Notre Dame-Miami: The Negatives

Oct. 6, 2012; Chicago, IL, USA; The Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Miami Hurricanes play in the fourth quarter at Soldier Field. Notre Dame won 41-3. Mandatory Credit: Matt Cashore-US PRESSWIRE

Secondary

Even though Notre Dame only gave up 285 yards of total offense to Miami, they didn’t allow a touchdown for the third straight game. How was their secondary a negative? Here’s why. There is not a stat for bad technique, which the Notre Dame safeties were guilty of all Saturday night. Fairley and Motta got turned around in their back pedal and didn’t keep their shoulders square to the line of scrimmage. I understand that Miami was 4 for 12 on third down and only averaged 5.7 yards per pass, but they could have given up much more. Just think what the game would have been like of Dorsett would have caught one of those deep balls on Miami’s first drive. That cannot happen! The secondary is improving every game and I can see the improvement, but if this defense wants to go from good to great and be considered “Elite” then the secondary needs to grow up fast. Stanford, Oklahoma, and USC have pocket passers that can pick you apart if you let them. The formula to success is no big plays and the corners need to tighten up and play a little more aggressive when attacking a comeback or hitch route.

Defensive Line

I was very shocked to not see a lot of pressure put on Stephen Morris from the defensive line. Stephon Tuitt, Louis Nix, and Kapron Lewis-Moore had a very quiet game. Notre Dame had to bring backers to put pressure on the quarterback, which takes away the help in our pass game that we still seem to need. The hurry up offense that Miami was running was keeping the subs on the sideline and forcing Notre Dame to keep their big men in for extended amounts of time. No excuses, if this defense wants to beat Stanford, Oklahoma, and USC then it needs to put pressure on the quarterback with the 3 lineman Notre Dame has.

Uniforms

Who was a fan of these? If you were can you stand up and admit it? I didn’t think so. I thought the helmet was atrocious, because you don’t mess with the gold helmets those are off limits. I liked the gold part of the helmet a lot, but the blue didn’t make much sense to me. Personally I like it when teams break out the alternate jerseys that they wear once a year, but these? The one stripe on the pants bamboozled me as well. Last years “under the lights” uniforms were really sweet and didn’t look like they were designed by a 3 year old with a blue and gold crayon. I am interested to see what they do for next year’s shamrock series game at Cowboys Stadium. The throwback idea is good and it keeps the tradition of Notre Dame’s uniforms, but this hideous excuse for a uniform needs to go. Here are some guidelines to making the shamrock series uniforms for Notre Dame. Number one you cannot change the color of the helmet, but you can add a shamrock, ND logo, fighting Irish logo, etc. but the helmet must be gold. Number two, the jersey can be the most creative part of the uniform, just use gold, blue, white and green. Number 3 the pants are always gold, but I wouldn’t mind to see some different styles of pants to be honest. Lastly, don’t change the color of the helmets. P.S. don’t change the color of the helmets.