Zentropy

Get ready for a hot hot hot football related post. Today we’re going to examine the main issue with the Notre Dame Fighting Cowering Irish.

In football, line play is everything. If your offensive line can’t block, your offense is going nowhere. Last Saturday, and the Saturday before, I watched with despair as Notre Dame’s offensive linemen were repeated bitch-slapped. Hard. To the tune of negative 8 rushing yards through two games. Never in my life did I think I’d see such a horrid display of mediocrity from the ND line. False-starts and holding penalties didn’t help, either. This really makes me wonder…even though a lot of these guys were high school All-Americans, they just weren’t performing like it. Personally, I think it’s a combination of a lack of toughness (former AA Aaron Taylor of ND has a great post on this over at Legends of South Bend), and poor coaching.

I can tell you this, if the offensive line doesn’t start performing better, they’re going to start 0-8 and might actually LOSE to Navy. Poor offensive line play snowballs and eventually leaks into other areas of the team as well. If you’re not moving the ball, your field position is poor all game. This puts tremendous pressure on your defense to stop the other team EVERY time they have the ball. They are thinking “Okay, we have to shut these guys out if we have any hope of winning”, which is too much to ask of any college defense. Then there’s special teams. With all the sacks given up this year (15) and negative rushing yards, it’s easy to see poor Geoff Price punting out of the end zone multiple times each game. This is a) very risky, as a blocked kick will lead to an easy touchdown or safety, and b) a gift of field position to the opponent if he actually gets out of there alive.

It’s going to be a long year….