Bagpipe Monday: The Duel Is Over

This isn’t an original thought. Perhaps it’s a byproduct of battleing Meneire’s disease as I did last night. Original thoughts don’t come around while you’re fighting- you use your instincts. Brian Kelly showed this last night by failing to recognize that the quarterback competition was over in the first quarter.

The wonderful @phillykelly

Notre Dame’s quarterback situation is not the reason the Fighting Irish lost the game last night. No, poor tackling and shock and awe all over the defense can be blamed here- but perhaps it had a huge role because of momentum and uncertainty.

Before Kelly finally pulled the plug on Zaire, Malik’s stat line was pedestrian at best: 2-5 passing for 23 yards and was sacked once and he had ZERO yards rushing on three attempts. You could argue that Zaire had less opportunities in a time when Texas could do no wrong, but I’ll make the argument that this inefficiency was a big reason why. Every time Zaire was out there, the offense looked, well... awful.

On the flipside, DeShone Kizer proved once again that he is a playmaker, and more than that, he has ice water running through his veins. He looked calm and determined and like he was going to win this thing no matter what. It didn’t happen, but he played the part perfectly. By the way... 6 touchdowns (5 passing and 1 rushing).

Perhaps more than all of that, the player trait that most people would put as the best thing about Malik Zaire is his "leadership," he looked more like an angry brother that just got shorted a present on Christmas morning. He looked disengaged and well, lost. It wasn’t the body language of a guy that was competing to be the man- he looked like the guy that just wanted to be the man. There’s a difference.

I think we can all agree that most people right now can see this and say, "DeShone Kizer is the man." However, the person making that call still hasn’t done that. The duel is over, will someone please go tell Brian Kelly.

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