Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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MURPHY'S LAW DAN MURPHY Unscrambling The Irish Season Ah, the tantalizing task of dissecting a college football season. Even in successful years the What Ifs and Woulda, Coulda, Shouldas run rampant. For the 2011 Irish, they infested the fall’s retrospective like the colorful characters of a Dr. Seuss book. We all know that playing such games will only lead to pain, yet we do it anyway. A botched kick here. A missed tackle there. The temptation to rearrange a few X’s and O’s in hopes of explaining what went wrong and what went right is irresistible. It’s also entirely too simple. Two letters? Come on, football is a complex game. It isn’t until we mix in the rest of the alphabet — from the A gap to the Z receiver — and start scrambling the letters that the picture becomes clear. Here then are some anagrams, in italics, to put the 2011 season in perspective. Making sense of the past four months starts at the quarterback position. The Irish used three different players under center this season, and each had his own strong group of supporters and detractors. Senior Dayne Crist looked the part and earned the starting job in training camp. However, a little rearranging and closer inspection shows he was predestined to have a scanty ride as Notre Dame’s starter. Irish head coach Brian Kelly had his memory set on Tommy Rees and the 4-0 record with which he finished his freshman year. The sophomore took over as the team’s starter one half into the 2011 season. Sophomore Andrew Hendrix entered the debate with a strong debut against Air Force. His two touchdowns in the season finale at Stanford insured that there would be another battle for the starting job next season. Can Hendrix leave the red hat army and his signaling duties behind on the sideline to become an ex-handwinder? Or has freshman option quarterback Everett Golson gotten resolve enough to push for the starting job while sitting out this season? Golson could be the campus choice for the quarterback of the future. A bit of cutting and pasting for the South Carolina native turns him into the Grotto’s Eleven. At least one position is set in stone for next year’s team. Irish junior Manti Te’o will be back for his final year as a middle linebacker. Te’o lived up to his name by proving he was into team no matter what happened during this season. Many a fan will raise a toast to Te’o’s loyalty in the next 12 months. Linebacker, after all, sounds much better as a beer clink. Kelly, for the second straight season, landed the best recruit on his list when Te’o announced his return. Last year, senior Michael Floyd was the top target. At 6-3, 225 pounds Floyd makes a chiefly mold for a wide receiver. His return came as a bit of a pleasant surprise for the Irish, who named him the team MVP for the second year in a row. Te’o was surprising for some as well, especially after Kelly opened a rift between his veteran players with controversial comments at a press conference the week after losing to USC. It was an uncharacteristic slip from the media-savvy son of an Irish Catholic Massachusetts politician. I guess, despite his name, Brian Kelly is not completely of that blarney ilk. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There are still plenty of ways to explain away a disappointing 8-4 finish. Michigan wide receiver Roy Roundtree put the Irish off course on an ornery detour with his dramatic game-winning touchdown catch at The Big House. Before that, USF cornerback Kayvon Webster dropped the first goose egg in Notre Dame’s very own basket of red zone turnovers — one that filled up quickly in the 0-2 start for the Irish. Senior Jonas Gray rebounded nicely from the opening drive fumble and became the face of the resurgent Irish run game this season. Under the guidance of assistant coach Ed Warriner, Notre Dame ran rewired in 2011, gaining almost 2,000 yards as a team. But Gray’s career would come to a knee-tearing, tear-jerking end on Senior Day. Just as joy rang for Gray, agony jars him back to the sideline to close the season. The Irish, like the rest of the country’s college football teams, had their ups and downs in 2011. The familiar preseason hype of a return to elite status was muted by early-season miscues. No matter how you spell it out, after another hope-filled season, Notre Dame is still not remade. ✦ Dan Murphy has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2011. He can be reached at dmurphy@blueandgold.com Plenty of Fighting Irish fans are still wondering what might have happened had head coach Brian Kelly not replaced senior quarterback Dayne Crist, right, with sophomore Tommy Rees, left, after one half. photo by aaron suozzi