Musings from Arledge: The Long Ride Back From South Bend
It’s late. I’m cold. I’m sitting on a bus, trying to get from South Bend to Chicago, but the bus isn’t moving. I need to stay in South Bend on Saturday night next time. In a hotel, if possible; in a sleeping bag outside the stadium, if not. This drive is awful even after a win. But after a loss, it’s just gruesome. A slow-moving root canal. I’m angry, and mostly at myself. I knew the outcome of this game before I flew out here, and I knew what it feels like to sit in traffic until 1:30 or so after the loss. I did this to myself.
Right now it’s hard to remember how much I love the USC-Notre Dame game, and how much I love to watch that game in this venue.
Still, I do. This is a special rivalry, and Notre Dame Stadium is a special place. I was even sitting just a few rows away from where I was sitting in 2005, in the same end zone where Reggie pushed Matt.
This one (spoiler alert!) went differently. But the memories were sweet.
This was a strange pre-game. I’ve never seen fewer USC fans at Notre Dame Stadium, and the Irish fans weren’t even interested in taunting us. You don’t have to taunt the baby seal before you club it. Things are bad when a hated rival doesn’t even have the heart to tease you. Nobody seemed terribly emotionally invested in this one. It was a trip to work on a Wednesday. Just something you do. Nothing to get worked up about.
Welcome to college football’s greatest intersectional scrimmage. Playing the role of the scout team, the USC Trojans!
I wondered at the end of the second quarter whether Donte Williams joined both teams’ fans in believing that USC could not win the game and maybe shouldn’t even try. No use fighting the long odds, he seemed to say. Let’s just try to make it respectable.
Why do I say this? Everybody saw the horrific clock management at the end of the half. But the problems started before the last play or two. It looked like Donte was coaching scared. At that point, the Trojans were down 17-3. They weren’t playing particularly well, but they were competitive. They were moving the ball. Red zone failures (surprise!) and an enormous turnover were the differences in the game. If USC scores a TD to end the half, they’re down one score and getting the second-half kickoff.
So why did Donte look like he was more interested in running out the clock? Near midfield, with a minute left, with two timeouts already burned, USC is running the football and taking forever to get to the line and run a new play. Playing for a field goal? But playing for a field goal there makes no sense: we’re shooting for 17-6? So running too much clock to have a chance to score a touchdown really only makes sense if Williams was primarily concerned about not giving Notre Dame the ball with time to score, because he just didn’t trust his offense to make plays, and didn’t want to be embarrassed. You can see how he got there … but he seemed willing to concede a two-score deficit at halftime in order to avoid the possibility of a three-score deficit, and that’s either senseless or the mentality of someone who doesn’t really believe he can win. Let’s manage the clock like we’re actually trying to win the game, instead of just trying to keep the score close.
The irony, of course, is that Donte recycled that foolishness about USC not really losing the game but just running out of time. Well, if that’s the problem, maybe you should haven’t wasted that minute at the end of the half, coach.
Better yet, stop saying that. Everybody should stop saying that. Games are always 60 minutes. Everybody gets notified in advance. If you repeatedly screw up for the first 33 minutes and get down 24-3, the problem is not that the clock operator failed to put 68 minutes on the clock. Your team gave up five drives of 70 yards or longer. Notre Dame punted once. If the Irish needed to do drive the field again, they would have. Just stop.
In any event, if Donte wanted to keep the score respectable, he achieved his goal, I suppose. 31-16 looks respectable. It wasn’t as ugly as Stanford. Or Utah. Or Oregon State. Whatever.
But how do you ultimately judge a game like this? It’s not a success. Losing to your biggest rival — largely because of critical mistakes — is never a success. But it could have been worse. I expected it to be worse. And the Trojans at least competed. They at least gave a real effort. They had quit in earlier losses. Here, they didn’t quit and let Notre Dame embarrass them.
Small victories, I guess.
The truth is that there are a couple of ways to look at this game. One way is to say that USC could play with Notre Dame but just made too many mistakes. And that’s true, but also incomplete. Bad teams make more mistakes than good teams. And good teams are better able to overcome their mistakes. When a football team loses most of its games because it made too many critical mistakes, that just means it’s a bad football team.
This team has a lame-duck coaching staff that has earned its lame-duck status. We can complain about the schemes and the apparent lack of preparation. That’s fine; I’ve done my share. But it’s also true that this team just doesn’t have the athletes of past USC teams. It’s Drake London and a bunch of guys. Some of those guys are pretty good; some of them aren’t very good. But they’re all just guys. Other than London, nobody on the roster causes fear. Other than London, you don’t have to game plan around anybody. It’s Drake London and an average Arizona State roster wearing USC uniforms. It is what it is.
Other guys on the roster might grow into what London already is. But he’s the one guy the other team doesn’t really have a good answer for. In baseball, they judge players based on the Wins Above Replacement — how many additional wins that player gives his team versus what the team would win with an average player at his position. We should judge Drake London on Points Above Replacement. I think it’s 7-10 points right now. The guy is a difference-maker, and USC just doesn’t have very many of those right now.
This next statement will make some people unhappy, but I don’t think the USC offensive line played that badly. I’m judging on a curve, of course. They’re not making anybody forget Anthony Munoz or Bruce Matthews. But I’ve seen worse performances over the last few years. There were some sacks, and one devastating tipped ball INT, but Kedon Slovis was not helping himself or his line on many of those plays. Throw. The. Ball. The pass protection wasn’t bad overall, and the line opened some holes to allow a running back to go over 130 yards. In recent years, the offensive line has taken a lot of beatings — physically on the field and rhetorically off the field — and it has been the weakest group in a mediocre program for much of the last decade. But all in all, it wasn’t a bad effort against the Irish by that group. Good enough to win, I think.
On the other hand, do opposing quarterbacks ever have to worry about getting touched by a USC pass rusher? I thought the USC edge rushers would be dangerous. Right now, they’re not. Drake Jackson spends far too much time in coverage, but he isn’t a dominant force even when he’s rushing the passer. He’s a good player; I acknowledge that. I just thought he’d be great. Korey Foreman? Looks like a true freshman, and I’m not sure I see the explosiveness of a great pass rusher. Maybe that will come. He’s just a kid. All I know is Notre Dame’s offensive line has struggled all year. They were playing their fourth left tackle of the year, a true freshman. But did it look like it? I don’t think so either. Maybe we should just drop 11.
Speaking of that, I’ll never get tired of watching Drake Jackson running around in pass coverage. Oh, wait, yes I am.
The Irish are almost always tough to beat in that building. You need to be 10-14 points better than the Irish to win there. The Trojans probably aren’t 10-14 points better than anybody remaining on the schedule other than Arizona, so the outcome wasn’t surprising. Still, this was a beatable ND team, and you hate to miss an opportunity to beat an average Notre Dame team at their place. You only get so many good chances to win in that building.
Iowa State just knocked off another top-10 team. That’s something Iowa State just didn’t do before Matt Campbell arrived. I like Luke Fickell. I’d be happy if USC hired Fickell. But lots of coaches have won at Cincinnati. Butch Jones did. Brian Kelly did. Kelly even went undefeated. I like Dave Aranda. I would be happy if USC hired Aranda. But Matt Rhule and Art Briles won at Baylor, too.
Nobody wins at Iowa State. Nobody but Matt Campbell. You have to identify under-the-radar talent and coach them up, and still you’re going to be short-handed almost every week. Iowa State is just an extremely tough place to win. There’s no guarantee he’d succeed at USC, of course, but I think he’s the safest bet not named Meyer or Saban. If I’m the AD, Campbell’s my guy, Trojans.
Unless Mike Tomlin wants the job.
I’ve made a few mean comments over the years about the unattractiveness of the Notre Dame student body.
That’s it. That’s the only point I have. No, I’m not taking back those comments. You want me to extend an olive branch? Fine. I bet there are a lot of great personalities on that campus.
When the ushers at Notre Dame Stadium say, “Welcome to Notre Dame” when you arrive, it feels friendly. “Thank you,” I think. But, on your way out after a whipping, when they say, “Thanks for coming,” it feels different. “What do you mean by that, jerk!?”, I think.
If you haven’t been to Notre Dame for a game, start making plans to go in two years. It’s worth it. You’ll be so happy you did you’ll want to buy me lunch for this helpful recommendation. Get to ND early to walk around the campus. The buildings are beautiful. The lawns are beautiful. The turning leaves are beautiful. The people wearing cardinal and gold are beautiful.
The people in green and blue have very solid personalities and won’t be offended or surprised when you swipe left. Coach Yogi Roth will almost certainly have our guys ready to play, and being in that stadium is a magical experience. Get to Chicago early, too. The science museum is great. They have a giant U-boat in the basement. The art museum is good, too. At least, I think it is. I recognized many of the paintings, and as an art Philistine, that’s how I judge art museums. Recognize a lot of paintings, good art museum. Don’t recognize very many, bad art museum. This one was good.
So it’s on to Arizona, the worst team in the conference and one of the worst programs in the Power Five. This one should be easy. Right?
