Archive for the ‘Jimmy Clausen’ Category

A review of the UHND Road Trip; An emotional football weekend that won’t be duplicated at home in 2008

At the end of our 2007 Boston College trip, Frank, Brian, Kyle and I concluded that next game we would all attend as part of our yearly “guys trip” was going to be Michigan in 2009. Little did we know the elements of nature and event planning would culminate in the perfect storm that descended on South Bend, Indiana, over the Michigan game weekend.

The excitement and emotion that swelled over the course of the Michigan weekend will not be matched at a Notre Dame home game the rest of this season. Sure the home schedule is weak the rest of the way, but consider all of the happenings which made the 2008 Michigan game arguably the best home game to have attended since the 2005 USC game.

• IRISH LEGENDS AUTOGRAPH SHOW

Legendary Irish players including such names as Lattner, Casper, Ferguson, Pinkett, Mayes, Rice, Bolcar, Pritchett, Stonebreaker, Ismail and about a dozen other starters from the 1988 National Championship team descended upon the College Football Hall of Fame for eight hours interacting with fans, signing autographs and reliving memories from glory’s past. Their arrival times were staggered throughout the day but almost every player stayed well beyond their commitment to see which familiar face would walk in next. Any die hard Notre Dame football fan would have been paralyzed in awe at seeing the boyish reactions of guys like Pritchett and Stams when they saw and then embraced as the third amigo walked into the room.

Then to sit back and watch members of Notre Dame’s then defensive backfield recalling big plays from the 1988 season. Corny Southall, and George Streeter listened intently as Pat Terrell thought back to the Miami game and the two huge plays he made against Steve Walsh. D’Juan Francisco made sure the guys knew he was the first Irish defender to pick off Walsh that day. And then Sean Penn look-a-like and certainly the most fit forty-something showed up and reminded the guys not to forget his pick-six in Los Angeles. Most everybody agreed Stan Smagala looked like he could still play today.

I had the chance to ask Scott Kowalkowski about the antics Todd Marinovich pulled against him in the 1989 Southern Cal game. His eyes lit up and seemed to thoroughly enjoy talking about the night the Irish beat the Trojans, Marinovich took a cheap shot and Kowalkowski ultimately had the last laugh putting him flat on his back. And then there’s the Rocket. We had the chance to interview the Rocket for the podcast a little over a week prior, but we spent about 20 minutes chatting with him and it is hard to find anybody more enthusiastic in discussing the Irish than the Rocket is. For a fan, it was a special way to spend the even of a rivalry game. But things were just getting started.

• PEP RALLY

I think it is safe to say, over the past 10-15 years, the Notre Dame home pep rally’s haven’t been anything to plan your Friday’s nights in South Bend around.  The initial downfall might have been the decision to move it from the Stepan Center to the JACC, but they may have not had a choice due to fan participation relative to capacity. In any event, more and more people have chosen to spend their vacation time in Chicago, then driving in early Saturday mornings for the game.  Some would rather hit up the local bars like The Linebacker or Corby’s, before ultimately heading to the new Friday night vogue; the Midnight Drummer’s Circle. In fact, I all but protested attending the pep rally with my group.  But I succumbed to peer pressure and I’m glad I did for this night only.  First, it was former Irish captain Ned Bolcar who fired up the crowd and then the team.  He got up and represented the 1988 National Championship team who sat aside the current Irish team.  Ned seemed to get lost in the moment and forgot entirely where he was which made it as surreal as possible.  He seemed to have forgotten there was a crowd there and turned to the team and challenged them to be as great as they could be.  He challenged each player to play for the guy sitting next to them, instead of for self. He was fantastic and you couldn’t help but feel he took personally, what had been a lack of emotion, by recent Irish football teams.   Then there was Lou Holtz.  I won’t try to sum up what Lou said.  You can watch it here:

• LOU’S STATUE

Speaking of Lou, he joined the fraternity of Irish great football coaches with busts on the ND campus when his statue was unveiled inside the stadium the morning of the game.  It is well deserved and just another not-so-common event that made gameday morning so special.

• TAILGATING

It had poured nonstop from last Friday night throughout the morning until about 10am.  And then the clouds broke, the temperatures rose to a comfortable 78 degrees and the tailgating began. It couldn’t have been a better start to pregame, allowing fans to cook and enjoy cocktails prior to kickoff and stroll through campus to watch the band march their way from under the Dome to the stadium.

• WEATHER & GAME

Under a blue-gray, dry September sky, the Irish jumped out to a 21-0 lead within ten minutes to start the game. It was an incredible start an already incredible weekend and you just knew nothing was going to ruin this day…even the weather. With just under five minutes to go in the 2nd quarter, the sprinkles started to fall. And shortly thereafter, those sprinkles turned into a steady and eventually heavy rain that appropriately ended right around the same time as the game.

The pouring showers combined with the warm temperatures, created an incredible atmosphere of fun and spirit that put a charge into the already raucous crowd and a fire into a team that was destined to completely dominate an afternoon that was a crescendo of perfection for Notre Dame legends and fans who descended on Notre Dame Stadium that day.  Fred Leahy, son of Frank, told me at dinner he has been to scores of Notre Dame home games.  Included among those were such recent, epic battles against Miami ’88, Florida State ’93, and USC ’05.  And he said Michigan ’08 was the fourth loudest he has ever heard Notre Dame Stadium.

With an uneventful slate of Irish opponents, the chill of fall and early winter an no collection of former Irish greats like the ones we saw the second week of September, fans will be hard pressed to have the type of enthusiasm and like it or not, the Fighting Irish football team will have a hard time matching the emotion they had on September 13, 2008.

Congratulations David Grimes on one hell of a play. It’s a shame how it was taken from you.

The following are some of the better discussions from Sunday’s press conference with Charlie Weis. The entire transcript can be read at UND.com.

On Duval Kamara’s physical advantage

The one thing that he does do which I’m very encouraged about, besides making some big plays, he plays to his body size. There are some guys that are his height that don’t and play small. He’s learning to use his body and that’s a big advantage going forward.

The biggest lack of improvement from the 2007 Irish

I think we’ve been fairly inconsistent catching the football. I think any layman could see the last couple of weeks that we’ve dropped a whole bunch of balls and we’ve dropped — I put down four yesterday, and I might be generous. Last week we dropped at least a half dozen, and they are spread out; it isn’t just like one person dropped every ball. And I think that’s cost us — it cost us some consistency in the passing game.

Tom Zbikowski playing quarterback

Let me tell you something, he was begging me to throw. And I said look, when we go out there, we’re running the football doesn’t make any difference what we do so don’t you even think about throwing it. He will actually tell you he’s got the best arm on the team. Just ask him. I’m sure he’ll tell you that.

Mistakes he’s made this year and how he intends to address them

Well, I think that I’ve probably made several mistakes this year and in my system. You know, the ones who know my system the best are New England, and I think that those guys would have no problem telling me what things I did right and what things I did wrong.

The future of the ND rushing attack

Going into the off season, the combination of James and Robert and Armando, you know, will give you a lot of reasons for — a huge reason to be optimistic in the running game.

Offseason plans for Clausen

I think the off season strength and conditioning program, and especially size and strength and bulk, are going to be as critical a factor as he could possibly have. This is probably going to be his biggest concern in the off season is going from, you know, 195 to 210. I think that that’s the direction we want to head. He says he wants to get to 215. I said that would take too many In N Out Burgers when he’s back in California.

The mood after a senior day win

I think it was pretty emotional for a lot of these guys, because you sit there and tell them about playing their last game at home, and it isn’t until they walk off the field that they actually realize that just happened.

Who is the starting quarterback against Stanford

It’s still Jimmy by a nose over Zibby.

His plans for Thanksgiving

Eat like a pig and lay on the couch and watch football, like the rest of America.

Clausen’s mental toughness

Here is the first thing that I was looking for yesterday. It was a little chilly yesterday, right, 45 degrees, a little drizzle, snow flurries and here is a kid from California, and you say, okay, is he going to shrivel up; is he going to be looking for a parka every time he turned around. I mean, there was absolutely no evidence.

Leadership comes from the field

It was 1991 and it was right after the Giants had won the Super Bowl my rookie year there where I was fairly insignificant as a coach but I was on the staff. And there was a little quarterback controversy and Jeff Hostetler ended up being the starter and the team started floundering during the year. And I went to Phil Simms and said, “Phil, why aren’t you taking more of a leadership responsibility?”

And he said, “Charlie, let me teach you something. You can’t lead when you’re not playing.” That was the first time I ever heard anyone who I had great admiration for kind of teach me, like you kind of have to be out there doing something.

Now, Sam (Young) has been a starter now for two years in a row. He’s been out there for two years, so he is one guy that can say he’s been out there for almost every play, and you can see where he could feel that obligation to help take over some of that reign and hopefully that manifests itself.

Fair or not, Jimmy Clausen will be compared to Brady Quinn for as long as he is at Notre Dame due to Brady’s phenomenal success playing QB for the Irish so let’s look at how Jimmy is doing compared to Brady at this point in his career. Below are some stats comparing Jimmy’s freshman season to that of Brady’s in 2003. Since Jimmy has two more starts against some poor defenses, he can build these up a bit, so I will update these again next week and a second time at the end of the season. Still, I think people may be surprised at how favorably Jimmy has performed compared to Brady despite the overall ineptness of the offense this year.

	Brady Quinn (2003)	Jimmy Clausen (2007)
Starts	9	7
Comp-Att-Int	157-332-15	103-181-5
Completion Pct	47.3	56.9
Att/INT	22.1	36.2
Att/TD	36.9	42.25
Yards	1831	864
QB Efficiency	93.53	98.77
Avg Yds/Att	5.51	4.77
Agv Yds/Comp	11.66	8.39
Touchdowns	9	4
Times Sacked	13	27
0 INT starts	2 (USC, Navy)	3 (MSU, UCLA, AFA)
2+ INT starts	4 (Pur, BC, FSU, Syr)	1 (BC)
3+ TD starts	0	1 (AFA)
0 TD starts	2 (FSU, BYU)	5 (PSU,.Mich, MSU, UCLA, BC)
300+ yard games	1 (BC)	0
<100 yard games	1 (Pitt)	4 (Mich, MSU, UCLA, BC)
Fumbles-Lost	6-2	4-2
Team Rushing	174.6	41.5
Record	4-5	1-6

A few stats I think really jump out so here are my observations of these numbers.

• Brady obviously had much more success throwing the ball downfield. He has a big edge over Jimmy in terms of yards, yards/completion, and yard/attempts.
• Jimmy has been better protecting the ball by throwing interceptions at a far lower rate - once every 36.2 attempts vs. Brady’s one per 22.1 attempts - but Brady got the ball in the end zone at better rate once ever 36.9 attempts vs. 42.25 for Jimmy.
• Brady had just 2 starts where he didn’t throw an interception while Jimmy’s got TD-less five times already. Jimmy does have a 3 TD game, however, something Brady never had as a frosh.
• Team rushing statistics and sacks are the two biggest disparities though. Brady was aided by a running game which gained 174.6 yards a game in his starts, while Jimmy’s gotten just 41.5 yards of help from the ground attack this year. Brady also got sacked just 13 times compared to Jimmy’s 27. This can be seen as Brady avoiding the rush better or as Jimmy receiving much worse blocking - the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Obviously these stats don’t paint the whole picture since the two seasons were vastly different for the Irish, but I think they show that despite how poorly this offense has performed as a unit, that Clausen might be performing better than some are giving him credit for. Basically, it shows that he has been smart with the ball but hasn’t been able to get the ball downfield nearly as well as Brady did. It will be interesting to see how these numbers look the next couple weeks.

First there was the entire series of over dramatic articles last summer which critisized Clausen for anything and everything possible. Then there was last Friday’s “report” about Clausen being cited for transporting alcohol which wreaked of cattiness. Now, Jeff Carroll’s column from this past weekend in the South Bend Tribune goes on the offensive against Jimmy yet again.

“Jimmy Clausen hasn’t taken a snap at Notre Dame, and already his time with the Irish has been emotionally exhausting.”

I wonder if a four part series of articles obsessing over the recruitment of Jimmy Clausen before the kid ever took a snap during his senior year of high school added the the “emotionally exhausting” status which Carroll now writes about. For the record, I don’t know a single Notre Dame fan who is remotely emotionally exhausted.

“It almost doesn’t seem fair, the way a man still more than a month away from his 20th birthday can find himself under such harsh scrutiny for every move he makes. But let’s not forget that it was Clausen himself who gleefully thrust himself into the spotlight a year and a half ago.”

This made me laugh. Carroll thinks its unfair for Clausen is under such scrutiny, yet he adds to it whenever humanly possible. One might say that last summer’s Courting Jimmy Clausen were a bit “harsh” and not very fair towards Clausen. The next couple paragraphs then obsess over Clausen’s announcement ceremony at the College Hall of Fame last spring. Dude, get over it.

Carroll also felt the need to criticize Clausen for having the audacity to go and get hurt and not fully disclose the details of the injury to very important people like the media. Nevermind that it’s Charlie Weis policy not to disclose injury news or the fact that there are federal laws protecting the kid’s privacy on the issue.

Not the arm injury soap opera that has hung over the quarterback competition like a black cloud since the beginning of the spring, culminating in this summer’s “procedure” frenzy.

The best part of the article, however, is definitely the closing:

However, when it’s one drama after another, and when it all surrounds an athlete who has been protected well beyond the bounds of good judgment, you can’t help but start to wonder whether it’s worth the aggravation, whether Clausen will really play four years at Notre Dame. And you start to wonder if he should. If, for all his prodigious talent, he’s worth the distraction.

Who exactly is wondering if Jimmy will play four years at Notre Dame at this point? And who exactly is questioning whether he is worth the “distraction?” For all of the fuss the SBT made over Jimmy’s latest “distraction,” the national media could not have cared less about it. There was an AP report on the matter, but even ESPN, who loves painting Notre Dame in a negative light, didn’t run with it.

This goes beyond fishing for a story since there is plenty of news to actually report on considering the Irish are in the midst of training camp. It’s time the media stops obsessing over every bit of information surrounding Clausen considering there would be no hype if it weren’t for them. Without the help of the media, who have reported on every shred of “news” about Clausen since he committed to Notre Dame, Clausen would be just another freshman in this year’s class.

Let the kid play a down of football before questioning whether or not he’ll finish his career at Notre Dame or suggest that his “distractions” are not worth having him around for.

The South Bend Tribune report on Friday that freshman quarterback Jimmy Clausen was cited with transporting alcohol back in June.

“Indiana State Excise Police cited the 19-year-old Clausen and a 23-year-old outside the Belmont Beverage store at 1621 South Bend Ave., near the Notre Dame campus, police said.”

Clausen entered a pre-trial diversion program just as Derrell Hand and Kyle McAlarney, other Notre Dame athletes who have had recent run ins with the law, did. According to the Tribune, Clausen’s deal included a $170 fine and an agreement to not commit a similar offense for the time period of one year.  If Clausen fulfills both ends of the agreement, the charge will go away.

The entire situation does not seem serious and one would assume that if this occurred back in June it was already dealt with internally. What strikes me as odd is the timing of the report from the SBT. This incident happened in June, but it just for reported now.

It should be noted that the SBT is the same newspaper that ran a entire series of articles which were extremely critical of Clausen earlier this off-season which slammed Clausen for everything from his haircut to his announcement ceremony back in the spring of 2006. Now today’s report comes with the following opening:

Maybe someday Jimmy Clausen will make headlines for something he actually does on the football field — not for ornate announcements with stretch Hummers, not for clandestine elbow conditions, and, most recently, not for a minor scrape with the law.

I wonder what the Clausen clan did to tick off the SBT, but it seems that co-authors Joshua Stone and Eric Hansen took just a little bit too much enjoyment out of writing that opening.

Now the real fun will begin when the national media gets a hold of this and turns it into an expose of how Charlie Weis has lost control of the program or how Notre Dame is selling its soul for football glory. That is of course, unless that is part of this Sunday’s edition of the South Bend Tribune.

Here are some photos from Saturday’s open practice courtesy of IndyinIN. Theres a couple good shots of the quarterbacks and another nice one of Latina talking with the offensive line.

Despite wide spread internet rumors over the summer about the severity of Jimmy Clausen’s injury status, Charlie Weis told the media on Monday that his prized freshman quarterback’s health is just fine thank you.

“People want to talk about procedures and being gone for the year, okay, he’s out there practicing today like I said he would be. Would I say when we’re teeing off on September 1st, would Jimmy Clausen being capable of being our starting quarterback and slinging it 30 or 40 times? The answer would be yes.”

Weis’s words should be comforting to fans after rumors lingered all summer that Clausen would have to miss considerable playing time due to the mysterious elbow “procedure” which he under went after the conclusion of spring practice. A fully healthy Clausen could very well be lining up under center for the Irish September 1.

Speaking of the quarterback race, Weis did not offer much insight into where things stand right now, but he did make a comparison between the three finalists for the starting position:

That’s the easiest way for me to say it. Let’s just say that Evan is kind of a cross between Demetrius and Jimmy. That would be the easiest way for me to explain it because I’m not looking for a jack-of-all-trades, and a master of none. I’m looking for somebody that can actually do enough stuff where we can win.

This struck me as a bit odd since most people considered Clausen to be the more mobile of the two between he and Sharpley. Regardless of who is faster, knowing that Clausen is healthy and capable of starting September 1 is definitely good news.

Heisman Pundit is a great site produces some really good content, but their post today insinuating that Charlie Weis “mortgaged his program’s future” on Jimmy Clausen is silly and down right ridiculous.

So, Weis passed on Mustain and left the slot open for Clausen. The idea was that Clausen was so good, he was worth waiting for.

Mustain, meanwhile, went 8-0 as a starter for Arkansas before transferring to USC.

In the meantime, Notre Dame has seen the writing on the wall regarding Clausen and has secured a commitment from another quarterback from the San Fernando Valley, Notre Dame High signal caller Dayne Crist, who is highly-regarded and could very well be the quarterback of the future.

His commitment to the Irish signals that Weis is probably a bit worried about the future of his star recruit.

First of all, there was nothing set in stone that Mustain would have definitely committed to Notre Dame had Weis made an offer late in the game. Secondly, Weis already had recruited two top 10 quarterbacks in that class and his commitment to the quarterbacks he already recruited is more of a reason why he didn’t go hard after Mustain. Zach Frazer and Demetrius Jones were already committed to Notre Dame and Weis made promises to them that he wouldn’t bring in any more quarterbacks.

The entire posts also fails to mention that Jones is even on the team an in the mix for the starting position. It also fails to mention that Zach Frazer, a top 10 quarterback last year, has transfered from Notre Dame because the Irish are loaded at quarterback with Clausen, Jones, and junior Evan Sharpley.

The insinuation that recruiting Crist is a sign that Weis is worried about Clausen is also a bit ridiculous. Weis will most likely try and recruit a quarterback every year and when you can get a quarterback as talented as Crist you go for it. Weis only had a handful of quarterbacks he even looked at this year and if he couldn’t have gotten an elite QB like Crist, he wouldn’t have pursued any others.

Maybe we should all let Clausen take a few snaps this fall before labeling him a bust. I doubt the author of the post saw many spring practices or the Blue-Gold game. Had he, he would have seen that of the four quarterbacks competting for the starting nod in the spring, Clausen threw the nicest ball.

If Heisman Pundit was just trying to rile up Notre Dame fans - mission accomplished, but if this post was a series attempt at assessing the future of Clausen, they should stick to discussing the Heisman race and not comment on a quarterback who’s never taken a snap on the college level.

Dennis Dodd is busy stirring up some trouble over on CBS with his latest edition of Dodds and Ends. Dodd apparently has spoken with Zach Frazer’s dad who has told him that Evan Sharpley will be the starting quarterback for the Irish against Georgia Tech. While this certainly seems posssible, just why is David Frazer busy telling Dennis Dodd who the starting QB will be for the Irish? Didn’t both Zach and David repeatedly say that Frazer left Notre Dame on good terms? If so, why leak out information he may think is accurate? Anyway, here’s a few highlights from Dodd’s banter…

“From what we know Sharpley is going to be the guy,” David Frazer told me from his office in Harrisburg, Pa. “Jones will be put in for a few trick plays. Clausen won’t play this year.”

Wow. That lends credence to an unsubstantiated blog that surfaced earlier this summer. It stated that Clausen had surgery on his throwing elbow. No one has confirmed the surgery orClausen’s playing status.

That is some sleuth detecting by Dodd. Maybe he missed the ESPN report that came out last month where Brian Hardin, a Notre Dame spokesman, admitted Clausen did indeed have surgery and that he would be ready for the start of camp.

“The way Charlie described it, he doesn’t think he has the passing game this year,” David Frazer said. “He wants somebody to throw it five yards (downfield). They’re going to run it more.

“I think the problem is they thought they were going to get (five-star receiving recruit) Arrelious Benn. With (Jeff) Samardzija and Rhema McKnight gone, they really don’t have go-to receiver types.”

This actually makes sense based on most of the speculation this off-season. Notre Dame should have a strong running game with a stable of talented running backs and with two new receivers and a new quarterback it is safe to assume that the Irish offense will be a bit less pass happy.

Should Sharpley end up up starting, it will most likely mean that neither Demetrius Jones or Clausen are ready to take over the reigns since both have widely been considered prospects with much higher ceilings. Sharpley would be a steady hand who wouldn’t win a lot of games by himself, but also won’t lose games either.

With each report surfacing about the QB race I keep getting the feeling that its going to be Demetrius Jones under center when Georgia Tech rolls into town that first weekend of September. Either that, or Weis really is playing a cat and mouse game with the whole quarterback situation. Either way, this is just going to the beginning of a summer of speculation.