I would like to apologize to our readers for not writing a post after Notre Dame's game against Western Michigan last week. I did watch the game, but had some family stuff to deal with at home over the weekend and then a very stressful work week back at school. (If I had posted something, it would've been a lot of ranting about giving up on the run way too early and letting Western Michigan hang around for too long.)
Anyway, back to the task at hand:
Navy- 35, Notre Dame- 17
Remember when Notre Dame won 43 straight games against Navy? Remember when playing a game against Navy might as well have been a guaranteed 'W' on the Irish schedule?
Me neither.
I don't know if this game was more or less heartbreaking than last year's triple overtime loss. Granted, Dayne Crist was missing his best three targets (Kyle Rudolph, Michael Floyd and Theo Riddick were unavailable due to injury) but in theory Notre Dame had plenty of talent to beat the Midshipmen. Notre Dame marched down the field on the opening drive but Navy made a huge goal line stand to force a turnover on downs. From there it only took them three plays to go 99 yards to score a touchdown. Notre Dame never quite recovered from that early blow.
Maybe Notre Dame got too comfortable after winning three-straight games. Maybe Navy was still riding the momentum of their come-from-behind win last week. We can sit here and speculate all day, but when it came down to it, Navy wanted it more and was much more fired up to play than the Irish.
Game Ball-
Backup quarterback Tommy Rees for putting together Notre Dame's best drive of the game at the end, even though it was in garbage time. He was 6-of-7 for 79 yards on the drive. It wasn't a bad idea to stick him in that situation and let him get a little playing time and he looked pretty confident.
Positives-
-Strained hip or not, Armando Allen still looked good (when they used him). He's not the biggest running back out there but he's very strong and physical for his size. Even more importantly, he keeps his legs moving until the whistle.
-At least Tommy Rees put together a nice fourth quarter drive on that last touchdown, right? Granted Navy had pretty much taken their foot off the gas at that point, but it was still a pretty drive. Notre Dame's offense actually did a decent job of moving the ball but made costly mistakes at all the wrong times.
-Other than one untimely pass interference call, Notre Dame was not flagged at all during the game. Not committing stupid penalties is always a plus. Too bad no one really notices how much a team in penalized until it starts costing them games.
-Navy could beat us by 50 points and we would still have a better mascot than them. I'm sorry, but those "Fear the goat!" signs that Navy fans bring to games fail miserably at sounding intimidating. There's not even an actual term for the irrational fear of goats. My roommates looked it up after one of them caught a glimpse of a "Fear the goat!" sign. The closest term is "zoophobia", which is the fear of animals in general. Ohh, what now Navy?! (Yes, I know there is an actual story behind why Navy's catchphrase is "Fear the goat!" Yes, I know I'm really, really pushing it here. But I couldn't think of anything else positive to say about Notre Dame's performance today. Forgive me.)
Negatives-
-Where to start? I'll go for the most obvious; the run defense. We all knew going into this game that Navy favors the triple option offense. It's their bread and butter. Their trademark. They've only been running that offense for the past ten thousands years. So why, why, why did Notre Dame look so ill-prepared to defend it? Navy quarterback Ricky Dobbs attempted TWO passes the entire game. We all knew Navy would be running it to the outside all day and that's been an area of weakness for the Notre Dame defense, so it makes no sense that they wouldn't put a majority of their focus on that aspect of the game. Fullback Alexander Teich rushed for 210 yards (a season and I think a career best for him), averaging 8.1 yards per rush. He's not even Navy's first string fullback! Starter Vince Murray was out with a knee injury! Navy's rushing offense alone put up almost as many yards as the entire Notre Dame offense. Coach Kelly claimed the defense made adjustments at halftime, but it didn't show. The run defense was flat-out ugly any way you look at it.
-Dayne Crist took a step backwards this game. Again, Rudolph, Floyd and Riddick are all hurt which made his task all that much harder, but I don't know who or what he was throwing to some of the time. The timing on his interceptions couldn't have possibly been worse either. Some of this can be chalked up to missing his top three targets, but there was definitely something off with Crist today.
-As always, I would've liked to see the Irish run the ball more. I was willing to be more lenient in this category, given how fast they fell behind and were playing catchup the entire game, but handing the ball off to Allen and Wood more often would've taken some of the pressure off of Crist and the younger, more inexperienced receivers.
-I bet you all thought I was going to forget my traditional rant about turnovers, didn't you? No such luck. Once again, Notre Dame lost the turnover battle. As I mentioned two paragraphs above, Crist's pair of picks came at what might have been the worst possible times. The first one, at the end of the second half, was especially brutal. Notre Dame had the ball deep in their own territory with a little over two minutes left in the half to try and put together a scoring drive (the Irish were down only 14-10 at this point). Crist throws an INT to De'Von Richardson at Notre Dame's 30 yard line. Navy scores a touchdown to make it 21-10 going into the half and they would also get the ball first coming back from halftime. What a difference one touchdown makes, huh? Navy scored 14 points off of Notre Dame's turnovers. 21, if you count the turnover on downs at the Notre Dame one yard line that led to Navy's first touchdown. If Notre Dame scores that TD on their first possession and Crist doesn't throw those interceptions, it's a completely different ball game even with the horrendous run defense.
Notre Dame is now 4-4 on the year. Tulsa is looming next, a team with a decent running attack but a weak defense. Hopefully the Fighting Irish can rebound against a very beatable Golden Hurricane squad.
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