Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/499410
FAN FORUM PARABLE OF TALENTS Congratulations to Mike Brey and the Fighting Irish basketball team for a marvelous season and tournament run. Five or so years ago, I would have never thought an ACC Tournament championship and deep NCAA run was possible. With mediocre facilities and not recruiting the elite five-star, one-and-done players that go to Ken- tucky, Duke, North Carolina, etc. Brey has seemingly found a niche. There will be times when those schools will be beatable with the annual mass exo- BE HEARD! Send your letters to: Letters Blue & Gold Illustrated P. O. Box 1007 Notre Dame, IN 46556 or e-mail to: lsomogyi@blueandgold.com FROM THE WEBSITE The end of spring football prompts the annual debates about whether Notre Dame will be a better running team this fall, similar to its 263-yard rushing performance in the Music City Bowl victory versus LSU. Here were some opinions on BlueandGold.com. Irishfanatic: 35 rush attempts per game is what I believe should be the minimum goal by our coaches this season. We have to use the strength of our team, and this year I believe it's our big uglies. Sbj75: Success in college football begins and ends with quarterback play. We are no different. If our QB play is dynamic, our success will improve significantly in 2015. If our QB play does not improve from 2014, we will continue to flounder. Kroney9ND: I'm a big advocate of the running game, but I also believe you can't just blindly run into stacked fronts all day to get to some arbitrary number. For me the change has to come in the mindset of the team — from the coaches and the way they run practice. I heard a great quote during the NCAA Tournament: You have to come with the mindset of playing fast because you can always slow the game down — but you can never speed it up. In football, you can always finesse a team, but you can rarely just turn the "physicality" switch on. PreTill1: We averaged 37 rush attempts per game last year and had more than 35 in 8 of the 12 games. Of the four we didn't, one was against USC and we weren't going to win that game running more. One was Michigan in which we ran for less than 3 yards per carry. The other two aren't overly surprising because it was Stanford and Louisville. In the UL game, we ran it 29 times and threw it 24. Scipiospinks: It's not about a certain number; it's about a mindset. Kelly has been a pass-first coach. We can run the same amount of times but the difference will be what we rely on when the game gets tough and how effective our running game is, It's been sub-par under Kelly because, in my opinion, it's not his priority. If it's not our identity we will average 130-160 yards per game again. Mheezyfrosheezy: Kelly became a pass-first coach when he realized he'd need 35-40 points a game to win with our D. That won't be the case this year. If our D stays healthy, you'll see a steady diet of smash- mouth football very similar to the LSU game. Mdainko: You're good at what you emphasize in practice. If we focus on the running game, playing physical, our pass blocking will likely suffer. We won't be quite as good protecting the passer when we've trained the line to dominate running the ball.