Lou Two?

"The Shirt" has been unveiled, and the 2010 edition of the Blue & Gold Game is upon us. As we wait for the public premiere of the latest version of the Fighting Irish, I wanted to share my thoughts on what has essentially been the prologue of the Brian Kelly Era. I was hoping to make this post much more in-depth, but time constraints (it's already really late on Friday night) dictate that it be just a summary of my impressions. But I think you'll get the flavor.

Lou Two? It hit me like a ton of bricks about a week ago when watching some of Coach Kelly's post-practice remarks to the media that he sounds a lot like Lou Holtz. His remarks that day were particularly tough on Dayne Crist, criticizing his sloppy footwork and his technique in general. He also remarked that "right now we're not a very good football team" and lamented the need to motivate players who are lucky enough to be wearing a gold helmet and playing for Notre Dame. That dose of pessimism and poor-mouthing was vintage Lou. But the similarities don't end there. When Lou came to Notre Dame he found a group of players that thought a little too much of their own abilities, and he had to bring those players down a peg by instilling a much stricter sense of discipline and by emphasizing the concept of "team" over the individual. We're seeing from Coach Kelly a lot of talk about the sense of entitlement he perceived when he walked into the Gug and the need to find the Right Kind of Guys (RKGs) who come to Notre Dame because they want to be part of the tradition of the Fighting Irish, not because it will enhance their chances of being drafted by the NFL. The final similarity I see is the primacy of the "system." Under Lou the Irish ran the option offense. It was who they were. Everyone knew the plays they were going to run, and the game plan was simply to execute the system better than the other team could defend it. Under Coach Kelly the system is his version of the spread offense. His goal is to develop his team to a level of unconscious competence in the spread and then execute it at a high level on game day, regardless of who the opponent is. So, at the outset, the Brian Kelly Era feels an awful lot like the beginning of the Lou Holtz Era. I think these two coaches have very similar ideas about how a head football coach should go about his business. I hope Coach Kelly can have results that compare favorably to Lou's as well.

Tempo. We've had some glimpses of the team's spring practices, although we haven't really been able to see anything meaningful. But we've certainly heard and read a lot about tempo. Those who have observed the practices have said that they are remarkable for the high tempo. Coach Kelly himself has on numerous occasions stated that one of the biggest challenges for the players and the team in the spring has been adjusting to the high tempo at which he expects them to play. But does all the talk about tempo mean anything? Or is it just so much more "new coach" rhetoric? I think all the emphasis on tempo is very significant. Even Charlie Weis noted that one of the problems that really vexed the team in 2007 was "tempo." I have written quite a bit about tempo, or the lack thereof, here on this blog. For example, after the loss to Georgia Tech to open 2007 (sorry to bring that up):

In talking about the loss, Coach Weis had a different take. It wasn't that our guys didn't know what to do, it was a "tempo" problem.

“It isn’t just the players playing each other, it’s handing the speed of the game. You can simulate it in practice the best you can, but obviously they did a much better job than we did of handling the speed of the game. They controlled the tempo with their defense versus our offense.”

And again -

“I thought the speed of the game, especially the offensive front against their defensive front, we were playing at two different tempos.”

What does that mean? Is that like "Well, Mr. and Mrs. Domer, it's not that little Johnny can't read. He actually reads very well. It's just that he reads at a slower tempo than the other children."

Oh, is that all?

And, more importantly, can you fix a "tempo" problem? Because if we don't fix our "tempo" problem I have a very strong feeling that this could be an issue down the road. Like this week in Happy Valley. Or in Pasadena. Or when the Trojans come calling.

This "tempo" issue has been discussed before here at OC Domer. Following the fan appreciation day practice in August I posted my thoughts on what we learned (or didn't learn) from that public practice. Included in my ramblings was the following:

It seemed to me that the line play was only going about 80% speed. Very little real smash-mouth going on. That, and the poor overall quality of the video posted at UND.com (too small, too grainy) makes it very difficult to evaluate line play. So I won't try.

Much has been made of the coaches requiring the defense to "run" a lap around the field when they lined up with only ten men on one play, as though the coaches were really cracking the whip. I was disappointed in how most of the guys dogged it on the lap. They pace was very slow, and many of the guys cut the corners in the end zones. I know the guys are fatigued after a week of camp, but maybe the reason USC and LSU run laps around us on game day is that we don't really "run" our laps at practice. Practice slow and play slow. Maybe I'm being unfair and too harsh, but that "lap" bothered me.

So maybe we've had a tempo problem for a while. If so, I am really disappointed. Living in Southern California, I am subjected to a rather steady stream of USC coverage. I've built up some immunity to it and no longer break out in hives. One common, recurring theme from those who visit Trojans' practices is that they are impressed by the high tempo of USC practices. If I know that one of the distinguishing characteristics of the current top program in the country is their high-tempo practices, surely that word has gotten out to the coaching community. Why wouldn't we (Notre Dame) be trying to emulate that? And if we are trying, why isn't it translating to Saturdays? Is it because we're coaching it wrong? Or is it because our guys are just too slow to play at that higher tempo? I sure hope it's the former, because coaching techniques can be fixed. If it's the latter, we're in serious trouble, because you can't teach speed.

It certainly seems that "tempo" is central to Coach Kelly's ideas about how he wants his teams to play the game, and it appears that he puts his money where his mouth is on that point by forcing the team to work at a very high tempo 100% of the time in practice. Hopefully in will translate into a team that plays faster and with more urgency than we have seen at Notre Dame in many years.

Defense. With all the focus on Dayne Crist and the new offensive system, the defense is getting overlooked. In listening to the coaches, it is clear that the new defensive system will be a significant departure from the Jon Tenuta experiment. Rather than a "Tora! Tora! Tora!" attack mentality, this year's defense will be a more disciplined unit with greater attention to gap control and playing one's assignment. Nobody wants to say it, but it is going to be a "bend-but-don't break" scheme that will focus on slowing down the opponent and avoiding the big offensive play. Once Coach Kelly's spread offense is hitting on all cylinders, a solid though perhaps unspectacular defense should be more than sufficient to enable the Irish to win what I expect will be a lot of shoot-outs. But the offense will surely sputter for a while as Dayne and the receivers grow in it, and the defense is going to have to be more than just "solid" if this team is going to win games in 2010. The defense is going to have to generate turnovers and it will have to be very stout when faced with tough situations following stalled drives and turnovers by the inexperienced offense. I have no idea what to expect from this unit, but I have no doubt that it needs to be a lot better than it was in 2009. Hopefully the new 3-4 scheme will be a better fit for our personnel, and hopefully the new defensive coaches can teach basic tackling techniques better than the previous staff did. There is plenty of talent on this side of the ball, and if they can learn the new schemes sufficiently well to "play fast" without making too many mistakes they could be very good. Coach Kelly's public comments on the defensive talent on this team have been very positive. I don't have a lot of insight to offer on what the defense will do. My only insight is that I think folks are underestimating how important it is that the defense be very good right out of the box since it has to be expected that there will be growing pains on the offensive side of the ball.

Chuck & Duck The Spread Offense. In order get some idea what to expect from Coach Kelly's offense, I have been watching this Tony Pike 2009 highlight video:




Obviously the quarterback drives the bus in this offense, and Dayne Crist will have to be very good from week one or we are in trouble. There is no place for the QB to hide in this scheme. There really is no way to protect the QB or slowly bring him along. It is pedal-to-the-metal from the coin flip. But the receivers are equally important. They have to run their routes correctly to get open, and they have to be able to catch the ball, even if the throw isn't perfect. It is clear from watching the above video that Tony Pike had a tremendous degree of trust in his receivers. He frequently threw the ball to receivers who weren't really open and trusted that they would be aggressive enough to come down with the ball or at least prevent an interception. In this system the QB is frequently going to be throwing the ball under duress, and he won't be able to deliver it to his wide-outs on a silver platter. This offense appears to assume that the QB will simply get the ball out of his hand and into the general vicinity of the receiver, who is expected to attack the ball and come down with it. That's the "bad news" for the receivers, so to speak. The good news is that the wide receivers will have many, many opportunities to make big plays. The ball is in the air all the time. When the offense is working, the receivers frequently catch the ball in space with plenty of room to make big gains. There will be plenty of wealth to spread around to those players who are able to grasp the scheme and step up their game. Michael Floyd is obviously the #1 WR right now. But this offense needs at least four WRs on the field at a time, and Golden Tate is playing for Pete Carroll now. It's time for the young guys to show us what they can do.

BGS RIP. The best college football blog on the 'net has decided to go out on top. The Blue-Gray Sky was the best college football blog when I started OC Domer in March of 2007, and they were still the best when they retired their jerseys on March 25, 2010. Week in and week out, season in and season out, the Blue-Gray Sky was the gold standard against which Notre Dame football blogs were measured. While the rest of us made do with our own modestly informed opinions based upon watching the game once, live, while drinking beer and eating nachos, the crew at BGS watched film, broke it down, and gave us actual analysis (accompanied by video clips, diagrams, and screen-caps) of what the team was doing and why it was or wasn't working. That's a lot of hard work and it was without peer in the Irish blogosphere. And it was greatly appreciated by me and thousands of other loyal BGS readers. It was a proud milestone for the OC Domer blog when BGS added us to their blogroll. Thanks for the traffic guys. Here's a portion of my comments at BGS upon hearing the news that they were shutting it down:

Running my own one-man blog, I completely understand how much work goes into a quality post. And as a dad with a job, I understand how hard it is to find the time to blog well. Thanks for all the blood, sweat & tears you guys have poured into your site the past six years. And good luck to all of you as you move on to the next chapters of your lives. But you and BGS will be missed.

NFL. Congratulations to Jimmy Clausen on being drafted by the Carolina Panthers! It looks like a great fit for Jimmy. The offense is the same one he ran at ND, and it is a fundamentally sound team that just needs a good QB to get to the next level. Jimmy will have a great chance to compete for the starting job right away, and if he wins it he will be in a much better situation to stay healthy and win games than Brady Quinn was in with the Browns. Good luck to Jimmy, and I'm glad he wasn't in New York where the cameras could document his pain as he slid down the board. And congratulations also to Golden Tate, who will be in Seattle playing for his old nemesis Pete Carroll. Great pick by Pete, and good fit for Golden as Seattle sorely needs a playmaker like him. How long has it been since Notre Dame had a player drafted (Clausen at pick 48) before the first USC player was drafted (Taylor Mays at pick 49)? Weird that Tebow was drafted ahead of Clausen and will be competing with Brady Quinn in Denver. I hope BQ wins that job and keeps Tebow on the sideline for a long time.

Conclusion. It's been exciting to watch Coach Kelly take over the Fighting Irish and begin to mold it in his image. But up until now its been like fingering the presents under the tree before Christmas, trying to figure out what's inside the wrapping. Tomorrow the wrapping begins to come off and we get to see what Santa brought us. I hope Santa got my letter.

Go Irish!

NFL Restricted Free-Agent Tender Levels

If you're a fan of the NFL, as I am, you've been hearing a lot the past few days about "tenders" that NFL teams have been making to their restricted free agents. You'll hear that the Denver Broncos have made a "first round tender" to Brandon Marshall, and that the Chargers have made a "first and third round tender" to running back Darren Sproles. You may have been wondering exactly what these terms mean.

A "restricted free agent" for 2010 is a player whose contract has expired and who has completed three, four, or five NFL seasons. A player with an expired contract and six or more seasons under their belts is TRULY a free agent, as he is entitled to negotiate the best deal he can find with any interested team and his former team has no ability to hinder his career move or to demand any compensation from the player's new team.

A restricted free agent can negotiate a new contract with any interested team, but his old team can maintain a "right of refusal" to re-sign the player by matching the other team's written offer, or the old team may be entitled to compensation in the form of draft choices if they choose not to match the other team's written offer. In order to preserve these "rights of first refusal" and the right to draft choice compensation, the player's old team must first "tender" to the restricted free agent a qualifying offer. The NFL's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) sets the salary levels a team's tender offer must meet in order to trigger the various levels of draft choice compensation. The higher the salary level in the tendered offer, the more compensation a team is entitled to receive from another team who signs the player away from them.

After some digging around, I finally located the following data regarding the dollar thresholds for tender offers for 2010 at nfllabor.com. Note that the numbers (including the number of years required) are different in 2010 than in previous years due to the unusual circumstance that the CBA is expiring.

Q. What are the different levels of tender offers to this year’s class of Restricted Free Agents and their associated levels of draft choice compensation?

A. Below is a breakdown of the tender offers, listed by number of accrued seasons, for Restricted Free Agents in 2010.

Player with THREE Accrued Seasons

Right of First Refusal — $1,101,000
Right of First Refusal + Pick in player’s original draft round — $1,101,000*
Right of First Refusal + Second-Round Draft Pick — $1,684,000*
Right of First Refusal + First-Round Draft Pick — $2,396,000*
Right of First Refusal + First- AND Third-Round Draft Picks — $3,043,000*

*or 110% of player’s 2009 Paragraph 5 Salary, whichever is greater

Player with FOUR Accrued Seasons

Right of First Refusal — $1,176,000
Right of First Refusal + Pick in player’s original draft round — $1,176,000*
Right of First Refusal + Second-Round Draft Pick — $1,759,000*
Right of First Refusal + First-Round Draft Pick — $2,521,000*
Right of First Refusal + First- AND Third-Round Draft Picks — $3,168,000*

*or 110% of player’s 2009 Paragraph 5 Salary, whichever is greater

Player with FIVE Accrued Seasons

Right of First Refusal — $1,226,000
Right of First Refusal + Pick in player’s original draft round — $1,226,000*
Right of First Refusal + Second-Round Draft Pick — $1,809,000*
Right of First Refusal + First-Round Draft Pick — $2,621,000*
Right of First Refusal + First- AND Third-Round Draft Picks — $3,268,000*

*or 110% of player’s 2009 Paragraph 5 Salary, whichever is greater

Having found the above information, I find it a lot easier to understand all the chatter about the impending free agency period, and I hope this is helpful to you too!

Board Games & Michael Vick

Michael Vick is now a Philadelphia Eagle. I wrote a little about Vick a while back, but his signing yesterday caused me to give his situation a little more thought, as I was having trouble sorting out my feelings.

If you have kids you can follow me on this one.

When playing board games with your kids, sometimes you land on the "lose a turn" square, which is disappointing. You're forced to sit and watch the other players zoom around the board for a whole turn (which seems like forever when you're five). But in the big scheme of the game, losing a turn isn't really that big of a deal.

Other times you roll the dice or draw a card and you have to return all the way back to the "start" square and have to start your journey all over again. You might also lose any prizes or tokens you had collected so far in the game. You are literally back at square one and starting the whole game over. That's way worse than just landing on the "lose a turn" square.

Prison is no picnic, and I like to believe that redemption is possible. But Michael Vick signing with the Eagles for $1.6 million feels to me like his numerous crimes only landed him on the "lose a turn" square, when he should have had to return all the way to the "start" square and begin rebuilding his life from scratch.

We have seen great stories of redemption in other areas of life: The ballplayer who throws it all away with drugs or alcohol, or loses it all due to injury or poor judgment. The player who faded into obscurity but who, over time, worked and scraped his way back up through the minors and eventually made it back to the show. The businessman or politician who fell off the top of mountain and had to spend years climbing back to the top. Those are great stories of penance and forgiveness and perseverance and redemption.

I'm willing to forgive Michael Vick for is transgressions, but I'd feel a little better about the whole thing if I saw a little more time spent on the struggle for redemption before signing the fat contract and rejoining the millionaires' club. Maybe a stint in the CFL or the new UFL. Maybe a season spent coaching a local youth team while getting himself back in shape. Something other than a big pile of cash and an instant return to the spotlight of superstardom. It seems to me that redemption cannot be given, it has to be earned. And I don't think Michael Vick has shown us that he has earned it yet.

Coach Weis Working Hard for his Guys

First of all, congratulations to David Bruton! The OC Domer 2007 Player of the Year was drafted by the Denver Broncos on Sunday. He was the Broncos' 4th round pick, and taken number 114 overall. When I heard about Bruton going to the Broncos the first thought that jumped into my head was that maybe he could be the next Steve Atwater for them. Atwater was a hard-hitting, rangy safety that was noted for doing a great job coming up and defending against the run. Given David Bruton's penchant for being among Notre Dame's top tacklers the past few seasons, I think the Atwater comparison is apt. Steve Atwater was listed as 6' 3", 220 lbs with a 4.44 second 40-yard dash time. Bruton is listed at 6' 2" and 219, with 40 times from 4.40 to 4.46 seconds. Go Broncos!

It's disappointing that the Irish had only one player drafted in 2009, but not really surprising. This class was the recruiting class of 2005, which was the hybrid Willingham/Weis class. Weis gets the "credit" (blame) for the recruiting class, but it was Willingham and his staff who had done all the background and recruiting for this group and then handed it over to Charlie with a month left before signing day following the Super Bowl. To me, this weekend's NFL draft finally closes the book on the Ty Willingham era at Notre Dame.

The South Bend Tribune noted today:

Fifth-year seniors Lambert, Brown and Crum represent the final three pieces of the last full recruiting class of the Tyrone Willingham Era (2004), a class that now holds the distinction of not having one player selected in an NFL Draft.

That includes the 10 players from that class who transferred and finished their football careers at other schools, and running back Darius Walker, who jumped into the draft pool after his junior season.

Willingham's first, and as it turns out only, senior class at Washington also went draftless this weekend.

The 2009 Fighting Irish will be stocked with Charlie Weis recruits from top to bottom, from seniors down to freshman. Any personnel or roster deficiencies fall at the feet of CW. To coin a phrase, "No Excuses."

Although we had only one player drafted over the weekend, that does NOT mean that more Notre Dame men won't get a chance to play football on Sundays. Early this morning my cell phone started buzzing with Twitter messages from Coach Weis. Here they are, in order:

• Good morning. I returned home late Saturday night from the ND Club of El Paso Texas. I spent Sunday watching Day 2 of the NFL Draft.
• I was happy for David Bruton winding up with Denver & my buddy, Josh McDaniels. Denver loves him as a safety, but even more on special teams
• After the draft, I worked on placing all our undrafted players. It looks like Mo Crum will go to Tampa, Grimes to Denver…
• Lambert to the 49ers, Kuntz to Indy, Justin Brown to Washington, and both Schwapp & Turkovich to the Cowboys.

I was very glad to read (1) that Charlie thought he had a chance to get seven more players signed as free agents and into NFL camps, and (2) that Coach is working hard for his guys. Clearly Charlie's Twitter messages are intended, at least in part, to get the attention of potential recruits who want to know that CW will do everything he can to get them their shot at the NFL if they prove themselves NFL-caliber.

There have been more developments since my break-of-dawn messages from CW. The SBT is now reporting that five Irish free agents agreed to terms Sunday night: Grimes (Denver), Kuntz (Indianapolis), Lambert (San Francisco), Schwapp (Dallas) and Turkovich (Dallas), and that Brown and Crum are expected to finalize agreements soon.

Although the odds of an undrafted free-agent making a roster are generally long, Notre Dame players have a way of sticking around in the NFL. Once these kids get into camp, the coaches see players that are of above-average intelligence, have been well-coached, have played big time football for four years, and who are high character guys. It's hard to let players like that go.

Good luck to all the NFL Irish as they chase their dreams.

Stealing Signals is Cheating. Who Knew?

There has been an abundance of outrage over the airwaves and in print about the latest scandal to rock the National Football League. Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down?

It turns out that the New England Patriots may have been video-taping opposing coaches' hand signals to their defenses in an effort to "steal" those signals.

Shocking, I know.

Apparently there is an NFL rule which prohibits teams from video-taping an opponent's sideline, whether from their own sideline or from the coaches boxes atop the stadium. Fair enough - if the Patriots broke a league rule, they should be punished.

But I have a more basic question. When did "stealing" hand signals become cheating? I feel like I'm missing something important.

When I played football in high school we always had a scouting report on the other team. Some reports were better than others. Sometimes it was just basic offensive and defensive sets, their favorite plays, trick plays to watch for, and so forth. Sometimes the scouting report was more detailed, and would include strong tendencies in certain down-and-distance situations. Sometimes we knew that if the opponent lined up in a certain formation they were going to run either of two plays (they were that predictable). We might know that if they put number 89 in at TE, they were going to throw to him for sure. Once, we knew that our opponent's "hot color" for audibles was always "red," and that if they audibled using the hot color, what play they liked to audible to.

When we had really good scouting reports, we certainly played better. Were we cheating? Is knowing an opponent's tendencies or habits cheating?

It used to be that players on the field called the plays. The quarterback called the offensive plays in the huddle. The offense always huddled five yards off the ball so the defense couldn't hear. What if the defense did hear? Was that cheating? Or was that being careless calling your plays? Eventually coaches decided they wanted to call plays instead of the QB, so they would send a player to the huddle with the play from the sideline. But that takes time, and restricts your flexibility with personnel. So they turned to signals.

I'm going to pose a series of hypothetical scenarios, and you tell me when the cheating occurs:

1. The coach yells from his sideline to his defense on the field "Two deep zone, blitz the strong side!" The offensive players hear the shouting and change their play.
2. The coach yells the same thing from the sideline to his defense on the field, but does so in Spanish instead of English. The wide receiver on that side of the offensive formation understands Spanish and tells the QB what's going on, so he calls an audible.
3. The coach has a white board and he writes on it in big letters "Two Deep Zone, blitz the strong side" and holds it over his head so his players on the field can read it. The opposing coach standing on his own sideline reads the white board and calls his play accordingly.
4. Same scenario as 3, but the coach writes on the board "2D, BS." The opposing coach cracks the code and figures out that "2D" is two deep and "BS" is blitz strong, and makes his play call accordingly.
5. Same scenario as 4, except the coach writes on the board "Bronco, Kangaroo." The opposing coach doesn't crack the code during the game, but other coaches scouting the game from the stands are taking notes of the white board messages and the corresponding defenses being run. The following week that coach prepares his team to play based upon what he has learned about his opponent's code system.
6. Same scenario as 5, except that instead of a white board and code words, the coach signals his team with a series of odd hand signals. Scouts in the stands take note of the signals and later, while watching game film, are able to figure out that when the opposing coach uses a slashing "Z" signal, the team runs an all-out blitz.
7. Same scenario as 6, except instead of the scouts just taking notes, they actually have a mini-cam with them and record the signals for use later when studying the game film.
   

Apparently, the NFL has decided that scenario 7 is illegal under league rules. In my mind though, scenario 7 is not substantively different than the other scenarios. It's more sophisticated, but not substantively different. If a team is using a means of communicating play calls to its players that can be readily seen or heard by the opponent on the field or on the opposing sideline, then the opponent is entitled to try to break the code. It's up to the team using codes or signals to find a system that is secure. Like letting the linebacker call the play in the huddle. Or shuttling in the plays. Or using a wrist band with numbers that change every week (or even every half).

Now, it's different if a team has installed a wiretap on the headsets used by opposing coaches. Or if they're using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment to overhear conversations on an opponent's bench. Or if they have a stolen copy of the other team's playbook, including that week's hand signals appendix. That's cheating.

The use of hand signals is an attempt to gain a competitive edge. It allows the defensive play to be called from the sideline by a coach, rather than by a less knowledgeable player, after seeing what personnel group the offense is deploying and without the need to substitute personnel. But if a team is sending hand signals that everyone in the stadium can see, the opponent is entitled to try to figure out the hand signal code in an effort to offset that competitive edge.

At least that's how I see it. To me, it just seems obvious. Which explains my confusion about the current "scandal" and the accompanying outrage. Of course, most media "outrage" is faked, but am I missing something here?