Ouch

Well, that was painful.
The Irish suffered their worst home opening loss and fell to Georgia Tech 33-3 on Saturday. There wasn't much good to take out of the loss, although the final result contained a certain amount of snowballing. Even at halftime, I felt that we had a chance if we could just get calmed down and make a few breaks.
The one clear conclusion is that our offensive line was thoroughly dominated by the Bees. A certain amount of that is due to GaTech having a very good defensive front seven - but the Irish line looked totally ineffective whether it be run blocking or pass protection. It seemed like ND hasn't been doing much live blocking drills, because the Bees actually kept playing after the initial contact whereas the Irish blockers were expecting blocking sled behavior.
The defense gave up a lot of running yards, but played good redzone defense in the first half. I won't take much away from their performance because our complete lack of an offense left them on the field, demoralized.
Similarly, I think that the Demetrius Jones gameplan was the right way to attack this defense. It didn't work due to turnovers but there were some early encouraging flashes. The fact is that this line couldn't protect a drop back passer or blow open holes, so why not try deception in the running game? Good luck to Jimmy Clausen this weekend - unless the OL goes through some serious learning, he better be throwing the ball after a one step drop.