The Future of Charlie Weis

Charlie Weis was hired with the intention of returning Notre Dame to its rightful place in the college football universe. Unfortunately he has not done much to distinguish himself from his predecessors. With a record of 29-21, Weis has failed to show significant improvement over Bob Davie (35-25) or Tyrone Willingham (21-15).

There is a story today on ESPN that discusses the current state of the Notre Dame program. Given the last two season at Notre Dame, Weis probably needs to win at least 8-9 games to keep his job. And from reading the article, I get the impression that the team will be improved.

Weis has made a couple coaching moves that should help. He has finally hired a new offensive line coach which may help improve the weakest area of the team. I don't know much about Frank Verducci, but the offensive line can't really get worse. The offensive line is also no longer young and inexperienced. Weis has also gone back to calling the plays. I never know why he went away from this in the first place. Play-calling is probably his greatest strength and that's how he helped win three Super Bowls. And except for a few games where Notre Dame didn't have the talent to compete, he did a pretty good job calling the plays during the Brady Quinn years.

I also really liked how Notre Dame brought in Jon Tenuta to help coordinate the defense with Corwin Brown. This was a brilliant move. Corwin Brown is highly regarded in the coaching profession (he was recommend to Weis by Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells) but he is pretty young and doesn't have much experience as a defensive coordinator. Tenuta on the other hand is one of the best coordinators in the college game. I remember being pretty excited when he was rumored to be going to Michigan with Les Miles. He is known as a guy that blitzes alot and he will only make the Irish defense better. And having been defensive coordinator at Ohio State, he knows what it is like to coach at this kind of program.

One thing that I found fairly interesting was that:

After last season, Weis asked for the offensive and defensive averages of the 10 teams that played in the BCS games, plus Cotton Bowl participants Ole Miss and Texas Tech. "If the goal is to be a BCS team," Weis reasoned, "then that's what we should be doing."

The statistics are just another way of viewing Notre Dame's shortcomings.

"We averaged 3.3 yards per carry," Weis said. "The average of these guys is 4.6. We averaged 109 rushing yards per game. The average for these guys is 175 ..."

I don't know if Notre Dame can improve to 4.6 yards per carry or 175 yards per game, but with new offensive line and running back coaches along with a general increase in experience, they should be able to substantially improve on last years numbers.

Jimmy Clausen should also take a pretty big step forward this year. He looked pretty good in the bowl game and he should build upon his performance, especially if he able to get the improved line play and running performance that Weis expects. Clausen had a lot of hype coming out high school that he is probably never going to meet. I mean who can ever forget that he promised he would win four Heisman trophies and four national championships. Or that Sports Illustrated hyped him up to be the Lebron James of football. Clausen was placed in a pretty tough situation having to start as a freshman on a 3-9 Notre Dame team. The experience of these last two years will only help him going forward. I don't expect Clausen to ever a pro prospect on the level of Matthew Stafford or Mark Sanchez, but I think he will develop into a pretty good college quarterback.

Looking at the schedule, it shapes up pretty nicely for the Irish:

Sept 5	Nevada
Sept 12	at Michigan
Sept 19	Michigan State
Oct 3	at Purdue
Oct 10	Washington
Oct 17	USC
Oct 24	Boston College
Oct 31	Washington State (at San Antonio)
Nov 7	Navy
Nov 14	at Pittsburgh
Nov 21	Connecticut
Nov 28	Stanford

Notre Dame opens with Nevada and that's a game they should win fairly easily (though they did struggle with San Diego St last year). At Michigan is usually a pretty tough game, but Michigan is down and Weis has won in Ann Arbor before. They are probably the favorites in this game and have a fairly good chance to win. This is probably the hardest game on their schedule to predict, because knows what to expect from Michigan.

Notre Dame has consistently struggled against Michigan State, but they have the better team and Michigan State is rebuilding. They should win this game. Purdue has a new coach and was pretty bad last year. This is another game that Notre Dame probably wins.

Washington is beginning the Steve Sarkisian era and they face a pretty big rebuilding job. Playing at home Notre Dame wins this game. After this comes Notre Dame's annual beatdown by USC. They still don't have the athletes to compete with USC and they lose, even to a rebuilding (at least by their standards) USC team.

Boston College comes to town the following weekend and this is a team that Notre Dame usually struggles with. Boston College really screwed up their coaching situation and I think they are going to be alot worse off. This is going to lead to Notre Dame winning this game.

Playing Washington State in San Antonio shouldn't be a problem for Notre Dame. They were one of the worst teams in college football last year and I don't think they will be much improved. Notre Dame wins this game.

Navy has been able to stay close with Notre Dame the last few years and even managed a victory two years ago. They just don't have the talent to compete and Notre Dame will beat them for the 45th time out of the last 46 years.

Dave Wannstedt has done a good job of recruiting at Pitt and they are probably one of the favorites to win the Big East next year. Playing at Pitt, this will be a tough game for the Irish. I think that people are expecting big things from Pitt, but that they are going to take a step back after losing Lesean McCoy to the NFL Draft. They are not going to be as good as people think and this allows Notre Dame to win this game.

Connecticut is a team that I don't know much about, just that they lost their really good running back from last year. Assuming that he was a big part of their team, Notre Dame wins this game with no problem.

The season closes with Stanford and usually Notre Dame has no trouble in this game. I think that Jim Harbaugh is a pretty good coach and it's going to really start to show in his third year at Stanford. The Cardinal will come to South Bend and shock the Irish, ruining their BCS hopes.

Assuming that Notre Dame loses to Michigan, they finish the season 9-3. This probably doesn't get them into the BCS, but it allows Weis to keep his job for another year.