On Friday, Charlie Weis said he has 4 main objectives for the Spring this year. I’ll have a full feature article on these later today, but for now, here’s a quick overview of the objectives Weis discussed yesterday.
1. Meshing the newly revised coaching staff – With all of the changes to the coaching staff this past off-season, this one seems pretty obvious. Weis will be attempting to fix the Notre Dame ground game with a new offensive line coach (Frank Verducci) and a new running backs coach (Tony Alford). On top of the new coaches, Weis shifted the responsibilities of the coaching staff around in order to make his role as offensive coordinator possible. In short the makeup and dynamic of the staff has changed quite a bit in a short period of time. Getting the staff all on the same page and meshed will be one of the biggest challenges for the Irish this spring.
Obviously, I brought in three new coaches with Frank Verducci and Tony Alford and Randy Hart.
In addition to having some of, you know graduate assistants and interns that are around as well where there’s been some of those guys. And in addition, you know, there’s been a change of job responsibilities of different coaches as well.
So one of our objectives in the spring time is to get that all worked out and meshed so as we go into training camp and into the season, everyone’s set and ready to go.
2. Self Scouting – Weis explained this as figuring out what they did last year that worked and what didn’t work. Well, whatever they did to fix the offensive line and running game last year didn’t work so I would expect them to be trying some new things in that department. With a new offensive line and running backs coach, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Fixing the running game was also mentioned by Weis as one of the top priorities in the spring. He did say the Irish were going to “pound it” last fall camp though, so I wouldn’t get too excited just yet.
Second objective as related to our self scout, which is our analysis of this past season. Every year we spend an in depth amount of time analyzing what we did well and what we didn’t do well, both on an X and O version, and mentally as well. Why things were working or why things weren’t working and why. We identify them and then we decide are we going to try to fix it, throw it out? What exactly are we going to do?
3. Outright Competition – This one seems pretty obvious too with all of the young talent – especially on defense. I don’t think there will be nearly as much competition on the offensive side of the ball. Defensively, three DL positions are probably up for grabs, two LB positions, and two more spots in the secondary. There’s a lot of talent and some decent experience all competing for that playing time.
So this is the time. I think this is going to be a very competitive spring because so many, so many guys on both sides of the ball have been playing, practically the entire offense, has been playing, and you know, a majority of the defense. Even a couple of the key losses that we had on defense where you lose David Bruton, you know, you lose David Bruton, and we’re moving Harrison Smith from Sam linebacker to free safety. You lose Terrail Lambert, you’ve got Darrin Walls back in school.
So even a couple of the positions we’re losing front line guys, we feel we have front line guys that are already replacing the front line guys that are walking out the door.
4. Finishing games – Weis mentioned maturity as the fourth overall objective, but finishing games is a major part of that. Had Notre Dame finished games last year we would have been watching the Irish as we recovered from our New Year’s Eve hangovers instead of as we prepared for midnight mass on Christmas Eve during bowl season. Against Pitt, North Carolina, and Syracuse the Irish held double digit second half leads and lost all three. Had they held on to those three games, Notre Dame would have finished the season 9-3 instead of 6-6. That’s a huge difference. If Weis is going to save his job this year, the Irish can’t blow anymore double digit second half leads.
Lastly, part of the maturity objective is finishing the game or finishing. I think that we all agree that last year there were games where you have double digit leads whether it’s coaching offensive, defensive teams. Regardless of the combination of reasons when you have double digit leads in three games you go ahead and let those games get away. The team and coaching staff and everyone have to make sure that finishing the game is the utmost priority, and a lot of that comes with the maturity of your team.
