Notre Dame still wears the signature helmets, dusted with gold paint before each game. The Fighting Irish still play in Notre Dame Stadium, a shrine to the genius of Knute Rockne. And they still have their own television network.
But last Saturday’s home loss to Northwestern underscored a reality that college football insiders have known for some time.
Notre Dame isn’t Notre Dame anymore. Notre Dame is just another 11 guys in shoulder pads.
The Irish (0-1) have won just two of their last eight games–the only victories coming at the expense of service academies–and travel to intrastate rival Purdue (1-0) Saturday. It has been a dramatic plunge for a team that came within a whisker of winning the national title less than two years ago.
Many of the school’s rabid fans want to blame head coach Lou Holtz, who is 83-25-2 in his 10th season at South Bend. Legendary former coach Ara Parseghian rejects that notion and insists it’s premature to sound the death knell of ND football.
“Too many people draw conclusions after only one game,” Parseghian said this week. “If they come back and win four games in a row, this conversation has no meaning.”
But there are at least five reasons why the biggest story in the young college football season is the fall of the Irish:
– Holtz has been unable to adapt his attack to take advantage of quarterback Ron Powlus’ superb skills as a drop-back passer. The sophomore, for his part, lacks the quickness and instincts to run the option, one of Holtz’s favorite weapons.
– The Irish lack a game-breaker in the mold of Tim Brown, Rocket Ismail and Ricky Watters. The Irish also don’t have the key ingredients of Holtz’s beloved power running game, a stalwart front line and a workhorse back.
– Notre Dame still outrecruits most rivals, but it has had trouble keeping players eligible and has watched its overall talent level slip in the last two years. The Irish were so depleted going into this season that Holtz granted scholarships to three walk-ons. That raised the number of scholarship athletes to 76, which is still nine below the NCAA limit.
– Turnover among the assistant coaches is a marked contrast to such longtime powers as Penn State, Nebraska and Florida State, where staff stability promotes consistent excellence on the field.
– The Irish are too small on defense, especially up front.
Things got worse for Notre Dame this week, when starting offensive left guard Jeremy Akers went down with a knee injury. He’ll be out at least six weeks.
That was bad news for an offense in a state of alarm after producing only 15 points against Northwestern, which conceded 32 points a game last year, worst in the Big Ten.
Holtz has been knocked for his unimaginative passing schemes, but he has won consistently with a five-pronged attack, each dependent on the others.
The first is a power running game. The second is the option. The third is the deep pass threat. The fourth is play-action passing. The fifth is a package of draws, screens and delayed handoffs.
But the last two Irish teams have lacked three of the five ingredients–power running, option and deep threat.
Powlus has a terrific arm and an uncanny touch, but those talents have not been maximized in the present Irish attack, which lacks a solid offensive line to provide protection and a receiver to complement pro prospect Derrick Mayes.
Powlus isn’t mobile enough to force opposing defenses to worry about the option threat, which they had to do when Tony Rice and Rick Mirer ran the attack. According to several defensive coordinators, Holtz used to run the option about 10 percent of the time, but the threat was enough to open up the field for other plays.
“You don’t have to respect Powlus on the option,” said one defensive coordinator who has followed the Irish. “And he’s not going to roll out and beat you the way Mirer could. The kid is a super quarterback, but he might not be the right one for Lou.”
Powlus doesn’t get much help from the offensive line, which allowed four sacks against Northwestern.
“Maybe they’re not as physical up front,” said Brigham Young defensive coordinator Ken Schmidt, whose unit held the Irish to 14 points last season. “And maybe they don’t have that big tailback.”
The Irish have tried to replace Jerome Bettis and Reggie Brooks with Randy Kinder and Robert Farmer, but neither blue-chipper coming out of high school has developed into a star.
Holtz’s mistrust in his running game was most evident when he ordered a bomb to open Notre Dame’s final series against Northwestern. The ball fell incomplete, and three plays later the Wildcats stuffed Kinder on a fourth-and-2 plunge.
Holtz took heat for the fourth-down call, but it appeared that Kinder had missed a hole opened by Irish blockers. His coaches, however, said Kinder read the play correctly.
Northwestern then ran out the clock. Some called it the upset of the century. But Notre Dame losses can hardly be considered upsets any more.
The Irish don’t win as much as they used to because they no longer enjoy a clear advantage at most positions.
“We had players that when we walked out on the field, unless we turned the ball over, we were going to win,” said former recruiting coordinator Vinny Cerrato, now a San Francisco 49er scout. “That’s the biggest difference I see from this team right now. It is absolutely not the coaching.”
Those days are gone, as are many of Holtz’s prized recruits in recent years.
Eight of the 22 members of the 1992 recruiting class are no longer on the team. And five of the 20 recruited two years ago are already gone.
Some of the losses have been from bad luck with injuries. But several have been academic casualties.
Recruiting experts contend the school’s admissions officials have buckled down on marginal student-athletes.
“The admissions office started putting the clamps on Notre Dame in 1991 and the class was horrible,” said Schaumburg-based prep talent scout Tom Lemming. “They had some good classes, but not the knockout players, the Rocket Ismails, Chris Zoriches, Todd Lyghts, Tony Rices.”
The Irish reeled in perhaps the nation’s top recruiting class this year, but Holtz couldn’t get speedster Randy Moss and tailback James Jackson admitted.
“I don’t think we’re looking at those decisions very differently than we did in 1987, for example,” said admissions director Kevin Rooney. “Chris Zorich would still be Chris Zorich and the way we evaluate his transcript would be exactly the same today as then.”
Lemming said another factor that hurt recruiting is staff instability. “They had a lot of soldier-of-fortune-type coaches who came to ND to get other coaching jobs and they didn’t put their time in in recruiting,” said Lemming, who praised current recruiting bosses Bob Chmiel and Dave Roberts.
Indeed, Holtz has employed three defensive coordinators since 1989 and four quarterback coaches since 1988.
Notre Dame’s recruiting struggles have been mirrored by a dropoff at the other end of the talent pipeline. The 1992 and 1993 Irish produced 19 NFL draft picks, including seven first-rounders. The 1994 Irish had only five draftees, none in the first round.
The NFL likes speed and size. Notre Dame has lacked both recently, at least compared with earlier Holtz teams.
One way speed shows up is in special teams and defensive touchdowns. The Irish scored seven each in 1988 and 1989. Last year, Notre Dame scored only one such touchdown and rated 106th in the nation in punt returns.
The Irish’s lack of size was plain Saturday, when the Wildcats ripped off yardage with basic man-on-man run-blocking schemes. Notre Dame will face an even more punishing ground game Saturday at Purdue, led by 240-pound fullback Mike Alstott.
And then there are games against Washington, Ohio State and Southern Cal, each ranked, each itching to compound Notre Dame’s misery.
“It’s not the good ol’ days right now,” Holtz said. “But I’m going to tell you one thing about Notre Dame: Notre Dame will always be back. If you think Notre Dame is down forever, you’re wrong.”
