Some more views on SDSU

I know the game is 4 days old now, but I'm still at a loss of words as to why ND didn't have a bigger showing against SDSU last Saturday. I'll tell you what, after watching the replay on Universial HD channel, I've been able to see why they looked lack luster.

First and foremost, every run play seemed to be to the left side of the offensive line. I am a huge Olsen fan and Turk has come up big this fall but you would have thought for sure that we'd be running behind the biggins' that we have with Stewart and Young on the right side. By doing this, Chris Stewart struggled to get to the second tier (the linebackers) to accomplish his assignment. Multiple times the player he was suppose to block made the tackle that prevented huge gains by Irish tailbacks Allen and Hughes. You could actually see his frustration on one play when he punched the air and stomped his huge foot. If he doesn't get quicker to the second tier, the Michigan linebackers are going to tee-off on the running backs.

Second thing I noticed is how hard it was for the WRs to break free from the bump and press coverages. Michigans DBs are big and physical and ND needs to be able to break away clean and quick as the front 7 is definitely looking to get to the QB often.

Mental mistakes, mental mistakes, mental mistakes. I'll highlight a few that were huge. Crum personal foul call, Kamara missing the hot route slant that hit his helmet and bounced off to get intercepted, Clausen missing Tate in ther corner on a wide open touchdown miss, a botched coverage call for Brian Smith and Kyle McCarthy on the long pass play that set up SDSU's first TD (they both had no clue who to cover), Hughes' fumble inside the 5 yard line (that was definitely NOT a fumble because his knee was down) and finally the FG/PAT holder (Maust) needs either more practice or to move to another position because he was unable to correctly place the ball for kicker Walker on two different occasions. Oh, on Clausen's other interception, Kamara stopped looking at the ball while the ball was in the air and instead of running the route and going up strong for the ball, he strided into the endzone, with his head looking at the DB, and gave a fairy tale leap that was about 3 seconds too early. I don't blame that all on Kamara, but he gave a very piss-poor effort to catch the ball or knock it away.

Now some good things I noticed (this could be individual or whatnot) on Michael Floyd's TD play, Clausen saw the coverage before he even lined up and pointed over to Floyd's directions. Floyd then broke away from coverage and got about 3 yards seperation immediately on his way to the catch. Brian Smith is an animal and was ALL OVER the field. Sergio Brown is going to be a stud. Ethan Johnson was getting work as an interior DL. Notre Dame's special teams (other than the FG/PAT unit) was amazing and it's only a matter of time before we see a kick-off for a TD. SDSU is very lucky that their QB was young and inexperienced because he was pressured A LOT and just seemed to chuck the ball wherever without a purpose (ND wo.uld have had about 8 sacks if there were a more experienced QB that knows to just take the sack, but SDSU got really, really lucky).

If Notre Dame continues the good and corrects those mental mistakes, the game this weekend will be fun to watch because Michigan is not getting any better with their offense and Notre Dame is about 5 times better than the Miami, OH squad that the Wolverines had come through there. GO IRISH!