What Irish Fans can be thankful for this year

It may seem that there is not a lot to be thankful for this year as a Notre Dame Fan.  However we took a deeper look as where we are as Irish faithful and even at 4 and 7 believe it or not there are things we can be thankful for.   As you go through this list you will notice that most of them do focus on the future, so here we go.

To be part of a great tradition with a great history.

Josh Adams; a bright spot this season with 2 years of eligibility left, guaranteeing at least one more year with the Irish.

Jarron Jones

Chris Finke; a former walk on that has made for an inspirational story this year.

Jarron Jones; always giving us hope that an extra point or field goal might me blocked. 

DeShone Kizer; giving us hope (if he returns) for next season

Isaac Rochell; for four years of loyal service and leadership.

Equanimeous St. Brown; for bringing unlimited potential to the receiving corps.

USC; because maybe, just maybe a win over the hottest team in the nation to end the year will make us feel a little better about the 2016 season.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Can the Irish make it to .500?

With five games remaining on Notre Dame's  schedule the Irish need to win four of them to be a .500 team and become bowl eligible.  This is possible but after seeing how the first seven games of the season have gone not probable.  Here is a quick look at Notre Dame's remaining opponents ranks on the best to worse chances of winning.

Army (4-3).  The Black Knights have a nice win early against Temple but also have a losses to Buffalo and North Texas.
Navy (5-1). With the exception of  their win over Fordham before yesterdays win over Memphis the Midshipmen don't have a victory over seven points.  Navy could also be at the top of this list as the toughest tem they the Irish still have to play.
Virginia Tech (5-2).  Even with an odd 31-17 loss to Syracuse the Hokies are playing well with wins over Miami and a ranked North Carolina team.

Miami (4-3).  The Hurricane's losses have come against good teams and their wins have come against cupcakes, but this is a talented team.

USC (4-3).  This is not your father's rivalry matchup.   After opening the season by being lambasted by Alabama and going 1-3 the Trojans have seemed to righted the ship.

More or less these are interchangeable.  It would be interesting and a bit exciting (which might be a good thing) if Notre Dame's game against the Trojans was the deciding factor if the Irish become bowl eligible.

The bye week and deep sigh

Ok, we are at the bye week and I think it is safe to say we are not where we thought the Irish would be at this point of the season.  When I looked at the schedule at the beginning of the year I thought we would need it to rest, recover and rejuvenate for second half of the season a run at the college playoffs not a break to stop the bleeding.

Here are a couple of things to put the first half of the season into perspective.  When the Irish play Navy in a few weeks Notre Dame will be unranked and Navy will probably "still" be in the top 25 and they are ahead of only a 1-6 UMass team among Independents.  We were supposed to have a dominate offensive line and two if not three high level running backs the running game is ranked 29th in the country.  We knew the defense might be a bit off, especially with a new line backing corps and a depleted defensive secondary but to be ranked 68th nationally in points allowed, accompanied by being 68th for points scored? 

If you had not watched a game and were to only look as some specific player stats a 2-5 record word surprise you.  Kizer; 1775 yards with 14 passing TD's and7 rushing scores and a 147.4 rating, Josh Adams; 4.7 yards for a total of 416 rushing yards, Equanimeous St. Brown averaging 19.7 yards a catch / 95.2 a game for 611 yards and 6 touchdowns.

Food for thought:  Overall for the season points for the Irish are 202 and opposition is 177.  Opposing teams have scored a total of 75 points off of Irish turnovers, Notre Dame overall has more offesnive yards than their opponents 2590 to 2503.  The Notre Dame defense only has 3 sack on the season whereas the Irish have been sacked 15 times so for this season.  Out of 6 games played Maki Zaire has appeared in 4 of them.  Notre Dame has fumbled 11 times losing 6 of them.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of room for improvement and a lot of work for Kelly and crew to do in the second of the 2016 football season.

Where do we go from here?

2-4 with losses to teams that in the summer we thought we should beat or at least could beat and the tough games are still to come.  A winning season and a bowl bid in serious doubt and keeping an optimistic but realistic approach  it's now a "take one game at a time" season.  Each win should be celebrated as individual victory not a means to an end. 

Out of loyalty let's see what we need to so to get a bowl bid, get to 6 wins.  The Irish need to win 4 of their final 6 games.  Balancing logic and hope we'll lean and the side of positive thinking and give Notre Dame wins to the 3 remaining unranked opponents, Navy, Army and USC (I would bet that Navy will be ranked this week and USC's stock is rising).  That means Kelly and crew will need o have at least one win over one of the remaining ranked teams in Stanford, Miami and Virginia Tech.

Going back to celebrating individual wins and zooming out to a 30,000 foot view here are things that Irish fans need to focus on and ponder.  Keeping players injury free for both the rest of the season and next year including those with NFL possibilities.  After that wins over any of their ranked opponents, USC, Miami and Standard would be feel good moments upsetting rivals in the role of underdog.

As disappointing as Saturdays loss to NC State was what may have been more disappointing was the manner the Irish loss.  I for one thought the play calling lost the game and that is what is making the season even worse.

At least we beat Syracuse

I have to admit even though it may be a bit sad it is still true that I felt relived after beating Syracuse to get to 2 - 3 on the season.  As much as it seemed possible that this season could not have gotten any worse a loss to the Orange would have done just that.  Imagine 1 - 4 with back to back losses to Duke and Syracuse.

Even though the Irish scored 50 points this in no way was a great game for Notre Dame.  I will give credit where credit is due; it was a tale of two half's as far as how the defense held the Syracuse offense in check (relatively speaking) on Saturday afternoon.  The first half looked as if the combined final score would easily reach 100 points and Orange quarterback looked like Tom Brady.  Of course against the Irish secondary this year that is not hard to do.

Let's start with the offense that looked as good as they are supposed to against a team like Syracuse (2-2 heading into the game).  Kizer!  Folks we could have two more years of this kid, working along  Equanimeous St. Brown and Josh Adams.  23 of 35 for 471 yards and 3 touchdowns through the air, along with rushing touchdown.  Overall the Irish offense racked up a total of 654 yards (471 in the air and 183 on the ground).  There is still room for improvement after going 3 for 12 on third downs and committing 6 penalties (including 4 defensive offside's) for 55 yards.  The good news if the Irish need to score 50 points a game each game this season I feel they can, the bad news is it might not be enough.

Jarron Jones Blocked PAT

The second half against Syracuse was the best game of the season for the Irish defense all season.  Kelly said that they would be playing more guys on defense, 28 different Notre Dame players, including 9 freshmen made tackles yesterday (note that some were on special teams and 1 was offensive lineman Quenton Nelson after a turnover).

Special teams at times defiantly looked special; C.J Sanders averaged 35.8 yards on 4 kick returns including 1 for 93 yards and a touchdown and Jarron Jones blocked is second PAT of the season (both have been returned for 2 points).  I'll give Justin Yoon partial credit for making 6 extra points and going 2 for 3 on field goal attempts.

 

Is 2016 Salvageable?

With a season that has started began with promise that lead to a quarterback controversy that never was, a 1 – 3 record and a fired defensive coordinator can Irish fans have any hope for a “successful “ year?

For true Irish fans any season with three losses can’t be successful since they will not be in the hunt for the College Football Playoffs and a bid for a National Championship.  Maybe the real question should be can Notre Dame have a respectable season?

In theory with eight games to go the best the Irish could finish is 9-3, of course along those lines the worst they could finish is 1-11.  If your program is supposed to be a top program 9-3 doesn’t cut it, it defiantly will not put you in the discussion for the playoffs, let alone a National Championship.  However keeping things in perspective finishing 9-3 would probably be seen has a success based on how we started and 1-11 is not likely either.

For this discussion we are going to predict a 4 and 4 finish for the Irish.  To be fair they could finish 6-2 but they could also finish 2-6, so let’s split the difference.  That would put the Irish at 5-8, totally unacceptable.  Even if Kelly and crew could win 6 of their last 8 that would get them to 7-5 making them bowl eligible, probably the Gildan New Mexico Bowl against North Texas.

Keeping this as optimistic as possible let’s say we finish the regular season with 6 to 8 wins.  First if one of those wins can be the season finale against USC and second if we can have a convincing bowl win (although we know it will have to be a lower level bowl) maybe the season can be salvaged in some way. 

Brian Kelly, a look back.

I have been and still am a Kelly supporter.  However after the firings over the weekend of Notre dame defensive coordinator Brian VaGorder and LSU head football coach Les Miles I decided to think a bit more about the man leading the hopes and dreams of millions of loyal Irish fans, Brian Kelly.

Let’s take a look at his body of work in South Bend.

2010: 8 wins vs. 5 losses and a Sun Bowl 33-17 win over the Miami Hurricanes.  Following up on Charlies Weis’s 2009 campaign of 6-6 and no bowl appearance things were looking up.

2011: Another 8 -5 record but this time with an 18-14 loss to a Jimbo Fisher lead Florida State Team.  No improvement but a lot of talk about “wait until he gets his players in there”.

2012: An unbelievable and an unexpected 12-1 season earning the Irish a trip to the National Championship game.  Even though Kelly and his team got demolished 42-14 by a team that some thought could beat some NFL teams in Alabama, the slogan of wait till next year sounded promising for once.

2013: A hiccup year going 9-4 with 29-16 win over a 6-6 Rutgers team in the Pinstripe Bowl left fans feeling a bit flat.  Note that this was the same season that Florida State won the National Championship just two years after playing the same 8-4 record Seminoles.

2014: Back to 8-5 with what may be Kelly’s signature win in a 31-28 victory over a Les Miles coached LSU squad.  At least the bowl win left fans feeling satisfied with the season on some level.

2015: 10-3 sounds pretty good until you realize that the three losses were again to teams in the upper echelon of college football meaning we can beat those we are supposed to but not those we need to.  This season seem to capture the essence of Kelly teams; signature losses (almost beat Clemson and Stanford) and when it comes to Major Bowls we get clobbered in a 44-28 loss to USU and it wasn’t that close.

So what do we have?  One great season in 2012, one a little better than good season in 2015, one barley good season in 2013 and three fair at best seasons in 2010, 2011 & 2014.  Remember that any season not in the hunt or discussion of a National Championship should be considered subpar.

There is a lot to like about Kelly but…