I wish Jake Locker was playing
Check out the latest Subway Alumni Show, as Sprout and Eric prepare for their trip to the West Coast. This Saturday night, Notre Dame travels to Seattle for Tyrone Willingham’s final non-conference game as coach of the Washington Huskies. This has been a devastating year for all of us as Husky fans, but at least we know that Tyrone will soon be gone and there will be a new coach to finally turn the team around (my vote is for Lane Kiffin). Enough of that, let’s examine the game:
The opening line is ND by 11 points, and similar to ndgravy’s point #2, there is a part of me worried about Ty miraculously getting his team up to somehow win this game even though they are 0-6. The fact that ND is currently 0-2 on the road also worries me. After careful thinking, I’ve decided that will not happen, and Notre Dame will win in a route. I have watched 4 of the Huskies games, and besides their almost-comeback against BYU, nothing has been close. Even the 35-28 game wasn’t that close, as Stanford seemed to be in control for the entire game.
Some interesting statistics at the halfway point of the Husky season: As a team they average 103 yds rushing and 216 yds passing, while allowing 41 points per game. Now, ND is only rushing for 101 yds per game, but at least the Irish are passing better, for 272 yds per game, and Jimmy has improved on that number for 3 straight weeks. If Weis wanted to, he could allow Jimmy Clausen to once again set his career best passing game and hit 400 yards, but that will not happen. ND is going to jump out to such a large lead that there will be no need to keep throwing the ball. Luckily, UW’s run defense is pretty miserable, so I see Armando Allen having a career day, most likely running well over 100 yards.
UW as a whole is very slow. Oregon State ran sweeps and end-arounds all day with great success, and their leading rusher last Saturday was a receiver. UW is easily tricked on misdirection and lack the speed to make up for mistakes. I hope Weis takes advantage of this. Even if he doesn’t specifically take advantage of UW’s lack of discipline, ND’s receivers spreading the field will give Washington’s secondary fits and open up the running game. In the game against Arizona, the Wildcats spent a lot of the game just running trick plays for what 
looked like the fun of it. They seemed to always work, so it would be fun to watch if ND can mix something fun like that into the game plan.
Unfortunately, I think ND might have problems stopping UW from time to time. However, UW is young and undisciplined, so plan on them making a lot of drive-killing mistakes on offense, thus helping Notre Dame’s defense. But from time to time, Ronnie Fouch (Jake Locker’s replacement) will make something happen, and the Huskies have a few young playmakers at RB, TE, and WR that will surprise ND. So I don’t see ND completely shutting out the Huskies, and the Irish should win, 35-13. For my crazy prediction of the day, you will see a receiver throw a touchdown pass. My money is Tate to Floyd on a reverse pass.
Filed under: Notre Dame
If Weis let’s Jimmy air the ball out, he better not stop him. That’s what we did against Stanford and we let them back into the game. Running out the clock when we have a significant lead with anything more than 5 minutes in the game means the other team has a chance of coming back into it.
Sorry we’re gonna miss you this weekend. We’ll be sure to play a couple rounds of Thunder for you.
I agree 100%. I’m not in the camp that thinks we should pound the ball. We have a team that’s built to be sweet at the passing game, so we should go for it.
Luckily, UW’s defense is bad enough that we should do a good job running the ball against them (and probably give the coaches false hope that we are getting a decent running game). It’s just not the way I would do it.
I think that we have a team that should average 125-150 yards a game at an average of over 4 yards a carry. I’m more than fine being a passing team. I just think that the offense should be able to run the ball after opening up the running lanes with the passing game. That is part of what made Darius Walker look like a good running back… his ability to be a good runner in a passing offense. I think Allen can do good things if we get him the ball in space (like Reggie Bush with New Orleans, who can’t run the ball worth anything but he does good things when he gets the ball on passes behind the line of scrimmage). I’d like to see Hughes and Allen be able to run between the tackles more. Both have shown bursts over the last two years, but neither has been consistent.
Anyways, I’m fine being a passing team, though I want to have a reliable running game to keep the defense off balance. That is what made out 2005 team so good, and it is also the strength of this season Texas team (and OU does this fairly well, as well). Just my two cents.