RAM VELA, SUPAHMAN THAT HO
We’d hand out Thighsman awards to ten to fifteen players today: Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada, Chad Henne’s one good knee, Percy Harvin, Jamaal Charles, Dennis Dixon, Beanie Wells. Yet if forced into a corner and held at gunpoint and made us pick one, we’d probably shit our pants with fright. And if you did that over football, you’d be very, very strange, or perhaps an Ohio State fan.
If one absolutely had to have our play of the day, it would be Ram Vela’s spring-loaded vault over Armando Allen and subsequent sack of Evan Sharpley in Navy’s victory over Notre Dame. For timing, it wins: a sack on fourth down to force overtime. For drama, it’s peerless, with the Midshipman uncorking every last quark of athleticism in his being to pull the Roy Williams redux on a helpless Sharpley.
The quality’s not great, but what it lacks in clarity the clip makes up for in enthusiasm. Sleep well, Middies. You get to sleep until 7 tomorrow morning in honor of your fine work.
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51
oc phil says:
So you don’t think the mob with pitchforks and torches might have had some impact on “Ty’s” last recruiting class? Any coach clearly on the hot seat has trouble bringing in top recruits. And Weis, with his 10 year contract. does not fall into that category. I still think it is ridiculous to “blame” someone fired in December for a recruiting class when the LOI day is in February.
As for Quinn, he’s hardly the first quarterback to suddenly get much better as a junior or senior. Carson Palmer might be an even more extreme example of a pattern that happens all the time.
I guess that Charlie still has a better winning percentage than Willingham, 588 compared to .583. Though he will need to win 2 out of the last 3 to keep it and at this point I’d favor both Air Force and Stanford over ND.
Unlike SKLM, I’m not generally a Notre Dame basher (just a Weis basher). I respect the school and the program and I’d rather see USC beat a good ND team than a bad one.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:36 am
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GeronimoRumplestiltskin says:
Hi oc phil -
First, I know that you don’t belong in the same category as SKLM. I’m sure he is a fine fellow in all other respects, but on the subject of Notre Dame, he is like Richard Dawkins on the subject of religion: his “insights” are ill-informed and foolish, but he just can’t leave the subject alone.
Second, I apologize in advance for the long post. I prefer complete thoughts to sound bytes, so bear with me.
As an ND fan and alum, I don’t hate USC, either. I actually missed them being a powerhouse in the ’80’s and ’90’s because playing them at their peak is a lot more fun.
Let address your points:
No, I don’t think the “mob with pitchforks and torches” had any bearing on the 2005 recruiting class for two reasons:
a) No one, neither inside ND nor out, thought Willingham would be fired after three seasons. Everyone assumed that he would get five years. That he was fired after three years came as a complete shock. Simply put, until the day he was fired, no one thought he was going anywhere for at least another 2 seasons.
(Note: SKLM and others cry “racism” over Ty not getting five years, but the truth is that consecutive non-winning seasons + two extremely subpar recruiting classes + unwillingness to change staff though ND never ranked higher than 81st in offense and had the 2nd worst pass defense in the country in 2004 despite a senior-laden defense + 3 straight 31-point losses to USC = fired. Faust and Davie never had consecutive non-winning seasons, recruited well, made staff changes, and both fought till their last day to keep their job; Ty began talking to Washington in Oct. 2004, when no one in ND’s administration had even uttered a whisper that he might be let go. Ty would have been let go regardless of skin color; however, if he were white, nary a complaint would have been heard about it, as there was none about Florida’s [Name Redacted], who was fired after 2 1/2 seasons, had the identical record as Willingham on the day of his firing, and was a much better recruiter. Cries of racism and unfairness on ND’s part are unwarranted, and serve as little more than a stick to beat ND with.)
b) The “mob with pitchforks and torches” was there for Gerry Faust, who oozed ND blue and gold from every pore, pretty much from the first season. It did not stop him from signing four straight Top 10 classes.
The “mob with pitchforks and torches” was there for Bob Davie during his 3rd season, a 5-7 campaign. It did not stop him from signing a #8 – #12 class (depending on whose rankings you look at). The mob for Davie, believe it or not, was actually more vicious than the one for Ty, as it was widely held among ND faithful that Davie had had a hand in Lou Holtz being forced out three years earlier.
c) Ty’s second class was, at the time, the worst class ND had signed in over 40 years, maybe ever. It had only 17 players in it, with no 5-star players and only 1 4-star player (Walker). Ty and his staff were very slow in their recruiting efforts, often not making initial contact with top players until they were already reported as being a “heavy lean” somewhere else. Of the recruits that listed ND as a final candidate but ended up signing somewhere else, their feedback on ND was damningly uniform: the other schools had made much more of an effort than Ty and his staff.
You would think Ty would change his approach after Feb. 2004, but he did not. He and his staff actually had to be called (by the AD) back from a golf outing in May 2004 – a prime recruiting month for the following year’s class – and told to get out on the recruiting trail. Nevertheless, as of Nov. 2004, the 2005 class was shaping up to be even worse than the previous one. They had no verbal commitments from any 4- or 5-star recruits. Of the recruits who had not yet verballed anywhere, ND was only listed in the top 5 choices for 2 recruits in the Scout Top 100. Even if those 2 had signed with ND (they didn’t), the class would have not finished in anyone’s Top 25 recruiting class rankings. Charlie picked up a couple of signees and lost a couple who had verballed, which in the recruiting rankings ended up as a wash – they gained as much as they lost.
To sum up, I have presented all the reasons I can as to why I consider the blame for the subpar 2005 class to be on Ty.
Next point:
“As for Quinn, he’s hardly the first quarterback to suddenly get much better as a junior or senior. Carson Palmer might be an even more extreme example of a pattern that happens all the time.”
Um, yes, though in citing Palmer as an example of “a pattern that happens all the time”, you could hardly have picked a worse candidate to make your case, as he, too, benefited from a coaching change. Palmer indeed had a breakout year in 2002 – once he had spent some time under the tutelage of Norm Chow. Good coach+talented student = success. Are you going to tell me that Chow had nothing to do with Palmer’s success? But perhaps you’re right, maybe it was just a coincidence that Charlie arrived right at the time Quinn was ready to throw 3 times as many TD passes and half the INTs and increase his completion rate from 50% to 65% over the next two seasons. Perhaps also it was coincidence that when Weis began coaching Vinnie Testaverde in 1998 with the Jets, the 11-year mediocre-to-bad QB had a career year and led the Jets to the AFC championship. It must have also been a coincidence that under Weis’ coaching, Tom Brady took a monumental leap from late round draft pick to All-Pro. Yup, coincidences all.
Funny, last year, quite a few folks considered Quinn to be not anything special. This year, these same folks now cite Quinn’s greatness as masking Weis’ ineptitude. I think a more reasonable analysis is that Quinn had the tools – ability to pick things up quickly, tough enough skin to withstand criticism, toughness, and an uncommonly strident work ethic – to be a great QB. Under Willingham (and his OC, Deidrick), he was grossly underdeveloped, and remarked more than once to his family that he felt “like he wasn’t being coached”. When Weis showed up, it was the perfect marriage of student and teacher. Whether Weis can be a successful head coach is another matter, but to deprive him of the credit he deserves in Quinn’s transformation is unfair and inaccurate.
And please don’t try to posit that since Brady and the Pats are better than ever (and kicking titanic amounts of ass this season) that Charlie was some superfluous cog in the Belicheck machine and he doesn’t deserve credit for his role in the Pats’ success while he was there. Tom Brady was not going to suddenly unlearn everything Weis taught him. A well-run organization is not going to collapse because one person, no matter how valuable, leaves. It will find a suitable replacement, bring him up to speed, and move on. The company I just left lost their vice president (he died) in 2003. He had been part of the management team (of about 6) that took the company from a $4 billion dollar company to a $40 billion dollar company in a relatively short time. He was considered have had a major role in the company’s growth (I can’t even balance my checkbook, so the particulars evade me). The company kept chugging on, and is now a $60 billion dollar company. Would you now posit that the late VP therefore must not have been that important?
To sum up, not to give Weis credit for Quinn’s leap in development makes no more sense than to not give Chow credit for Palmer or the late VP (whom I actually never met) credit for my former employer’s leap in growth.
As for the Weis – Willingham winning % comparison, I don’t care. Such a thing is only important to ND bashers. Like most ND folks, I’m more concerned with a) keeping this recruiting class together, and b) next season. As I said before, if ND does not win 8+ games next season, Weis will be in serious trouble.
Good luck on your team’s season and whatever bowl (Holiday?) they end up in….
GR
November 6th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
53
Stacy Keibler Luvs Me says:
GeronimoRumplestiltskin:
Geronimo:
I’ll play, here is my response:
1) OC Phil Angle: Although OC Phil and I are USC fans, we obviously come from different viewpoints. He takes a more serious approach.
2) SKLM Angle: While, I take the humorous route, in the spirit of this EDSBS blog. Sometimes my material goes over like a lead balloon, and other times I think it is funny. Since ND and Charlie are the usual butts of my jokes, I can understand your anger. I even stopped piling on for weeks, when the ND season reached its nadir. I have also written that I feel bad for the fifth year seniors, especially Zibby, who came back only to get whacked week in and week out. A good ND team is good for college football and USC. Beating up on cupcakes is not all that satisfying.
3) Ty W: By now only a tiny percentage of ND fans are still blaming Ty for this season. I could go on and on about how Monk Molloy and others felt Ty was given the bum’s rush, and how some national sports types brought up the race issue, but that is old news. It should be clear to all by now that this season is in the toilet not because of the stuff that did or did not happen three years ago with Ty, but with the awful coaching of Weis and Co. He simply did not prepare his players this year and if he were a man of honor, he would resign. The few that still bring up Ty as the problem with ND this year sound stupid. (This last line was tough, but you Kool-Aid drinkers need to hear the truth straight up sometimes.)
4) Weis the Genius Recruiter: If Weis is such a good recruiter, why didn’t he get any good kickers, running backs with speed, blah, blah, blah, during the past few years?
5) Weis the Genius QB Coach: If Weis were such a genius offensive mind, why did he mess up the QB situation this year? Brady Quinn was good in spite of Weis not because of Weis.
6) Blue Gray Sky: Did you read Jay’s rant on Sat or Sun and the game thread at the ND site? Jay cut Charlie a new one. Seems most ND fans and commentators think more like me than you by now! The rant is still available in:
http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/
It is located toward the end of the blog, so scroll down to read some ND primal therapy.
Seems the only people still defending Charlie are his relatives or his coaches relatives, right Ms. Weis, sorry, “Mr. Geronimo Rumplestlsken”?
November 6th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
54
oc phil says:
Geronimo: I’m not going to answer at such length, but your make a number of good points. Where we disagree it is mainly a matter of emphasis. For example, I think Charlie gets way too much credit for developing QB’s but that does not mean that he does not deserve any.
I cited Palmer in part because I’ve heard way less hype about Carroll/Chow developing him than Weis with Quinn. Like Quinn, Palmer was supposed to be a stud coming out of high school, developing into what he was projected as a bit late isn’t that massive of a surprise. Guys have breakout seasons as juniors or senoirs all the time. I see that as the more normal pattern than players who don’t make big improvements as time goes on.
I think the whole waving of the Superbowl rings that Charlie does is obnoxious. He was an assistant, not the head coach or a player. I’ve been both an assistant and a head coach (NCAA Divison III) and it isn’t at all the same thing. I think a big chunk of the problems that Notre Dame is going through right now comes from Charlie learning that difference the hard way.
I’m curious that you talk about Tom Brady not forgetting all that Charlie taught him, where did Charlie get all of this information from? He never played the game at a high level.
I don’t think your former VP deserved ALL the credit for the companies growth if he was part of a 6 person management team. Maybe he was due more than 1/6 of the credit, maybe less than 1/6. I don’t see at all why he should get more credit than the CEO, so I’d be inclined to say he probably contributed to less than 1/6.
No Willingham clearly wasn’t fired based on his race. Though I think SOME of the coolness towards him and the over the top love towards Charlie has to be related to that factor. Yes Charlie “gets it” and is “one of us” but I think that is much much easier for many of the fans to react that way to a white guy than a black guy. It’s a subtle thing in general and certainly does not warrent painting Notre Dame as a racist institution. Obviously TW would never have been hired in the first place were that the case.
And the key factor that people tend to forget when talking about TW’s firing is Urban Meyer. I think TW was treated somewhat unfairly given the historical precedents but he was let go because of Meyer not Weis. So the comparisons of TW vs CW at the end of 3 years are still relevant, but they are by no means the whole story.
As far as USC’s bowl this year, they have twice made it into a BCS bowl with 2 losses in the past 5 years. If they win out against Cal, ASU and UCLA they will have a good chance to do it again. Especially if Oregon goes to the title game, I can’t imagine the Rose Bowl not taking a 2 loss USC team. If USC does end up in the Holiday bowl then I’m OK with that too. I have lots of family in San Diego and we will have a great tailgate.
Looks like this did get long after all…
November 6th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
55
Mike R says:
Gr –
Haters hate. It’s what they can do. Sometimes the bricks are just too dense to get through to whatever grey matter might (?) be inside. To make it (hopefully) clear enuf for a hater to grasp, the jury is still out on CW as a college HC. These next 3 games, the ensuing off-season with its hoped-for changes, and the 2008 season on the field will tell the tale. Your points are well made, and accurate. We’ll all be watching and waiting, some with great hope, some with hatred. GO IRISH!!!!
November 6th, 2007 at 6:03 pm