We'll start off with some of the personnel news heading into this week, the most radical change being that freshman Kerry Neal has officially shown enough of his ox like strength to capture the starting Will Linebacker job, replacing Anthongy Vernaglia. Up to this point in the season, Neal has been used mainly to rush the quarterback or help out on run defense, aka he hasn't been dropped into coverage that often. Look for Neal to be one of Charlie's go to weapons for disrupting the efficient BC passing attack.
Continuing to employ his strange depth chart strategies, Charlie still has Barry Gallup listed ahead of Golden Tate on the receiver list, but this was the case last week and Tate had multiple plays called to him while Gallup didn't get any touches. Weis said that Tate is lower on the list this week because he got banged up a little bit against UCLA, joking that the real reason is so Gallup, a Boston native, can see some action against his former home team.
Injury wise, David Grimes has been practicing this week and he should be ready to go on Saturday. Sophomore guard Dan Wenger, however, is still recovering from a knee injury against Michigan; Weis hinted in his latest press conference that once Dan was able to do everything full speed, he would have to earn his starting job back, and who can blame Weis for that? Not once while he was in the starting lineup did ND achieve positive rushing yards, and the line has looked much more physical with Matt Carufel filling in for him at the guard spot.
When asked what it was like working with such a young group of players, Charlie said that he has spent more time mentally and psychologically this year than ever before:
"With such a young group, you need to spend extra time to make sure that the players aren't just nodding their heads, but that they actually understand the situation."
But while the team may be young, one of their strengths has been the ability to play as a team:
"You need to practice and act like a team in order to win games like Saturday, and this team has done that. The defense has shown spurts of getting better while the offense has only shown flashes. "
Speaking of the offense, Weis and the Observer both commented on how the offense could look a little different against Boston College than it did against UCLA. The idea is that against the Bruins, an inept backup quarterback allowed Notre Dame to sit back and be content with making less mistakes than him.
Matt Ryan is virtually incomparable with Mcleod Bethel-Thompson, and it would be a large underestimation of his ability to think that Notre Dame could hold BC to 6 points. To counter the Eagles offense, the Irish will plan on opening up the offense a little bit to try and move the ball more. In the UCLA game, the passes thrown were either short and safe dump passes or deep fly routes to the Golden boy. This conservative strategy will be tweaked a little bit this Saturday as more intermediate routes will be used to stretch out the defense and open up the field for some big plays (or at least a few more first downs).
Following Charlie's previous comments about going back to training camp, we should be almost ready for the home opener this weekend. This will be the fourth straight week of "full speed" practices for Notre Dame, and this style of play seems to be one of the main reasons our defense has looked so improved in the past games. Especially against UCLA, we showed good closing speed on the ball and actually hit with some intensity. If the Irish can improve on that performance, this rivalry game could be closer than some people are predicting.
Hope for the best. Go Irish. Beat Eagles.
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