*** Official Michigan lays the smack down on Notre Dame thread ***

[Terrabon98]

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I just got back home in Detroit from the game. God that was sweet. I had to go through 4 years of college at Michigan with them losing the first road game.

It was such a sweet sweet victory. So, what's their ranking gonna be tomorrow? I think 4.

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4???? are you guys out of your minds????

they might be the 6th best team in the SEC
get outside the midwest shell

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you must not get out much

[JackWhite]

The SEC is great, but the two best wins of the season were OSU and UM destroying the then #2 teams in the country on the road. At least give Big 10 teams credit for playing tough non-conference road games.

Compare that to Auburn's non-conference schedule: Arkansas State, Buffalo, Tulane, and Washington State. They don't have one road game against a ranked opponent. If they go undefeated and get shutout of the NC game again, they should blame themselves. It is their own fault with that horrible non-conference schedule.

[Bigdaddydvo]

This was a tough, eye opening game for the Irish. They were clearly over-rated, and a hungry, determined Michigan Squad certainly let the country know. The Blue ran quite a clinic yesterday. This post from ndnation.com best sums up the Irish's woes:

"You're never as good as your best victory and you're never as bad as your worst loss."

In reading the board I'm struck by the fact that while many here profess disdain for the media they act just like them. The media and a sizeable segment of ND fans make sweeping judgements/pronouncements on a game to game basis without any regard to the "realities" of the situation. People here are little more than flags in the wind.

24 hours ago Weis was viewed a excellent coach who would lead ND back. "Back" is a nod to the fact that we are a work in progress and not a finished product.

Today questions abound around coaching.

Perspective is in order here. I don't expect it from the national media. But I do expect it from serious watchers of ND football. People need to see thing for how they are and not for how they'd like them to be!

This team isn't perfect, it's flawed. It always has been flawed. T. Lambert was mentioned by Weis in the PSU post presser as someone that they were attacking. He knew what was coming but what were his options?

We're not dealing with a bunch of rubes here. Some of the people on staff have coached at the highest levels of the game. They know that their team has it's weaknesses. But thank god we're not dealing with a staff that cries to the media about "lack of talent" (Bob Davie "Close the talent gap against Navy"). That coupled with the fact that we were winning made people overlooked our fundamental flaws while figuring that Weis could finesse or out scheme away our deficiencies.

A good coach can do that but their margin for error decreases in porportion to the talent their facing.

In Michigan yesterday we faced an intently focused team, that was more talented, and which received some critical early brakes. There is no gameplan for being down 21-7 in the first quarter with multiple TO's and a loss of confidence. ND simply isn't at a point where they can shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly and expect to come back and beat a team like that. Hell, nobody is. USC would have a hard time coming back from such an occurance of events to start the game.

Short of God himself no coach would have won that game yesterday. It was a classic "whatever could go wrong did" scenario that happens to every coach at some point in their career. It happened to Weis when he was with Belichick in the opening game 2/3 years ago. After cutting Lawyer Milloy they faced the Bills in the opening game and they proceeded to get worked 41-7 (or something like that). People thought Belichick had lost the team. Instead they only went on to win the Super Bowl.

Unfortunately college football offers no such playoff system.

In sum ND is pretty much what I always thought they were a good 9-10 win team that if everything broke correctly could content for a NC. But 3 losses were also a distinct possibility for this program because as I, and many others viewed it, this team lacked a great defense (no cover corners, questionable LB play - We're faster at LB than we were last year but we traded stoutness against the run for playmaking in space. Unfortunately the trick is to have LB's that are big enough to play the run and who are fast enough to cover in space) and some complimentary parts on offense (vertical threat at WR, speed back, and solid interior line play).

The solution........

There's really only one way to get out of the mess and that's by recruiting top line players, who in future, will allow Weis/Minter to expand the game plan as opposed to shrinking it.

If you don't understand what I mean by shrinking it go back and watch how Michigan defended us. It was OSU pt 2 as they flooded the intermediate zones confident that ND didn't have the speed at WR to get behind them or the playmaker at RB to create something out of a short pass.

Michigan, perhaps on the back of their good fortune in getting 21 points off quick turnovers, had zero respect for our ability to make plays in front or behind them.

I suspect that if they hadn't raced out to such an early lead English would have played a more conservative gameplan. That in turn would have played into Weis gameplan of controlling the clock and building long drives. That because of our limitations is who we are and what we do. Taken out of that element you get yesterday's result.

I am under no illusions that Weis can wave a wand right the wrongs of classes that should be part of his current core unit. After all he is a football coach not a magician.

Personally I'll be happy with a 10 win season and a recruiting class that addresses our areas of weakness. If that's accomplished Weis will have remade ND's program in a two year span. That in itself is an impressive feat and one that we should commend the staff for. We won't have the depth or experience in 2007 but in 2008 our staff won't be in the position of trying to coverup multiple holes against teams like OSU, USC, and Michigan. Once the talent becomes even then the games reduced down to coaching. It is at that point that we'll truly find out what type of staff we have.

I'm betting that it's a good one.

[bowens]

Nice post.

[srjunkacct]

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"You're never as good as your best victory and you're never as bad as your worst loss."



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Or, in 2+2 parlance, "variance is a bitch."

[DVaut1]

Bigdaddy,

That was a good post.

Under what kind of scenario could you envision yourself (and the Notre Dame fan base at large) losing confidence in Weis? I understand you're not the spokesman for ND fandom, but just whatever you feel you have for their pulse.

In other words, what are the expectations for Weis in the next 5 years? Obviously, if he pulls a Willingham and has two .500 or sub .500 seasons, I expect there will be obvious disappointment. But the general buzz last week in the ND community (at least from the ND fans I know personally, along with what I’ve read on the internet) was that ND has transcended the bounds of your everyday top 25 program and become a USC-type juggernaut that might dominate college football for the next decade. Perhaps I’m exaggerating, but you need only look at this week's "Official" NCF thread at deacsoft and others proclaiming Michigan had “no shot” at this game.

Now, perhaps ND fans fell prey to the understandable unbridled enthusiasm that follows a solid season like 2005 and the PSU win, which I can empathize with. But it seems like at least some members of the ND fan community not only hope but seriously expect ND to be perennial national championship contenders and a consistent top 5 team.

It only takes a cursory look over the last decade of college football to notice that perennial national title contenders are few and far between – and that staying in the top 25 of the rankings year in and year out, let alone in the top 5 or 10, is extremely difficult. Proof, from an article on ESPN today:

“Miami is out of the rankings for the first time since 1999…which ended a streak of 107 consecutive poll appearances that was the nation's longest current streak.”

While USC has certainly set the standard in the past 4 years, you only need to return to 2001 when USC was 6-6 and unranked to note that their dominance hasn't always been the case. Programs like Oklahoma, Miami, LSU, Ohio State, Michigan, FSU, Florida, Tenneessee -- all have been subject to one or two 4 or 5 loss seasons since 2002.

Is it possible that expectations surrounding ND and Weis have become so high that Weis will never be able to satisfy them? I think if ND finds itself winning 8 or 9 games consistently, they’ll have returned from depths of the Davie/Willingham era – very few programs, if any, win 10 games every year, let alone competes for a national championship and finish in the top 10 year-in and year-out; will it be a disappointment for the ND community if Weis doesn't do just that? That is, will it be disappointing if ND, for instance, goes 9-3 this year and 8-4 next year? What if ND finds itself out of a BCS bowl three or four years in a row (while still winning 8-10 games a year)? In short, it sounds as if some ND fans thought they were going to be the next USC – and expected to dominate college football for the forseeable future. But USC-type dominance is a rare phenomenon, and it seems like if expectations are that high, Weis is almost certainly bound to fall short. I may be wrong in asserting that expectations were/are that high. But I feel confident in claiming they had at least become unreasonable, so unreasonable that it inevitably sets up Weis for failure -- not an objetive, .500 season/Davie type failure, but a failure to live up to impossible standards.

[bernie]

I thoroughly effing enjoyed watching this. Nothing is louder than the silence of goldendomers when watching their overrated team get killed on the home turf.

Along with watching Miami get their asshanders award. Especially after the scene they made pregame. Then seeing the highlights of Florida State losing. The only thing that would've been better on Sat in the NW is if Florida would've lost too.

Huskies are actually 2-1 with a shot at going 4-1 before the ceiling collapses a bit. Other than QB, this team has really improved. There are actual whispers of Bowl possibilities...

One bright spot about ND though(as much as I hate to give them any credit whatsoever), I thought Weiss was fantastic in his postgame interview. One of the classiest speeches I've seen in awhile. Kudos on that.

Pro sidenote: I see Shaun Alexander is back to his turf flopping best since he got his contract. Maybe he could be the posterboy for the 'QB slide rule' applying to runningbacks.

b

[bernie]

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As a ND fan, I can honestly say ND does not deserve to be in the top 5 after this game. They have one tough game the rest of thr year, USC, but I still think we will see them in a BCS game. Michigan impressed the [censored] out of me today.

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I don't think they should be in the top 10 after this game. I don't think any team that gets blown out, at home, should be in the top 10.

b

[UATrewqaz]

The entire college football universe must have some sort of brain cancer combined with an odd sort of amnesia.

How many bowls has ND lost the past decade? How many of those did they get utterly blown out?

What has happend to them the last 6 or so times they've been preseason top 10? What like 3+ losses EVERY TIME? Notre Dame football has been the most overrated thing in the entire sports universe the last 15 years.

Obviously they have a great tradition and are one of the most storied programs in college football, but there are plenty of others that have comparable traditions, so N.D. should stop feeling so damn special.

Oh yeah, join a damn conference.

[PTjvs]

I don't see ND joining a conference in the forseeable future. They obviously don't want to share their TV revenue, and if they were in the most likely conference (Big10), ND would be exposed by the competition. ND isn't within 10 points of OSU at this point, and hasn't been for a few years now.

jvs