What We Learned: ND 20, Stanford 13

Good stuff as always Lou.

In addition to Niklas, Golic took a big step backwards with his three false start penalties. It's not often that you lose the turnover, field position, and penalty battles and still come out ahead. But that's what you get when running backs run hard and don't fumble, quarterbacks don't throw costly picks, and receivers don't drop balls they should catch...and catch ones that most others couldn't!

One of the most exciting games I've seen in horrible playing conditions, but with an unbelievable crowd. Notre Dame Stadium has been rocking this year and the crowd noise, support, and enthusiasm has provided a much needed energy boost for our players.

Joethoma,

I was proud to be a part of that crowd yesterday!

Great insight, Lou! Blanda is an apt comparison. So much about the Raiders and his contribution that year made them interesting and fun to watch, and I wasn't even remotely a fan of the Raiders. Similarly, the Irish have some story lines this year that make us interesting even to our many non-fans, and Rees is one of them. I don't know when baseball started to have "closers" but they have not been around forever as we understand the term today. It was probably someone like Hoyt Wilhelm. Maybe Rees is creating the closer position in college football.

In my view, Kelly is working with what he has right at the moment at the quarterback position perfectly. I think Golson, playing well and through these inevitable growing pains, gives us the best chance to beat our best competition. I look for where he is improving and I see it, in spite of the mistakes. I certainly saw some great plays, as well as the head-shakers getting more of the focus today. It's coming. And, Rees focus and mental toughness are as good as I have ever seen on the college football field.

HAHAH, I said the exact same thing. I am sure he is. He didnt leave because he wanted to be a Bull. He left due to his GF. I hope it works for him.

Lou,

How ironic! Ernie Nevers and the Four Horsemen. Stanford Vs Irish. same ending.

Match-ups.

Game to game, team-to-team, player-to-player. Difficult to predict a favored team if they are relatively equal.

We know the party line. Turnovers, home field advantage, breaks, who wants it more, who's due, etc.

After match-ups intangibles make the difference. Biggest intangible is momentum. Our momentum on defense is awesome and the offense is improving - the players know they can perform. If we can get momentum with the punt and kickoff return teams we will be hard to stop.

Here was Brian Kelly's response at his Sunday teleconference when asked about Mike Golic Jr.'s issues with the three illegal procedure penalties:

"Well, I don't know that Mike Golic had a lot to do with those false starts. You know, there's a lot of other things going on out there that I'm not going to get into right now.

"Mike has made progress. Mike is he played against a very, very good defense, and they won some, Mike won some. The thing with Mike, he's such a dedicated player. I mean, he comes to practice every day; he's purposeful. He's not going to be First Team All American at that position, but here at Notre Dame, he doesn't need to be; he needs to just be Mike Golic. And we're proud of the steps that he's made to help our offense."

With absolutely no knowledge of what happened, my first two guesses might be something Stanford was doing verbally or a miscommunication from someone else along offense. A coach will not talk about these publicly because it might come across the wrong way — similar to David Shaw about the whistle in the stand. He might have been right about it, but it's usually a no-win when you convey it publicly.

If a coach plays favorites, for any reason, you better be able to back it up.

I'm glad to see Coach realized his mistakes with the pass plays on that end of the field. I said to myself right then that it was a coaching fault and not Gohlson's. Sure he could have gotten rid of it, and should have, but you don't set yourself up for failure like that with such a young QB. Set him up for success, not for risking failure.