Bye weeks are good for many things. For head coach Charlie Weis this week was an opportunity to rest key personnel with injuries, self-scout the first five games, and get the reserves meaningful practice repetitions. For fans it is a chance to reflect on (and potentially readjust) their season expectations and, this year, to get […]

Notre Dame returns home Saturday to meet Michigan State for its third game of the season. Both teams enter the contest at 1-1 and coming off tough losses. Last week the Irish lost a heartbreaker in the Big House as freshman quarterback Tate Forcier exposed a porous Irish defense. The Spartans, on the other hand, […]

Notre Dame travels to Ann Arbor Saturday to face what appears to be a rejuvenated Michigan team under second year head coach Rich Rodriguez. Both teams easily dispatched their first opponents as the Irish scored a dominant win against Nevada and the Wolverines routed Western Michigan. But convincing opening week wins are largely overshadowed by […]

The momentum from the Hawaii Bowl certainly carried over for the Irish offense. Head coach Charlie Weis couldn’t have written a better script for the first game of 2009 as Notre Dame amassed better than 500 yards of offense while shutting out a Nevada squad that averaged over 37 points per game in 2008. It […]

Notre Dame opens the 2009 season Saturday by welcoming Nevada to South Bend. For many this is the “make it or break it” year for head coach Charlie Weis. Two consecutive disappointing campaigns have exhausted all the leniency from the overachieving Irish squads of his first two years. Weis made several changes in the off-season: […]

It always starts the same way. Media pundits gushing over video-game offensive and defensive statistics, touting playmakers and storylines, and predicting the winner or the next “game of the year, decade or century.” It fires up the fans. This year will be no different: it may not be Oklahoma’s unthinkable, record setting offense or USC’s […]

At Clashmore Mike we strive to monitor the college football landscape as a whole, objectively and without bias. While we have a vested interest in Notre Dame, we attempt to view the performance of the Irish via appropriate statistical metrics that benchmark on-field production (irrespective of how said production is measured). One such example is […]

Notre Dame’s season opener against Nevada is right around the corner and a seemingly eternal off-season can’t end soon enough. Fans seem tired of attempting to produce logical explanations for the last two years: a disastrous 2007 season and an underachieving 2008 campaign. Head coach Charlie Weis’ said it best at Notre Dame’s media day, […]

Now that the voting is over, it’s time to present the results. First, thanks to all who participated. At the time of this analysis better than 200 people cast votes. For each game on Notre Dame’s 2009 schedule voters were asked to select their confidence in a win. Predicting the outcome of the 2009 season […]

Whether you saw the Blue-Gold game live or followed along with the reviews, the Irish have had a relatively eventful off-season. A solid recruiting class headlined by defensive stalwart Manti Te’o preceded three coaching changes. Rumors emerged from Spring practice sessions highlighting quarterback Jimmy Clausen’s continued development, defensive lineman Ethan Johnson domination of one-on-one drills […]