It's a new month, and you faithful LSF readers know what that means...stats! Yes! It's that time of month where we review the previous month's in-depth statistics, and see where we sit.
+September 2010 had 40 posts, which tied July 2010 as the most posted month in our 3 year history.
+According to Blogger, we have dropped 818 posts since our inception in 2007.
+According to Twitter, we have dropped 1,037 "LSF Instant Sufferings" (formerly "LSF Tweets") since its inception.
+We had 1,798 page views last month (21 already today!)
+Our top referral source was Google.com, who sent us 326 readers. Google.uk brought us 125 and Google.ca brought us 50.
+The most popular Google searches that brought people to LSF were: Tyler Chatwood (5), Jon Rauch (4), Pictures of Inaz Sainz (4), and Brandon Wood (3).
+The Google search "Fernando Rodney Sucks" brought us 2 readers, and that made me proud.
+Halos Heaven brought us 120 readers this month! Thanks guys!
+In national terms this month, we had readers from the US (928), the UK (164), Canada (76), Germany (55), Denmark (50), Luxembourg (47), and even South Korea (42). Australia, Vietnam, and South Africa combined for 80 total readers, as well.
+In operating system terms this month, we had readers using Internet Explorer (53%), Firefox (21%), Safari (14%), and Chrome (6%).
+In actual device terms this month, we had readers checking in with Windows (73%), Mac (13%), iPhones (1%), and even a few using an iPad and a Playstation Portable (13 combined).
+Brandon's post from December 12, 2007 called, "We're by far the greatest team the world has ever seen" led the blog with 274 page views in September, while Tommy's September 16, 2010's "King Conger drives 'em in as Halo win" was second with 146 page views.
I hope you all enjoy the stat rundown as much as I do. Well, you have another month before you get it again, so throttle back.
If you read my last Notre Dame post, I wasn't too confident heading into the weekend's Holy War. I wasn't feeling very good after the Michigan-Michigan State-Stanford tridium of pain and anguish. To make things worse, on Saturday morning ESPN put a map up on the screen to show who would be watching what game on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 during the 5 pm timeslot. Thanks to living in California, ESPN told me that I'd be more interested in Stanford/Oregon and USC/Washington than I would be in ND/BC. Man, they don't know me at all. "Wait! I'll switch to the "ESPNa" feed on DirecTV," I thought...not available in my area, of course. Then I remembered I could cruise over to ESPN3.com, thank you Cox Communications, to catch the game that way. Man, the things a fan has to do to be able to watch their team in this day and age. Luckily for me, my effort was rewarded. Not only did Notre Dame play well against their Catholic counterparts, but they played so well that we had the "B" team out there to close it out. It was like a flashback to the "Evan Sharpley in at QB in the fourth after Brady Quinn stomped everyone" days. This version of the Holy War ended 31-13 (a palendrome!) in favor of the good guys, and it was a big win heading into what the media is calling the "soft part of the Irish schedule."
It didn't even seem like a fair fight, really. BC had their freshman QB, Chase Rettig, start, only to see him go down with an ankle injury in the second quarter. Meanwhile, Dayne Crist and company faced little resistance, as they put three TDs on the board in the first quarter. Crist ran in the first one, before connecting with Rudolph and Riddick (finally coming into his own at wide out) to jump out to a non-ND-type 21-0 lead. How about Michael Floyd finally getting into the action on that Riddick TD drive? After some BC action, it was 24-13 at the half, and the Irish were just kind of on cruise control.
Armando Allen finished it off with a 3rd quarter TD run (he finished with 90 rushing on 19 carries), but the defense might be the big story for the Irish. The Eagles were held to 5 net rushing yards in the game. 5! ESPN couldn't stop talking about our linebacker crew and the job they were doing, despite never being able to call any of them by name, which was weird. Blanton had an INT and a sack in the game, Smith grabbed another pick, and Calabrese and Te'o each had 10 huge tackles to lead the way. I mean, they were really, really on point in this one.
The offense did it's job as well, with Floyd and Riddick each getting 69 yards in the air on a day when Dayne "Jesus" Crist went 24/44 for 203 YRD/2 TD/1 INT. It's not an amazing line of stats, by any means, but he always seems to get the job done (unless he's knocked out on a TD sneak against Michigan). So, I figured we should explore what kind of game/season Crist actually had/is having. Let's let College Football Reference's amazing website of stats give us a little persective.
This was Dayne's 9th game as a ND QB in his career, and just his 3rd true road game. This game featured his lowest number of passing yards for any game in his career with more than 10 pass attempts. He did that, despite having the 3rd most completions in his career and tying the second most attempts. His rating of 103.8 was his lowest since subbing in against Purdue back in September of 2009. He did, however, match the second most rushing attempts for a game in his career (6), but only got 5 yards (but, did get a TD). So, I think a deeper exploration of his game stats shows just how important the defense was for Notre Dame on Saturday.
In terms of looking at Crist's season, he currently sits 4th in pass attempts in the FBS, but doesn't grace the top 20 in completion percentage. He currently ranks 12th in passing yards, which is pretty impressive, better than Andrew Luck even, but he's not near the top 20 for passing yards per attempt. He currently is tied at 20th for passing TDs, but doesn't even come close to sniffing the top 20 for passer rating (keep in mind that the CFB Reference site only gives top 20 on it's leaderboards...hence all the top 20 stuff). It's clearly an iffy season from Crist, if we're being completely objective. Tons of room to improve, and I believe he will continue to do so.
Just for fun, there are some ND surprises on the CFB Reference leader boards. How about Michael Floyd ranking 18th in total receiving yards? I was shocked. How about Theo Riddick being ranked 16th in receptions? I was pretty surprised. How about Armando Allen being ranked 17th in plays from scrimage? Again, shocked. How about David Ruffer being ranked 17th in field goals made and tied for first with his perfect FG percentage? Finally, a good kicker, eh?
Well, at 2-3, we have 7 wins left to get to reach my lofty 9-3 preseason prediction. Good thing our schedule is about to get "soft!" Next weekend is a knockdown dragout battle with the Panthers of Pitt, who probably resent being the first game on the easy part of our schedule. Pitt may be 2-2, but I'm not sure they are as easy as ESPN would have us believe. They lost by 3 to Utah to start the season before beating up New Hampshire 38-16. Then they got schooled by Miami 31-3 before completely crushing Florida International. Would you call BC a cake team? Probably not before we beat them, and I think the same goes for the Panthers. I want to take a cautious approach heading into this game, because I'm worried about the trap of buying into this starting the winnable part of the schedule stuff. Remember how we lost by 5 to Pitt in 2009? A direct quote from my 11/15/09 post on that game sums it up, "...we were outplayed for the majority of the game, and would have never had the comeback chance if not for the amazing Golden Tate (please don't leave early)." Yeah, we were down 9-27 with almost 13 minutes to go, and a Tate TD catch and kick return for a TD made the game look closer than it was. Clausen choked under the pressure late, and we got smoked. I'm not going to pretend that Pitt sucks so much worse this year that we are just going to roll them up (although, they were 8-1 when we met them last year). We're going to have to play spot on fooseball on both sides for the whole game, and I only hope that's possible.
As far as predictions, I picked ND to win the game back in my 1/15/10 season preview post, and I'm sticking with it.
If Coach Kelly can get us to 6-3 by the end of the month, he'll be placed back on Savior status.
By the way, nice loss USC.
-- Sent from my Palm Prē
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