I agree with the overall thesis...

by domer.mq , Sunday, March 01, 2009, 14:26 (6240 days ago) @ Jay
edited by domer.mq, Sunday, March 01, 2009, 17:24

but I think UNC did have the patience, for the first time we'd seen that season, to stick with on particular tactic for beating ND: jumping routes and forcing JC to go to his second look. The first successful jump went for a TD INT return, the next "successful" jump caused JC to pause long enough to help with him getting stripped of the ball (If I recall that at all correctly).

I think you might be able to say that UNC shut down ND in the 2nd half. ND scored just once in the 2nd half, and that drive required a roughing the kicker penalty to stay alive after ND went 3 and out (JC threw an incomplete on 3rd and 2 from the ND 36). That drive went 72 yards for a TD, but after that, the Irish drove for 8, 51, 33, and 63 yards without a score to end the game. That's about 1/3rd of the yards gained by the Irish without a score, and only the 8 yard drive occurred with ND holding a lead in the 2nd half, meaning, in a way, that the other fairly "long" drives just ate up a lot of clock without any ultimate productivity (scores).

I'll still maintain that the real "template" for beating ND, and one that Butch Davis probably appreciated, was that you could wait for ND to screw themselves up (see also: red zone offense), so long as you could hold on and keep things from getting out of hand. But the entire notion of a "template" is really dumb. It's something that lets board posters think they have any clue what it's actually like trying to execute on a game plan at game speed. Speaking as a veteran board poster/blogger: I don't have a freaking clue, and the "template" term makes me nervous.

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Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.