It feels good to be disappointed again. Notre Dame battled against a far inferior opponent, but despite a 33-7 victory- I can’t help but think that it should have been 57-0. I never thought I would feel that way for another year or two, here we are at 5-2 and I want more. It feels good.
So here are just a few thoughts from the game. I have some other stuff going on outside of blogging, so I will make this brief and a little generic. This is the Washington Huskies Ty Willingham Post- generic as Flavorite.
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Clausen was off his game. I was worried that the bye week and having to travel across the country might do this to a few of the younger players, but I thought that Jimmy would have been able to overcome. It’s not like he played rotten- just not the same as we have seen in the first 6 games of the season. He’ll shake it off and get back to form this week. I have no doubts about it.
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Mike Floyd is just sick. He had another good game with 4 receptions for 107 yards and a TD. The TD catch was different than the other scores Floyd has this year, because it was a catch and run for 51 yards. It is nice to see that kind of playmaking ability that close to the line of scrimmage by a wide receiver- not named Golden. Floyd should of had one or 2 more TD’s, but Jimmy’s lack of accuracy that night didn’t help. Regardless, he had a good night and especially good for a freshman coming off of a bad play the game prior.
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It was nice to see Harrison Smith finally getting rewarded for getting his nuts crushed every week. I always see Smith go up in the air on the blitz and get an opposing lineman’s helmet stuffed right in his jock. Smith came away with 2 sacks and once again he proved to be a decent running back as well. Smith took a fake punt 35 yards. This was the second time this year that Harrison got a carry off of a fake punt. Both times he was successful as he got the first down and then some.
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I wanted that shutout. I WANTED IT BAD!!! Oh well. The Fighting Irish have not shutout an opponent since Rutgers in 2002 42-0. The lone touchdown was scored on our third teamers and walk-ons. BTW- 2002 saw another shutout as well when the Irish blanked Maryland in the season opener 22-0. It’s ironic that the 2002 team was a Ty coached, Davie built defensive team. Weird.
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Speaking of Davie… I thought he did a very good job in the booth. His counterpart was Mark Jones, and that ass clown tried more than a few times to slam ND. Davie backed Weis and the University up time after time. It was just very surreal. Just imagine if Holtz showed up. You can tell it is close to Halloween.
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Notre Dame suffered last year in some part to the lack of experience as much as the relative youth of the team. The Fighting Irish have had too many close games this year, to really get some real playing time for the second teamers and freshman. One that stood out was Jonas Gray. Gray came in for mop up duty and ran the ball 9 times for 61 yards. He passed the eyeball test. Also, Flemming got the start at Jack LB over Mo Crum. It wasn’t planned according to Weis, but it says a lot about what they think about Flemming.
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The defense was fucking good. But, Washington is just as awful. It is very encouraging, however, that the defense only allowed like 78 yards before the TD “drive” by Washington late in the 4th quarter. Brian Smith was hitting players as hard as a fat girl hits the open buffet at Golden Corral. Some interesting things from our defense came about Saturday: Herring was the leading tackler for the game after being almost non-existent for most of the season. As stated before, Flemming starting over Crum. The Irish had no takeaways. I’m not sure what happened , so let me know- where’s Gary Gray? Is he hurt? Anyways, the defense played great and just destroyed any hopes for Washington early in the game.
That’s about it for me. I apologize if this was a little too generic, but like I said… I got some things going on and haven’t the time to type out all of my thoughts.
You don’t want to go there anyways.
BTW- James Aldridge is catching on fire with another good performance. 13 carries for 84 yards and 2 TDs. He looks happy.