FOOTBALL: Irish need offense to step up
By CHRIS FEDERICO
Sports Editor
Notre Dame is 2-0 — that's the good news.
Here's the bad news:
Carlyle Holiday hasn't fired one pass into a receiver's hands in the end zone. Ryan Grant hasn't plowed through the line to score six. And Arnaz Battle has yet to fly past opposing defensive backs and dance across the goal line.
The Irish have scored four touchdowns in their first two games this season — defensive backs scored all four. That says a lot for the defense. Most teams can only hope for that sort of production. But for the offense, that's scary.
Yes, the Irish are 2-0, and yes many people expected them to be 0-2 at this point in the season, but the offensive production has been lousy.
If the Irish hope to finish any better than 2-9, Holiday and his pool of talented receivers will need to put points on the board.
"It's frustrating that [cornerback] Vontez [Duff] is the leading scorer on the team right now," Holiday said. "A couple of guys on the team and I feel very embarrassed. I guess we shouldn't, but we felt like that towards the end of the game. We know as an offensive team that we've got to score touchdowns to help the team win, we've really got to work on those things in order for us to be a better ball club."
Over the last three games, including the Purdue game at the end of last season, Duff has three touchdown returns. Unfortunately, the odds are that he won't be able to average one a game for the rest of the season.
After a decent performance in the opener last week against Maryland, the Irish passing attack was almost non-existent in Saturday's victory against the Boilermakers. Holiday was only 7-for-22 for 50 yards. His first completion to a wide receiver didn't come until 7:06 into the second quarter — a nine-yard pass to Carlos Campbell.
"Where I was the most disappointed today was in our passing game," said Irish offensive coordinator Bill Diedrick. "Purdue did a nice job with their packages, and they really kept us off balance early in the game. I just wasn't very happy with how we executed in the passing game."
Notre Dame had trouble most of the day picking up on Purdue's blitz schemes. The Boilermakers moved in and out of different coverage packages to keep the relatively untested Irish offense off balance.
"I thought Purdue did a good job with their blitz packages, especially coming in and out of it," said Irish head coach Tyrone Willingham. "It forced our quarterback to put us in checks. And sometimes it put us in protections that worked against us."
While it seemed clear with the game Saturday that there are several areas of concern for the offense, Irish coaches and players are not ready to go into panic mode.
"I'm always concerned about [not scoring]," Diedrick said. "Anytime you go on the field you expect to be very efficient in you execution, and you expect to score. But we haven't put the ball in the end zone. We've got to make the running game better, and get more efficient in the passing game, and scoring will come with all of that."
If the Irish are to be successful, it's going to be up to the offense to do its job and score points, because the Irish can only rely on the defense and special teams for so long. Most coaches say special teams are good for two wins a year. By that count, the Irish offense should be on its own to put points on the scoreboard for the next 10 games.
"We're fortunate right now in that it's not just our defense that has the ability to score," Willingham said. "Right now we're getting points from our special teams, too. When you have all of your segments that can put points on the board, it makes you dangerous. But I shouldn't say all of our elements can put points on the board, because right now we haven't scored points with one of our elements. But that will come, and we know that."
If the Irish want another win, it needs to come soon.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer. Contact Chris Federico at cfederic@nd.edu.
All Sports Stories for Monday, September 9, 2002
