Amongst the Many Negatives, A Few Positives
UHND.com - Frank Vitovitch
September 10, 2001

Notre Dame, Ind (UHND.com) - While there were indeed many negative aspects to Saturday's game, there were a few positives.  The negatives however have been well documented by myself and other Notre Dame writers so I thought I would write an article on the few things that went right as opposed to continuing to harp on negatives I figured it would be good to look on the bright side since it does no good to keep looking back at the game when the Irish face another daunting task this week in traveling to West Lafayette, a place Bob Davie has never won (along with East Lansing).

1. Carlyle Holiday showed promise.  In the few drives he got he looked good.  He is still raw and needs experience buthe has the talent to be a game breaker for the Notre Dame offense.  With Holiday in the game, there is always the chance for something to happen from nothing because he can buy time and make plays on his own.  He probably won't start this weekend, but I think it is inevitable that he will be the starter by season's end.  He has just too much talent to keep him off the field and at some time you have to throw experience out the window in place of pure talent.  The Notre Dame offense for some reason responded to Carlyle when he came in the game.  He lead Notre Dame to its first points and while he was admittably nervous, he did not seem any more rattled than LoVecchio did.

2. At times the offensive line performed well.  How well can an offensive line look when the offensive game plan is as predictable as it can be.  The offensive line opened up a few nice holes from time to time for the running backs.  At other times however, the Nebraska front overwhelmed the Irish line.  The good news however is that this line will not see a much more talented group this year in my opinion.  They went up against one of the best and had a trial by fire.  Unfortunately, they did not rise to the occasion as they could have.  With two players making first career starts (Mahan and Milligan) the line did not perform overly bad.  There are a lot of posts saying otherwise, but I thought for the most part they played decently.  After a game of playing together and a week of practicing fixing what they did wrong, the line could have a nice effort against a weaker defense than they faced this past weekend.

I think Milligan is going to become a real player and Vollers and Black are both solid performers.  I am not sure on Mahan yet though.  Jeff Faine however, is in a class all his own on this line.  He is All American material and will anchor this line and lead by example.  He is a junior this year with two years of eligibility left so the sky is the limit for him.

3. Anthony Weaver looks ready to take the step from solid performer to All American caliber.  He made a lot of plays against a talented offensive line.  He had a sack, forced a fumble, and was in the backfield a lot.  He is ready for a break out season and if he plays like he did against Nebraska against the upcoming opponents he could put himself in position to be a first round draft pick.  He is extremely talented and was one of a few who rose to the occasion on defense this weekend from the get go.  While others may have settled into the game, he was on his game from the opening whistle.

4. Courtney Watson looks like he will fill the void left by Anthony Denman.  He still has a long way to go to fully replace what Denman meant to the defense, but he had a great start.  I have documented his performance in yesterday's article "Watson Has Impressive Debut" and gave him my defensive MVP award in this weeks Game MVPs as well so there is no need to go into this topic anymore.  All you need to know is that Watson is going to be a player maker for this defense.

5. Nicholas Setta looked good as well.  He boomed a kick-off out of the endzone.  True it was a little wind aided, but it was still a nice kick.  He also connected on his only field goal attempt.  He looks better than a year ago.  He has yet to get a long field goal attempt, but I think Notre Dame is "setta" at place kicker for the next three years since he has three years left including this year.

Well, that's it.  Other positives were the blocked punt, but special teams as a whole were disappointing.  Rocky Boiman showed a lot of heart as well out there coming on the field after tearing his hand open.  Notre Dame also contained the option the few times it was run, but that had no outcome on the game since the Irish had no answer for the power rushing game.  One positive about that is that Notre Dame won't face a team that features such a strong power running game again this season.  

So for now, lets forget look towards the Purdue game and hope that Davie can fix this ship pretty quick before it sinks and makes for another season like 1999.