Bruised Irish Head to Michigan State

By Paul Smith
paul.smith@collegeblitz.com

Barrington, Ill. -- In a sport bursting with cliches, it is one of the oldest. It was one Charlie Weis chose not to use last Sunday as he assessed his Notre Dame team's stunning 47-21 beatdown at the hands of No. 6 Michigan at Notre Dame Stadium, an event not even the cockiest Wolverines fan saw coming.

On a day and day after where he poured out a good portion of his soul to a very inquisitive media horde, Weis wouldn't lean on the "We weren't ready to play" crutch, even when offered.

Good for him. Although, clearly, the Fighting Irish, penalized thoroughly by The Associated Press pollsters, who dropped them from No. 2 to 12, were not remotely ready for what hit them early and often.

Who the hell could be? If Michigan, particularly defensively, was a football panzer division, Notre Dame, for a day at least, was Poland.

"This was going to be our big test," U-M defensive end Lamarr Woodley, the Wolverines' immensely-talented defensive end told Chicago Tribune beat reporter Avani Patel after the game. "We passed the test today." During it, Woodley played with a controlled fury that was a signature for U-M's efforts.

Michigan passed -- with flying colors, speaking of cliches. Up there somewhere in the stratosphere, where most of their 6,000 or so fans resided afterward.

Woodley's 54-yard touchdown return of a Brady Quinn fumble closed out the game's scoring, but in reality, this game was over by halftime.

34-14.

Against a defense Weis and his staff allowed themselves to think was gaining some pretty serious stature after the big performance the week before in a 41-17 home rout of Penn State. The competitive moments were gone pretty quickly.

After Michigan had broken a 7-7 tie created by linebacker Prescott Burgess's 31-yard interception of a hurried Quinn sideline pass and a 3-yard T.D. reception from Quinn by Ashley McConnel, the fans temporarily forgot the 69-yard go-ahead Chad Henne-to-Mario Manningham bomb and focused on the blocked extra point.

That lasted about five blinks. On this sun-swept afternoon, the Wolverines were a downhill 18-wheeler and the Irish were the proverbial butterfly.

"I've had a time to watch everything a couple of times over this morning," Weis told the media Sunday, "then also had an opportunity to meet with the staff to make sure what I was seeing was the same as what they were seeing."

In other words, not many believed their eyes as they gulped copious amounts of coffee.

It wasn't a statistical disaster -- the Wolverines (3-0) only managed 340 yards' total offense, but after Mike Hart capped one first-quarter drive with a 2-yard T.D. bolt and Henne hit Manningham for 20 and 22-yard touchdowns before halftime, it was 34-7 and the only thing left to ask was, "Any questions?"

Which was the tack the stunned Weis took Sunday.

"Let's start with the obvious," he emphasized. "You know, any time you're minus four in the tournover ration in a game, with our five turnovers to their one, you really have no chance of winning the game."

Before the Penn State game, Weis had pounded it into his defense that it was time to make a statement. "Our much-maligned defense," he said, playfully.

But with exception of trying to see what area code Manningham inhabited, it fell to the offense to explain the across-the-board snafus that sealed Notre Dame's fate. "I knew they were going to play us man because of Mike (Hart) in the backfield," Manningham told the Trib's football guru Teddy Greenstein. It created a step-late confusion in the Notre Dame secondary for most of the day.

For the Irish, questions littered the field, locker room and post game press seassions.

Was it the Heisman Trophy-hyped Quinn struggling to get the offense going? Forced to throw 48 times, completing half, but suffering three interceptions to go with touchdowns to McConnell, Jeff Samardzija (just before halftime) and Rheema McKnight early in the fourth), Quinn was a baffling A.W.O.L. for much of the afternoon.

In the first and third quarters, the Irish managed no first downs, for example.
Usually cool under fire -- and Michigan's pass rush was in his face all day, sacking him four times, he threw into coverage and had several passes batted down by Michigan's blitzers.

"I think people are obviously upset right now," was about all the likable All-American senior could muster, talking to the Trib's columnist, Mike Downey. "We should be motivated by this loss. I know that much.

The recurrence of much of the inconsistency that plagued him in the opener at Georgia Tech was as baffling to him as any observer. "I don't know," he said. "Your guess is as good as mine."

That, unfortunately, was what the Irish did much of last Saturday.

Guess.

Wrongly, most of the time.

"The credit -- it sure doesn't go to me," said Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, who was placed squarely on the front burner by demanding Wolverines fans before this season. Talking to Trib college football guru Teddy Greenstein, he added, "Those guys out on the field, they played the game."

Part of it, for sure, goes to new U-M offensive coordinator Mike DeBord, whose team rolled up some huge rushing totals in its first two games. "I'm sure people were saying, 'Are they ever going to throw?' DeBord told Greenstein. "Chad never blinked an eye. He said, 'I don't care what we have to do to win.'
But we knew coming in here we'd have to throw it and they did a great job."

After Henne suffered a Chinedum Ndukwe pick on the Wolverines' second series that set up the short Quinn-to-McConnell touchdown pass, unlike recent years, there was no group sigh on the Michigan sideline.

"I told 'em 'That's my fault,' " said Henne, who completed 13-of-22 passes for 220 yards and the three Manningham T.D.s. "But it's all about bounce-back-ability."

From that point on, Henne was a guy finally living up to the press accolades that swept him from Reading, PA to Ann Arbor. "If you value courage, what Chad Henne did after he threw that first pass speaks to what he is," Carr said.

So Michigan will head back to Ann Arbor riding a wave of confidence into its first league game against young, but mysterious Wisconsin (3-0), playing under first-year coach Bret Bielema, who replaced the venerable Barry Alvarez this year. And Notre Dame will try and find out what IT is.

In Sunday's press conference, Weis hinted the R & D period will be short but very thorough. It had better be, because the Irish (2-1) travel to Michigan State, which is coming off a 38-23 win at Pitt and is 6-2 vs. N.D. in the last eight games.

"First of all, my confidence is not shaken one bit," Weis emphasized to a reporter wondering what a defeat like this could mean psychologically. "You've known me well enough by now to know tthat that's not a facade.

"I'm not a liar. I'm a very truthful person. 'Not shaken but stirred." Remember that? I might be stirred, but it's not shaken."

They will need every bit of Weis' stirring and some offensive shaking and a defensive revival to hold off an underrated Spartans team that beat the Irish 44-41 in a wild overtime game in South Bend last September.

"...I can tell you this," Weis assessed, "the first thing I did (after the game), well, I obviously had to think this through before I went into the locker room because the most important conversation you have with your team is the one you have walking into the locker room, because you need to already have a game plan for how you're going to address the team.

"Obviously there are problems. Besides the team being shellshocked, they just lost a big game at home. You have to have your approach ready where you're going to rally the troops."

In this unforgiving era of B.C.S. football, so full of expectations, so fraught with potential season-ruining pitfalls, that may be the toughest battle of all.

It'll be one that should add a dash of extra fascination to Saturday's Irish-Spartans scrum in East Lansing.

"...I also in a very matter-of-fact way made them look at me when a couple of the heads were drooping," Weis said. "Let 'em know in no uncertain terms that it's not OK, not OK to perform like that.

"I don't believe in that 'We'll-get-'em-next-time' mentality...One of the things that gives you a little credibility with your team is when the first person you blame is yourself."

Coaching 101. Professor Weis. Next Test: Saturday, East Lansing, Michigan.

A little too early to call a mid-term exam, but make no mistake, a pretty urgent self-examination.