Week 2 saw the Notre Dame Fighting Irish welcome the Michigan Wolverines into Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend. Both teams were coming off opening week wins at home against inferior opponents (Michigan beating UConn, Notre Dame beating Purdue). Going into the game, both teams had alot to prove, and I think both teams played reasonably well. Michigan won the game 28-24 with a touchdown in the last minute of the game by their phenom quarterback Denard Robinson.
Clearly Robinson is the story early in the season for the Wolverines. He had over 500 yards of total offense in today's game, and accounted for 3 touchdowns (1 through the air, 2 on the ground). He is going to be tough for Big Ten defenses to game plan for, and should give even the best defenses fits (Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Iowa).
While Denard Robinson obviously was the player of the game, I think the most important player was probably Notre Dame QB Dayne Crist. Crist led the Irish to a touchdown on the opening drive of the game, and he made it look easy. Michigan's defense offered little resistance on the opening drive score. Then the Irish D forced a punt, and the Irish got the ball back. Expecting that Crist would come back out on the field, I was shocked to see Tommy Rees take the field on offense. At first the announcers made it sound like Brian Kelly had planned to get Rees in the game early, and when Rees was picked off on his first throw, I thought it was the dumbest coaching decision. However, it was later revealed that Crist needed to sit out with some kind of ailment that was affecting his vision. So Crist sat out the rest of the first half, while back-up QBs Rees and Nate Montana struggled to do much of anything. The Irish didn't score another point in the first half, although they should have kicked a field goal at the end of the first half instead of trying for 6 points from three yards out, and only 3 seconds left in the half. Notre Dame went to the locker room down 21-7 instead of 21-10, which would have been huge in the second half.
Crist played the second half, and the Irish offense looked very good. They scored on their first two possessions (a 53 yard TD pass to T.J. Jones, who actually dropped the ball in celebration before crossing the goal line, which is a stupid play that players seem to think is cool; and a field goal) to cut the lead to 21-17. The defense played inspired football in the second half, limiting Denard Robinson to smaller gains than he had in the first half, and forcing the Michigan offense into 2 missed field goal attempts.
The fourth quarter was pretty much a stale mate until about 4 minutes to go. The Irish got a stop near mid-field, and the Wolverines pinned the Irish down inside their five on the punt. A couple of plays later, Crist hooked up with TE Kyle Rudolph for a 95 yard touchdown pass to give the Irish the lead with about 3:30 remaining in the game.
Denard Robinson then led Michigan downfield for the go ahead touchdown run with only 27 seconds remaining in the game. The Irish had a chance to score at the end after a stupid late hit penalty on a Michigan DB gave the Irish the ball inside the Michigan 30 yard line with 6 seconds left. Now, if the Irish had kicked the field goal at the end of the first half, the score would have been 28-27 instead of 28-24. They had 2 timeouts, so they could have run the ball twice in the middle of the field, called quick timeouts, and trotted their kicker, who has a good leg on him, for the game winning attempt. They instead went for the touchdown at the end of the first half and failed. At the time it didn't seem like a big deal, and when the Irish went ahead late in the game I'm sure nobody really thought about it, but I'm sure Brian Kelly will think about that decision while looking back on this game. Crist eventually launched a pass out of the back of the endzone on the last play. Nobody had a shot to catch it, and the Irish took a tough loss.
To me, the outcome of this game would have changed dramatically had Crist played the entire first half. The offense works much better when he is in there. Notre Dame probably wins the game, and scores alot more points if he is able to play the first half.
All that being said, while I didn't enjoy the outcome of the game, it was still a heck of a game. I can see where both of these football programs are on the rise. I wouldn't be surprised to hear Denard Robinson's name in the Heisman talks in the coming weeks. Hopefully the Irish will have better luck next week as they travel to Lansing, Michigan for a game against the Michigan State Spartans.
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