By Louie Villalobos
http://www.irishblueandgold.com
It would be nice if Notre Dame could finish a game early. North Carolina came in 1-7 with a lameduck coach. There was really no reason why the Irish couldn’t have secured this game in the second quarter and sent the Tar Heels back to the south with an embarassing loss.
Instead, the Irish defense and special teams let North Carolina feel they had a chance for much of the game. Reality finally sank in because Brady Quinn and his offense was more than willing to shoot it out. Quinn finished with 349 passing yards and Jeff Samardzija had a massive game and got a team touchdown record. Notre Dame 45, North Carolina 26.
The Tar Heels rang up 245 yards of offense and returned a kickoff for a touchdown. Joe Dailey, who took over the quarterback job for the heels, threw for more than 200 yards and NC receiver Hakeen Nicks had 6 receptions for 170 yards. Remeber, this is a team that came to South Bend with only one win.
The Irish defense is going to have to do much better than that against Air Force, not to mention USC. But what else is new, right? The Irish played down to an opponent, the offense was stellar, and they won the game. That’s all that matters?
Not if we’re talking about the BSC title game. Not if we’re talking about Notre Dame being a dominant team for years to come. Go Irish.
1 Comment
November 7, 2006 at 6:25 am
My sentiments exactly! There are still too many flaws with this team to achieve a championship level of dominence. The defense is prone to giving up big plays and the offense lacks a power rushing game balance out the strong passing game. I think we really need to rotating our running backs out of the backfield to keep the defense off balance with different running styles. Holtz was very successful with this approach. Aldridge seems quicker to hole and better at plowing through tackles. Hopefully we’ll see more of him the rest of the season. Let’s give Prince some meaningful carries too and see how fast he is.