When an opponent turns the ball over 6 times, good teams usually put up points in the 40 to 50 point range for wins. Not this time, Notre Dame eked out only a 7 point win. Notre Dame has a serious identity problem on what type of offense to run. In the end it just looks like a mish mash of confusion and ultra conservative play calling and misuse of some of your best players, especially Eifert and Wood.

Eifert is an All American tight end as a receiver–not a blocker. So they are doubling him–leaves someone else open and he came through with a clutch catch to cement this win. It was his first catch in 2 games. Kelly lectures the media that tight ends by definition are really blockers–see some of the disconnect here.

Riddick was terrific and he is my MVP on offense followed by the maligned Tommy Rees who came into the game after Golson had a meltdown mid way in the 2nd quarter. Yet Kelly says Golson is still the starter.

Now Golson may improve, he has a strong arm but looks to me that he is more of a thrower than passer with no touch. He throws way too much into coverage– example to the end zone to Niklas who was covered by 3 Michigan defenders. Now we all know Rees’s limitations and he is not the future but as a 3 year player it feels a lot safer with him in the game and I think his teammates feel the same way.

So we have big problems going ahead especially with an offensive line that has been playing awful except in certain spurts–I give the OL a D grade for this game. Somebody better be working aggressively with Kiel. If he really is a 5 star passer you just have to get him into games somehow this year. He is not going to sit on the bench for the next 3 years.

Finally, finishing with the offense I give a game ball to Michigan coach Brady Hoke who called a time out for a measurement at the end of the game when the refs had it as 4th and 1–backfired showed first down and ND took a kneel to end the game.

This was actually a horrible game for both offenses and badly coached by each coach.

Defense–give them an A with everybody stepping up including all those kids running around like a bunch of frisky squirrels. The DL played great as usual. What more can you say about Manti–that was just a great performance and should seal up the Butkus Award. To name a few other star players on D–Zeke Motta and Danny Spond.

The problem here is we just cannot expect the defense to stop everyone and spend that much time on the field. Kelly has 2 weeks to get this offense tuned up–they have to score points and lots of them with our remaining schedule. I sure hope Kelly has been saving plays because what he’s doing now just won’t work against the rest of this schedule.

I’ll take this win and happy to be 4-0 until I read this article by Greg Couch of Fox Sports–kind of deflating:

4-0 start not as impressive as it seems

Checking in with Charlie Weis his Kansas team lost to Northern Illinois 30-23. Crist 10 0f 26 no TD’s and no picks but 4 sacks. Kansas is now 1-3.