Jeff chimed in this week on the opponent poll so here’s this week’s poll based on both of our thoughts.

2008 UHND Opponent Poll
		Opponent	Last Game	Next	Comments
1.		Southern Cal Trojans	W, 52-7 - Virginia	vs. #2 OSU (9/13)	Frank : USC is going to beat Ohio State by at least two touchdowns this weekend. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see USC give OSU the same kind of beat down Florida gave them in the title game in 2006. Jeff: The Trojans looked impressive this week sitting at home watching the games on television.  Not that they needed it, but for three quarters, Ohio laid a template on how to beat the Buckeyes.  Still, the Trojans will be 2-0 and still #1 in the nation this time next week.
2.		Michigan State Spartans	W, 42-10 - E. Michigan	vs. Florida Atlantic (9/13)	Frank: Michigan State took care of business at home against Eastern Michigan. They host Florida Atlantic before the Irish come to town in two weeks. This team will give Notre Dame a lot of trouble and with OSU not looking too strong this weekend, the Spartans could be a dark horse candidate in the Big 10 this year. Jeff: The Spartans were on some radar for being one of the more underrated teams in the country preseason.  They are still in that discussion even as they stumbled week one against one of the more impressive teams people thought would be rebuilding, California.  Sparty took care of business this week and has another tune up before welcoming the Irish to East Lansing where they should be a near a two touchdown favorite.
3.		Michigan Wolverines	W, 16-6 - Miami (OH)	@ Notre Dame (9/13)	Frank: I don’t care if the Michigan offense struggled, their defense looks tough and after seeing our offense, we could have a really tough time putting points on the board this weekend. In their last 6 quarters of football, Michigan has allowed just 9 points. Jeff: It was ugly but they avoided going 0-2 for the second straight season.  Ohio State, Appalachian State, Utah, and Miami (OH) have been able to give Michigan fits by spreading out the field.  ND doesn’t have to run the spread, but if the Irish run a heavy dose of double tight ends or two back sets, they are playing to the strength of Michigan’s defense.  ND needs to keep the number of defenders in the box to six or fewer to be able to move the ball on Michigan.
4.		Purdue Boilermakers	W, 42-10 - N Colorado	vs. #16 Oregon (9/13)	Frank: Nice win to start off Tiller’s final season, but they will have a tough time against Oregon this weekend. The Ducks look very tough even after losing Dennis Dixon and Jonathan Stewart to the NFL this year. The Boilermakers will be 2-1 when they travel to South Bend. Jeff: Go big or go home seems to be an appropriate mantra in Joe Tiller’s farewell campaign with Purdue.  They romped in their first game of the season against a weaker opponent, something the Irish couldn’t do.  Look for Purdue to leave it all on the field this year.  Even with a brutal schedule, they should remain in the top 5 of this poll throughout the season.
5.		Boston College Eagles	L, 16-19 - Georgia Tech	vs. UCF (9/20)	Frank: Boston College is a very average football team this year after losing A LOT of seniors last year. Considering how weak the ACC is this year, though, they should have have a decent record.Jeff: I would really not like BC to be in this position but the rest of the teams are simply bad.  BC lost to a good Georgia Tech team, albeit at home.  Grudgingly, they are not as bad as the teams to follow.
6.		Stanford Cardinal	L, 17-41 - Arizona State	@ TCU (9/13)	Frank: Ummmm, so I guess Oregon Stat wasn’t that good after all. Stanford was brought back down to earth this weekend. Jeff: Got throttled by Rudy Carpenter and the Sun Devils. They should still find themselves well clear of the Pac-10 cellar where the loser of the Apple Cup should round up the conference standings.
7.		Pittsburgh Panthers	W, 27-16 - Buffalo	vs. Iowa (9/20)	Frank: Who is a worse coach - Wannstedt, Willingham, or Greg Robinson? Notre Dame’s schedule is like a Who’s Who list of coaches that will be looking for new jobs next year. Jeff: Squeezed by Buffalo at home.
8.		Washington Huskies	L, 27-28 - BYUI	vs. #3 Oklahoma (9/13)	Frank: Washington got screwed. I don’t care if Locker’s celebration technically called for a penalty. The officials made themselves decide the outcome of that game although Washington should have been able to make a 35 yard field goal. That is the type of loss than can be very deflating for a team - especially with Oklahoma coming to town. Jeff: Jake Locker almost single-handily beat BYU, and then lost it for Washington on a celebration penalty once he scored.  Yeah it was a tough call but that team gets no sympathy from me.
9.		Navy Midshipmen	L, 23-35, Ball State	@ Duke (9/13)	Frank: Tough loss for Navy, but after watching the ND defense struggle with the perimeter running game of San Diego State, this could be a terrible matchup for the ND defense. Jeff: Took a step back in a loss this week to Ball State.  Three of Navy’s five scoring drives were field goals, including two chip shots inside the red zone. If they converted those to touchdowns, the Middies would be 2-0.
10.		North Carolina Tar Heels	W, 35-27 - McNeese State	@ Rutgers (9/11)	Frank: Until North Carolina beats a Division 1A team, they’ll be low in this poll. Jeff: Idle after a week one survival against McNeese State.
11.		Syracuse Orangemen	L, 28-42 - Akron	vs. #17 Penn State (9/13)	Frank: Will Greg Robinson be coaching Syracuse by the time they make their November trip to South Bend? I don’t think so. Jeff: After two touchdown losses to Northwestern and Akron, the Orange host Penn State this week and will start 0-3.
12.		San Diego State Aztecs	L, 13-21 - Notre Dame	@ San Jose State (9/13)	Frank: I still think this is the worst team we will face all year. Jeff: [Exhale] The Aztecs can now go back to playing the type of football they are used to after playing well over their heads against the Irish.

Yesterday’s game against San Diego State was not the kind of start any of us had hoped for.  SDSU was smaller, slower, and injured and we were an inch or two away from being down 2 scores in the fourth quarter.  I’ve been saying all summer long that if we couldn’t run the ball against SDSU or struggled scoring points, we would be in trouble this year so seeing us struggle to move the ball on the ground was extremely disappointing.

Still, a day later I tried like hell to find some positives out of Saturday’s game.  Maybe its the optimist in me who doesn’t want to think that I’ve waited all off-season to see how improved we’d be only to find out we aren’t that improved at all.  Whatever the reason, he are some positives I took out of yesterday’s game.

• Golden Tate is a legit playmaker.  Tate showed he has made a lot of progress since last season and was the only consistent threat on offense for Notre Dame.  He showed that he is very, very good at playing the ball once its in the air.  His two near catches - the sideline “catch” that was ruled out of bounds and the deep play in which he was interferred with - were both nearly spectacular catches that take good concentration and excellent hands to make.  Considering he is still just a sophomore and learning everyday, seeing him was very encouraging.
• Jimmy Clausen looks MUCH better. Clausen made some very nice throws.  His touchdown passes to Golden Tate and David Grimes were perfectly thrown balls.  He did throw two interceptions but one was 100% on Duval Kamara (the one that hit him in the numbers) and on the other Kamara didn’t do Clausen any favors either.  Clausen showed some good zip on the ball that wasn’t really there last year and for the most part he made very good decisions.  One play that ended up not hurting him was when Clausen ran out of bounds five yards behind the line of scrimmage instead of throwing the ball away but that play was luckily negated by a SDSU penalty.
• The OL didn’t allow a sack. Yes it was San Diego State, but after surrendering an average of almost 5 sacks a game last year it was nice to see the OL keep Clausen standing upright.  Now, if we can just get them to run block…
• Michael Floyd looks like he is every bit as good as advertised. He only had one catch, but it was a touchdown and on the play Floyd got behind the SDSU corner within five yards.  He exploded off the line and had the corner beat in an instant.  He was also WIDE open running down the field on a few occassions in the fourth quarter but didn’t have the ball thrown his way.  I don’t see any way that he isn’t on the field much more this weekend.
• Armando Allen is running much tougher. Allen broke some tackles that he wouldn’t have broken last year.  On his one nice punt return he broke at least 3 tackles.  His vision is still a little suspect and he missed some cut back lanes, but it was nice to see him running stronger.
• Kyle McCarthy is an excellent tackler. There isn’t a better tackler on the team than Kyle McCarthy.  He ended up with 15 tackles on Saturday and didn’t miss the kind of tackles some of his defensive counterparts did.
• Raeshon McNeil was very good in coverage. He missed a couple tackles in supporting the run, but his coverage was pretty good.
• Sergio Brown appears to be a very good nickel back. Brown played a lot on Saturday and was probably the most effective blitzer for Notre Dame.
• Special Teams looked improved other than the place kicking. The return units looked better; the coverage units looked better; the punt block team blocked a punt; Maust was pretty good punting the ball.  The missed 48 yarder by Brandon Walker was disappointing, but at least he had plenty of leg on it and it was close - in years past we’ve seen some really ugly misses.  Long snapping was VERY poor, but that should be expected with a new long snapper.   Still, the special teams gave the offense outstanding field positon twice in the first half with the punt block and Allen’s tackle breaking return.

Head over to the podcast page and check out our interview with Rocket Ismail! Sorry for the lack of warning, but he was a very last minute guest on last night’s Podcast and gave us a great interview.

There’s been a couple really awesome moments since we started UHND back in 1997 and tonight was definitely one of them.

For the third year in a row I’ll be participating in the CollegeRivals.org weekly Fan Poll (will be updated tomorrow at 1PM CT).  Every week I will publish my weekly ballot here on the blog.  The first week is always tough to judge, but here’s my ballot for this week.

San Diego State’s defensive line was hit with the injury bug over the summer and their bad luck continued in their opening week loss to cal Poly.

The Aztecs, who concluded fall camp already thin across the defensive front, had no fewer than four more defensive linemen sustain at least some sort of injury in Saturday’s season-opening 29-27 loss to Cal Poly.

Junior Tony DeMartinis, who started at defensive end Saturday, will miss the rest of the season after suffering a torn anterior and medial collateral ligament in his knee. DeMartinis is the second defensive lineman to be lost for the year. Sophomore tackle Neil Spencer (shoulder) is also out for the season after playing in every game last year.

DeMartinis got the start at defensive end when junior Jonathan Soto was moved to tackle because of a lingering knee injury to senior Siaosi Fifita. Though coach Chuck Long is hopeful Fifita can resume practicing tomorrow as the Aztecs begin preparations for Notre Dame, there are others who required medical attention in the wake of Saturday’s loss.

San Diego State gave up 483 yards to Division 1AA Cal Poly - a middle of the road D1AA school - on Saturday and will come into Notre Dame Stadium with even less depth along the defensive line.  There is no reason whatsoever that the Irish offense should struggle in this one.  This will be the worst defense a Notre Dame offense has faced during the Charlie Weis Era.

Notre Dame commit EJ Banks started off his season on the right foot this weekend with and impressive showing - even if he only played the first half.  Banks cramped up and missed most of the second half, but he did enough damage by halftime to put his team in position to win.

Montour earned a 35-27 victory against visiting Pine-Richland on the shoulders of Banks, a Notre Dame recruit who rushed for four touchdowns, threw another and accumulated 166 yards passing to complement his 117 yards rushing.

“E.J. is a special player,” Montour coach Lou Cerro said. “The kid comes to play each and every week. … Everyone saw what he can do when he has the ball in his hands.”

Banks has not been talked about much on the boards and has been a sort of under the radar recruit this far, but it seems pretty clear that the kid can play and is extremely athletic.  After watching a lot of college football this weekend, it is pretty clear that one area where we might still be lacking, despite the recruiting success of Charlie Weis, is in athleticism.   Notre Dame just needs more athletes out there and it looks like Banks fits that role.

Welcome to a new feature on the UHND.com Blog.  Every week I will publish a poll of Notre Dame’s opponents with comments on how each team looked the week before.  This week’s was a bit challenging because Notre Dame opponents looked really bad yesterday.  The hardest spot to pick was #2 because after USC every other ND opponent is really about even till we get to the end of the poll where the Syracuse and San Diego State teams reside.  Anyway, here is our first installment.

2008 UHND Opponent Poll
		Opponent	Last Game	Next	Comments
1.		Southern Cal Trojans	W, 52-7 - Virginia	vs. #2 OSU (9/13)	Wow. USC looked like they were in mid-season form already in their thrashing of the Cavaliers. Virginia isn’t a particularly strong team, but USC dismantled them. Sanchez certainly dind’t look hurt and it looked like USC had about 7 RB’s who could all start at most colleges.
2.		Michigan State Spartans	L, 31-38 - Cal	vs. E Michigan (9/6)	Surpised that the Michigan State defense looked as poorly as it did. Cal is a pretty talented football team, but their offense looked decent. Ringer only averaged 3.0 ypc, but Hoyer threw for 321 and Mark Dell caught 9 passes for 202 yards. Sparty will be a tough test for our defense.
3.		Michigan Wolverines	L, 23-25 - Utah	vs. Miami (OH) (9/06)	Yes I saw how bad the Michigan offense looked, but I also saw a defense in the second half that can force turnovers. Michigan’s offense is not going to be able to move the ball consisntenly early in the year, but the defense caused 3 turnovers inside the Utah 35 which lead to three touchdowns to UM.
4.		Boston College Eagles	W, 21-0 - Kent State	vs. Georgia Tech (9/06)	Boston College didn’t look overly impressive, but they did get the shut out against Kent State. BC lost so much on offense that they will struggle on that side of the ball, but they look like a well coached, disciplined football team.
5.		Purdue Boilermakers	No Game	vs. N Colorafo (9/06)	Purdue was off so there is nothing to really judge them on this week. The Boilermakers did have to like seeing Michigan, Michigan State, and Illinois all lose this weekend though. Other than OSU, the Big 10 looks wide open.
6.		Stanford Cardinal	W, 36-28 - Oregon State	@ #15 Arizona State (9/06)	Kudos to Jim Harbaugh. I thought Stanford would be terrible again this year, but they got their season off to a great starter with a win over Oregon State in front of literally dozens of Stanford fans.
7.		Pittsburgh Panthers	L, 17-27 -0 Bowling Green	vs. Buffalo (9/06)	Dave Wannstedt’s seat might be on fire after that loss. With all the talent he’s brought into Pittsburgh, there’s no excuse for losing at home to Bowling Green to start the season. LeSean McCoy ran for just 71 yards.. against Bowling Green. At least the next Pitt coach will have plenty of talent thanks to Wanny.
8.		Washington Huskies	L, 10-44 - Oregon	vs. #16 BYU (9/06)	I feel bad for Jake Locker. I really do. He is a one man show on offense. Oregon was perfectly content rushing four linemen every down so they wouldn’t get burned for long runs by Locker. The result was Locker dropping back, finding no one open, and then running around. The poor kid looked exhausted at half-time. On almost any other Pac 10 team Locker would be an All American. At Washington he will be lucky to make it through the season alive. UW’s defense wore down too because of their lack of depth (sound familiar?). Their brutal schedule has them hosting BYU and Okalhoma the next two weeks too. OUCH.
9.		Navy Midshipmen	W, 41-13 Towson	@ Ball State (9/06)	Navy was typical Navy against Towson with 348 yards from Shun White. Remember though, this is Towson - a Division 1AA school.
10.		Syracuse Orangemen	L, 10-30 - Northwestern	vs. Akron (9/06)	For a half it looked like Syracuse might be improved. Then things went back to normal. Giving up 30 points to Northwestern to open the season was not the start to the season Greg Robinson was looking for.
11.		North Carolina Tar Heels	W, 35-27 - McNeese State	@ Rutgers (9/11)	For all the talk of the improvement in Chapel Hill this year, North Carolina looked horrible in nearly losing to Division 1AA McNeese state yesterday. Former Notre Dame commitment Greg Little ran 14 times for 37 yards in his debut as their starting RB.
12.		San Diego State Aztecs	L, 27-29 - Cal Poly	@ Notre Dame (9/06)	San Diego State might be one of the worst opponents we’ve faced in 20 years. SDSU lost to a Division 1AA school that was only 7-4 last year. The Aztecs couldn’t run the ball, but did throw for 352 yards. That’s good news for ND considering we couldn’t stop the run but were tough through the air last year.

Kirk Herbstreit released his annual “Herbies” on ESPN.com today and a couple Notre Dame players/coaches were mentioned.

• “Quarterbacks — What A Difference A Year Makes” - #3 Jimmy Clausen
• “Top True Freshmen — From High School To The Big Time” - Michael Floyd
• “Movin’ On Up” - #2 Notre Dame
• “Coaches Who Will Exceed Expectations” - #2 Charlie Weis

Herbie has always been pretty pro-Notre Dame on the WWL so it shouldn’t be too surprising that he has Weis as a coach who will exceed expectations and Notre Dame as a team that is “Movin’ on Up”.  It’s nice to see him list Floyd as one of the top freshmen in the country as well.

And here’s some video of Lou picking Notre Dame to win 10 or 11 games this year.  You just gotta love Lou.

Former Notre Dame wide receiver Richard Jackson will be attending the University of Central Florida after deciding to transfer from Notre Dame earlier this month.  Jackson missed all of last year with injuries and was very close to being burried on the depth chart with the influx of talent in the freshman class and decided to try and catch on somewhere else.

From UCFSports.com…

“I wanted to make the best choice for me and my family,” Jackson said. “That’s the reason I came home, to be closer to my family. UCF isn’t that far away and it will be nice to be around my family again.”

Jackson said his expectation is join the team Sunday after completing a required physical on Saturday. He will initially join the team as a walk-on.

“I’m paying my own way and hopefully I can work my way towards a scholarship,” Jackson said.

Unless he is granted a waiver by the NCAA, Jackson will sit out this season and would have two more years of eligibility beginning in 2009.

“I think there’s a chance I could play pretty early on,” Jackson said. “I talked to them about that when I went out there on Sunday. I haven’t talked to them a whole lot this week because I wanted to make sure I did everything on my end by getting enrolled in school.”

Jackson is a very talented athelete who I think could have a very nice impact for UCF.  Had he not gotten injured last year, who knows what would have happened with his development at Notre Dame.  If you go back and watch the videos of the receivers in Weis’s first class, Jackson’s was easily the most impressive and reminded me a lot of Jeff Samardzija really.

The injuries though, combined with the incoming talent at receiver would have made seeing the field very difficult for him.  Here’s wishing Richard good luck at UCF.

Notre Dame suffered it’s first major injury of the year this week when it was discovered that starting tight end Mike Ragone had a partial tear of his ACL.  The sophomore tight end tried to play through the injury with the help of a practice, but decided to shut it down and get it fixed according to a release from Charlie Weis.

This summer, while running routes, Mike tweaked his knee and partially tore his left ACL. His two options were to have the knee fixed immediately or to brace it and try to play. He understood that eventually the knee would have to be fixed and he was hoping to do it at the conclusion of the 2008 season.

Mike had continued to practice, but felt his progress had deteriorated. Thursday afternoon, Mike came to me and decided that having the surgery done now prior to the start of school would be best. Together with Jim Russ and our team doctors, we quickly arranged surgery for late Friday morning. The surgery was successful and Mike will spend the 2008 season rehabbing to be ready for the 2009 season.

This is terrible news for both Notre Dame and Mike Ragone.  Ragone was primed for a breakout season and his loss leaves Notre Dame with just one scholarship tight end who has seen any extensive action.  Junior fullback/tight end hybrid Luke Schmidt and true freshmen Kyle Rudolp and Joseph Fauria will now need to play a much more prominent role in the TE rotation than originally planned.

For Ragone, this is his second major injury in two years.  He missed his entire senior season at Camden Catholic with a knee injury and now has a partial tear of his ACL.   ACL’s are very tough to recover from so here’s hoping Mike has a full recovery and is back on the field for the Irish next year.

UPDATE: I just posted an article on the homepage regarding the loss of Ragone and what it means to our depth at tight end this year.