NOTRE DAME FANS OF NEW ENGLAND
God, Country, Notre Dame
HOW MANY IS ENOUGH
READER POLL: HOW MANY IS ENOUGH?
“Charlie Weis will be sitting squarely on the hot seat in 2009.” That’s how most sports reporters reacted to the announcement from AD Jack Swarbrick that he would be returning to coach the Fighting Irish. There were some who expressed their surprised that he was not replaced following the 3-9 and 7-6 record during the previous two seasons. Yet Swarbrick said he saw reasons for optimism for the upcoming season. He pointed to the coaching staff additions. He also cited another year of strong recruiting. “It helps provide the depth and improves the competitive environment in practice,” he said. Swarbrick also believes the 49-21 victory in the Hawai’i Bowl - the most points scored in the bowl season - has led to improved team spirit and camaraderie. “I feel very good about our preparations,” he said. Swarbrick also had positive words about Coach Weis, saying he hadn’t been given enough credit for coaching through all the pain he was in last season. So now the question remains, what will it take for Coach Weis to retain his job beyond this season?
Despite all of the criticism, no one can deny that Coach Weis loves Notre Dame and, as an alumnus, understands the history and tradition of the University. He has also been a tireless recruiter who has been outspoken when it comes to articulating the benefits of attending the school. Not only has he disproven the myth that Notre Dame can’t get the top recruits because of their academic standards, he has turned a negative into a positive by announcing, “Choosing a college is not a four-year, but a 40-year decision” and “Come to Notre Dame where you can play Division One football AND get a world-class education.” He has also run a clean, no-nonsense program.
It seems like just yesterday that he left the Patriots for South Bend and delighted Irish fans with his brash confidence and Super Bowl rings. After Bob Davies and Tyrone Willingham, most felt certain that he was the man to end the national-title drought that had reached two decades. “Euphoria since has given way to concern and concern to impatience,” said Nancy Armour in a Chicago Sun-Times article. “Weis still has to prove that he’s a worthy successor to Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian and Holtz – and he has to do it now. This is the defining year for Weis, who has little room for error after two dismal seasons that infuriated the faithful and had some calling for him to be fired. However, all will be forgiven if Notre Dame wins 10 or more games and gets back into the mix for a BCS bowl game. But stagger to another mediocre finish or be exposed by USC as a BCS pretender, and the Irish likely will be looking for somebody else to restore the most storied program in college football to prominence.”
Looking back, it is clear that Coach Weis has grown as a college coach. “When you first come into any job, especially coming in from being an assistant coach to a head coach, there’s that level of transition. But 
you do wear an awful lot of hats there. It’s a never-ending process. The one thing I’ve been able to do better as the years have gone on is to continue to evolve with the job,” said Coach Weis. The evolution is seen everywhere: from how he deals with the media to how he relates to his players to how he works with his coaching staff. What remains to be seen is will it translate to more wins? As Lee Corso, ESPN college football analyst said, “There ‘s a hell of a lot of difference between a head coach in college and a head coach or offensive coordinator in the pros. In fact, 80 percent of the time you spend in college is off the field. A college coaching job is part PR, part charity work, part faculty representative, part priest. It’s recruiting. The reason the learning curve didn’t show up earlier was the presence of Brady Quinn and a veteran team.” So, the Weis era opened in the worse possible way, setting the bar deceptively high and creating the perception that Notre Dame was about to regain its elite status. We soon found the truth: Those teams left next to no foundation for the future.
Coach Weis has worked hard to assemble a roster that is deep and talented. Talent is often the difference between a good team and a great team, and the Fighting Irish are moving toward the elite class as a result of the outstanding recruiting classes of the past three years. Furthermore, those highly-rated recruits are experienced. There are 44 letter winners on the roster, including 18 returning starters. Ten of those returnees are on offense; second most in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision. Sixteen players on offense have starting experience and 11 have started at least ten games. Coach Weis had stated when he was hired that, “If you can’t contend for a national title by year five, you’re doing something wrong.” What he didn’t realize was that behind the veteran team that went to BCS bowls in 2005 and 2006 were back-to-back Ty Willingham recruiting classes with marginal talent and alarmingly thin numbers. There were only 75 scholarship athletes in 2005, 14 of whom eventually left the program. When those two classes became juniors and seniors, they should have been the cornerstone of the program. Those who attended the 2007 Blue & Gold spring game remember that the offensive line was so thin that they wore green jerseys. They were forced to do double duty because there were not enough players for two full units. As a result, they had to rely on more freshmen and sophomores than you’d normally like, while lacking leadership because there wasn’t a strong upper class presence on the roster. They have now grown up and represent the foundation of this team. “I think that players can easily fall into an excuse of ‘we’re young.’ The bottom line is we have a lot of guys that aren’t that young anymore. And it’s time for them to step up and mature as a group, mature as a team. Everyone has to make sure that finishing the game is the utmost priority, and a lot of that comes with the maturity of your team,” said Coach Weis. In 2007, opponents outscored the Irish 60-48 in the fourth quarter and last year was pretty much the same. They were outscored 90-54 in the fourth quarter, but that difference increased to 52-14 in the six games they lost. In loses to Syracuse, Boston College and USC, they were shut out in the fourth quarter. Coach Weis has since rebuilt that number to 80 scholarship players to start this season, just five below the 85 maximum. Furthermore, the scholarship numbers are finally balanced among the classes.
Coach Weis has become a better college coach after implementing the results of his “self-assessment” that has followed each season at Notre Dame. This year will be no exception. Weis’ three new assistants and the highest-profile graduate assistant in the county, Bryant Young, have all looked like upgrades in the spring and have sparked optimism about Notre Dame’s most troubled positions from the 2008 season. In his own evaluations, Coach Weis noted that the running game was actually stronger than the passing game in spring practice. This suggests a major improvement at running back and in the offensive line. Its obvious that Coach Weis made a number of mistakes in the early years that a seasoned college head coach would not have. In a March 22nd interview with Eric Hansen, South Bend Tribune Staff Writer, Coach Weis stated, ‘”I can tell you any time I’m anywhere, I’m much more aware of what comes with the territory of being the head coach at Notre Dame. It took me a long time to get to this point, not because I didn’t want to get there, but because I had no clue. Weis’ self-imposed coaching makeover garnered last winter and spring, the bigger steps have been taken this offseason. ”I think the way I’m most like I was when I came here is that my greatest strength is still a level of expertise on offense,” Weis said. “And the way I’m most different is that I have a much better understanding of the differences between college and the pros – because there are a whole bunch of differences. On one level, football is football, but on a lot of levels it’s not. Just the age of the players is one big thing you have to adapt to. And being the focal point of the media is another. In New England, I never talked, because that was the structure of the head coach. Unless you’ve lived through these things – and Notre Dame is different than just about anyplace else – you can never be totally prepared, even though you go into it thinking and saying you would be.” He hired a new running backs coach, a new offensive line coach and a new defensive line coach this winter to address the three chronic problem areas and significantly shifted responsibilities among his incumbent assistants as well as his own. “You’ve got to get away from your ego and figure out how your coaching staff and your team is going to be the most productive.” Coach Weis’ coaching staff realignment has put coaches in the best position to help the team with Corwin Brown, a dynamic leader, running things from the sidelines as Associate Head Coach. “Jon Tenuta calling the plays on defense is the best most Charlie Weis has made. Tenuta in that role is as good as it gets. And Charlie calling offensive plays is second to non. Those two moves will be very good for Irish football,” said Corso. Four seasons ago, Weis’ initial blasts of brashness helped pull Notre Dame back into the national spotlight when it had become a program that elicited indifference from those looking at it from the outside.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that, “Offensive line experience is one of the tell-tale predictors of success in college football. Last season, eight of the top 10 teams in the final AP poll began the season with at least 65 combined career starts by their offensive linemen, including BCS title game participants, Florida and Oklahoma. Two of 2008’s biggest surprises, Utah and Ole Miss, had more than 80 starts of experience, enabling them to improve dramatically on offense. Conversely, Georgia, Missouri and Clemson – three preseason Top 10 teams that disappointed – were green up front, with fewer than 40 starts each. Using this statistic, Notre Dame should be a team to watch this season, as their offensive line starters have 100 career starts. Offensive line play was a huge weakness for the Fighting Irish in 2007 and 2008.
When you combine the talent and experience on the Notre Dame roster with a favorable, manageable schedule, 2009 could be the year that the Irish return to the elite of college football. The Domer Law blog stated, ‘It all begins and ends with the offensive line. For years, offensive line play has been a weak link in the Notre Dame running game. For all his success prior to his stint at Notre Dame, John Latina could not get the job done. He couldn’t teach them zone blocking, he favored cut blocks. Hopefully, Verducci can motivate the offensive line to win one-on-one matchups. They are certainly talented and experienced enough to take the next step. They need to display a mean, nasty attitude coming off the line of scrimmage and bring the fight to the defense rather than waiting for the defense to come to them.
Blue & Gold Nation summed it up: “With the pieces of the puzzle appearing on the table, waiting to be assembled, it appears that the next phase of the Weis era is about to begin. It also appears to be a more coherent one. Energy, for one thing, is clearly seen in the likes of Tony Alford and Randy Hart. Notre Dame needed a spark in the running game and Frank Verducci has been added as “running game coordinator.” Coach Weis began the 2007 stating publically that he finally had the opportunity to pound the ball. It never happened! Two of the people who were responsible are no longer with the program. Coach Weis is back calling plays. Holding the play card in his hand is a role which he is more comfortable in.” South Bend Tribune Columnist Al Legar wrote, ‘New Irish assistant coaches Frank Verducci and Tony Alford have been given the assignment of getting Notre Dame out of triple digits - the Irish offense ranked 116th (out of 119) in the country with a school-record low 75.3 yards per game in 2007 and 100th with 109.7 yards per game in 2008 – and into the end zone. “It’s just a group of special people coming together,” Verducci explained. “ It’s a willingness not to let the other guy down. It’s an unselfish attitude where you’re going to do your part and you don’t care who gets the glory for it. There’s also a schematic aspect. You go against a particular opponent and they place a particular scheme you can exploit. The other is a personnel matchup. You exploit a certain weakness. The schematic aspect may not be there, but your guys are better than theirs. You wear them out that way.” Alford added, “The biggest thing, in all reality, is that you’re more physical than the guy across from you. When he lines up, he knows he just got punched in the mouth. The scary part of it is, he knows it’s going to happen again and there’s not much he can do about it. It’s something of a melding of the two. That’s just the mentality for getting a perfect run game.”’
Let’s be honest. Mike Hutton, Post-Tribune staff writer put it best. “Most Notre Dame fans are weary, skeptical and hopeful. It’s time to stop the hyperbole and get real. They were largely disappointing in 2006, perhaps because they were so good in 2005. They were awful in 2007 when they should’ve just been bad. And they were barely mediocre in 2008, when they should’ve been decent. This is a team and a program with more questions than answers.”
By acknowledging that changes were needed both on and off the field, Coach Weis has gone a long way toward temporarily soothing angry Irish fans. “I’m not really worrying about the past. Right now, the only thing I’m worried about is the start of this football season,” Coach Weis said. “I could sit there and tell you the lofty goals I have, my expectations. But guess what, it’s time for us to back them up.” “I think this is a make- or- break year, said an Irish fan visiting campus with his son recently, “He has to get at least eight or nine wins. Even if he gets seven wins, I don’t think they’ll be happy.” Some would say that Notre Dame improved by four victories from 2007 and 2008, and more improvement is expected over last season’s total of seven wins, especially with a schedule built for success. USC is only team on the schedule that will be a clear favorite, but the key to the season will be Notre Dame’s ability to win some of those “toss-up” games in order to make a push toward a major bowl. What would make you happy? What are your expectations for 2009? How much faith do (still) you have in Coach Weis? How many wins do you think Coach Weis needs to keep his job? So, here’s our Notre Dame Fans of New England Reader Poll:
_____ Will the team continue to make progress, win 8-9 games and go to a second-tier BCS bowl?
_____ Will the team win 10-11 games, go to a major BCS bowl?
_____ Will the team make the leap, win 12-13 games and go to the championship game?