Rockne's Roundtable

Thats WAY to easy of a number. Should be more like 40!!

Dear John Goodman,

Please keep your opinions to yourself unless they agree with ours.

Sincerely,

A Large Percentage of the Notre Dame Fan Base

As long as he protects the ball and the other 10 people on the field trust and respect him, it shouldn't matter who the QB is. If they decide Rees is that guy who am I to second guess the people who have forgotten more about football than most of us will ever know. It also helps that Rees put on some muscle this year and seems to be a little faster. ( 40 yards untouched on a scramble) I just want to see a leader at QB again and everything else will fall in place.

The destination was the message board, so I think you failed as a sniper.

Jigga's 2 posts are the only thing that really needs to be said. I couldn't say them better. Sully08 and 2Daniel also hit nails square on the head. If Rees is the leader now or in September I can understand some fans are going to be disappointed or whatever you call the emotion. But the Oh God no, facepalming, and this can't be possible posts are just silly and incorrect. It'd be one thing if Kelly proclaimed Rees the incumbent, or planned to give him the edge because of his experience. He's done everything but! He stripped down the playbook, started an open competition from scratch and gave the other 3 QBs every chance to win the job. If Tommy Rees walks out of the battle royale the starter then not a single person should have a problem with that, it means he's shown something to earn it. I want the starter to be the one that earned it; not a fallback for experience or new blood for the sake of new blood like many seem to favor.

All the talk of Golson having to win because of Kelly's spread needs to stop too. Kelly's spread isn't what he even plans on running this year, and even so he's done just fine with Tony Pike and Ben Mauk. That's one reason I'm more than ok with Rees as the starter...because Kelly really seems to have contingencies in place for it this year. If we were keeping the wide open spread as our primary O; Golson or Hendrix would be #1 right now, Tyler Eifert would be our starting W, and Troy Niklas would be an OLB. The team is going to run a 2 TE, 1 WR and 2 RB/WR offense. It's going to be full of jet sweeps, swings, and bubbles to get the ball to Riddick, Wood, GA3, and Toma. Instead of Rees having to run out of the read option, he can dump it off to one of those guys and let them work magic. And in the event they swarm that, he'll have the amount of space where even he can run 40 yards. A mountain like Lombard is going to be on the right side so he doesn't have to scramble or rush things. This all will make up for his lack of athleticism. The only deciding factor in him starting is and will be if he can smartly move the ball and not turn it over. The coaches talked about the WRs transitioning into more option routes to get open and downfield, another advantage for Rees. His experience makes it far more likely for him to react and throw it to where the guy will be not where a rookie will think he SHOULD be.

The talk about his arm strength and defenses keying last year is moot. Last year the only downfield threat was Floyd. So you could roll coverage to one side, shrink Floyd's window and make Eifert beat you. Rees has a decent enough arm to get the ball 30-40 yards downfield but he couldn't jam it between a high deep safety to MF without floating those jumpers. Throwing 30-40 yards downfield to a Riddick or GA3 with the top off the defense is a different skill set. Rees brings a 12-4 record to the table and while he isn't a BCS carrying QB, he is capable of not being a BCS destroying QB. Throw in a Hendrix/Golson package IF Rees wins the job and you limit his mistakes/deficencies more. And there's still a chance one of the 3 could beat him out in-season for snaps or take the job next spring.

That definitely seems to be the case, doesn't it?