Notre Dame vs Texas A&M Day After Discussion + ND vs NIU Pregame Analysis

welcome in Irish fans it is Sunday September 1st welcome to September and welcome to Victory Sunday I hope they both feel like great days they feel pretty darn good for me um good game overall yesterday going into Kyle Field College Station tough environment everybody knew it we've been talking about it all week lot of Notre Dame fans showed up looked like you know thousand to 2,000 Notre Dame fans showed up which was good to see we always travel well but man did we need to get in there and get a win yesterday and having a little bit of a home crowd there was certainly an advantage of some sort all right so few things to talk about today I think the the first thing on everybody's mind is is the offensive line we're also going to talk about a little later the NIU game coming up next weekend next Saturday um got some obligations later this week and I just don't have time to do a a second podcast uh later this week so we're going to go ahead and cover that at the end of this and I'll make my score prediction we'll talk a little bit about how How the Irish or what the Irish should do how they should perform against a Mac team which frankly I I'm I'm not sure is even in the picture or in the conversation for winning the Mac but first we're going to talk a little bit about yesterday's game what what gets you worried what gets you excited and what do we really take away from what we saw I think the first thing that we take away from what we saw is that our our offensive line has some communication issues to work out Sam Pendleton and Anthony knap need to get on the same page and some of that's going to be Co coaching and some of that's going to be trust and some of that's going to be experience just playing with each other in practice and the coaches I'm sure have watched a ton of what happened yesterday and they're going to go after those mistakes that we had in practice yesterday they're they're going to go after the communication problems and shift up the line shift up the defensive look have guys you know move into Blitz and then back out and then Blitz somebody else that didn't look like they were going to Blitz send to safety send a a different linebacker so they're going to mix it up on those guys and and really get those guys to communicate this week noise certainly always plays a factor in communication so I don't want to take away completely from those two guys what they accomplished yesterday as as you know two linemen who really hadn't well they certainly never started a game with each other before yesterday was Anthony nap's first game was his first college football game and he held his own against scouton the best defensive pass rusher in the big 10 last year nap comes in as a freshman and he held his own one holding call the line gave up zero sacks and I'm not saying that that doesn't have as much to do with Riley Leonard as the quarterback as it does with the performance of those two but Riley Leonard's not Superman and he's not getting that done on his own he's not giving up zero sacks all by himself without a little bit of help against a a front defensive front let's call it nine because when we had two wide outs they had nine guys in the Box most of the time no safety help over the top maybe maybe single high safety coverage over the top but the second it looked like a run everybody was in the box now why we didn't run a little bit of play action on some of those kind of play I don't know like that that that's one thing that I am going to be confused about and will continue to be confused about with the play calling maybe they just didn't practice any play action maybe they they thought you know all right well we'll go in there and we'll just go with the fundamentals very very little play play action yesterday I'm not sure that it would have made a whole lot of difference the re the the corners were not biting on the play action and despite the fact that we had our wide receivers you know in in single coverage with their Corners we really weren't getting open little bit of miscommunication between the wide receivers and and Riley Leonard and we saw one yesterday between Jeremiah Love and Riley Leonard uh you know love broke to the inside of the end zone Leonard through to the outside shoulder I think it was the right it was the right throw it was the wrong read by love but but again that's that's communication that's working together that's that's learning how your quarterback operates and that's that's a little bit of learning your position uh on the part of Jeremiah Love who is not used to being lined up as a wide receiver and being utilized as a wide receiver in some of those circumstances and you leave him back there because if you need to pull him back to to block you'd rather have him back there to block than one of our wide receivers who's you know probably great at a crack block but you don't want a wide receiver going up against a defensive end or a linebacker I want to give a little bit of credit actually I want to give a whole lot of credit to Cooper Flanigan yesterday for a crack block the 21 yard touchdown run 29 yard touchdown run that Jeremiah Love made yesterday if it weren't for a crack block that run stopped short at five yards and then Jeremiah Love did the rest and man that was a beautiful play that was an absolutely beautiful play our line did everything it was supposed to do there we got that one extra guy into the into the blocking scheme that we needed Flanigan executed perfectly love executed perfectly and we scored our second touchdown of the day and again I want I want to give the line credit for the jaran price touchdown too not for the whole touchdown certainly jaran price goes in he makes one guy Miss and he's gone and it was and it was a thing of beauty but the line set it up the line set it up because if it's not a one-on-one situation for jarian price it's not a touchdown right football is a team sport we all know that and the the running backs and the receivers and the quarterbacks the defensive backs you know the really the defense as a whole those guys all get a lot of credit because you see the stats on their stat sheet for what they've done at the end of the day and what they've done right and what they've done really well you see the sacks you see the interceptions you see the number of tackles you see the number of pass breakups all that shows up on the stat card but what doesn't show up on the stat card is I executed my block correctly so that number four could run 29 yards through nine guys for a touchdown and he basically went untouched I want you to go back and watch that play I want you to watch him squeeze for the line I want you to see what Cooper Flanigan did there he really kind of sealed the left Edge uh helped out an nap a little bit on that on that one but man he you know I mean nap's nap had two guys to block Flanigan comes in and lays down the block and just opens the Gap just enough for love to squeeze through go back and watch that play because it's it's a thing of beauty and then slips through and does does the rest I mean that was a great whole team play now one of the things I'm surprised about for from yesterday is the 198 total rushing yards because watching that game did not feel like a 198 rushing yard game it felt like a passing game in a lot of ways but more than anything it just felt like a defensive standoff Riley Leonard's longest Rush yesterday was 11 yards love had the 29 yard rush and then jaran price had the 47 yard rush for the touchdown again thing of beauty right that was a whole team effort everybody did their job on that play and executed well starting with the offensive line so we can be hard on the offensive line for the Mis blocks and the miscommunications and the inexperience and that's that's not on them that is a lack of playing together that is a lack of knowing each other and knowing how to work with each other Anthony knp and Sam Pendleton will get better as the year goes on now I had my own frustrations with all of that yesterday I found myself at some point during that game saying where is Tosh Baker when we need him I sent a message to a friend said man I I like I would love to see Tosh in the game for a few minutes it's not what I said but it's what I said you know and it was it's it was the lack of experience the ongoing lack of experience and the lack of communication between Pendleton and nap that was causing problems so the coaches will work on that this week and I think once we get to ni like as we get to NIU and as we work and we play against NIU they're going to continue to work on that because you can guarantee the niu's watching the game film and they saw what happened there and they're going to try to capitalize on the Same Mistakes One game at a time we always talk about one game at a time you know I I I talk about one game at a time shut out the noise right there's a lot of noise out there there's a ton of noise about we got to get ready for Louisville we got to get ready for Purdue we got to get ready for southern cal southern Cal's in November puru two weeks away we got to get ready for inite NIU watched our watched this game you can guarantee every coach at NIU watched this game especially the defensive coaches and they are using that they're using the mistakes that we made this week to try to exploit our defense and our offense next week that's their job that's what they're going to do that's how they're going to prep their team this week so how do we prep our team by working on the communication and trying to get to to overcome the mistakes that we made now I don't know if anybody's watched NIU play a football game the the Mac is not known for being a well- covered well televised football team and quite frankly I could probably just look over here at my screen on the left and and take a take a peek to see if they played but the point that I'm trying to make is that it really doesn't matter if they've played a game yet or not we just got to go do what we're supposed to go do and the way we do that is by working on the offensive line communication and the communication between Riley Leonard and the receivers and I think this coming week we TR to take away those opportunities for Leonard to run we try to minimize those because we don't want to get him hurt playing against NIU or Miami Ohio or Navy or Army and those are the easy games on our schedule right we maybe take a few more chances against Purdue and Georgia Tech and Louisville but these these group of five Conference teams that were playing this year we got to make sure we really protect our quarterback on those so practice this week expected to be for the line working on communication expect the coaches to send it those guys exactly what they saw against A&M this week it might be ones on twos might be ones on ones might be ones on a practice squad I know the practice squad's been built but I wouldn't be surprised if it's one oneson ones unless they're just really trying to keep guys from getting hurt they could very well we you know we've got some injuries they could very well say you know we don't want anybody getting hurt stay away from the oneson ones speaking of injuries we we saw how aggressive our D line is yesterday and I don't think they're out there intentionally trying to hurt anybody but they're tough and they're tough to go against and I will say they're probably four the most aggressive guys three the most aggressive guys yeah no we'll say four We'll add We'll add batell in there four the most aggressive guys in the country they will come after you and they will challenge you and I expect them to continue to do that I expect that against NIU the other thing that I I think really needs to get worked on this week is is the communication and I've I've already said it but the communication between the quarterback and the wide receivers those guys need to get on the same page and they will continue to get better as time goes on right young wide receiver wide receiver core transfer quarterback got a you know we've got transfer receivers as well but for the most part very young wide receiver core so those guys are going to have to work on communication this week as well and the way we keep Leonard from going out and making a lot of big plays with his feet CU one in practice we make him throw the ball and I do think we get a practice squad out there for that I think we see some practice squad Corners because our practice squad ought to be as good as niu's first string maybe a little better maybe a little worse here and there but but pretty similar and you start giving Leonard some opportunities to throw the ball in practice against guys that are wide open and you start building trust between the wide receivers and the quarterback and the quarterback and the wide receivers because trust works both ways right defense is solid Aiden Scher had a pick yesterday Christian Gray nearly had a pick yesterday he played his heart out he had that one pass interference call I think that was a good play on his part if he doesn't pull that guy down you know probably goes for six so why take the chance he knew he was beat take the penalty move on there were some bad penalties there were a lot of bad penalties yesterday a lot of bad penalties that were caused by being in a hostile environment against a really good team and being an aggressive ball team and you know as frustrating as those penalties were as frustrating as the the offsides penalties were that that was a product of the environment that we were in as much as it was anything else and they learned quickly they stepped back they tone down the aggression they started playing smart first game of the season emotions are high you got all that noise around you you're going to make some mistakes like that I think the one penalty I really didn't like yesterday was the offensive pass interference you know I mean Leonard has got to know not to throw that football when he's got guys actively when he's got receivers actively blocking downfield he's got to know that that's going to get called and that's going to get called every time and I'm sure the coach pulled him over and had a conver ation with him I don't know if it was coach Gino or if it was coach free or who it was but one of those guys I'm sure pulled him aside and said hey look you got receivers actively blocking downfield you can't let the ball go they're going to call that every time we all remember when it happened get you know for to Brian Kelly and it was like the first time they had ever called it but they've been consistently calling it since then we we all remember the you know the the pick block play in the end zone so you know if you expect them to not call it they're going to call it every time you can't you can't have active blocks going on while the ball's in the air and you can't just expect your blockers to let their blocks go and then try to pick them back up because you threw the ball or because you want to throw the ball you just got to run it's the only really it's the only penalty that I have a problem with I don't have a problem with the Anthony knp hold I'd rather take a hold than a sack six-yard loss and a loss of down in my mind is worse than a 10 yard loss and not losing the down so take the penalty now the only other hold that I really don't like was was the one that you know pulled back a long run but we scored right after that so kind to wash our hands with that one and I you know not standing out vividly in my memory again right because jarian price scored right after that I don't I don't even remember who it was I think it was I think it was Flanigan but one of the things that I would like to see more this coming week is the use of our tight ends Flanigan had a catch I I don't think Mitch Evans number even ever got called you know I we bring some of the best tight ends in the country into this University and we just didn't take advantage yesterday those are receiving threats that we have out there that we need to do a better job of utilizing and maybe that's a trust thing still but I would love to see a little bit of trust that you can throw the ball up for for your tight end who's 66 and has a great vertical over a linebacker who's 63 or over a Corner who's 61 would love to see that we didn't see any of that yesterday we saw a little bit of challenging with Bo Collins Bo Collins got in there and and and got it done for us a few times they found a matchup that they liked there and they exploited it a little bit so I like that I like that we've got a a chippy feisty wide receiver that wants to go in there and make a play for us and he and has great hands but we got a pair of if not three very good tight ends that are exactly the same way so why are we not utilizing why are we not taking advantage of that matchup those matchups those are my questions about the offense from yesterday about why you know like what we didn't what we didn't do and why did we not do that differently and if I got to sit sit down in a in a press conference with Coach Dem Brock that'd probably be the question I'd ask why didn't we take advantage of the tight end situation and the you know certainly obvious mismatches there and why didn't we utilize play action a little bit more all right let's talk a little bit about the NIU game I I really don't have a whole lot to say about this game um the game frankly ought to be a blowout if we go out there and we play with some passion we play with some heart and we go out to make a statement and that's what we need to do we need to go out there and we need to make a statement we need to show the rest of the country that we're as good as ol Miss beaten up on Ferman as as good as Alabama beaten up on Western Kentucky as good as Ohio State beaten up on akan and all of the other teams yesterday in the top 10 that played an FCS team or a Mountain West or a sun belt or a Mac or you name it kind of team and we need to go make the same statement in a home game in week one this past week's week zero we get two Buys so we're not taking the week zero buy that a lot of that a lot of teams a lot of people take we need to go out and we need to make that statement we need we need to we need to go out and put 63 points on the board and the way that we do that is by giving Riley Leonard the opportunity to throw the ball downfield now the other thing that does for Riley Leonard right I think everybody watches the game yesterday and they say oh well yeah Leonard's a great athlete I'm certainly saying it Leonard's a great athlete but I don't think he's the best quarterback on our team I think that title belongs to any one of the three quarterbacks sitting in the depth chart behind him probably CJ car maybe Steve angelli maybe Kenny meni and based on what we've seen in actual games the evidence is that in the way of a quarterback in the way of a passing pocket quarterback I believe Steve Angeli is a better quarterback than Riley lyard but he's not a better athlete and he's not better at improvising Riley Leonard played a football game yesterday and and you know who he reminded me of he reminded me of Tim TBO I was having flashbacks to Tim TBO triple option yesterday lowering his shoulder and just bowling over linebackers that's what I that's what I saw right the problem with that is it's it's great for us right now here at Notre Dame but the problem with that is is it doesn't contribute to a lengthy career in the NFL for Riley Leonard so we need to show for him for his sake and for the sake of all of the quarterback recruits out there that are that are planning to come into Notre Dame we need to show them that we can teach a transfer quarterback to throw the ball down field to an open receiver and make some big plays through the air because that's what everybody looks for today and I would like to see I would like to see football going go back to a little bit more of the the lower your shoulder and knock somebody on their butt kind of game but that's not reality not g to happen very often you know and and and the heck of the thing is is like Leonard's a big guy but I don't think he fits the mold of big NFL quarterback he's just not big enough he's not built like a tight end or a linebacker and that's the kind of guy you got to be heck I don't think he's built like Tim TBO who would have made a great running back or fullback and frankly was a real real competitor and did all the right things in the NFL and the fact that he's didn't stay an NFL quarterback is still mind-blowing to me because he he just went out there and got it done and that's exactly what Leonard did for us yesterday that's why I'm comparing those two guys that's why I'm looking at this and I'm saying hey we've got the same thing here but we have got to set this young man up for success for the NFL we've got to show that he can we got to show off what his arm can do and I I want to see I want to see him do that this week against NIU I want to see him put the ball up in the air and hit great house and Mitchell and you know fison and everybody else right and Faison's out he's hurt yesterday I'm I'm hoping that's not too too serious but but you get the idea that's the kind of production we need from him next week that's how we get 63 to nothing because I think that's the statement we need to make 63 to nothing we need to go out there and show everybody that we can put up more points on a Mac team than Ohio State now they're going to they're going to do everything they can to take advantage of the weaknesses that they saw this week and that'll make it a little bit harder because akan didn't know what any of Ohio State's weaknesses were going into this week's game neither did Western Kentucky about Alabama neither did Ferman about ol Miss so putting up that High double digit shutout is not going to be quite as easy but we kept what everybody said was going to be one of the best offenses in the country to 13 points yesterday so we sure as heck ought to be able to do the same thing to NIU I'd like to see Howard cross have three or four sacks I'd like to see Riley Mills have three or four sacks I'd like to see Jordan Bello have three or four sacks heck we put the three of those guys together we get nine that'd be a great game defensively we probably won't get that I don't think they'll start I don't think they'll throw the ball that often if that starts to happen but this is a team that can limit yardage can play well against the run and can limit the number of mistakes that we make and and I you know I think we just need to keep the first string in there and play him hard and and make that put the put the punctuation put the dot on the exclamation point that we made yesterday this is a great football team and this coming Saturday it needs to go prove it so again I'm saying 63 nothing I think that should be the goal I think that should be the minimum of the goal no points allowed no field goals we'll see how the rest of the season pans out after that um you know once again I I I want to reiterate I think stats can be incredibly deceiving that's unfortunately what everybody judges football on these days everybody's you know everybody thinks they know statistics they'll look at this game yesterday and they'll say oh well we had 200 rushing yards 198 rushing yards sure as heck didn't feel like it if you go back and watch the game and the heck of the thing is everybody watched this game everybody watched this game and nobody's going to go and watch Notre Dame versus NIU so we made a statement yesterday we got to make a statement on the stat card on Saturday it's just unfortunately how college sports is today that's all I've got for this week I love you all keep looking up go Irish be NIU see you next Sunday