The comments during and after the Navy game were also odd. First he said Navy was doing things it hadn’t done or the coaches hadn’t seen. Second, in the interview after halftime he claimed Notre Dame made adjustments, but then on sunday following the game he admitted that the team wasn’t prepared and didn’t make adjustments. Even Diaco came out and admitted that he didn’t want to make adjustments because the team hadn’t practiced them. This comes after Kelly had said ND was practicing for Navy since September. I sure hope not because the coaches would really look bad then. All this even though Navy kept running up the B gaps while Irish linebackers were playing the A gaps. And kept playing the A gaps and Navy never had to change it’s strategy. The Navy game was more alarming than the Tulsa game. Notre Dame was outcoached again. Notre Dame is 4-5 with a good chance of having a worse record than last year in only the first year of the Kelly regime and the coaches beg us to have blind faith in what’s going on behind closed doors even though the record doesn’t suggest we trust them. South Bend, we have a problem.

I don’t dispute your point that Notre Dame needs to develop self confidence, especially in pressure situations. I also agree that going for a touchdown pass in that situation is worth consideration, since it was only 2nd down and there was still some 40 seconds on the clock and ND had a timeout.

I disagree that self confidence lesson would take a higher priority than putting your team in the best position to win. Winning ugly isn’t great, but I’m not sure I can find many who wouldn’t say it beats losing pretty. Do teams who lose pretty get higher rankings than teams that win ugly? Kicking a field goal in this circumstance had a higher probability of success than trying to pass in the end zone, as I will show later, so it put the team in a better position to win than taking a shot at the end zone.

While successfully going for the jugular would definitely help this team’s psyche, a loss in this circumstance would be more damaging than the psychological boost of a game winning touchdown pass. Going into the game ND was 4-4, had earlier lost two games it should’ve won (U-M and MSU), had just come off an embarrassing loss to Navy the week before, had suffered numerous injuries to key players and still had to face Utah and USC. And then early in the game it loses its starting quarterback. All those facts suggest the team’s psyche might have been fragile to begin with and underscores the urgency of getting a win. Not to mention, if you lose this game your chances of getting to a bowl and the 15 extra practices that Kelly so values are jeopardized. So, it would be difficult for me to agree if your assertion for why the logic made sense is because of the importance of a self confidence lesson. That argument just sounds like an excuse for a poor play call.

If you are suggesting that going for a touchdown pass makes more sense than kicking a field goal, then consider these facts. Although Tommy Rees had played a solid game in relief including leading the team to four touchdown drives his collegiate experience was still very limited. Plus, earlier in the game he had demonstrated poor judgement by throwing two interceptions including forcing one into triple coverage. These facts seem to support the argument that Rees might not make a perfect throw or choose to the throw the ball away, which is what throwing a pass in the end zone required to go right. Not taking anything away from Rees, but it’s asking alot of an inexperienced qb to make a perfect throw or a correct read in a pressure situation when he had already demonstrated mistakes.

And it definitely isn’t sound logic when the coach had a higher probability alternative. No, a field goal wasn’t certain, but I can’t buy your reasoning that going for the touchdown pass with the inexperienced qb is more sound than going with a Groza award finalist kicker who was not only in range but has been perfect so far on the season. Seems the odds of an experienced and flawless kicker within his range of making a field goal were higher than an inexperienced qb either making a perfect throw or the correct decision to throw out of bounds in a pressure situation.

Go Irish

After last week’s tragedy, it’s not surprising that we lost to Tulsa.

Even though our players appear to lack heart and talent, that’s no reason to abandon them. Weiss clearly overrated them, and now Kelly must clean up the mess.

It’s premature to call for Kelly’s head after 9 games. I am not ready to give him the TW treatment yet.

He should explain his bonehead coaching decisions though.

It’s time to face facts, we are a below average team in transition.

Expectations were simply too high at the beginning of the season.

It’s going to take some time and patience to turn things around.

We are going to lose some recruits before we right the ship.

What else did we learn? The coach we should have hired last year was in the house. Todd Graham turned the Rice football program around in a single season and had three pretty good years at Tulsa.

After having witnessed BK’s two previous humiliating, public vilifications of Nate Montana and Dane Crist for overthrowing receivers in the end zone at end of a half, does anyone actually believe that a FRESHMAN is going to chance committing the same offense at the end of ANY half in ANY game AGAIN?

Is the precious hurry up offense so inflexible that we can’t use one of our remaining timeouts to help spell it out one more time for the inexperienced freshman?

Can you imagine players throwing the now infamous BK “What were you thinking?” taunt back in his face (behind his back of course) further undermining his credibility with the team?

After 18 consecutive field goals, didn’t Ruffer earn his chance to win the game? What must he be thinking now?

Will this easily avoidable loss spell the end of Notre Dame’s bowl hopes? Recruiting hopes?

If the erosion of faith in the head coach by students and alumni (the core of team support) continues to accelerate, how long will it take the program to recover?

Is it at least possible that after going from hero to goat in one play and suffering a huge blow to his psyche, Tommy Reese elects to transfer before his sophomore year and Michael Floyd leaves before his final year?

I’m still in shock – did we really just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – against Tulsa!?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but do the above outlined manifestations, ramifications and implications surely rank this play call as the worst in Notre Dame living memory? Coach Kelly needs to put his enormous ego in check and let the Fighting Irish win, not just fight.

lot’s of blame to be shared and very sad