Notre Dame Football Mailbag - Part III

0:00This is Belie, one network, every topic, everywhere. So Friday free for all mailbag here on the Irish Breakdown podcast, brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel one day away from Notre Dame picking off their home opener inside the Notre Dame Stadium. Got a Friday free for all mailbag to get us a rest of the way. Yep. Johnny won. How important is it for the offensive line to be dominant in this game versus rice? I do think that's important. Agreed. Now, is it an end all be all? No, but I gotta feel like if this is going to be a dominant offensive line, there should be some level of dominance against team like rice. If you don't dominate rice, I will be a little concerned. It's just two games. I get that. But now we're showing like you didn't play well. I think

1:01people are overreacting to a good game from Notre Dame. If you don't dominate rice, then you didn't play a good game on the offensive line. That's the difference. That would concern me. 100% because there's things that we can go back to and look at on all 22. It's like, hey, corners for Wisconsin, we're bailing. That's why CJ Car wasn't ripping off, seam throws, deep posts, slot fades, all those things. But the offensive line, it gets a little bit more simple. If you're not able to go out and dominate a defensive line, that average is like 270 pounds, then we're going to have some questions. So yes, this one I will say it is important. I'm in full agreeance there. Yep. From Patty O. Furniture, love that name. If this were youth football, I would think CJ had beef with Jayton great house and coach Rudolph doesn't like Sully's dad, but that couldn't happen at this level, right? Well, I don't know if that's happening, but that absolutely happens at this level. A thousand percent happens at this level. I think if you broke down the game, look, I just like

2:02for all of you that didn't watch, watch the breakdown I did, just watch it with an open mind. Like, and I ask, do you trust me to give you on a assessment of Notre Dame football? Do you find me to be someone that's just concede running cover for the football? No, I'm definitely not that. I'm not someone who tends to overreact maybe as much to certain things. And I'm not anymore. Maybe I used to be like that because that's just kind of how my mindset was. I just have strong reactions to things. But if there were reasons to be concerned, I would point them out to you. I did point them out to you when it came to the offensive line. That was concerning. I go, I use film. I use all 22 film. I've got a 20 something minute run game breakdown, a 20 plus minute pass game breakdown where I show you in those clips, there were multiple plays where Jaden great house to me was a primary read. He was either one or two and the read led CJ somewhere else. There was one time that I thought he could have thrown

3:03to Jordan phase, Jaden great house that he threw to Jordan phase on one time. And that was the first one. And here's the thing. I show that in the video. So it's not like it's all like, okay, let me put a good spin on this. I show that play. And then there was another, what was the other play that I always the post corner route by Jordan phase on. I'm sitting or telling you how Jordan phase on a really good player. And I show you on the first rocky ran into game was terrible route. So could that be the case? This again, I say this, it's not that you're not right. I don't we don't have enough data to know you are. That's kind of my point. But yeah, the Sullivan in the Southern apps are thing is more concerning to me than the other way around like if they would have done this with Maddie, if Maddie Augustine doesn't get hurt and they would have started him over Southern apps, I would have understood that more because that's a guy that you've been getting work at right guards since spring practice. Right. Okay. You may make it because

4:05here we're going to rush now. We know who Sully is and we think he's at his ceiling. And I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think Sullivan Absor is pretty close to his ceiling. There's still some technical things I think he can get better at, but he's much closer to his ceiling than like Gerby Lambert is. Oh, sure. And you say, look, Maddie Augustine to me just has a way higher ceiling. And we're willing to take a little bit of a, he's going to make some mistakes in the first month. We're willing to live with those because once he gets that experience under his belt, we think with his power and the ability to do this and do that, we think that by the time we get to BYU and Miami, he's going to be rocking and rolling. That gives us our best chance to have a higher ceiling on the offensive line. I could understand that. And I would, I would. My issue is more so doing it with Styles Prescott. And it's not because I don't think Styles Prescott's a good player. I showed you guys my evaluation of him last week. I think Styles Prescott has talent. It's more about taking a guy that's playing, been playing left tackle his entire career, including all through spring, including the first half of fall camp, given him basically

5:09two weeks to prepare for a, a big 10 team that was a pretty good run defense last year. And then being shocked when he doesn't look comfortable at right guard, you should not have put him in that position to begin with. If you really feel that way about Styles Prescott, what you should have done is start some an after and then work Styles into the game. Give him the third series, give him the six, you know, things like that. But you don't throw him into that. And then, and then you're shocked that his technique going from playing left guard to left tackle to right guard is wrong. Because it's a very, it's a different position. And he's making, you know, changes when it comes to how, how he uses his hands. Now you're putting Gerby Lambert next to a guy that he doesn't have much of a rapport with on the field. It's like when they made the chain from San Pendleton to, to Billy Shrouth. It's not that San Pendleton is not a good player, but putting a veteran there allowed Anthony Napp to have less pressure on him. Because he had a veteran that, and just

6:09the report kind of clicked that's more of my issue. And, you know, who knows what the reasons are. But my point is there's, there is a, a football argument to be made to maybe want to move on from sub and ab shirt right guard. I'm not making it. I would like to see him get that chance to right guard. But I'm also a realist that doesn't think like if you just give him enough games, he's going to make you forget about Charles Jagassal. I'm not saying that either. What I'm saying is there's a right and a wrong way to make that move. And I think they went the wrong way to make that move. And I don't know that they necessarily went with the right guy to make that move. At least from a timing standpoint. From fighting Irish warrior, how worried could and should the Notre Dame coaching staff be with the latest injury to champ mons? I'd be very concerned. I mean, I'm not concerned from the standpoint of like, oh, a non throwing shoulder injury doesn't really, to me, have a huge impact on your future. But it's more so now that he's going to have two full lost seasons. Because of

7:12injuries, is he injury prone? And then what does that do to his development? I don't know that champion's family would want to have this conversation. But if they were open to it, I would be okay if they wanted to re re re classify. Go back to 28. I would have no problem with that. And get me a little bit more distance between him and Noah and and Teddy. I don't know that the family feels that way in his statement about, you know, my season's over. He talks about can't wait to get to Notre Dame. So it doesn't sound like that's in their plans. But I wouldn't be against that. Because I really feel like there's a level of development needed. And not even just about playing games, it's, he's not even practicing for almost two full seasons. That's a big concern for me. Was was this a new injury or was it something that they were going into cleanup? That was the only I've heard conflicting things, but I believe it was something new. Okay. But I'm not 100% certain of that. There's been a lot of conflicting reports. So I don't want to say definitively which one it is. Yep.

8:18From Salty, how surprised were you by Colorado's win against Georgia Tech and their emphasis on O line and D line physicality in the running game? Salty, we talked about that on Tuesday. Very surprised. I wasn't necessarily surprised by their win. I mean, I was surprised, but I wasn't like, Oh my gosh. That is the craziest. I just did not see that coming. I was more surprised at how they won. Yeah. Like they were really like we're going to be a more physical team. Like you could tell everything about what they were trying to do. Game plan wise on both sides of the ball. We're going to be we're going to match Georgia Tech physicality because that's one thing about Georgia Tech. They're physical ball team. Colorado out physical. It was an impressive job in game one from Brennan Merit and game one. You're able to stab some mindset that goes back to kind of where to my Marcus Freeman. You don't do that because of you had a physical game plan that you put in on a Tuesday two weeks before the game started. That started back in January. Now maybe some of the stuff we were making fun of Colorado about some of the fights and things like that. Maybe that was a bi-park of the fact that they're really emphasizing to be tougher to be more physical to not back down.

9:20Maybe we're not there. But now the questions can they do that consistently is going to be my next question. But yeah, I was I was absolutely surprised at how they won. I was surprised. It was an upset, but you and I aren't very high on on Colorado or Georgia Tech this year. No, I don't think either one of these are going to be like contenders in their conferences. So I'm surprised, but I'm not shocked by it. I'm shocked at how they won. In kudos to coach Sanders and coach Marion and those guys for and I don't know who their O-line coach is on just being able to get that done in one off season. Just a complete mindset change. Now let's see if they can keep it going. Now that they've tasted a little bit of success, let's see if they keep that thing going. Yep. Good question. All right. Um, here we go. Another one from Salty, which team benefited the most? Ole Miss for a close win against an unranked team or Louisville for a very good loss against the top

10:2325 ranked opponent? Well, Louisville was ranked. Yeah. Yeah, they were 24. Ole Miss was not... Look, I think the team that wins always gets the the bigger benefit. But I think both teams benefited from how that game played out. Does that make sense? I'm like, it's hard for me to think of a team that benefited from a close loss more than a team that won unless we're talking about like Western Michigan compared to Michigan, where it's like it's a much bigger miss. But we're talking about two top 25 power four teams. The team that won always has the greater benefit. I just think Louisville also benefited from how they lost. Win would have been better. But I think Louisville showed a little something now. Can Louisville build on that? Because they got another big one coming up in two weeks when they host SMU. Sure. I'll say this perception wise, I think Louisville benefited more. Because for Ole Miss, it was about somewhat like the worst fears were kind of coming true

11:27of that Trinidad Chambliss is just going to have to put on the Superman Cape every week for them to beat a 24th ranked team. Whereas for Louisville, that was like, hey, you can go hang with the top 10 SEC team. So perception wise, Louisville benefited more. But all encompassing I'm with Brian. Whoever wins more because Ole Miss is still a top 10 team and they go into week two, one, and oh, but from a perception standpoint, I think Louisville benefited more. From Robert McCarthy, hello all. Brian, what's the latest on Quincy Porter in his time frame? And do you think he can be wide receiver one? Not in 2026. I don't know a lot about his time frame, guys. It's very much up in the air. I mean, I don't think they anticipated him needing a second surgery. I think that was needed because of how the recovery was going. And whenever that happens, I look, I'll just put a few guys like this. You can keep asking me about Quincy Porter. Totally fine. That's why I love about Friday free for all. You can ask everyone like, I've never told Muhammad Abduro anybody, hey, don't ask me these negative. No, ask them, but just to understand,

12:29you know what kind of response you may get. But that's part of the fun of talking about. I don't want you guys to just throw soft balls at me. And so that, hey, here comes the hang-in curve, knock it out of the park. That's no fun. It's not fun for you and it's not fun for me. So you guys keep asking about Quincy Porter, but just so you know, here's my stance on it. Until Notre Dame tells us to definitively, he's returning on X-Date, not he's going to be soon. Until they say he will play against so-and-so, I'm not thinking at all about Quincy Porter. In regard to what he may or may not, not hope the young man gets healthy. I care about that. But I don't, I'm not thinking about him as far as how he may or may not help this football team. And it's the same mindset I have at Charles Jagassal. When they tell me Charles Jagassal is returning for this game, I will care about how he can impact the football team. Or I always care, but like, let's care is a wrong word because I care. I will put thought in response into how he could or couldn't help the football team. Because we just don't know when that's going to be or how much prep time.

13:33So could he be receiver number one this year? No. If Quincy Porter returns to full health, could he be, and let's say he, let's say he misses half the year, let's say he doesn't come back, they'll be why you and he's really nothing more than like their number five guy. He's rotates one mic at Gilbert, but he has a, he's healthy. He recovers. He gets a strength back. He gets his athleticism back. And he's healthy all off season. Could he be their wider receiver one next year? Yes. He's got that kind of ability, but we're so far away from having that conversation right now just because I don't know if he's going to be healthy again. And, and, and, and then the second part of that is even when they tell me he's going to be back, I need to see him show the same juice athletically that he had before the knee injury. That's the other part of it. So I'm just, it's just not one that I'm going to really put a lot of thought into until we actually see him back on the field and see what he can do. And then, and then on top of everything that you said, just to put this disclaimer out there, the week that he gets declared back, that does not mean that he will play 45 snaps in that game. He's the targeted nine times.

14:41When he gets removed from the injury report, that does not then mean he's going to start catch nine balls for 183 yards and three touchdowns. Right. They will then continue to work him back. That's, I just want to put that out there today because I know that will be a major talking point in whatever post game show is immediately following the announcement earlier that week that he's back. So I just want to put that out there now. From Sean Green has N.I.U. fallen off that much to be a 3 1,5 point underdog to an FCS school at home. Yes. Yeah, they're pretty bad. They lost most of their team. Their head coach is now, I think he's a, isn't he a Jadarian Prices position coach? Didn't he go to the Seahawks? Where did Thomas, where did he go? Thomas Hammack, he is now the running backs coach for, yes, Jadarian Prices position coach with the Seahawks.

15:41And part of the reason he left, I mean, they left the Mac to go join the Pac-12 or was it the Mac-Pack-12, right? Or was it the Mountain West? I think it was a Pac-12. Hold on a second. It's all, it's very confusing about who's in what conference now, but they are now in the Mountain West, northern and a little is now in the Mountain West. So they're now in a league with UNOV, North Dakota State Air Force, Nevada, Mexico, San Jose State, U-TEP, Wyoming, and Hawaii. That's part of the reason why he bounced. And yeah, the programs are mess. Yeah, they're mess. I was scrolling through looking at some bets for myself this morning on Fandall and I saw that. That they were three and a half point dogs to an FCS. He was like, ooh, yeah, didn't know it was that bad. It's not good, Travis. It's not good. It's not good at all. Now, keep in mind that the FCS team they're favored to lose to, like made it to the FCS championship

16:46game last year and lost to Montana State by a point. Beat North Dakota State last year, I believe in the playoffs. So it's a pretty good FCS program. Beat South Dakota State last year. They could potentially have beaten Northern Illinois in a good year, potentially. But yeah, it's not good. Yeah, Northern Illinois. And we just saw a Mac team get beat by an FCS team last week. Bowling Green at home. It's not good for Eddie George. Not good for Eddie George. Oh, good. Yeah, that's a fall in pretty far. Yep. All right, Travis. Let's go from Adam Garcia. How do you think we can get rid of the lack of competitiveness issue from a lot of these coaches at bigger schools? Demand more of them and hold them more accountable as the athletic directors. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah, like if I'm Chris Kotie, it's like I'm sitting now in star Kings and say, listen, man, just so we're clear, you don't determine who we play. I do. That's my

17:51job. Your job is to get the players ready to go win whatever games I put on schedule. And it's a bad look. I mean, that's what it's, look, it's going to come down to the decision makers and the money people to tell these coaches, hey, man, I understand what you're saying, but that's not how this works. That's ultimately what what happened, but yeah, here's my two cents, Adam. And I get the point that you're coming at here. I don't think that you can do anything to make somebody more competitive. I think you can just do things to make them quit whining. That's the thing. Like competitiveness in my eyes is not something that you can instill in somebody. That's correct. You're either a competitive person or you're not. Like, I'm competitive in everything that I do everything. And I'm not talking when I play pick up basketball or when I throw a football or when I'm playing volleyball with my friends, I'm talking in every single thing that I do. And that's either something that you have or you don't. But where I do think that the higher

18:52ups and the powers that B can do is make them complain about it less because like, look, I can sit here and try to hammer, Sarc and say that he's not a true competitor. You don't get to the spot that Steve Sarkies in his ad if you're not a true competitor. If I'm Chris Conti, I'm like, hey, man, quit crying. Hey, man, quit whining about stuff, dog. We're a Texas. Like, we're supposed to be in Texas. You don't come down here to, you know, derroque royal. Like, you know, we're firing a can in every single time we score a touchdown. Like quit whining and complaining about having to play other top programs. Stop whining and complaining about that. It's hot or that it's too cold or that we have to travel or we have to play this team. But competitiveness is something that you either have or you don't. And I will say for as annoying as a lot of these coaches have been, Lane Kiffin, Joey McGuire, Pete Golding, Steve Sarkies in this entire off season, I don't think it's a lack of competitiveness. Sometimes it's, you got to know when to take the microphone away from somebody. And I think that is what would do them the most that I really do. I love that point, Trev. You are correct. That's a great. You can't make someone competitive. You

19:55can just make him stop whining about it. You can make sure that their whining is no longer public. It's a great point. Great point. Another one, quick one from Adam Garcia, he says, do you think we have the number one ranked defense in a country? I think they have a defense capable of being the best defense in a country. But I don't know that we have any idea. Even if I think, boy, that's that that defense, a number one ranked defensive performance, it wasn't. The number one defense in the country doesn't give up four big plays on double moves on blown coverage. But I also don't overreact to that because it's one game and it's new guys that were having those issues. But it's like, okay, I don't have any context for how good was Ohio State is going to be defensively. I don't have any context for how good Miami is going to be defensively or Texas is going to be defensively. I have some context for how Oregon is going to be defensively. And Indiana, even to a degree and right now, I like like, no, it's defense better than those two defenses. But again, it's one game. You know, I mean, heck Indiana held Ohio State to fewer points and they held it

20:58old dominion two last year. I think about actually, of the minion and Alabama, Alabama, Ohio State combined for fewer points against Indiana combined than what old dominion scored. Colton Joseph, by himself. So they have the potential to be that. But we don't really know how good any of these defenses are, including their names based after just one game. But they have a shot to be that. I'll say this. I don't even know if they to played okay and not real good. I don't know that my opinion would have changed because again, I think it's just one game. Agreed. But I saw some things for that game. I really liked and some things you're like, oh, they're going to have to get a little bit better there. Yeah. Agreed. The tone of the conversation would have been different. But the points we would have been making would have been the same. Still game one, still 11 games left, still things that we want to see, still things that need enhanced. But yeah, I'm with you. From Bayley West, what should we as fans look for in car and the receivers in the passing game?

22:02Just continued to improve the timing. From the receivers, I want to see a little bit more urgency with how they run routes. I'm going to keep saying that until they start doing it. Yep. And the other thing from the receivers, they need to block better than they did the first unit. Now, everybody likes point when great, Jane Graydust misses a block and he missed a couple. But I don't take the entire unit blocked for poo in the first half. They're a little better in the second half. But that I was very disappointed with the blocking from the receivers in the game. But the big thing is just a little bit more urgency as route runners and what I want to see from CJ Car in the past game. Just kind of keep doing what you're doing. And this idea that you're going to take what the defense gives you is also being completely misconstrued. Because sometimes what the defense gives you is a bunch of deep shots. Like no coach should ever go into a game and say, yeah, I know they're playing quarters, but we're still going to a real soft quarters. But we're going to still keep throwing outside go routes against it because we're going to dictate to them. That's not what you do.

23:04Just like saying, we're going to take what the defense gives us doesn't mean that you're necessarily allowing the defense to dictate to you what a football coach means by that is very different than what an analyst or a fan means by that. And for now, maybe for some coaches, that means we're going to be conservative or whatever. But for another football coach, if you're going to give us this all day, we're going to take it all day because you can't stop us if you're going to keep giving this to us. Like Notre Dame against USC last year in the run game took what USC gave them. You're going to give us this all day. We're going to keep taking it. And they ran for over 300 yards. Man, I wish they would have done this, this, this, and this and tried to do this, this, and this so that I could feel better about myself in the game. Like so I just think there's when Marcus Freeman says we're going to take what the defense gives us, that means something different than what fans is. Now, I do think there's an element of Marcus Freeman's always going to want to be a little bit more conservative. But this idea that it's trussle ball, like, guys got to understand what it takes to build a team. You don't always come out

24:06and say, we're going to do this game plan against this team and this against that team. So I want to see them continue to just grow together. And I want to see the receivers play with more urgency in all phases of the game because you haven't sought, you have not heard me say, guys, the receivers played lights out on Sunday night. Calm down. You haven't heard me say that. You have me, sir, say, I'm not concerned about the past game. And I'm not concerned about CJ Carr targeting Jordan Fazon so much because honestly, if you break down the film, he should have. You know, so that's the thing about it is, if they're going to play Bill Coverage, why would you not keep taking it? But here's the, they didn't just keep taking hitch routes. As I showed in the film breakdown, I literally built on it. I showed the hitches, then I did what, Trev, I showed how the hitches and how they were doing these things, then opened up other things. I also showed how, how they were playing the giving you the hitches,

25:07also resulted in doing a double move that if CJ Carr throws a more accurate pass is a big play. So it's not like they just ran hitches all day. I showed how what they're doing the defend the quick game and the fact that they're trying to defend the run over the middle and play out over top against a team that runs a lot of goes and stuff like that last year also opened up some opportunities over the middle of field. I broke that down so they didn't just come out say, well, they're not going to let us throw the ball down the field all day, but they're going to leave a big opening over the middle field that allowed them to make some big plays. And the fact that their corners are bailing are a big reason why George Nolan James could catch a ball and say, if you can make one guy miss, there's nobody for 20 yards. So taking what they give you doesn't mean that you're just playing passively all game because that's not what they did. And like I said, I'd encourage you to watch the video breakdown because I show in there exactly what I'm talking about. There were opportunities for bigger plays in that game that CJ needed to hit one of them.

26:08But the other part is they needed to run the ball better because because they couldn't run the ball, they found themselves in a lot of third and longers, which now Wisconsin can really play to stop the past game. And when they started moving the ball better on first and second down now of sudden, you're more effective in certain situations. They're even more aggressive with their linebackers, which opened up some big opportunities. So I think that's in, you know, Charlie Weiss last about Luke responded to me in a private message. I'm saying because it's a it's a fun thing he says, he's expected to see more shots down the field. But understand that, but like to me, that is a faulty assumption that you had. And I love you, man. Like a long time member. But this is where sometimes I guess I get frustrated that you don't listen to me because you had that expectation, but what was one of the keys to victory that we had last week on Wednesday? Patients, the offensive coaches need to be patients. What was our argument? Don't come out just forcing the

27:10ball down the field. Why? Because they're going to give you this. And then when they do this, then you have your opportunities like we warned you guys that that's not what the game plan was going to be. And yet you just ignored me. And now you're mad about it. Whereas if you didn't listen to me, you wouldn't be as mad about it because you'd understand exactly why I told you was going to happen before the game. And I showed you film after the game to show you why they did what they did. Now if they do that game plan against Miami, if they're playing tight cupboards, that's a terrible game plan. But if Miami plays quarters against them and bailes their corners, they should keep doing it. I showed how the corners bailing then set up the backers would buzz out and go hard underneath it. And that allowed them to do that's why they hit the seam route. So the first time Notre Dame ran slot fade. They ran a hitch to flan again in the vertical and the linebacker buzzed with it. And so CJ took the hitch. The next time they ran slot fade, they didn't blitz the line. So they blitzed and I broke this play down. They blitzed the edge, safety came down and safety took the

28:15seam route. The corner, they kind of bracketed the seam and then they were going to try to have the safety buzz outside. Notre Dame saw that. CJ saw that and he throws the hitch route. Easy first and 10 seven yard game. Love that seven yard game. I'll first down. I'll live there all day. Seven yards in the cloud of dust. You know where that ends up. Trev the end zone. The next time they ran it, they didn't blitz the linebacker. So the safety bailes the corner and then the corner sinks and then the linebacker tried to he buzzed the flat. So what CJ do? He banged the seam behind it. For an 18 yard game. Now I'd like to see him get that ball up a couple yards and let maybe Mike to catch it and make some of it. All right. But that was an aggressive play. They were coming downhill to stop the run. So Notre Dame ran an overdid concept with a post over top. Here's a deal. If the safety would have come down and played quarters in that situation, they're going to the post. When you look at the breakdown I did, the first place that CJ car looks is the post. And then he looked at

29:20the deep over and it was there. So he took the deep over to Miling Graham. The next time they ran a different coverage, the safety jumps the quarters, the two corners bail, which takes away the post. The safety jumps the over route to buy Jayden great house, who was the the prime like the post is the alert. If you get that look, you take the post, but post snap if the post is gone, you're going over to dig to check down that time they jump. Jayden and if and I show it, you can see CJ's eyes going from here to here to here. Because he's going to read the safety for the post and then great house is coming to that side. So it's going to go safety to safety to dig. You can see CJ's eyes go post dig or over dig. And he bangs the backside dig. That's an aggressive play call. But because they were playing soft coverage, it opened up that over the middle routes as opposed to the post routes. They ran slot fade several times in that game. If they played a more aggressive

30:22coverage, then you should throw the shot should have thrown the slot fade. If they had thrown the slot fade against those looks, it wasn't there. Later in the game, they had a one on one down the field and CJ didn't throw great ball and Miling Graham ran a bad route. They took the shot though because the coverage structure changed and those chances were there. The double move was there because they were having success over the middle. So now they were squeezing the corners down more playing Tampa 2, which then opened up the double move. CJ didn't hit it. So that's all I wish you guys would maybe watch these videos more and pay attention. But then also listen to what we say on Keyes to Victory because if you did, both of those things, I think your opinion of the past game would be very different coming out of this game and you're like, yeah, it makes sense why they did that. And hey, you guess what? Part of them taking what the defense gave them were some shots down the field. Hit some you miss some. 100%. On one of the things that this

31:25does for you as well is they put on film what they're able to do if the corners in the secondary elect to continue to sit back and bail. There's going to be some defensive coordinator that they face coming down the stretch that is going to say, hey, we're going to take this short intermediate middle of the field throws away. And then that will be a game where CJ Carr Mike Denbrock, hopefully, elect to dice up the defense downfield. It's just all it's all of that pattern. It is. And that's one thing that I'm looking forward to seeing. We did a soup. Couple some super chats on here, Trev, that I want to get to here. We got one from Remington. Thank you for that Remington. And then we got one from Andy Milton fan. Appreciate Andy Milton fan. What was JR thinking? What could SP even prove against the team like Christ in a competition? Did Sully Punches dog? It's very frustrating. I mean, I gave I've given a couple rationales on what he might have been thinking. But let's take the emotion of it out. Let's take the he must not like someone absurge because none of us can prove

32:26that. And honestly, I could make the accusation and he then what he says, uh, he can't prove it. So it's kind of a it's an unproductive conversation. There may be some truth to it. There may not be. But what I can do is I can say, well, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say, okay, is there a rationalization for why you may want to go to a style press guard? And the thing we said last week and I'll repeat again is, yeah, there is. There's a rational explanation for why you want to play style press God. You feel as an offensive line coach, the style press God has a higher ceiling at right garden, self and action. Or Maddie Augustine does. And so you feel looking at the schedule like, Hey, I think there's time for style press God to get comfortable. And I'm willing to take a little bit of this to do that. If the offensive line would have played exactly the way that it did on Saturday, but let's say their name was up 20 to 3 and a half time, I don't

33:28know that they benched style press God. I think you had to when you were only up 1310 and you couldn't move the ball all that effectively. So whether you agree that he should have done that or not, I understand the desire. I also think putting style press God in the game makes you a little bit more athletic at guard. And when you're going to run the absolute crap out of mid zone, I understand you wanting to have a more athletic player. But what we saw in that game was, solve an ab sure despite not being the athlete that South Press God is will still more effective on cutback blocks because he understands the technique required at guard to make those blocks. It's a different animal for a backside guard than it is a backside tackle on mid zone. It's very different. And that's where we go to I think styles just put in a bad position. What could styles of proven against a team like rice that his footwork was better, that his timing was better? Like look, I can watch a game guys and so can all of you. I'm just speaking just for myself, not like I'm so smart that I can do this. Anyone to watch a game and say hey, that worked

34:32against that bad team, but your footwork still a hot mess. You know, like yeah, like I'm watching game last night and Malik, I Tony's a phenomenal player. But there's a couple catches he made. You're like, I don't that doesn't tell me he's a phenomenal player because that's the garbage team and that like that's not being caught on a competent player. You know, but you can see there are other plays from that game where you're like, that's why he's that dude. I know they played FFFMU, but that's why he's that dude. You know what I mean? Like you can tell the difference. And so let's say styles played and dominated against rice, but I'm like his footwork still stinks. He doesn't have good timing. He just dominated a 275 pound defensive tackle. You can you could learn that. But let's say he played in the game and they dominated and his footwork is improved. Then he did a better job on backside blocks. And he he showed a better feel for how to properly chip as opposed to diving in the guy and tripping up yourself and your fellow tackle and so he looked more comfortable playing the position of game to that tells me something. Now let me see him do it

35:34against better competition against Michigan State next week. But if I watch a guy play with the same bad technique against a bad team that he had against a good team, even if there's dominance, you can say he didn't get any better. But if a guy shows better technique like your technique doesn't improve because you're playing a worse team. Your technique improves because you're more comfortable playing the position. So in fairness, I do think that we could have learned something about it. I just I still don't think it was the right decision. And I still think the right decision would have been to almost treat prestiles like you treated Trevor Lawrence in 2018. We're going to find you some chances to play. Let you get your feet wet and we think when we think you're ready, then we're going to start setting certain starting line up. I think the way they went about it was the problem. Not so much that they want to improve on Southern App Store. Again, I don't agree with it. I have a different opinion. I believe of some of an option than the coaching staff. It would seem. But if I can take my opinion out of it, as a you can understand Trevor, why they would make that decision, even if you don't agree with it. It goes all the way back like Brian Kelly's first year. People

36:39say I have no idea why Brian Kelly would have Tommy restow the ball against Tulsa. But no, I understand why I did it. I just think the play call was dumb. If you wanted to take that shot, let Tommy drop back and throw a fade to Michael Floyd. Don't ask him to throw it on the run. You did not. I'm not saying I'd have done that. I'm saying I can understand why he did it. I just didn't like the specific calls. You got to be able to look at it and say, I don't like the decision. It seems like there might be more to it. But at least we can understand what's the football reason why you might do that. And I can understand the football reason even though I don't necessarily agree with his conclusion. But I'm not going to lie. Trevor and I've had it off the air conversation of it just kind of seems personal at this point in time. It does. I'm not going to lie to you on pretend like come on, Andy Milton fan. We're playing overly dramatic here. No, I've had those same thoughts. But I also think that I can point to a football reason that maybe

37:40is makes more sense than he just doesn't like Sully. Maybe he doesn't like Sully as a player. Maybe he thinks he's a phenomenal young man. But he just thinks we got better players. And I just, it's my job to get one of these more talented players ready to go. That's actually kind of something we would want, right? I just think the way it and so that's why I say in theory, I don't think it's a terrible decision. If you think there's somebody better, I just think the way they went about it was bad because you also put styles in a bad position. Agreed. Yeah, nothing, nothing more to add. I agree. So, Richard from sloppy Joe, appreciate you a little out of topic. But BD in your opinion, if Doos Knight had never committed to Notre Dame, would Bear Bachmeier be in our quarterback room right now? If yes, then why? Yeah, I mean, I think they knew Bear was thinking about committing to Notre Dame and they used that to get Doos to commit. That's not a guess. I was told

38:41that. So yeah, they not forced Doos's commitment or not use that use his potential commitment to get Doos to make, which I don't have a problem with. I know it didn't work out. But if you think Doos Knight's a significantly better player than Bear Bachmeier and they did and he may very well be, we don't know that he isn't. Just because Bear had a chance to play, guess what? If Doos would have gone to BYU last year, he would have started as a true freshman also. And we don't know how he did. We saw him start one game and he looked pretty darn good in that one game. The point is, I was if I don't critique something at the time, I don't want to look back and pretend like, vows a dumb move. It didn't work out. But it wasn't a dumb move. I understood it. But yes, Bear would have probably committed to Notre Dame. Now, what do you have stayed committed? That I don't know. But he would have committed to Notre Dame. And I'm more, I thought I think more that there's a greater chance that Bear Bachmeier stays in the class than Doos. And that is something that I

39:43made known at the time. Well, I hope this works out and I understand why you're doing it. But I hope it does. You could end up with neither of them. And that was the concern. Sure. I think we had one more, another super chat down here from Kenneth Hurn. I appreciate you, Kenneth. How would you rate the quarterback play of Notre Dame's opponents through the first games of the season? Is it better or worse than you expected? Well, given the level of the opponents that some of them faced, it was about what I expected. Yeah, I expected Steve Angelie. If he was going to be healthy to go for a week, one to dice up New Hampshire, I expected Daryen Menson, that offense to rip up Stanford and Florida A&M. Colton Joseph was, I mean, not that I were taking my Notre Dame hat off. It's not that I expected him to rip up Notre Dame on the ground. I certainly thought he was going to finish with more than three yards. Trying to think of just running through the other way. I mean, again,

40:43like Bear Bachmeier, they played nobody. He looked good in what he would. He looked what we, he looked like what we thought he would look like. Yeah. Mason McKenzie, whatever his name is, it Boston College. He looked like what I thought he was going to look like in that offense. I'm saying Billy Edwards. Yeah. Millie Edwards was who we thought. There was nobody that, yeah. There was nobody that I looked at in week one and was like, whoa, they might be a problem. I think there was one for me, Ryan Brown. But it's not that he did something we haven't seen before. It's like, hey, that's the good version of Ryan Brown that we've seen before. And if he does that, then kind of like what he did in the first advocate scenario, I sure mean, made some plays. Part of it was the Notre Dame defense, but he also made some like that throw he made. He was the one that threw the touchdown pass to Nitro Tuggle, right? They hadn't put their backup quarterback in yet, right? When he beat Mark Zachary, that was a dime. The problem is then the next we could go out and just completely lay an egg. And that's the thing

41:45where one game doesn't change our opinion of Purdue or Ryan Brown. But it's like, well, the good Ryan Brown still in there. Let's see. And that's why I think this is a big weekend for him and Purdue. But we talked about the Purdue angle yesterday. I think it's a big game for Ryan Brown, also trapped. The other player that also kind of stuck out to me a little bit, it was more so getting a question like a hypothesis answered was Davis Warren. I don't think that he's going to be able to go and put up a monster amount of passing yards against Notre Dame. But we posed the question at the time with Davis Warren. Was it more of a Sharan Moore thing? Or was Davis Warren really just kind of that bad? And he showed me some stuff against Miami, man. He wasn't afraid to hung in the pocket, made some good throws. So Davis Warren kind of impressed me a little bit. Again, not to say that he's going to go and dice up Notre Dame or the rest of the ACC schedule that they face. But we got our question answered of was it a Davis Warren thing or a Sharan Moore thing? And it was through the first couple games more of a Sharan Moore thing. I thought to your like,

42:45I agree with you, Trevor. I thought he looked pretty good against Miami. Saying, I mean, if his receivers could catch at all, he'd have had a pretty nice gaming. And now eventually the O-line just got overwhelmed by Miami's front. But I thought Davis Warren early in a game was dealing. Yeah, he would be one that I was like, he's been he's improved. I think another one Kevin Jennings to me, if he can just clean up some of the turnovers as a very dynamic player. But he was also kind of what we expected. Yeah, you know, I don't know that it was like something we didn't expect. So I'm with Trev. I didn't see anything from anybody where you're like, like you said, I say the one thing, it wasn't a surprise. It was nice to see Steve looking healthy. Yeah. You know, like it was it was nice to see Steve Angelie not looking like, how's he going to play? Can he not drive off that foot? You know, he looked fine. And Braxton Woods and Rush for 200 yards and three touchdowns in the opener, but it was against an FCS school. So I don't know how much we can take from that. But we said he'd be more Malcolm Perry than he was Blake Hervath.

43:48And for one game, that was true. We went three of six passing and Rush for 200 yards. It looked a little bit more like the old school Navy offense than it did. Which should be smart if they did that because that's just a kind of player, Braxton Woods and it's great. Thank you for listening.