Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com NOV. 5, 2022 5 L et's just get the disclaimer out of the way from the very be- ginning. This isn't a column giving Notre Dame offensive co- ordinator Tommy Rees a pass for the personnel he's working with during the 2022 season. He shares the responsibility for the players the Fighting Irish boast on the offensive side of the foot- ball. If Notre Dame has a talent is- sue, look to him first. Head coach Marcus Freeman and his assemblage of assistants, including wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey, are working to rectify that. The Irish have com- mitments from three of the top 26 wideouts in the class of 2023 — four-star Braylon James (No. 16), four-star Jaden Greathouse (No. 21) and four-star Rico Flores Jr. (No. 26) — according to the On3 Consensus. Help is on the way. Now, to the point at hand: Notre Dame's offensive play calling. It's not as bad as the masses make it out to be. Freeman said Rees was doing an "excellent job" even after the Irish's 16-14 loss to Stanford in mid-October. He has said some questionable things in press conferences over the last month. Much of that has been documented within previ- ous issues of Blue & Gold Illustrated. But maybe, just maybe, Freeman wasn't so far off in relation to what he said about his 30-year-old offensive coordinator. For the "Notre Dame is too reliant on an outdated 'scan' offensive system" — two of junior tight end Michael May- er's biggest catches in the game against UNLV came via the scan. One the first, junior quarterback Drew Pyne looked to the sideline, Rees relayed a message from the press box to the coaches down below, and like a game of telephone tag they sent the word onto the field for Pyne to put through the earholes of the 10 other Irish players between the white lines. Boom: 20-yard touchdown to Mayer on a post with sophomore wide receiver Jayden Thomas running a crossing route. On the second, Pyne and company repeated the routine. Boom: 34-yard gain on an incredible catch by Mayer via a well-diagnosed one-on-one seam opportunity over the middle by Pyne and the man responsible for telling him the favorable matchup would be there. That's Rees. Have there been some head-scratch- ers along the way? Of course. Nobody calls a perfect game. Rees might not be among the best play callers in the country, but it's far too much of a leap to conclude he's one of the worst. The tunnel screen to Mayer on fourth-and-goal inside the 5-yard line against BYU was one of those calls that made you wince. Running the ball out of the pistol on another short-yardage red zone situation in the same game was another strange tactic. But if the worst thing Rees has done is dial up too many looks for the most productive tight end in the country and hand the ball off to Notre Dame's 227-pound bowling ball of a tailback, sophomore Audric Estime, then is that really all that bad? The perceived over-reliance on Mayer isn't all on Rees, either. It's Pyne staring him down. It's Pyne who physically launches the ball in his direction, for better or worse. "I don't think we are using him too much," Rees said of Mayer. "There are times when our eyes need to go somewhere else. Guys are going to give Michael Mayer attention. We have to be able to react and see it and understand it. We have good players elsewhere." Those players have to perform. Want a cliché? Here's one: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Lorenzo Styles dropped a surefire chain-mover on third down on a perfect pass from Pyne vs. UNLV. Even Mayer dropped a ball delivered right in his breadbasket in that game. Pyne missed wide-open touch- downs to wide receivers Tobias Mer- riweather and Braden Lenzy in the loss to Stanford, and sailed a ball over running back Chris Tyree's head right at the goal line vs. the Rebels. He's got to be better. There is not a player on the field who can make an of- fensive coordinator look good as well as a quarterback can. That's not to say Rees needs Pyne to bail him out. Rees just needs Pyne to, well, do his bleeping job. The Notre Dame offense is far from a world-beater. When has it ever really been one, even during the 54-10 stretch under Brian Kelly from 2017-21? Those teams were led by a grizzled veteran head coach and had a wide margin for error. This one, not so much. Rees is working with what he's got. It's not always pretty. But when the players are executing — yeah, I'm using that word — in an efficient manner, it can be effective enough to compete at a fairly high level. ✦ GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Rees has had his ups and downs during the 2022 season. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Don't Be Too Quick To Blame The Play Calling