press conference were the good and bad news on injuries regarding Michael Floyd and Dayne Crist, there were still more than a few interesting tidbits gathered yesterday. Here are a few notes from the press conference.
* John Goodman is now working as the third-string quarterback. Weis was clear that this was simply an emergency precaution, but he wanted to be prepared just in case.
The thing is if we don’t start training him to be ready to go what we don’t want to do is be down another quarterback, regardless whether it was one of the first two guys and now be scrambling to get them ready to go. Even when we tried our gadget plays in practice, and reverse passes with Goodman, which, believe it or not, we do have them. He’s not been efficient throwing it because of being rusty.
In training camp when we threw it a lot, he would look pretty good. But because it’s been a while. So we have to knock off some of the rust. It’s not a question of whether Goody can throw the ball or run the offense. It’s the question of you don’t want to take away from his competing at the wide receiver position but at the same time get him ready to go. He’ll be a marginal rep guy at quarterback, and his reps will come at wide receiver.
This kind of emergency situation is around because Nate Montana decided to spent this fall at Pasadena City College, hoping to get some playing time and develop his skill set. The transition hasn’t been easy for Nate, he’s completed only 31 of his 88 passes, throwing 2 touchdowns and 5 interceptions, although I’m guessing Weis would feel more comfortable with Montana under center than Goodman, who hasn’t played there since his senior season in high school.
* It’s pretty obvious that CW is happy to have Michael Floyd back. It’s also obvious that he did everything by the book to protect Michael, even consulting with Dr. James Andrews, the most prominent doctor in sports medicine.
Our trainers did a good job. And talked to the doctor guru down in Alabama. And he agreed, let’s go. And Michael called his mom up to make sure that we were all on the same page. Because I let him, you know -- I let Michael make the call. Once he got cleared to go, you know, still let Michael make the call whether or not this was the week or not.
He talked to his mom. Talked to me. Came back to me and said, I’m ready to go. Wasn’t too long before I was getting a text from No. 7. He might have been as happy as No. 3 was. I think No. 7 might have been just as happy.
Weis was clear that the Irish have a game plan with Floyd and that he won’t be on the field for the entire game. Still I think the decision to let him play against Navy was smart, and it’ll let him get accustomed to contact and game speed before the showdown with Pitt next weekend.
* Weis addressed the Golden Tate / fair catch issue, specifically whether or not Golden has been conservative back there in calling fair catches. I’ve long thought Golden has been pretty risk averse as a return man, which doesn’t really seem to fit his on-field personality, but CW attributed the fair catches to the spread punt alignment.
I think everyone’s in this spread punt right now. It’s the big in vogue thing in the country. You spread them out all over the place, and instead of two gunners, you have seven of them. Just about every week you’re dealing with the same thing. That forces you everyone’s playing one-on-one in space.
You’re blocking one-on-one in space. So it’s not like you had double teams on this guy or double teams on that guy. There’s always one guy besides downside guys that’s running completely free on account of running down there. In our case usually our lone snapper. He’s running down there and nobody even touches him. So the ball goes down there and it’s like having another gunner down there.
Whether it was Tommy Zbikowski back there or Joey Getherall, Irish fans have gotten used to fearless punt returners that never signaled for fair catches. Still, I think Tate has been a little more conservative than either he or Charlie would care to admit, and that’s probably a product of the tight games the Irish have been playing in. Still, with hands like Tate’s, he’d be better off taking a chance on catching the ball, maybe making someone miss, and if he gets hit early, he’d get the Irish an extra 15 yards. (Also known as the Getherall special...)