Notre Dame concluded its 2016 Spring football season on Saturday with the annual Blue – Gold Game. As always, the focus rested squarely on yet another quarterback battle for the Irish. Both Deshone Kizer and Malik Zaire had their moments during the yearly scrimmage which featured a “real” scoring system for the first time in years. Here’s all of the highlights and the last taste of live Notre Dame football until fall camp.
Kizer is better than Zaire period.
How about Narduzzi as DC?
ND Football 101
-Refer to the menu bar at the top of this page.
-Under “Team” > 2015 depth chart, > Defensive depth Chart >WILL, MIKE, SAM.
-Scroll down to the Linebackers.
JAYLON Smith was the starting “WILL” or weak side linebacker. His back-up, or “understudy”, was Te’Von Coney.
Joe Schmidt was the Starting “MIKE” linebacker or middle linebacker. His back-up, or “understudy” was Nyles Morgan.
James Onwualu is the starting “SAM” linebacker or strong side linebacker. His back-up, or “understudy” is Greer Martini.
A Senior has to compete for a starting job? Oh the humanity!
George…look I’d love to see him become the ‘guy’. But every time i catch sight of #5 he’s being taken out of a play. He is now being hyped as the defensive ‘team leader’, the guy who positions the defensive players once VanNo calls the set. He might actually know the alignments and assignments but he just doesn’t know how NOT to avoid be taken out of almost every play himself.
Last season, on the SHO series, VanNo asked his defensive leaders to be “proactive”, to pick a (up and coming) player and mentor him. Who did Jason Smith go to…Coney, not NoMo. That speaks volumes. Further proof, last season Kelly played a gimpy Schmidt and a lesser quality player in Coney over NoMo. In fact he was relegated to ST’s mostly. My guess is that Coney is still hurt so VanNo is hyping NoMo. I realize the importance of having a force in the middle. We had almost a perfect season when we had a star at MLB and a pretty damn good season going (following year) until Schmidt got injured.
But (I think) all is not lost. I got a hunch about VanNo this year. It seemed to me that he had a sense of calm on the sidelines last Saturday. Maybe he thinks finally his message got through to enough defensive players. Except for a couple of missed tackles (to be expected), his D looked pretty good. I’m hoping.
If Morgan doesn’t perform this year, I’m blaming BVG. And I feel like BVG already has a few strikes against him. Morgan has a clean slate as far as I’m concerned. Freshman All-American.
Congratulations to DSK, overall you were the better QB Saturday afternoon. You demonstrated a calmness, confidence and headiness that could easily lead to being named starting QB in the Fall. However, the excitement MZ brings cannot be overlooked. I understand this is just a small sample but I still believe starting QB should be MZ’s job to lose. I’ve expressed that I thought it was a ‘cop-out’ of Kelly to make this a ‘public’ competition. I sensed that MZ was pressing in the first two possessions, probably as a result of ‘having to compete’ as a Sr for a job that he lost through injury…not as a result of ‘bad’ play. That said, i think it was smart of Kelly following the game, to not give the QB job away based on this game. BTW, I thought the 3rd best QB Saturday was VanNo’s kid.
Speaking of VanNo…from what i saw, i think he should find enough defensive players from the two teams he fielded, to actually come up with a D we could all be proud of. Regarding NoMo, did anyone see him ‘standout’ as our heir apparent to MLB?