Good morning from Austin, Texas, where thank goodness our boys don’t have to play in this heat again this year.
It’s the home opener, and as seems to be the case for a lot of folks when home openers come around, that brings me back to my freshman year.
My first student home game came against Purdue. I went to my Glee Club performance, found my brother back near the dorm, drank a lot of whiskey quickly, and stood in the stadium with a bright red face as Tommy Rees led the Irish to survival right after getting booed. After the game, my other brother’s friend Pat led me and a small posse to a complete stranger’s tailgate. After handing me enough Miller Lites to fill every pocket on my person (“Hey man, we’re trying to get rid of these”), Pat found himself confronted by the stranger, who asked who he knew there. “I know Bob,” Pat replied, and the stranger said there was no one at the tailgate named Bob. “I know Bob!” said Pat, louder, and the exchange repeated two more times before the stranger, not knowing what to do, retreated and let Pat keep giving away his beers. Then we all went to The View.
Mine was a classic home opener. Theirs is a classic which is also a home opener. I cannot fathom what it would be like to have one’s first home football game as a college student be 1) a night game, 2) a big game, and 3) the first time Notre Dame Stadium’s sold alcohol in the concourse. God bless all parties. Keep your Miller Lites close, Bob.
It’s not exactly “do or die,” but it’s close enough to call it that. Doing it handily would be nice, but like last year’s game in College Station and Kegs and Eggs on East Washington, this is an exercise in survival. A few thoughts, mostly reactions from the Miami game that are still working their way out:
- I hope Freeman & Denbrock don’t let critics dictate how many times Jeremiyah Love touches the football. Is he the best ball-carrier in the country? Quite possibly, but that’s not a surprise. I don’t think a Mike Elko-coached team is going to take Jadarian Price as lightly as Miami did, but if CJ Carr needs to make throws, let him make throws.
- That said: If we are going to see a lot of Love, don’t force Carr into preordained reads. The O in RPO stands for option. Seems weird to call those and take away the optionality? Nothing wrong with designed runs off tackle.
- Our line kind of stunk against Miami, and hopefully that was just Miami’s defensive front and some bad conditioning, because it’s really hard to win in college football with a bad offensive line. Harder than winning with a bad quarterback, in some cases.
- I don’t think Marcel Reed is especially good and also Marcel Reed terrifies me. That kind of player. The kind who can make defenses break down, then make defenses overcorrect, then make large men fall down on top of themselves in the backfield. I hope none of this is an issue.
- Texas A&M’s defense hasn’t looked that great so far, and that’s weird. I don’t know what to make of it but I don’t think it can be a bad thing for us?
- Our front seven kind of got pushed around by Miami’s line. Hope we can step up, especially in the middle.
- There are a lot of weirdos at Texas A&M, but people there were very nice last year, to me at least. And I’m not very charming in person. I certainly wasn’t trying to charm. Nice weirdos. Think of them as nice weirdos. Treat them well. Give Elko his due, too. He didn’t do anything wrong when he left South Bend, and he sure didn’t do much wrong while he was there.
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Bob would’ve wanted you to enjoy those Miller Lites.