Tuesday football notes

Published 4:54 pm Tuesday, October 21, 2008

As much as Tyrone Willingham doesn’t want it to be, a lot of the focus this week continues to be on the head coaches as the current Notre Dame coach brings the Irish to town to face the coach the school fired four years ago.

Irish coach Charlie Weis held his weekly press conference, which was also available via teleconference to the media that covers Washington. He, like Willingham, said this year’s meeting feels like any other game, though he admitted that the 2005 game had a different feel to it. If you want to read all of what Weis had to say (and it’s a lot), you can find it here at und.com.

As always on Tuesdays offensive coordinator Tim Lappano met with the media to talk about his offense and Notre Dame’s defense. Of Notre Dame, he said the Irish are a zone-blitz team that will blitz about 50 percent of the time, something the Huskies have seen a lot of since Ronnie Fouch took over at quarterback.

Here’s some highlights of what he had to say today:

Thoughts on Terrance Dailey, who rushed for 102 yards in his first start:

“I thought he played pretty good. He got literally jacked up big time on that hit down the sideline by Afalava. It was a physical, hard hit. That’s the way the game is supposed to be played. They told him he wasn’t going to get back in the game and he told them differently. He made them pay with the 59-yard run.

Any time you put up 100 yards against that defense – they’re playing pretty good, they’re a real good defense. To have 100 yards your second game, really your first game, that’s a pretty good effort. He had some pretty good runs aside from the long one where I thought he slammed it up inside. Split a couple tackles and finished the run, gained a couple extra yards. He missed the one blitz early, but that’s going to happen. He played pretty well.”

“He’s got a swagger. He was bleeding from his mouth and told them he’d be back. He was in my hip pocket immediately demanding to get back in the game – and I love that. And he wanted the ball. It’s all good.”

So why didn’t he play earlier in the season?

“The playbook was very difficult for him… the amount of protections and pass game and all that kind of stuff was a lot different from what he did in high school. The horizontal running, we worked really hard on that. He’s very coachable. He comes in, first guy in Sunday to watch film. Got better all the time and, I told you, we had those three rookie scrimmages the first bye week and he went off. Everybody on the team – players and coaches – knew he was pretty good. So, at the Arizona game it was, ‘Let’s go.’ We have seven games left, let’s play this kid. He’s going to give us something in the run game we don’t have with Jake gone now. We’ve got to have somebody that can take the ball the distance and do something for you. He proved us right in the Oregon State game.”

“Right now he’s our No. 1 guy.”

Thoughts on the play of the line:

“I thought we played better. Running the football, we played better than we have any game. We got more movement against these guys than we have the last couple years. They still were a problem on the edges for us in the passing game.”

What’s the plan for Cody Bruns?

”

He’s gonna go. Hopefully that thing will hold up. He will go this week. I talked to him. He wants to give it a go and whatever happens happens. If he pulls that thing, he pulls it and he’s going to miss more time. But hopefully that thing can hold together. That’s why we didn’t want to play him Saturday. He just pulled that thing Wednesday and he didn’t feel good about going in on Friday. If you put him in there and he pulls it again, then we’re going to lose him for four to five weeks and it’s too bad for the kid. Trust me, he’s a great kid. The last thing you want to do is mess with that kid. We wanted to put him on ice this weekend and get him for the rst of the season. Hopefully he has a good day today and it doesn’t blow up.”

So what happened on that delay of game penalty?

“I’ll take full responsibility for it. That’s Ronnie’s and my job. Number one, we script the first 15 plays of every game. We rehearse them on Friday night. We have everybody on the sideline. And as soon as they kick the ball off we gave the play on the sideline and went out. It’s my job; it’s all the coaches job if they are not getting up to the line fast enough, we’ve got to see that, yell at them. And Ronnie has to see the clock.”

And on the goal-line stand Oregon State made late in the game when you had four cracks at the end zone?

“You know the worst call I made there? The quarterback sneak, because Ronnie wanted to go over the top, and he needs to burrow down in there and get his shoulder down and run his feet.

“On the second play we missed a block, and then on the naked, Kavario was wide open like I told you, and that showed up big time. What happened there was just that Ronnie got away with pulling the ball down in practice against our show team defense because the same thing presented itself. There was a crease from here to mic over there [points at microphone across the room], but against the show team it stayed open when he pulled it down when Kavario was wide open and ran it. Against Oregon State, it just went like that, shut down fast and he got shocked. And on the last play, that was a stretch play that we need to keep outside. We had the had edge sealed and Paul had the corner four yards knocked off in the middle of the end zone. We had a stretch play on there and that ball’s got to stay outside.”

Did you get the push you needed from the line?

“Yeah, it was there.”

“You’ve got to get the ball in there, and I still stand by that. You’ve got to get the ball in there when it’s on the 1-yard line. If you’ve got to run somebody over, you’ve got to run somebody over, because a lot of times on the goal line you’ve got to run somebody over. One of those safeties is going to be free. I still say it’s unacceptable.”

“That was awful, that was terrible.”

How much does that affect your team?

“We put it to rest, today’s a new day. Sunday, did I like it? No. Was I in a very good mood Sunday? No. But it’s a whole new week, we’ve got to put all of that stuff away. Just like the very first play of the game, we’ve got to put that away. It’s just like a golfer hitting the first shot out of bounds. We put it away and made 51 yards on the third play of the game that should of put us in the middle of the field and we had a holding penalty. We cant’ sit there and dwell on things like that, we’ve got to go to work. We can’t go out there today bitching and moaning about the goal-line stand that they made against us, because we’ve got to go out and play Notre Dame now. Learn from it yes, but dwell on it today, tomorrow and Thursday, that’s the worst thing we can do. We have no chance if we go out there and dwell on what coulda, woulda, shoulda happened.”

Where’s the line between using it as motivation and dwelling on it?

“I think today. We needed to talk about it Sunday, we needed to be angry Sunday and yesterday it was game plan all day, but today it’s over. This is the start of the Notre Dame week and you’ve got to put everything else away.”

Have they been good about compartmentalizing those things?

“They were good yesterday. We had a lot of guys up in the office yesterday watching film. A ton of guys on both sides of the football. Like I said, the character of these kids—there’s a lot of kids that want to win. I’m not trying to tell you every one of them want to win right now, but the majority of these kids still want to win, and we owe that to them to give them the best plan that we can to help them succeed and win a game, and that’s what we want to do. We’ve got the majority of troops wanting to win the football game and get better, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

Feel like you’re getting into a rhythm calling games with Fouch at QB?

“I think he played pretty good. I think I know what he likes, obviously he likes to throw it down the field, but we’ve got to build our game plan against what the defense presents to us. But I thought Ronnie played better after I watched the game a couple times on Sunday than I did Saturday night, because he got hit 13 times and he stayed in there better than I thought he did. Now there were two times when he got out when I wanted him to step in there, but he got hit 13 times and made some damn good throws. I think he played pretty good and he’s tough.”

He looked good on long throws?

“With somebody right in his grill. He was really impressive when you watch that tape. He was impressive because he got hit—he got sacked one time—but he got 13 times. So he stayed in there and let a couple go with people right in his face. The wheel route to Jordan Polk down the sideline was unbelievable. He knew he was going to get hit, the guy was right from you to me, stepped into it, let it go, boom. He’s doing really well, Ronnie can throw the football.”

It sometimes looked like he was throwing off his back foot, was that because of pressure?

“That’s because he had people right in his face. He had gas right in his grill and that was the only way he could get it out. He played pretty good.”