God never ceases to amaze me in the depths of his Fighting Irish fandem. Moments after Michigan State struck gold with a fake field goal in OT to stun the Irish 34-31, Spartan coach Mark Dantonio started feeling chest pain. After being rushed to the hospital late Saturday night, it had turned out that he suffered a heart attack. Now, he's going to make a full recovery, so don't make comments about how insensitive it is to joke about this (it's Dantonio's fault, really, for eating too many orders of Irish Nachos...which is just my guess), but I guess the excitement and intensity of the moment was just too much for him to take. Most Irish fans probably wished they had a heart attack Saturday night so we wouldn't have had to watch the way the game ended. All we could all do was take off our Mike Ragone t-shirt jerseys (or Kyle Rudolph replica, in J's case), hold them to our faces, and wonder why we didn't try and make a last drive with 20ish seconds left and timeouts in the glove box at the end of the fourth quarter. No matter how you break it down, we're 1-2.
You can't say much, really. It was a back and forth game, and MSU got the huge stop in OT it needed to win. It was 7-0, 7-7, 7-14, 14-14, 14-21, 21-21, 28-21, and 28-28. I guess after we took the lead with 13 minutes left after a sweet Michael Floyd TD, it would have been nice to see the defense step up and step up again to keep the game that way. Kirk Cousins just didn't want to see it end. This Notre Dame team, while I don't want to sound like a doom sayer, seems to lack the ability to seal the deal. In a tight game, when you take the lead late, you need to stomp the throat of the bad guys and finish the job. That aggressive finishing is not something we've seen this year. Not against Michigan, not against Michigan State, not even in our lone win against Purdue (although, we didn't need to). So when I watch MSU go 2 for 2 on 4th downs, I get worried about this team. When I see that they get 477 total yards, and 8.1 yards per pass, I get worried about this team. When I see that we cough up the ball three times and only get it back once, I get worried about this team. When we get out-possessed by 16% of total game time, I get worried about this team.
We're going to have to do some work to get to my preseason prediction of 9-3!
Speaking of doing work, the Irish weren't all questions and sad sack stuff. Clearly, we have some huge positives to build on. Our first loss happened on a last second play in regulation and our second loss happened on a trick play in overtime. This team is NOT as bad as their 1-2 record makes them look.
On defense, Zeke Mota snagged the INT and led the team with 11 tackles, and was a pleasant surprise. Te'o wasn't far behind with 10 bring downs, and he just looked like a star out there for most of the game. Junior linebacker Darius Flemming and Sophomore linebacker Carlo Calabrese each had 2 sacks, doing their best to keep us in the game.
On the offensive side, Dayne Crist looked healthy out there, and is clearly continuing to improve. DC was 32/55 (that's a lot of passing) for 369 yards, 4 TDs, and just 1 INT. That's a big, big game. Armando Allen rushed for 71 on 13 carries, seemingly contained most of the time. Cierre Wood was a ghost, with 3 one yard runs. I think Theo Riddick was the most pleasant positive, as he finally busted out of his shell at the wide out spot. He had 10 catches for 128 yards and a TD, and showed he can make some pretty tough snags. Michael Floyd finally did more than block, getting 2 TDs and 81 yards on 6 catches. However, he still doesn't look like himself, right? I'm not sure exactly what the deal is, but he just doesn't seem the same, especially once he is on the run after the catch. Rudolph had the other TD, but he'll probably be best remembered for getting straight stuffed on our 3rd down play in OT.
I keep replaying that fake field goal over and over again in my mind. It was made even worse by the fact that we had a guy back to cover the pass, but he slipped and fell down. So much for Dantonio's statements about ND not knowing it was coming. But, even when you have a hunch that something is coming, you still have to execute, and we didn't. I guess I keep replaying it in my head because I'm trying to decide if I think that we got beat by a gutsy call, or if I think we got beat by a cheap douchebag call that goes against some unwritten rules. My jury is still out on that one, but I am objective enough to realize that if ND did the same move, I'd be proud.
Like I said earlier, either way you slice it, we're 1-2 and we're headed into a battle. Next weekend, we welcome the #16 Stanford Cardinal (3-0) into South Bend for our first match against a ranked squad this year. The Palo Alto crew beat Sac State 52-17, embarrassed UCLA 35-0, and killed Jon Davis and the Demon Deacons 68-24. QB Andrew Luck threw for 4 TDs and rushed for another (207 passing yards and 69 rushing yards). This game is coming like a freight train to South Bend, and I'm not sure there is anything we can do to stop it.
Just so you can hold me accountable:
January 4, 2010- In my preseason prediction post, I said this about the ND/Stanford game, "Most in the media won't agree with this, but I think this will be the Irish's big win in the first 5 games of the year."
We'll see.
-- Sent from my Palm Prē
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