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| Alabama showed it's on another level — and now the Irish know more work is to be done. |
This isn’t the way it was supposed to go.
After the dreamlike way that Notre Dame’s 12-0 undefeated regular season played out, the last thing anyone thought was that a cold, hard dose of reality would await in the national title game.
That is, however, exactly what Irish fans got on Jan. 7, when Alabama, for the third time in four years, blasted its BCS championship game foe. The score was 42-14, but Alabama had things put away early in the second quarter.
It was hard to get too angry about anything that happened after it became clear the Tide was on another playing field Monday night. A couple of sketchy officiating decisions — not reviewing what appeared to be a catch by Tyler Eifert on ND’s first drive, followed by a stupid interference call against the Irish when the offender was clipped into interfering — kept ND from gaining their footing, but not nearly as much as the Alabama offensive line did.
44 days off proved lethal to the Notre Dame defense, which just didn’t look like itself. SEC mouth-breathers were quick to chalk it up to superior athletes, and it’s certainly true that the Tide boasted more potent running backs and better line play than the Irish had seen. But those things didn’t explain why Manti Te’o missed several tackles when in position to make them, why Zeke Motta looked like he had no idea where he was supposed to be half the time, or why ND was slower to react to screen passes than they had been during the regular season (when such an offensive play call was tantamount to taking a knee).
It probably didn’t help matters that Brian Kelly was quick to abandon the running game when things got tough. It was hard to blame him too much considering the Tide scored touchdowns on their first three possessions, but even on ND’s early drives, Kelly seemed scared to call a run. What runs he did call were stuffed, but most glaring were back to back calls for Everett Golson to throw deep on 2nd and 3rd downs when just two yards were needed for the first.
I could go on about the things the ND coaches didn’t do well and the things their players didn’t do well, but that would be insulting to Alabama, a terrific football team that played as locked-in as I’ve ever seen a team play. A.J. McCarron, given time by his colossal offensive line, made mincemeat of an ND secondary that had played so well all year it was easy to forget their starting cornerbacks were a true freshman converted running back and a junior in his second year of playing the position. The Tide exposed that fact, and how.
The predictable outcries of Notre Dame not belonging in the title game and SEC superiority were unleashed so quickly once Bama took control that they’d largely died down following the game.
It is easy to watch that game and assume that the SEC is an unstoppable force of college football, that you might as well stage a four-team playoff among that conference to determine a champion in the future. However, it is worth noting that given a six-week layoff last season, Saban’s Alabama team destroyed LSU, an almighty SEC team, similarly. (They didn’t score 42 points, but they were just as dominant as they were against the Irish this week.) This SEC run of titles is less about the conference than about Nick Saban. Saban has taken four teams to the title game, and each time, given the long layoff, he has relentlessly attacked the opponent’s weaknesses and watched his team outclass them on the field.
The SEC has won seven titles in a row less because of the players than because of the coaches. After all, five of those seven were won by Nick Saban and Urban Meyer, ranked 1 and 2 in most any reasonable person’s poll of FBS coaches. The other two were won against probably the most fraudulent BCS title-game participant of all time — 2007’s Ohio State team — and by a guy who by all rights shouldn’t have been eligible — Cam Newton.
Anyway, I digress. The game showed that, while there’s little reason to believe Notre Dame will fade back into obscurity anytime soon, they still have plenty of distance to go. The good news for Irish fans is they’re on the pathway. This 2012 team was never supposed to be this good. 2013 was supposed to be the year ND exploded onto the scene, after Golson had a year under him and when Stephon Tuitt, Louis Nix and company were a year more experienced. While Kelly did not follow the path of every other great Irish coach by winning the national title in year three, he still achieved the pivotal third-year task of proving he’s the right man for the Notre Dame job.
And the 12-0 season paid recruiting dividends. ND has a consensus top-3 recruiting class in the country coming in, one even better than Alabama’s according to most services. Among them are two of the best recruits at their positions that ND’s ever acquired since recruiting rankings became in vogue — Greg Bryant at running back and Max Redfield at safety.
Returning will be the vast majority of the difference-makers on this Notre Dame team. Only Manti Te’o, Theo Riddick, Tyler Eifert, Kapron Lewis-Moore and (likely) Cierre Wood will be departing among the blue-chip level talents, while the Irish bring back their two best defensive linemen, three-fourths of their secondary, their quarterback, an excellent class of freshmen and three guys (Jamoris Slaughter, Lo Wood and Austin Collinsworth) that missed this season with injuries and would’ve otherwise contributed.
So while the Irish got fed a big dish of humble pie at the national championship game, ND haters shouldn’t get used to such defeats. Kelly has set a pathway to success, and his team is taking the fast track on that path.
And while no 12-0 season can ever be called likely, don’t bet against a rematch of this game next year in Pasadena. And if that happens, Kelly and his staff hopefully have a whole book of notes of what not to do in preparation for it.
