Irish secondary endures a frustrating day
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Scott Priestle
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
<!--PHOTOS--><TABLE class=phototableright align=right border=0><!-- begin large ad code --><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE align=center><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle></IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>RENEE SAUER | DISPATCH </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Receiver Anthony Gonzalez beats Notre Dame’s Ambrose Wooden for a key reception in the fourth quarter that gave OSU a first down. The Irish secondary gave up big plays throughout the game and two late third-down conversions. Safety Tom Zbikowski also had an 88-yard fumble return for a touchdown nullified. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
TEMPE, Ariz. — Tom Zbikowski saw the ball on the ground and picked it up, then ran 88 yards until he reached the end zone. He did not bother to watch a replay.
"I was just trying to catch my breath," he said.
Before Zbikowski could get his wind back, Ohio State had the ball back.
Zbikowski appeared to have a tying, momentum-changing touchdown late in the third quarter of the Fiesta Bowl yesterday. But the TD was wiped out by a block-in-the-back penalty, and moments later the fumble recovery was wiped out by a video review. Ohio State maintained possession and promptly added to its lead, en route to a 34-20 win.
That play became an all-too-fitting thumbnail for the Notre Dame defensive backfield.
"We had to keep regrouping," Zbikowski said.
Troy Smith hit Ted Ginn for a 56-yard touchdown pass on the first Ohio State possession. Ginn later scored on a 68-yard end around, and Smith threw a Fiesta Bowlrecord 85-yard TD pass to Santonio Holmes.
Zbikowski and fellow safety Chinedum Ndukwe said the first TD was the result of a missed coverage call in the secondary. Each took responsibility. On Holmes’ TD, Ndukwe bit on a play-action fake to running back Antonio Pittman, and Holmes ran past him.
"It was nobody else but me," Ndukwe said.
Despite allowing 617 yards to the OSU offense, Ndukwe and the Irish were within striking distance until the final two minutes. Late in the third quarter, it appeared they struck.
With Ohio State up 21-13, OSU receiver Anthony Gonzalez fumbled deep in Notre Dame territory and Zbikowski scooped it up, then ran the length of the field. But the penalty erased the TD, and then the replay official reviewed the initial pass and determined that Gonzalez did not have possession; thus, it was an incomplete pass and Ohio State maintained possession. Josh Huston’s field goal pushed the OSU lead to 24-13. "I thought it was (a catch), but I’m glad they said it wasn’t," Gonzalez said. "I only saw the one angle, the play they showed on the scoreboard. But when it happened live, I thought it was a catch." Zbikowski does not care to see a replay. "It could have been a game-changing play," he said. "But it doesn’t matter. They made more plays than us." [email protected]
He’s a leader even in defeat
Quinn nearly rallies Irish after Ohio State amasses two-touchdown lead
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Scott Priestle
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
<!--PHOTOS--><TABLE class=phototableright align=right border=0><!-- begin large ad code --><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE align=center><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle></IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>NEAL C . LAURON | DISPATCH </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn was sacked five times by Ohio State, including this one by Mike Kudla in the fourth quarter. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
TEMPE, Ariz. — Brady Quinn led his Notre Dame teammates out of the tunnel yesterday for the start of the Fiesta Bowl. It only seemed as if he did not stop running until the end of the game.
Clearly, he did not stop leading.
As his teammates began walking back toward the tunnel after a 34-20 loss to Ohio State, their heads hanging, Quinn yelled, "Where are you going? Salute the band, just like every game."
With that, the players who tried to slink off the field jogged back toward the Notre Dame band. Quinn had put a final stamp on a game that — for better or worse — will define his and his team’s season.
Quinn was impressive, completing 29 of 45 passes for 286 yards and leading a fourth-quarter rally. The Buckeyes were better.
"It’s disheartening," Quinn said. "You spend so much time envisioning a win. It’s tough to walk off the field after a game like that, especially in that type of game, playing against the team you grew up watching, the team you almost played for."
Quinn, a Dublin native and Coffman High School graduate, no doubt made a favorable impression on the OSU players. And he added to his sterling reputation among his teammates, with his poise in the huddle and in the pocket.
He could not overcome a few lapses by the Notre Dame defense and the relentless pursuit by the OSU defense, though.
Quinn was sacked five times, including the final play of the game by Mike Kudla, and he was hurried throughout.
"They were better than I expected," Quinn said. "Watching film, we knew they were a good all-around defense, but we didn’t know they could rush like that. It didn’t look like they were as fast up front as Tennessee. But they found ways to get pressure, to get through the holes and get penetration all day."
The Irish intended to pick on the Buckeyes secondary, but their receivers dropped at least four passes in the first half and Ohio State opened a 21-7 lead. All-American receiver Jeff Samardzija dropped two passes. Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis responded by putting more on Quinn’s shoulders in the second half, even using a no-huddle offense.
At one point, Quinn completed 14 consecutive passes, including a 28-yard pass on third-and-12. Moments later, he completed a 16-yard pass on fourth-and-7, and the Irish drove for a touchdown to pull to 27-20.
"He’s a natural-born leader," running back Darius Walker said. "He’s been doing it all year, and he did it again today. When your quarterback, your main man, is confident like that, it really filters down to the rest of the guys."
The Notre Dame defense could not stop Ohio State on the ensuing drive, though, and Quinn’s hope of a victory over his hometown team all but ended when OSU quarterback Troy Smith eluded a sack and converted a thirdand-11 with about 2½ minutes to play.
"Ohio State made the plays they needed to," Quinn said. "We didn’t execute the game plan as well as we should have."
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Buckeyes grew tired of hearing about wise Weis
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Aaron Portzline
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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TEMPE, Ariz. — Notre Dame’s resurrection as a national power under first-year coach Charlie Weis was one of the top stories in college football this season.
It’s just that Ohio State players got sick of reading it.
In the minutes after OSU’s 34-20 win over Notre Dame last night in the Fiesta Bowl, several Buckeyes sounded off, saying the attention paid to Weis and the Fighting Irish only made the victory sweeter.
"This is the very first time I’ve played a game where I wanted to beat a coach so badly," receiver Anthony Gonzalez said. "People say all these wonderful things about Charlie Weis. Many of them are warranted, I’m sure. But we know what we have. We have a great coaching staff. We have great players."
Mostly, the game was billed as Ohio State’s unrelenting defense vs. Notre Dame’s offense, which was one of the most effective and innovative in the country this season under Weis.
Instead, Ohio State’s offense outperformed Notre Dame’s offense.
Consider:
• OSU had 617 yards of offense, compared with 348 for Notre Dame.
• OSU rushed for 275 yards, compared with 62 for Notre Dame.
• OSU had more yards offense in the first half (391) than Notre Dame did in the entire game (348).
• OSU averaged 9.6 yards per play, exactly twice that of Notre Dame (4.8).
• OSU had 27 first downs — 12 rushing, 14 passing and one via penalty. Pretty good balance.
"They overlooked our offense," OSU strong safety Donte Whitner said. "I mean, Antonio Pittman, Santonio Holmes, Troy Smith, Ted Ginn, Anthony Gonzalez . . . everybody chipped in. Everybody talked about how good Notre Dame was on that side of the ball. But they forgot about our offense."
The prevailing theory was that with four weeks to prepare for Ohio State’s defense, Weis could draw up a game plan that would give OSU fits, similar to the way Notre Dame scared top-ranked Southern California this season.
"I’ve been hearing a lot about how hard it is to beat a Notre Dame team when you give Charlie Weis four weeks to prepare," Ohio State linebacker A.J. Hawk said. "That kind of upset me, because I thought, ‘What about giving coach (Jim) Tressel four weeks to prepare for you?’ "Our coaches have been in big games their entire lives, and they know how to get ready for them."
After starting quickly, Irish offense hits a lull
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Ray Stein
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
<!--PHOTOS--><TABLE class=phototableright align=right border=0><!-- begin large ad code --><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE align=center><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle></IMG> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=credit width=200>RENEE SAUER | DISPATCH </TD></TR><TR><TD class=cutline width=200>Irish running back Darius Walker, being dragged down by linebacker Anthony Schlegel, rushed for 90 yards and three touchdowns. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
TEMPE, Ariz. — Thirteen offensive plays into the Fiesta Bowl, running back Darius Walker and his Notre Dame teammates seemed like they were destined for huge games.
Walker, a sophomore halfback, had gained 59 yards on his first six carries and scored the Fighting Irish’s first touchdown on a 20-yard run.
But whatever offensive magic was there early soon disappeared, and the malaise ultimately doomed Notre Dame in a 34-20 loss to Ohio State yesterday.
"It was like we started a little flat," Walker said. "It seemed like we played tight or something. You can’t do that against a defense this good."
Walker finished with 90 yards rushing on 16 carries and all three of the Fighting Irish scores, including a nifty 10-yard run in the third quarter to help Notre Dame get back in the game at 21-13.
"I’ve had better days," Walker said. "We wanted to send these seniors out on top."
"He was one guy who you could say was tough for us all game," Notre Dame receiver Jeff Samardzija said of Walker. "He has the ability to carry our offense."
Samardzija, too, noticed that the Irish offense sputtered in the first half after their opening scoring drive, but he likewise couldn’t put a finger on the problem.
"We weren’t clicking like we should have been," said Samardzija, who had six catches for 59 yards. "We had some sacks, some dropped balls — I know I left a lot of plays on the field. It wasn’t the play-calling; it was the execution."
Rolling the dice
Notre Dame players were neither surprised nor disappointed when coach Charlie Weis eschewed a short field-goal try by going for it on fourth-and-2 from the Ohio State 6-yard line in a tie game late in the first quarter.
The Fighting Irish, who had taken over at the Buckeyes 14 after Ronald Talley recovered a fumble, ran three times for 8 yards before quarterback Brady Quinn was sacked by A.J. Hawk on fourth down.
After the game, Weis had no regrets.
"It’s easier in hindsight to say, hey, take the points," he said. "But we planned on taking a lot of chances. The team understood the risk."
A bad jag
Losing to the Buckeyes continued a streak Notre Dame would just as soon forget; the Fighting Irish now have lost eight straight bowl games dating to the 1994 season. Notre Dame has dropped three Fiesta Bowls in that stretch, in 1995 to Colorado and in 2001 to Oregon State before yesterday.
So while Irish players entertained the notion of a return to glory under Weis, there was a bitter taste as well.
"You obviously remember your last game," defensive end Victor Abiamiri said. "We accomplished a lot this year, but this game showed we have some improvement to do."
[email protected]
Weis' comments that implied that Tennecheat's defense was comparable to ours, if not better, has really irked a few people. In fact, Weis' total lack of respect for OSU in the media has shown his true colors.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=yspsctnhdln>Nothing nasty about it</TD></TR><TR><TD height=7><SPACER type="block" width="1" height="1"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>By Jerry Bonkowski, Yahoo! Sports
January 2, 2006
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>TEMPE, Ariz. – Even though they're located just 280 miles apart, Notre Dame had played Ohio State just four times in the last 71 seasons prior to Monday's Fiesta Bowl.
And it might be another 71 seasons before the Irish will want to cross paths again with the Buckeyes, who cruised to an easy 34-20 win.
Fiesta Bowl? The only ones celebrating at the end of this one were the Buckeyes and their fans, while the game morphed into the Siesta Bowl for ND supporters. The outcome was not as close as the final score indicated.
When it was over, Ohio State extended its dominance in the annual classic in the Valley of the Sun to three consecutive wins in the last four seasons, including a national championship three years ago.
"There's something special about this Fiesta Bowl; there's no question about it," Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel said. "For our seniors, this was their last game. We wanted to make sure that we were going to send them out as champions."
Added Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis, "The bottom line is they came up with the big plays and put the game away. There's no reason to sit there and make any second guesses or complain because they definitely were the better team."
Notre Dame came into the game having lost its last seven bowl appearances but with the intention of putting the "nasty" back into "dynasty," one of the many colorful slogans worn by fans in Sun Devil Stadium. Irish faithful hoped this game would be the first step back on the road to yearly dominance.
But there was no nasty – except for Notre Dame's poor play. Guess the start of another dynasty will have to wait until next season at the earliest.
"I tell them there's two ways you can go after a loss," Weis said. "One way is you can sit there and feel sorry for yourselves, or the other way is to take that bitter taste in your mouth and say, 'I don't want to have that bitter taste again next year this time.' It's either/or, black and white, it's one or the other. I mean, it's which way do you want to go?"
Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith and his defensive teammates stopped Notre Dame on both sides of the ball. Smith directed the Buckeyes' offense with an effective combination of both passing and rushing that wound up with 617 yards of total offense (to just 348 for ND).
"[Smith] was my biggest fear going into the game," Weis said. "He didn't miss a point. His best football is ahead of him."
But Smith's passing was only part of it. The Buckeyes also pounded out 275 yards rushing.
"I was disappointed in the number of big plays we gave up," Weis said. "People blew up the sideline and we weren't even close to them in coverage."
Defensively, the Buckeyes gave Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn one of his longest days ever on a football field. Rattled early and often, Quinn just could not get the Irish on track. He appeared nervous almost every time he came up under center, being forced to rush a number of passes due to the nonstop onslaught of Ohio State's defensive pressure.
The Irish offensive line didn't help, allowing Buckeye defenders to penetrate seemingly at will. At times, the ND offensive front looked so porous that you had to wonder if the Irish's linemen were more worried about saving their own skins rather than protecting Quinn's.
While Quinn came alive in the second half with several quick one-and-out screen passes that led to Notre Dame's final two scores – all three Irish touchdowns in the game were scored by Darius Walker – it wasn't all that much to write home about in the long run.
Notre Dame ended the season 9-3, a mark Weis is not happy having in the final record books. Yet it's the best mark for the Irish since they were 10-3 under former coach Tyrone Willingham in 2002.
Ohio State finished the year 10-2 and, depending upon how Texas fares against Southern California in Wednesday's Rose Bowl, the Buckeyes could end the season as high as No. 2 in the season-ending polls. That's assuming the Rose Bowl loser falls below OSU and Penn State doesn't blow out Florida State in the Orange Bowl on Tuesday.
Both schools will lose a number of senior players to graduation this spring. As they leave Phoenix, both teams have decidedly different takes on Monday's outcome.
"They need to know how bad this feels," Weis said.
On the other hand, OSU's returning players already are eyeing a possible return to what has become their adopted favorite city away from Columbus.
"The national championship is here [at the new NFL stadium in nearby Glendale] next year – we like that," Smith said. "And hopefully, that means our chances are pretty good."
Veteran motorsports writer Jerry Bonkowski is a Yahoo! Sports NASCAR columnist. Send Jerry a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
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Ohio State coach Jim Tressel gets hit with Gatorade after the Buckeyes sealed a 34-20 victory over Notre Dame at the 35th Annual Fiesta Bowl college football game in Tempe, AZ at Sun Devil Stadium Monday, Jan. 2, 2006.
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Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith, right, is congratulated by teammate Santonio Holmes (4) after their 34-20 win over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz.. Linebacker A.J. Hawk is at center back.
(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)
Notre Dame's Ambrose Wooden (22) look on from the sidelines late in the fourth quarter of their 34-20 loss to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz..
(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)
Ohio State coach Jim Tressel celebrates with the trophy after their 34-20 win over Notre Dame in Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 in Tempe, Ariz..
(AP Photo/Matt York)
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Ohio State linebacker A.J. Hawk (47) and quarterback Troy Smith (10) celebrate with their defense and offense player of the game awards after their 34-20 win over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 in Tempe, Ariz..
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Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith is congratulated by teammates after their 34-20 win over Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 in Tempe, Ariz..
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Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, center obscured, is doused with gatorade by Bobby Carpenter, Brandon Schnittker, and Rob Sims late in the fourth quarter of the Fiesta Bowl college football game against Notre Dame, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz.. Ohio State won, 34-20.
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Ohio State's Antonio Pittman (25) rushes for a touchdown ahead of Notre Dame defenders Mike Richardson (30) Ambrose Wooden (22) and Corey Mays (46) in the fourth quarter of the Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 in Tempe, Ariz.. Ohio State won the game, 34-20.
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Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith rushes ahead of Notre Dame defender Victor Abiamiri (95) in the first half of the Fiesta Bowl college football game, Monday, Jan. 2, 2006 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz..
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Just read before I came back to this. Weis is a whiney little bitch, isn't he?
