Spring Practice Update II

First off I’d like to start by saying that it was great to be back on campus. After being away for the better part of a year and a half it was nice to see the place I called home for six years. The campus is expanding like crazy and some parts of it I didn’t even recognize. Construction is everywhere both in the form of buildings and roads.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the tailgate. We were lucky to have such great weather for the tailgating and game. I think a good time was had by all. There was some PS2 NCAA College Football 2007 on hand and plenty of trash talking ensued. We also had some cornhole which invited more than a few neighbors to participate in the activity. Finally, thanks to Vinnie and his father’s restaurant Da Vinci’s for supplying the food. If you are in the Elkhart area, it’s worth the stop. I recommend the baked mostaccioli. It’s breathtaking, I assure you.

I want to talk about several things, the Blue & Gold game, Corwin Brown, and recruiting …in that order. But before I get to the Blue & Gold game I’d like to say a few things about the game itself. The Blue & Gold game counts as a practice and since there are only fifteen in the Spring coaches typically use it, at least to some extent, to that end. As such, you really can’t get a whole lot out of watching a game like this as far as a status check of the team goes. This is evident by a plethora of people out there on message boards, as well as “sports journalists” (I put those words in quotes because everyone by now knows my opinion of them), talking about the game citing a multitude of different opinions. Some people criticize this and glorify that, but for others it is the other way around. Most of the things I will say here are barely observations. Nothing I speak of is likely as good or as bad as I might state.

To give an example I’ll take one particular match-up of the game. Both Ara and Lou said that they were particularly impressed with the secondary. And I’ll admit, they looked good. But you have to take that performance in context as there were essentially no deep balls thrown, the offenses ran nearly 75% of the time, and our receivers looked terrible. It is far more likely that the secondary is somewhat improved, that the play-calling and rules of the game were to their benefit, and that our receivers aren’t as bad as I fear.

On a side note, it has been well documented that Holtz was right back where he used to be as coach of ND. He paced up and down the sideline, picked grass, and chewed out players. If you looked closely you could see the student manager following him up and down the sideline with the cord to his headset....

Offense

Well let’s get it out of the way. In my opinion, Clausen had the best day of the four quarterbacks. Everyone is talking about his 3 of 7 day but at least 3 of those incompletions were to avoid a sack. I don’t call that a poor throw, I call it good awareness. And given our status next year, unproven QB and receivers, young offensive line, etc. throwing the ball away and living to fight another down without the long yardage situations is key for the success of our offense. He was accurate on most of his throws intended for a receiver with the exception of one and he had, by far, the most competent throw of the day on a bench route to his left. The throw was in the air, waiting for the receiver, before he made his cut. It really was pretty.

Clausen is beginning to win over his teammates as well. Comments by both Travis Thomas and Maurice Crum were positive in that respect. That said, I still think he is slightly behind Sharpley with respect to being the starting QB at ND. He doesn’t quite understand the offense as well as he needs to (it was evident by a miscommunication that forced him to call a timeout) and I was very surprised at his lack of mobility on Saturday. For someone who is supposed to run a 4.7 40 he didn’t look too fleet of foot. Just remember folks, there’s a lot of time between now and Georgia Tech and I’d be hard pressed to think that Charlie would leave him out of the “top 2” going into the Fall. This means he will have many reps and begin to learn more.

Sharpley had the second best performance, in my opinion, and it was a close second as well. He ran the offense efficiently, he looks comfortable under center, and he has sufficient accuracy and arm strength. I stick by my former statement and say if we had to play tomorrow he is our guy (link here). But I also still believe he isn’t the long-term solution. I can see him and Clausen battling it out in the fall.

Jones looked decent at times and poor at others. It’s difficult not to get excited about his 31 yard run, especially when you watch it on the highlights and see him separating from the linebackers. But his pick was a terrible throw into coverage and behind the receiver and his touchdown pass was a good adjustment on the ball by Parris on a deflected throw. He doesn’t look comfortable dropping back. The bottom line on Jones is that he is too volatile. While it’s exciting that he might be able to bail us out of some third down situations with his legs, if he isn’t accurate defenses will commit to stopping him via a spy and he won’t be able to make them pay for losing a pass defender. His throwing motion is still awful.

Frazer, in my mind, has to be completely out of the race. He didn’t have a single completion on Saturday and what’s worse, he didn’t have a decent throw. I can’t see him making the “top 2” cut.

While we are talking about quarterbacks I think it’s hilarious that the popular trend in writing among the “sports journalists” is that it is going to be impossible to replace such a great player like Quinn and his 30+ ND passing records. Never mind the fact that these are the same writers who were trashing his play all last season and tearing his draft status apart. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, sports journalists are simply story spinning, story-line creating, fickle writers just trying to sell their product.

Without a doubt the most positive thing on the offensive side of the ball had to be the running game. And make no mistake about it, it is nothing like it has been since Weis arrived. We may have run four or five zone plays all day long. Most of the running was off tackle, much of it in the form of isolation plays, treys and counter treys, and some trapping. All four of the tailbacks looked good when given a bit of room. Travis Thomas had one of the best moves of the day when he juked an un-touched defender just after taking the handoff. You can see the speed in Armando Allen, but he did look timid like Munir Prince at times. At one point Aldridge made such a great cut and I thought it was Allen until they called his name. And Jabbie made the most out of every opportunity he had. The media is in love with Jabbie now but if you really look at the game he had more opportunities than the other backs. For the most part, there were more holes and more space for him on his carries. If he is currently behind Aldridge and Thomas it says to me that we can expect very good things from them given the same opportunity.

On top of the tailbacks playing well both Schwaap and Schmidt played well. Schmidt has improved his blocking tremendously, mostly by keeping his feet wider and breaking down before taking on the defender. Schwaap is just a beast and showed his knee is back to healthy. He was running over people and will be a nice compliment to the tailbacks mentioned above in our ground game. You heard it hear first, at one point during the season we will line up in a two tight end, I backfield formation, motion both tight ends out as well as the tailback, and give it to Schwaap right up the middle on a short yardage situation. The moral of the story is that we are talented and deep in the backfield.

Speaking of tight ends they got a lot of action on Saturday. Carlson looked decent but I think he may have lost a little speed. It’s possible that he added the weight via strength to help with blocking but he may have sacrificed some of his speed and agility in the process. Reuland looked decent but bobbled most of the passes thrown his way. Catching those clean can help with the RAC (run after catch) yards. Yeatman looked rusty, probably the effects of not practicing every day.

The offensive line played well at times and poorly at others. If I had to grade the run blocking I would probably give it a B+. If I had to grade the pass blocking I’d probably give it a C-. The run blocking grade would have been even better had it been more consistent. Most of our success came via traps and isolation plays utilizing a pulling guard. We used a lot of motion with a fullback or tight end coming behind the QB and kicking the outside defender. It was fairly successful. The pass blocking was less impressive but the fact that only two hands were needed for a sack doesn’t help the cause. Still, I don’t believe I saw one time where our QB dropped back and was able to cleanly deliver the ball free from pressure. Sam Young looked pretty good. He held his own with Maurice Richardson who abused the other tackles all day long.

I would have to say our receiving corps looked terrible on Saturday. I saw some decent blocking from some of them but overall we weren’t able to gain separation from defenders and lack any real down-field threat. This may, however, be an overstatement as there weren’t many deep routes. West is out and Kumara isn’t on campus yet but it seems like we don’t have someone who’s going to get us that jump ball like Samardzija or Stovall. Richard Jackson was my hope in this area but he couldn’t catch a cold on Saturday. I’d have to give Parris the best grade of them all but he lacks true speed and doesn’t catch the ball with his hands (he really does look like a Samardzija clone though). This is a problem area for our offense that needs to be addressed soon. Not being able to get open killed us in both the USC and LSU games last year and it will only be more detrimental to our success this season.

Overall I’d say it was difficult to glean anything substantial about the offense. Weis said he wanted to have the day focused on the run and getting back to a more physical, tough approach to the game that we had “gotten away from.” This is good news if he sticks with it because we shouldn’t have to throw it on third and short and I want to see the “nasty” football team he promised us. The bad news may be that a consistent, good running game means eight in the box from opposing defenses. If we can’t develop a legitimate down-field threat and/or a QB to get that threat the ball play action is our only weapon against other teams selling out against the run. However, if we can consistently move the ball on the ground it will help us control the clock, take pressure off the QB, and rest the defense. With four running backs legitimately pushing for playing time and multiple offensive lineman fighting for each position, we should be able to keep our players fresh during games. This may prove helpful but we have to develop in our receiver corps to have a legitimate shot at winning some of our tougher games. Additionally, long, ground-based drives require elimination of mistakes such that we will really need to play disciplined football to be successful.

Defense

Defensively, as I stated above, I think our secondary looks much better. That said, it could be that the receivers played that poorly. Both McNeil and Walls looked a stop quicker and much more physical than last year. This was especially true at the line of scrimmage playing bump-and-run coverage. Wooden’s play was very encouraging both in run support and against the pass. Lambert looks to be faster and in better shape than last year. Both Bruton and Herring looked very rangy when on the field. At 6’3” Bruton may turn out to be the true center fielder we’ve been looking for. Last, but not least, Zibi had a quiet, but good day. He was tough against the run but looked much better against the pass, particularly blanketing Carlson down the field.

The one thing that stood out to me about the defense more than anything else was the ability to get pressure from the outside. Richardson was responsible for this more often than anyone else but in general we were able to get good pressure from the outside. As stated above, this could be the result of poor offensive line play. Hopefully, however, it is an indication of good things for our pass rush on defense. If this is an area of improvement expect the secondary to benefit.

Our linebacker play was improved in most areas. The pursuit was good and we were aggressive. We still, however, have too difficult of a time on the inside shedding blocks from offensive lineman at the next level. I think the defensive line is partially to blame for this as the inside linebackers in the 3-4 scheme are supposed to be able to run and make the tackles but we were still guilty of it. Vernaglia had a solid game. Even though he over-pursued at times, he wasn’t out of position often, was physical, and really played well against the run in many cases. Toryan Smith was lighting people up, but you can tell he is still young and plays too much on reaction rather than instinct. A little more time and I think he will really be a force in the middle for us.

It was difficult for me to tell if the defensive line played well or not. In this type of defense they really aren’t the “playmakers” and didn’t show up much on the stat line. I did note that Justin Brown played well. He seemed to be very quick off the ball and really blew up a few plays. Chris Stewart is really tough to move on the inside but he must play lower and maintain leverage. Being tough to move and being able to control the A-gaps are two different things.

That’s about all I have on defense. To be honest, I really didn’t play as close of attention to them as I should have. Overall I think they were more physical than they had been in the past. I saw some pretty big hits out there, some being given, others taken, but the pursuit, speed, and physical play did seem to be elevated from last year.

Corwin Brown

I’m not going to lie, I’m falling in love with Corwin Brown. I read this excerpt on Blue Gray Sky (link here) that is excellent. It is some comments written by a coach that attended the coaching clinic at ND and listened in on Brown’s session. Brown talks about his philosophy, “first the players, then the plays,” like he extracted it from the Belichick Football Bible. He gets it, you cater your defense to the personell you have. Weis knows it on offense, that’s why we ran 75% of the time on Saturday and threw to the tight end a lot. That’s why our running game this year will look nothing like it has in the past under him. The players seem to love him (Brown), they respect him, they want to play hard for him. He is making waves on the recruiting trail. And on top of all that, he is imparting to all of those defenders who are playing for him the very simple philosophy that they must run and hit, attack the football, and go hard. When he was with the Jets his secondaries always forced tons of turnovers. It was those three things that did it. You have to like it.

But the thing that impresses me the most about him is that he gets football. For the first three spring practices he practiced one defensive front and two coverages. If all else fails, he can come back to that. He can get it done with that. It isn’t that he doesn’t know more complicated and intricate defenses, it is that football isn’t about doing a lot of things. Football is about doing a few things well, and making it look like a lot of things. With twenty hours of practice a week you don’t have the time to practice a lot of things. And Corwin gets this. At this point it is still just talking as I said before (link here), but I really, really like the stuff he is saying.

Recruiting

Well, many people know that recruiting is going well thus far this Spring. Weis has grabbed two top tight end prospects in Rudolph and Fauria and what many regard as the top QB in California and top passing QB in the nation in Crist. These recruits are coming to ND despite a ton of talent and depth at their positions. This is huge for our recruiting. You don’t build a dynasty by taking years off recruiting players. You do it by bringing in top players over and over again. Look at the backfield at USC. They have 5-7 running backs that would probably start anywhere in the country. You can never predict injuries or transfers so it’s great to see us stocking up. We have also really addressed our need at linebacker by getting three commitments thus far. I really like this McDonald kid. He can run for his size, his coach says he can’t get him out of the film room, and he wants to destroy people when he tackles them. The future looks bright and it’s only April.