East Rutherford, NJ (UHND) - For the last five seasons Notre Dame struggled to find an offensive identity.  It appears now that they have one.  Carlyle Holiday looked more than capable of quarterbacking the west coast offense Tyrone Willingham and Bill Diedrick installed at Notre Dame with his performance on Saturday.

Holiday displayed a cool and a demeanor we had not yet seen from the junior starting quarterback.  He looked comfortable in the pocket and confident with his passes.  He made a few mental mistakes, but for the most part all of his throws were on the money.  He hit wide receivers in stride, he threw the ball away when no one was open, he took off when there was room.  He impressed everyone with the progress he made from last year.

The receivers also stepped up Saturday night.  Arnaz Battle and Omar Jenkins combined for 156 yards receiving and both came up with big plays.  Jenkins was solid and caught everything thrown his way.  Battle was flashy and displayed game breaking ability.  Youngsters Carlos Campbell, Rhema McKnight, and Maurice Stovall also got in on the action.

The biggest problem against Maryland came with the runningback.  Notre Dame's inexperienced group looked slow and tentative.  They need to attack the line more and explode through the holes.  They also didn't break many tackles.  Ryan Grant has a lot of talent and will come around.  Purdue's defense is not as good as Maryland's so he should rebound next week.

The best part of the new offense was the unpredictability of it.  Notre Dame didn't run, run, pass, punt like they did countless times last year.  They threw on first down and ran on third down on occasion.  They passed to the tight end, the handed off to the fullback.  All the things they didn't do last year, they did tonight.

It is still very early to get too excited, but the promise the offense showed on Saturday is reason to be optimistic.  There were a lot of procedure penalties, but that will go away with more games as everyone gets used to playing in games again.

This offense is still the base package as well since it takes more than a spring and summer to learn the entire west coast offense.   This offense will also be a big selling point to recruits.  A lot of team in the NFL use the west coast offense, Philadelphia, Green Bay, San Francisco (all playoff teams from 2001) to name a few) so incoming recruits with NFL aspirations will now be able to prepare themselves for the NFL at ND instead of learning the option.  It would not surprise me if interest in Notre Dame increases after this game, especially if the Irish follow with wins the next few weeks.

The offense still has a long way to go to get where Willingham and Diedrick want it to be, but this offense is already leagues ahead of the system that was installed at ND the previous seasons under Davie.  It will be interesting to see how the offense evolves throughout the season.  If the offense can put the ball in the endzone and not rely on Nicholas Setta to kick five field goals a week, this could be a very productive offense.