Notre Dame football: Stanford slip-ups haunt Kelly, Irish

Notre Dame football, already taking on water, descended even further into chaos Saturday in a game it should have won, were it not for several key unforced errors.

Earlier this week, we wrote about how Brian Kelly was wrong to criticize the snapping of center Sam Mustipher after Notre Dame football’s loss to North Carolina State.

And in the spirit of fairness, we’d like to formally retract, at least partially, that criticism following the team’s loss to Stanford. Mustipher’s costly miscue cost the Irish a safety and an ensuing touchdown, basically forming the difference in the final 17-10 score. So clearly, there’s something wrong with the snapping, and Kelly was right when he identified the issue last week.

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But there’s a big difference between identifying an issue and fixing it, and that difference is what really cost Notre Dame on Saturday. And I’m not just talking about Mustipher. The Irish should have won last night. They could have won last night. They were favored, Christian McCaffery was out, Stanford was stumbling from two consecutive blowouts and possessed a leaky offensive line and a pass defense ranked outside the top 80 in the country.

Notre Dame, meanwhile, was coming off a loss, but a loss in a hurricane to a sneakily good NC State team. DeShone Kizer would be able to pass, Tarean Folston was healthy, and the defense was improving under Greg Hudson.

So why did the Irish lose?

Brian Kelly doesn’t trust DeShone Kizer

The decision to yank Kizer in favor of Malik Zaire after two interceptions to start the second half was a hugely controversial move by Kelly. He said after the game that he hoped in doing so he would jump start the Irish and give them the momentum they had lost from the first half.

I’m of two minds here. On one hand, I would hope that after all the drama of the QB position battle that we’ve been through, Kelly would have trusted his starter enough to let him try to self-correct and get the lead back. After all, the score was still 10-7 Irish at this point. It wasn’t as though things had spiraled out of control.

Kizer is a talented quarterback, but he’s not perfect. He’s going to make mistakes, but he is more than capable of bouncing back from them. To have such a short leash as to be yanked after two INTs is surprising, given this is a guy many expect to be a highly-drafted pro next year.

Still, I don’t want to fault Kelly too much here. After all, momentum is such a tricky thing, this might have worked, and then he would have looked like a genius. Kizer’s two picks were definitely his fault, and when you’re 2-4 no one can be considered untouchable.

But here’s the thing. Kizer has the just about the only bright spot for Notre Dame this season. He’s certainly the best player on the team. So if you’re going to bench him, even temporarily, you’d better have a good reason. And furthermore, whoever replaces him must approach his level of production. Speaking of which…

Brian Kelly can’t figure out how to use Malik Zaire

Malik Zaire is a good quarterback, right? It’s hard to remember now, but he played so well in 2014 as a late-season replacement for Everett Golson, and he shined against Texas in the 2015 opener.

But this year he has been nothing short of ghastly. On the season he’s 6-for-16 with three sacks and no touchdowns, and he’s ran 14 times for -1 yard. Why? Did the broken ankle he suffered against Virginia affect him permanently? Is it all mental?

I think the physical tools are all there, but there’s definitely something missing from a mental/gameplan standpoint. Whenever Zaire enters the game, he looks frantic to make some huge play, which often results in him taking a sack when he could have thrown the ball away. It’s almost as if he thinks he could win the starting job with one magnificent pass or run.

If Kelly is so worried about Kizer’s play as to remove him midgame for three series, he needs to have a proper gameplan for how to use Zaire. And whatever he has now, which seems to be mostly a rush-based game with a sprinkle of short passes, is not working. You can’t change momentum if you can’t put your quarterback in a position to make plays.

It’s possible Zaire just can’t hack it, and that the gameplan is fine, but if that’s the case, why is Kelly putting him out there?

Next: Wait, Notre Dame is favored over Stanford?

Bottom line: The Irish defense was much improved this week, but the passing game suffered from poor decision-making, both on the part of Kizer and Kelly.