Falcons Fall At Golden Dome

There were no big surprises in South Bend Saturday.  The teams showed up and what was expected to happen more or less did happen.  Notre Dame is one of the top 10 teams in the country and right now we're closer to being in the bottom 10...and the Irish did what they would expect to do.  No reason to run through a big recap or the stats...Notre Dame had 9.3 yards per play and BG had 3.3...overall, they are the stats of a 52-0 game.

A few news items coming out that might be of interest moving forward.

Grant Loy played most of the game.  Wade started, the team was 3 and out each drive, and they brought Loy in.  Coach said that was planned...that Loy had earned the start in practice.  It did make a difference...not on the offensive side of the scoreboard.  However, BG did extend some drives and that kept the BG defense off the field, which is what was needed to keep this game from being the 70+ rout it could have been.

For example, BG had the ball for 33 minutes.  Yes, I understand that's because Notre Dame had a lot of short scoring drives. (Other than their last drive, their longest one was 3 minutes.)  Having said that, when BG played OSU last, BG had the ball for 21 minutes and OSU ended up over 70.  In South Bend, BG was 8 of 19 on 3rd down, which is not too bad against this defense.  I think Loy opened the running game up by being a threat to run.  The offense helped the defense out...but, as Coach mentioned after the game, struggles to score.

When asked about QB moving forward, he said we would need both guys.

Andrew Clair did not play.  What Loeffler described after the game was a very frustrating situation.  Clair tweaked his foot again in practice, saw the doctor, but they can't get it fixed.  Seems as if they are having trouble getting their arms around it.  Coach said he wants to get to the point where they are running 5 RBS (which is a wow), but now we have to roll with 2 or 3.  I know there has been some discussion on the web about Clair red-shirting, but it doesn't sound to me like that's where they are right now.

Jerry McBride also did not play and Coach doesn't know about his return.  That's really tough.  He's really the only playmaker in the d-backfield.  Coach said that he looked out and saw true freshmen and sophomores out against ND's formidable, grown men, and realized the situation they were thrown into.

Sam Nemerov was also DNP due to injury.

Note that Antonio Sotolongo played a nice game in the backfield.  He led the team in tackles.  That's because Notre Dame had a lot of running plays where Sotolongo was the last man to make the stop, and he did, most of the time, which is the safety's job.

Quentin Morris had 10 catches for 92 yards and Denley averaged 4.2 yards per carry.

Matt Naranjo also had a good game.

Last thing.  Coach said there was "zero quit."  I want to just say that I was proud of our guys, who enter that arena knowing what the odds are, and they played hard and represented our school well.  This is not easy for them and I'm grateful for their resilience.