This week's Irish Blogger Gathering is brought to you by the good--though conflicted--folks at GameDay 40, a self-described double-score serving of College Football blogging malt liquor: 20 oz. of Fighting Irish and 20 oz. of Iowa Hawkeye. Cheers, gentlemen--in the distance I can hear the siren song of Snoop Dogg's "Ain't No Fun," Morrissey Manor's 40's-at-4 anthem emeritus. Keep reading for the The Mouth of the South's haiku game prediction.
1. I don't know anything about Wake Forest except that Tim Duncan went there. Who is the Tim Duncan of the Wake Forest footballers, i.e., one guy that the Irish must game plan for on Saturday and why?
Wake Forest's athletic department is billing this game the biggest in the history of BB&T field, so the Irish cannot afford to take this game lightly. Irish fans should take interest, as ND/Wake Forest is this year's College Football Graduation Rate National Championship. I'm sure that a conscientious, socially-responsible college football fanbase and country will tune in to ND vs. Wake Forest, rather than the academic travesty and sad social commentary that will be LSU vs. 'Bama.
To answer the question, though, Senior wideout Chris Givens and a VERY dangerous group of Wake Forest wide receivers are Wake's Tim Duncan. Givens has got speed to burn and is truly a complete receiver. If the Irish leave Lo Wood on Givens, the results will likely be be described in multiples of six. And Givens's compatriots are talented enough to make the Irish pay for showing Givens too much attention.
Bobby Diaco's boys should have some success getting to the quarterback, as Wake's offensive line has given up their share of sacks. Though big, they are not the fleetest of foot. Wake's wide receivers will test this defense, which I've criticized at times for its lack of versatility. In Bobby D's 3-4, there is a field-side corner and a boundary-corner, and they are not interchangeable. So even if we have Champ Bailey at one corner position and Clifford Jefferson at the other, in Diaco's 3-4 it is not likely that we'd move these guys around, even if the other guy is putting Randy Moss on poor Clifford.
Wake Forest has a number of threats at wide receiver. The Irish have two very good cornerbacks, and two very good safeties, but a dearth of depth behind them. Color me anxious to see what Diaco's D does to disrupt the Demon Deacons' diverse deployment of receiving derring-do.
2. Cierre Wood and Jonas Gray have been a solid running back tandem this year with Gray coming on strong in the last couple of games. With a finite amount of opportunities for each back, how do you think BK should split the carries in the coming weeks? Explain.
Ben and Jerry. O'Brien and Richter. Rogers and Hammerstein. Larry and Balky. Ali and Frazier. Young Einstein and Marie Curie. Ali and Foreman. Batman and Robin. Arnaz and Ball. Peons. Duos that pale in comparison to the dynamic rushing duo that is Cierre Wood and Jonas Gray. Wood and Gray. Gray and Wood. Wood. Gray. Gray. Wood.
The answer to this question is that Wood and Gray are stallions. Thoroughbreds. The coaching staff should continue to give us large doses of both lads. I would say that three plays is too many to go without giving either Wood or Gray a touch. Wood/Gray. Floyd. Wood/Gray. Eifert. Floyd. Wood/Gray. Rinse. Repeat. I also like getting them an even number of carries. Keep them both fresh. In short, I like the way that the coaching staff is using Wray, or Cionas, though I, like some of my more crusty Irish counterparts, would love to see even more of these two. Harumph... Fullbacks!
This guy is my hero.
3. Andrew Hendrix did not play against Navy. Without speculating as to the reasons why he didn't play against the Midshipmen, do you think he's being underutilized? Why or why not?
Check out my Decoding Coach post from earlier this week. We need not speculate on why Hendrix didn't get his against Navy. Coach Kelly said that we use Hendrix to throw the defense off. We did not need anything more than our vanilla offense to throw Navy off. We did not need a change of pace, hence we did not need to use our change-of-pace quarterback. Normally I take coachspeak with a ton of salt, but this actually makes sense, though it only explains why Hendrix didn't play when the game was still in doubt. I think Kelly played Crist for the remainder of the game because he wanted to get Dayne's confidence up and make sure that his "mind was right."
4. What do the following series of statements mean-if anything- for Notre Dame versus Wake Forest this weekend? Wake Forest beat NC State. NC State beat Virginia. Virginia beat The U. The U beat Ohio State. Ohio State beat Illinois. Illinois beat Arizona State. Arizona State beat USC. USC beat Notre Dame.
The transitive property of congruence is no longer valid. What does this mean? I have no idea, but I've asked resident One Foot Down Supergenius Buger to come up with an alternate means of explaining the universe. This kid has mad smarts. He makes Wile E. Coyote look like a regular genius. In between his Wake Forest X's and O's Breakdown and his Q&A with a Wake Forest blog Burger is banging out a comprehensive theory of the universe that ties together The Theory of Relativity, String Theory, String Cheese, Post-Keynesian economics, Post-Modernism, Newtonian Physics, Shakespeare Conspiracy Theory, Dark Matter, The Dark Knight--because the critical acclaim for the new Batman movies truly is a mystery of the universe; their popularity is easier to explain: people are idiots--while conclusively determining whether Pluto is a planet--yeah right, with an elliptical orbit? Honestly. Burgs is supposed to be done by around noon, EST. Stephen Hawking is said to be incessantly refreshing One Foot Down's home page in anticipation.
5. What's your prediction for Saturday's game against the Demon Deacons and why? Bonus points if your answer is a Haiku.