Irish Blogger Gathering: The “Saying A Lot By Asking Obtuse Questions” Edition

This week's IBG questions come from Her Loyal Sons:

What photo of some member of the 2008 Irish squad doing something, anything at all, really, says all 1,000 words that need to be said about this team? OR, which photo of some member of the 2008 Irish squad doing something would tell 1,000 lies about this team if you only saw the photo and didn’t know better? (Double-secret word score bonus for answering both mutations of the same question)
DomerMQ wrote about the picture of Olsen growling over Michigan’s Mouton. At the time, the picture seemed to offer hope for Irish fans; our young players were beating down on a rival that had thumped us two years straight, and they were looking angry (in a good way) while doing it. In retrospect, I think this picture (courtesy of MS Paint Like A Champion Today) may say some things about our team:
A lot of ND fans got so pumped about the Olsen picture, but since the UM beatdown, our team has gone 3-3, showing a lot of second half softness in four of those games and only showing the same fire in wins over 3-6 Purdue and 0-8 Washington. So if ND is represented by this superhero-like picture of Olsen, it seems that our kryptonite comes from playing close games against above average teams, which doesn’t seem to make us much like a superhero at all.

Some of you may know that I (domer.mq) am a football stat geek. Which statistic do you think geeks like myself should really be paying attention to this season and why? (Can pertain to ND or CFB in general.)

Clausen’s 44 attempts last weekend gave my QB analysis chart another data point that supports one of my conclusions from the article: when Jimmy has more than 40 pass attempts, we lose. This stat may be most correlated with the running game, but not necessarily in terms of YPC. When we throw the ball a lot, opposing defenses tend to only rush 3-5 linemen and drop the rest into coverage, and JC has struggled when facing a lot of defensive players in the secondary, turning the ball over or displaying a low completion percentage. Until Clausen makes the next leap in his development, we should try to stay between 20-35 attempts if we can run the ball (with Allen!) with any success at all.

Give me the damn ball!
Seeing as how Boston College is nothing but an up-jumped program enjoying the luxury and soft Corinthian leather of an ACC schedule, which team from the current top 25 would you love to see this year’s Irish play this weekend in Fredo’s stead? Why? Do you think the Irish would win? Describe the game. Paint us a picture! I’ll get the popcorn!

First off, I would very much like to play (and destroy) Boston College this weekend because while they are not generally a great team, they have won five straight against the Irish, moving the all time series record to 9-8 in favor of the Irish. This game gives us an opportunity to distance ourselves from the Eagles, which I hope the team takes advantage of.
Not to dodge the question though, if we could play any team in the top 25 this week, it would be Ball State for me. Boring pick, you ask? Maybe, but when I went to the Purdue game last year, some trash talking fan claimed that Notre Dame was the worst team in the state of Indiana, saying with a thick West Lafayette accent, “You can’t even beat Ball State!” The sad thing is that the jumbo-tron-loving Boilermaker may actually have been right last year, so I would like to see Notre Dame thoroughly handle Ball State this year just to give me some peace of mind.
Just beat 'em already!
Let’s dispose of the gradient colors and subtle vagaries of college football for a moment and answer this question with one of the supplied, absolute answers and a blurb defending your pick. No waffling! The Question: Why is Notre Dame unable to put away games when leading going into half time? The possible answers: 1) ND Players all have a soft, nougat center 2) The Coaches don’t want to tick off potential future employers 3) God doesn’t think it’s classy to blow a team out 4) The ND Fanbase can’t really stomach blowouts any more than they could stomach a protracted land war in Asia. Remember, you must pick one and you must defend it with great vigor!

While I may be able to write a more humorous answer by responding to 2-4, I really do think that right now the problem is with the players. Sure the coaches may have hurt their chances by dampening their “strategic advantage,” but the fact is that when you come out flat and don’t execute, you aren’t going to have much success. Coming out flat doesn’t have much to do with a nougat center, but not being able to recapture control of the game after you give your opponent momentum does. Remember that picture of Olsen I mentioned? The Irish have shown a lot of positive nastiness when they have been in control of games, but when the game begins to slip away, the players visibly begin to lose confidence. As Weis said following the Pitt loss, the confidence should improve as the team wins a few close nail biters, thus hardening the nougat center into something more like hardened caramel.

Tennessee just began celebrating the career of Phil Fulmer today this week as he announced that he’d been given the opportunity to make it look like resigning was his idea. Certainly, this is a clarion call to ADs across the country to begin worrying over their tea that, should their current HC not work out, they wont get a shot at #s 1-5 on their candidate list. Tell us about an AD who may be looking at this move by Tennessee and acting a bit more aggressively towards a reduction in force of his current football staff now rather than later. And who might that AD be trying to seduce before Tennessee already has a “hand shake agreement” with the guy?
I’ve never been a big coach candidate follower (unless ND or the Browns are looking for one, which I guess has been fairly often over the last decade), so don’t put much into my answer here. If I had to pick one coach that is hot on the market, my knee-jerk reaction is Skip Holtz, who has displayed some great coaching capability by beating a few ranked teams with an understaffed ECU squad. I think that Holtz will have a couple offers to choose from after this season.