Week 1 - Postscript

South Florida at Notre Dame

What a freak show. From the first half offensive meltdown, to the 5 turnovers, to the multiple penalties, to the red zone execution lapses, to the stadium evacuations… Just when you think you’ve seen it all. USF’s offense did next to nothing through the first 30 minutes to earn a 16-0 halftime lead, but enjoyed one nevertheless. From our vantage point, Irish QB Dayne Crist seemed very confused when USF started dropping 8 into coverage. Confused…or rattled. Frankly, we expected a lot more poise from him, for sure, and from the team as well. The Irish defense did just about everything necessary to win this one, sans one crushing 2nd half drive, the penalties in the secondary (a couple of which seemed to be more from trigger happy Big East officials than anything else, but IFP isn’t going to play ‘blame the officials’ for this loss), and the fact that they couldn’t force USF to turn the ball over.

Notre Dame shot themselves in the foot three or four times and then bled to death in this one. No other way to describe it.

The IFP staff was on-site only until the first stadium evacuation, so we’ve got some DVR work to do to get a more complete picture. But we have opinions…of course.

1. Start Tommy Rees at QB on Saturday night vs. Michigan.

2. Given the PR hell the team (& school) went through to get Michael Floyd on the field this season, use him early, often, and in between early and often in every game and in every offensive series. Dare teams to single-cover Floyd and then abuse them elsewhere when he is doubled. Michael Floyd may very well be one of the 2 or 3 most dangerous weapons in all of college football right now. There hasn’t been a player to EVER play in the defensive secondary for the University of South Florida, in the entire history of that program, who can cover Michael Floyd. So no more quiet first halves from #3, OK? Everyone saw what a noisy 2nd half from him looks like. And if/when Dayne Crist ever gets back under center for Notre Dame, make sure someone has introduced him to Michael Floyd beforehand.

3. If Theo Riddick has all of a sudden developed an acute and incurable case of the yips with regards to fielding punts, make Floyd do that too. More Floyd touches, more better.

4. Bench Ben Turk. Now. Not tomorrow. Not after one more try vs. the Wolverines. Now. Let the freshman kickoff specialist , Kyle Brindza (and his fancy shoes ), take over the Notre Dame punting duties as well for the foreseeable future. Turk’s 34 yards/punt average was a kill shot to the field position battle vs. USF. Most high school teams punt the ball with more consistency and length.


Ball State at Indiana (at Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis)

The Hoosiers gave up 210 yard rushing to the Cardinals and dropped HC Kevin Wilson’s debut, 27-20. Matt Perez, a redshirt freshman running from Park Ridge, IL Maine South HS had 41 yards rushing and scored a TD for IU. Ball State went on a clock-killing, 14-play, 80-yard drive with 9:30 left in the 4th quarter to seal the deal, and they ran the football on 13 of those 14 plays. The drive ended up in a BSU FG that put the Cardinals up 10. IU could only match that drive with a FG of their own…and the ensuing onside kick failed for the Hoosiers.

Run-stoppers, please apply.


DePauw at Rose-Hulman

Rose Dash lost a surprisingly tight one to heavily favored DePauw, 23-13. Heavily favored per IFP anyway; don’t think there was a line on this one at the Mirage on Saturday. But this game did end up a lot closer than we expected. It was almost a statistical draw, in terms of total rushing yardage, passing yardage, and penalty yardage. Rose-Hulman’s Mitch Snyder threw for 280 yards, 2 TDs and completed 60% of this throws on the afternoon. The difference was that DePauw was a lot more efficient on third down than the Engineers, converting 13 of 21 (compared to only 3 for 13 for RHIT). So, from that, it is not surprising that the Tigers had a huge time of possession advantage (roughly 40 minutes for the DePauw vs. 20 minutes for the good guys). Despite that, however, Rose-Hulman actually won the 2nd half, 13-9. Problem was they trailed at the intermission, 14-0. Kudos to new HC Coach Sokol for keeping his team locked in, despite being down early.