I don’t think anybody expected the Irish to steamroll Navy for the second straight season. Behind the rock solid offensive line play and an impressive performance by Manti Te’o’s defense, Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo called the Irish the best Notre Dame team he’d seen in 15 years.
Nobody knows how to take advantage of momentum less than the Irish lately, making Saturday’s date with Purdue another wild guess. Will Notre Dame follow the same formula as last Saturday, and repeat the drubbing they put on the Boilermakers last year? Can Notre Dame head into Michigan State undefeated, making for a pretty great primetime showdown in week three, before another one against the down-in-the-dumps Wolverines?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
After last week’s thrilling debut, we’re back with another Irish Blogger Gathering. This time, I’m asking questions to our friends at Her Loyal Sons. Ryan Ritter -- also known as NDTex -- fielded my queries.
Here. We. Go.
Obviously, this season got off to a much better start than last year, with the Irish taking control over an undermanned opponent and dominating them. Nobody loves to jump to conclusions more than Irish fans, so in that spirit, give me your three best and worst takeaways from the 50-10 drubbing of Navy.
BEST
1. The offensive line dominated. Watching Navy get pushed back five yards on just about every play. I’m a big believer that teams are built in the trenches and then outward so I was positively giddy over what I saw from them against Navy.
2. Speed. Not just from our skill players like George Atkinson III or Theo Riddick, but from guys like Stephon Tuitt. We had a 300+ lineman outrun Navy and even non-ND fans were in awe. Notre Dame may just have that “SEC speed” that talking-heads were convinced the Irish would never have again.
3. The entire confidence of Golson. Even after the interception, he didn’t seem phased. Sure, we ran the ball a lot, but how many times have we watched a bad INT be followed up by additional mistakes at QB? Another play that stood out to me was the blind-side sack that he took early in the game. Not only did he somehow not fumble, but the next play he was rushed again and instead of making a panicked throw, calmly went out of the pocket and tried to get as much yardage as possible. It’s still quite early, but he doesn’t look like an inexperienced QB right now.
WORST
1. Dumb mistakes reared their ugly head again. Botched extra point attempts and a very, very bad INT by Golson. None of them were too costly, but Irish fans are going to be a sensitive bunch, myself included, after 2011’s disasters. These are flashbacks I’d prefer not to have.
2. Even though, I’m not in a panic mode, our secondary did not play well at all. Granted, the defense was selling out on the option, meaning no safety help for the young CBs, but watching Navy receivers easily burn them definitely didn’t give me any warm and fuzzy feelings.
3. Golson’s INT -- yes, I’m going to mention this twice. Part of it is because I have very little to complain about, but the INT really was that bad. I don’t know if it was hubris or a horribly bad read that caused it, but you simply can’t stare down a receiver and then throw it into double coverage. Ask Tommy Rees how well that works out.
After not exactly lighting the world on fire in the secondary, the Irish defense will now play an offense with a quarterback whose primary skill is throwing the football. How do you expect the secondary to play Saturday afternoon?
To be perfectly frank, much better. As I said in the previous response, the CBs had practically zero safety help. It was all one-on-one, leave CBs on an island type coverage for the most part. That simply won’t repeat against Purdue.
Purdue will allow us to go back to our base defense and run normal coverage schemes once again. In fact, Notre Dame started to do this in the second half and lo and behold, we got Manti Te’o his first pick.
We’ll be far from perfect and I fully expect this young secondary to take a few lumps during Purdue and throughout the season, but that’s to be expect really with any defense. I mean, even Alabama gave up some huge plays on Denard Robinson floaters.
The Irish didn’t show much offensively in their victory over Navy, throwing the ball less than 20 times and relying on a back-to-the-basics ground attack. Any new wrinkles you expect to see against Purdue, or is Chuck Martin saving some bullets for East Lansing and the Wolverines?
I think Brian Kelly and Chuck Martin are doing exactly what they should be: the K.I.S.S. principle, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, back to basics, run the damn ball, or whatever else you want to call it. At media day in the offseason Kelly borderline admitted that he probably got too cute with the offense, knowing he had loads of play at his disposal. He mentioned specifically that Martin would say to him “here’s what we need to beat, now give me a play” and proceed from there.
“Get used to it” has been thrown out the window. The Irish appear to be more than willing to play to their strengths and not be cute about it.
As far as any wrinkles, I don’t expect anything too fancy. Perhaps a new formation or two making use of splitting Eifert out wide to cause severe mismatches or perhaps having more true spread formations with multiple WRs, but that’s about it. I don’t think the Kelly is going to turn around and tell Golson to throw 40 times either. Let a defense prove they can stop the run-first attack and then adjust from there.
***
For other entries in the IBG, head to Her Loyal Sons, The Subway Domer, and Strong and True for more answers to burning questions.