Notre Dame: Five Key Things Revisited

Well here's where we pick apart the five questions Ty and I dissected on Friday afternoon. Bonus observations at the bottom as we obviously missed a few things that were key factors in the game. I'm going to try and keep the gnashing and wailing of teeth to a minimum, after all just Monday I posted about how this was still an 8-4 or 9-3 type to me.

This week's five burning questions.

1.) Will our defensive line be able to get penetration on an Offensive Line that is not comprised of high schoolers and ne'er do wells?

One sack by Pickelman to force a fumble. Nine tackles for loss. We only surrendered 275 yards of offense. That's far more consistent with 17 points(which is what the offense scored and wasn't gifted) than 31 points. The 31 points contained a Kickoff return* for a touchdown and a drive that started on the MSU 12.

How much of this is due to the defensive line? Eh, it's hard to say without film review. 4.5 of the TFLs came from D-Lineman which is pretty decent. You cannot pin this loss on the defensive line and the play of the defense is what kept us in the game at all.

*- More on this in a bit.

2.) Will Captain Kirk avenge the 2009 Kobayashi Maru at Notre Dame?

No. It wasn't even close. Two problems here. 1.) Our offensive playcalling did not put our players in a position to win. It's been a while since I've felt that way certainly not in 2010 probably not since the Cousins/Nichol merry-go-round of 2009. 2.)I don't think that Cousins trusts his line, I haven't had a chance to rewatch the game, but if I had a nickel for every time he checked down to the flat I would be rich.

3.) Who's gonna throw their beef around more BJ Cunningham or Michael Floyd?

If you would have told me prior to the game we'd hold Michael Floyd to 84 yards and no touchdowns AND BJ Cunningham would have 12 catches for 158 yards and also no touchdowns and that we lost convincingly. I would have tried hard to make a bet with you that would have involved money, humiliation and perhaps some real estate.

BJ Cunningham may not be better than Michael Floyd, but there's no way you can tell me they don't belong in the same conversation. Cunningham was getting double teamed just the same as Floyd and won the duel. He just lost the game.

4.) Brian Kelly: Can a person cause their own head to pop?

I don't know. Notre Dame came out and kicked us in the nuts. We responded by not kicking them in the nuts back. Then we changed our strategy to running trick plays that didn't work. Then we played catch-up the whole game. I'm not really sure what if anything Kelly had to be worried about.

5.) Do the Fighting Irish begin their season 0-3?

No they didn't.

Bonus Observations

- Kick return coverage this year really needs to improve. Even minus the kick return for a touchdown the Spartans are averaging 84th in NCAA in kick return yardage allowed. I made a note of this during the FAU game but wanted to see how we did against a team that was all growed up. How we did is we gave up a Kick Return for a touchdown.

- Well. Our offensive line. It sucks. With Burkland out, it's probably going to suck even more. I didn't want to ask about it in the five questions because I thought I had spent too much time nitpicking it already. Apparently, trying not to nitpick something because I'm bored of it, doesn't mean that it's not an issue. I'll be rewatching the game this week and will be paying close attention to this.

- I do not need to rewatch the game to say I was disppointed with the MSU playcalling. The Fake Field Goal was neither successful or fake. I'm not a strong X's and O's guy although, I'm working on it. A shovel pass up the middle seems a risky proposition to me. If they fan out to defend the fake you might catch them napping up the middle, but if they're honestly defending the field goal isn't the middle of the line where all the BEEF is coming through? If you want to go for it on fourth and 3 on the 3, just line up and go for it. That would have made more sense to me.

- Further, Roushar said several times he wanted the offense to be MORE unpredictable. If he wanted to be more unpredictable by running the same plays over and over to the point where the Notre Dame Defensive Coordinator said: "He cannot possibly be running again on First Down!", Roushar succeeded.

Overall Assessment

It's important to remember for me that Roushar hasn't been in this spot as a coach since 2004 and that he's entitled to a few goofs too. That said, games like this make me crazy. I don't like losing, but I despise losing when I feel like we could have won. We got punched in the mouth early and responded by trying to outsmart the opposition by taking unnecessary and long chances.

I'm looking forward to Central next week and a chance to get healthy and work on some of our weak spots. I don't suspect we'll see another Central special, but we'll be talking more this week with Mike from The Chip Report on that later this week.

Notre Dame: The Humble Pie Edition

Well, that happened. Coming into the game, I felt very good about things. We had dismantled FAU as completely as a team could be taken apart. FAU's 3-4 was similar to ND's schematically with players who were just less talented. Our defense capitalized well on FAU's mistakes holding them to 48 total yards.

Then there was the other side of the coin. Notre Dame choked the game away against Michigan and had a problem even making a game against University of South Florida. They had the highest turnover margin in the nation. Brian Kelly had no faith in either of his quarterbacks. So naturally that all adds up to the prediction of a victory and....



Five key things revisited tomorrow. For tonight I only want to type things I won't want to take back tomorrow or do more research on, perhaps even both.

- B.J. Cunningham had an outstanding game. 12 catches for 158 yards and a long of 25 yards. That's simply put, outstanding.

- Nick Hill looked great on kick returns. I'm excited to see him grow in this position.

- The defense played a decent game I thought, sure we kinda got punked in the first quarter. But it's hard to get on the D for giving up what essentially amounted to 17 points. 7 off the total for the kick return for a touchdown, 7 off the total for ND getting the ball on the MSU 10 with 7 minutes to go or whatever.

- Bummer about Skyler Burkland, that looked moderately high ankle sprain-ish. I'll be interested to see what information if any we get.

- I think Mark Dantonio might have made a joke: "To begin with, I thought to come down to Notre Dame and play well we had to do a number of things: We had to travel as a team. I thought we did well in that area."

That's all I feel comfortable parting ways with observationally today. I'd like to weigh the "what went wrong" a bit more carefully. Well played, the Dame, well played.

Notre Dame: The Devil's Five Key Things

We're taking the five key things series started last week and weaving it in with the Devil's Advocate series we did last year. Co-Authoring this segment will be my partner in crime Ty from the Lions in Winter. Check out his blogified Ndamukong madness here.

It's that time again, time to go over a few key things before our game this weekend. In case you have been living under a Spartan Sports rock, we are playing our rivals this weekend, Notre Dame. The game where we played Notre Dame in Fall of 1998 was my true awakening as a Spartan Football fan. I liked them before that, but it was on like Donkey Kong after that.

It was the first weekend I spent the whole weekend in my dorm, and I was watching the game. As we scored our first touchdown I realized most of my floor was watching it and as we scored a second and a third people all started piling into the kid's room who had the biggest TV and by halftime with the score 42-3 we were all watching as one drunken happy family.

This week's five burning questions.

1.) Will our defensive line be able to get penetration on an Offensive Line that is not comprised of high schoolers and ne'er do wells?

A principal concern of mine throughout the off-season has been the lauding of how great our Defensive Line has been. Well, who they are playing against has been a principal concern of mine too. Like it's easy to look great rushing the pass when you're playing against a backup or third string Offensive Tackle in McGaha and a converted Defensive Tackle in Dan France during Spring ball.

In the fall, we got little in the way of pass rush against Youngstown State because they were letting go of their passes so quick. FAU's Offensive Line was a train wreck so hideous it can only be represented by a picture.



And you will know us by the trail of dead...

So this is the first REAL test of how much our Defensive Line has improved. I expect to see a performance much closer to YSU than FAU. As much as I've picked on Brian Kelly in the past few days. His Offensive line will be prepared to play and I expect our front four to need some help generating pressure.

 

Ty: I think the defensive line’s well aware of their reputation, and I think they want to uphold it. Maybe it’s false hope, but I think we haven’t seen these guys’ top gear yet. The level of talent on the other side of the field is an order of magnitude better, but the stakes are an order of magnitude higher. I think the D-line shows us much more in this game than they have to date—but I also think Narduzzi will keep an uncapped bottle of linebacker hot sauce in hand, just in case.


2.) Will Captain Kirk avenge the 2009 Kobayashi Maru at Notre Dame?

This depends more on the defense than the offense unfortunately for Captain Kirk. In 2009, the offense moved in fits and starts because of the quarterback platooning. That said, we scored 30 in 2009 and 34 in 2010(I'll refrain the Little Giants drop for the first time this week.)

If we can drop 35 on them again, I do not think they have the tools to keep up in a shootout like that though. So I guess my answer to the question is really more was it ever really a Kobayashi Maru to begin with? If your offense scores 30 points, it did it's job.

Yeah, ND can score, but if it becomes a track meet I like our quarterback and receivers to outlast theirs. The Spartans have more targets, and Rees is more prone to turn it over than Cousins. SILLY PREDICTION: the game turns on a third-quarter Rees interception.

3.) Who's gonna throw their beef around more BJ Cunningham or Michael Floyd?

Well, Floyd outweighs Cunningham by 10 lbs, has 100 receiving yards more and an extra touchdown already in a two game season. Of course the Tommy Rees decision making tree for who to throw the ball to reads like this. *

1.) Michael Floyd.
2.) Michael Floyd.
3.) Throw it away.
4.) Michael Floyd.

In case you haven't heard BJ Cunningham became the all-time reception leader at Michigan State last week. Last year we held Michael Floyd to 81 yards by giving up Theo Riddick and containing Kyle Rudolph. This year, the replacement for Rudolph is nowhere near as good yet.

In short, I think we concede yardage to Riddick to lockdown Floyd and BJ Cunningham continues his career as MSU's most reliable target. Cunningham wins this duel.

* - As I reread this article one more time, I thought this was too close to the FLOYDFLOYDFLOYDFLOYD of MGoBlog to not provide a link. So link provided. Doesn't change the fact that Rees has no idea what option two is.

I’m a big Floyd fan.

Wait what? Oh, MICHAEL Floyd. Yeah, the kid can ball. I expect him to do some damage, even with constant attention from the MSU secondary and Rees’s decision tree that doesn’t branch. I’m not sure I like Cunningham in a pure statistical duel because, again, Cousins has more targets and is better at finding them.

4.) Brian Kelly: Can a person cause their own head to pop?



Stay tuned to find out after this 2.5 hour NBC Commercial Break

You know, one of these two coaches literally had a heart attack after Little Giants. How was it not this guy?

5.) Do the Fighting Irish begin their season 0-3?

I said it yesterday, I think the Irish have the talent to play ball and even beat us. They have too far to have come since last Saturday to pull it off this Saturday. They COULD beat us, but they have to avoid beating themselves first. They're not ready to do that yet.

MSU 28 ND 17

While watching Notre Dame play Michigan, I couldn’t help but feel that MSU is better than both of them. In fact, it felt exactly like watching last season’s Michigan – Notre Dame game: the drama, the crowd, the hype, the pressure, the huge plays, the terrible football. The level of play was definitely better this season than last, though, and that makes me nervous. The Dame looks better in 2011 than they did in 2010, and I’m not yet positive the same is true of Michigan State. As close as last season’s game was, it’ll have to be for the Spartans to come out on top.

MSU 34 ND 30

P.S. Hate The Dame.

Next!: The Notre Dame Fighting Irish

In this world there are three things I love more than all other things. My family, the Philly at Backyard BBQ and the sad panda look of the fans of our vanquished rivals. I don't always feel that way about Notre Dame fans. Despite how hard I was on Notre Dame's program with the Uncle Rico comparisons I've always found their fans to be a likable sort of people. If you really wanted to go all JK Rowling on the whole thing, Notre Dame is like Hufflepuff, certainly a rival, but at the end of the day not the enemy of all things sacred and good. When Voldemort is comin' to town you can count on them to get your back.



I'm not sayin', oh screw it, I am sayin'

So that's what makes it particularly hard to watch the latest in the string of Saviors of Notre Dame football. The fans of Notre Dame deserve better than Brian Kelly or at least the Brian Kelly I've seen on TV the past two weeks. In just a year they've gone from Brian Kelly lobbying for only 8 minutes of commercial breaks between snaps to Brian Kelly being incapable of sending in a play call with enough time for the QB to do anything other than run the play as given. Dayne Crist and Tommy Rees, Notre Dame Quarterbacks both have not gotten stupider since last year. I have to assume they've stayed the same at reading defenses if not gotten better. So what gives?

Here's a list of what Brian Kelly is not:
- The President of Senegal.
- The Savior of Notre Dame football
- An oompa-loompa
- Unstoppable

Previewing a team like Notre Dame scares the crap out of me, and by scares the crap out of me I mean is difficult to do. There will be a minimum of two games in progress under the view of touchdown Jesus, Notre Dame vs. Michigan State, Notre Dame vs Notre Dame and perhaps even Rees vs Kelly. Kelly won Saturday night's match up of Rees vs. Kelly at the sacrifice of winning the match up of Notre Dame vs. Michigan.

That was the most excitingly terrible game I have ever seen. Neither team could give that game away to the other. A commenter on Twitter said: I know when Michigan plays Notre Dame, you wish both teams could lose. Both teams tried and failed. How do you make a prediction on a team that has yet to play a game where they don't spend more time beating themselves than trying to beat you? Well, who even knows if we'll be close to right, but let's give it the old college try.

Notre Dame Pass Defense against Michigan State Passing Attack

Notre Dame's defense gave up 338 yards to Denard Robinson on Saturday but he only completed 11 passes. Additionally, Michigan never had an offensive drive that went more than five plays. This suggests that Notre Dame might be susceptible to the big play. Further, Cousins is more accurate than any quarterback they've played so far this year and in this regard you can only consider the Irish Pass Defense untested. The Irish held BJ Daniels to 128 yards passing, but it rained like God was starting the great flood in South Bend and USF was just trying to salt away the lead on the ground after that. Plus BJ Daniels is like Denard Robinson lite.

Cousins has been his usual efficient self completing 79 percent of his passes for 3 touchdowns and no picks. He's looked comfortable and in command of the offense as you'd expect. BJ Cunningham is going to be the best wide receiver in South Bend on Saturday, yep, I said that. We should have Bennie Fowler back and always watch out for Keshawn.

Advantage: MSU
Key Matchup: Kirk Cousins vs the missing communication armbands of the ND Secondary.

Notre Dame Rushing Defense vs Michigan State Rushing

In case you haven't heard our running backs are good. Real good. Like "killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die" good. I bring them up because Notre Dame will have to gameplan around our rushing attack good. In an interview with Dan Roushar, our offensive coordinator, he indicated that MSU has kept things pretty vanilla in the run game so far. I don't know if that means as much to the run game as it does to the passing game, but more wrinkles available is always a good thing.

I suspect we'll continue our rotation of Baker and Bell with Caper on 3rd down. Hill could make an appearance as the game goes on. There's something magical about having a 5'6" guy running through a line of people a foot taller than him. You can't find him sometimes.

Notre Dame is tooling itself up to stop the run by playing with lots of beef on it's defense. If they have success early on, look for State to start using the pass to set up the run. They surrendered 126 rushing yards to USF in the aforementioned rain bowl but only like 10 yards to rushers not named Denard Robinson in the Michigan game. That's probably part Notre Dame's Defense and part that Michigan was playing from behind the whole game.

Advantage: MSU(but not by as much as before)
Key Matchup: The MSU Monster Trio vs Notre Dame beefcakey manchildren linebackers.

Notre Dame Passing Attack vs MSU Pass Defense

Tommy Rees stepped in to relieve Dayne Crist halfway through the USF game and is suffering the same sort of turnover problems that Crist did. He's got a pretty respectable 69.9 percent completion percentage for 611 yards and 5 touchdowns on the season. He unfortunately has 4 interceptions and 1 lost fumble to his credit at this point. I'd pick on him for half his passing yards being to Michael Floyd, but the same is true of Cousins to Cunningham. Speaking of Michael Floyd, he is definitely among the top two receivers in the stadium on Saturday. Michigan State will need to keep a bead on him at all times.Notre Dame has been effective at moving the ball all season and not being able to close in the redzone. If those problems aren't cured on Saturday, look out.

Michigan State on the other hand has yet to face a quarterback as good as Tommy Rees. Further, they've shown in the Youngstown State game if you want to try and complete passes for four yards, we'll give that to you all day long. Still I like the cut of the jib of our defensive line and think that Worthy will show up to wreak havoc on the ND interior line Saturday. Dennard and Adams will have to do some of their best work to keep tabs on Michael Floyd. They will need help from Lewis and Robinson over the top on deep routes.

If Notre Dame can avoid beating itself:
Advantage: Wash
Key Matchup: Notre Dame not beating itself.

If Notre Dame has Notre Dame fail:
Advantage: MSU
Key Matchup: MSU Defensive Line forcing poor decisions that result in Turnover Walks of Shame.

Notre Dame Rushing Attack vs MSU Rush Defense

I think the combination of Wood and Gray is not as solid a rushing attack as Allen and Wood was last year. The tandem of backs has combined for an average of 160 rushing yards a game against two of the worst defenses they will play this year. In short, I'd say Notre Dame's rushing game is the quality of a middle tier Big 10 opponent, they'll have some success running, but I'd say it'll be capped at 100 yards give or take 25 yards.

Of course there is to consider the Spartans looked devastating in their lopsided victory of FAU by ceding only 22 rushing yards. While it may have only been FAU, they looked like a machine into which you feed men and out comes only bones. Still, this will be higher quality competition than MSU has faced thus far.

Advantage: Wash
Key Matchup: MSU's young linebackers forcing Wood and Gray into the ground.

Special Teams

Notre Dame's Kicker is 1/2 on the Season, Conroy is 2/4 on the Season.
Notre Dame's Punter has an average of about 36, Sadler is averaging 37.8 on the Season.
Advantage: Wash
Key Matchup: Getting one team to stop copying the other team's average special teams play.

Intangibles





Coaching

Right now, Mark Dantonio has his sea legs at MSU, Brian Kelly does not.

Final Prediction

It's not that Notre Dame CAN'T win this game, it's that I think they have too far to come in too short a time. I'd rather be playing them now than in six weeks from now. I think ND's pass defense has not shown me that they can stop Cousins nor that their defense is well-suited to stop our rushing attack. They make too many mistakes at critical times on offense for me to be real scared about offense. Although, expect this to be a game where if you watch it with someone who gets pissy about a team moving the ball between the 20s, that you will be hearing a lot of complaints. Final score in the 5 Key Things Post tomorrow.

Rivalry Week: Notre Dame

There are different levels of rivalry in college football. Auburn vs. Alabama, Army vs. Navy, Oklahoma and Texas, as much as it pains me to say it Michigan vs. Ohio State. Then you have a more friendly type of rivalry like the one we have with Notre Dame. I like to think of Notre Dame as our Uncle Rico.



Yes, that Uncle Rico.

See, it's not that Notre Dame is bad, it's that it's best days appear to be behind it. They remember when they were the toast of college football. Which with the exception of a few years in the Joe Kuharich and Gerry Faust years was always the case until the hiring of Bob Davie. Since Bob Davie was hired no coach has had a higher winning percentage than any of the forebearers other than the two I named above.

This is who Notre Dame used to be:



That's letting up 38 points in a season, ND let up 35 points last week.

38 points in a season that featured games against four top 10 teams. By comparison last year Notre Dame played no teams in the top 10 at the time they played them and only two that finished the season ranked.

It could be argued that Notre Dame has a tougher schedule than most BCS teams, although I'm inclined to think that they'd struggle in any major conference. With such foes as Western Michigan, Tulsa and Army they're ferociously tearing up the college football scene. Last year they took a break from their annual winning of the Service Academy trophy by losing to Navy and not even playing Air Force. They're certainly not your Grandpa's Notre Dame team.

MSU has won 10 of the last 14 meetings, including a streak of six consecutive wins in South Bend from 1997-2007. The overall series stands at 46-32 and one tie that you may have heard of:



Our grandpa's Notre Dame and MSU fans would probably be having a conversation about when men were men and Notre Dame was a machine of magic that would fell it's enemies by twitching it's nose and thanking MSU for being Notre Dame's Florida Atlantic for so many years. But today, Rudy himself says it best. It's our time our time for beating up on poor Uncle Rico.



Tomorrow, we'll do the breakdown of the Irish and what that means for Saturday's game.