While Charlie Weis did not live up to the expectations when he was head coach, he did do some good things for Notre Dame. One of them was starting the tradition of the Shamrock Series. It started in San Antonio at the Alamo Dome. Then an old tradition was renewed for a year when the Fighting Irish played Army at Yankee Stadium. It has since traveled to Fed Ex Field in the nation's capital, Soldier Field in Chicago, and finally to AT & T Stadium aka The house that Jerry built in Arlington, Texas.
In these games, Notre Dame just seems to bring their best every time. What is it that pumps Notre Dame up for this game? Is it the special uniforms? Is it the trip to a historic stadium? Whatever it is the Irish are always at their best for this game.
No disrespect to Washington State, Army, Maryland, or last year's Miami, but Arizona State was Notre Dame's toughest challenge for this annual event. Here is a team that was coming off scoring 62 points against USC and they also had a huge, yet a little controversial,win over Wisconsin. Not to mention that Dallas is actually a lot closer to Tempe than it is to South Bend meaning at times it seemed as though the Sun Devils had the home field advantage. Also none of the experts were giving the Fighting Irish much of a chance and even Irish fans including me had serious doubts that they could pull this off.
I had two major concerns going into this game. The first was that this defense has not looked anything like it did last year after losing Manti Te'o among others. They struggled against mediocre offenses so how would they stop this team that has put up 122 points this season against legitimate FBS opponents. But low and behold the defense looked a lot like last season's defense. They were all over Taylor Kelly and sacked him four times. Three of them were by Prince Shembo who has not performed like he did last year. The Pressure also caused three turnovers including a late pick six by Dan Fox to seal it.
The defense did give up three passing touchdowns which would ordinarily not be a good game, but against this offense it is pretty damn good. That is especially true since one of those scores was a meaningless score with 11 seconds left. Hopefully, this is a confidence boost for this defense the rest of the season.
The other concern I had was how confident Tommy Rees would be after two bad games and lots of nasty tweets and lack of support from the fan base. But Rees played a great game. He had 279 passing yards and three touchdowns. He really only had one bad mistake but it was a pick six that could have turned the game around. But he rallied after that and put together two more scoring drives.
Rees got a lot of help from TJ Jones who had a career game with 8 catches for 135 yards and a touchdown. Jones has really become the go to guy on offense. DaVaris Daniels also chipped in with 4 catches for 67 yards. That was good to see after Daniels did nothing the last two weeks. Cam McDaniel was the best runner with 82 yards on 15 carries. This Texas boy showed Texas toughness in his home state with these yards. He fought for every inch he got.
Hopefully, this is also a confidence boost for Rees and the offense the rest of the way. Being fair to Rees, Michigan State has a defense that really looks a lot like last year's Irish defense and Oklahoma looks like they are clearly the best team in the Big 12. So it is not like he struggles against scrubs. He also has all new players around him other than Jones and Daniels. So even though he is a senior, most of the rest of the key players are young.
In closing, I thought Brian Kelly had a great game plan by really working the clock and having an early time of possession advantage. That kept the powerful Arizona State offense off the field and the Irish defense fresh. Going into the bye, Notre Dame has two weeks to prepare for USC who has an interim coach. Notre Dame will certainly be favored and then they have a series of winnable games starting with the service academies heading into the showdown at the end of the season with Stanford. The outlook on the season definitely looks a lot better after a big win like this.
Go Irish!!!!!
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