SOUTH BEND, Ind. — We begin with Kirk Bohls, the estimable columnist who has seen some football in his 42 years at the Austin American-Statesman. He previewed this Texas season by concluding, "The 2016 season can't get here soon enough." We move from there to Jordan Spieth, the former Texas student who happened to win the Masters and the U.S. Open this year, and who tweeted early on Saturday night, "Texas' offense looking about as useful as my last four rounds."
In what passes for adversity in Spieth's life, he has missed two straight cuts.
With but one Saturday night in the books, the nation might surmise safely that Texas, storied football program, will not appear in the four-team, 2015-16 College Football Playoff.
The case of Notre Dame, storied football program, remains less definitive, more cheerful, its new quarterback a delight to witness.
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As storied program met storied program in a storied Notre Dame Stadium, people tuned in because storied programs almost always bob back to the surface. As Texas barely could bob to the midfield with its toothless offense in a 38-3 loss, it appeared Notre Dame will rebound from a so-so 8-5 sooner than Texas will rebound from a sub-so-so 6-7.
Call it a hunch.
“All in all for a first game, this is what you should look like,” Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly said.
Second-year Texas Coach Charlie Strong, a wildly successful tinkerer at Louisville who yet went 7-6 and 7-6 the first two seasons there, remains in the early tinkering stages. Many of the 27 million Texans will watch the Longhorns’ offense try to budge this year, and only a few subsets figure to enjoy it — the fans of Baylor, TCU, Texas A&M and Texas Tech. “I don’t think we’re going backward,” Strong reassured, later adding, “You still look at it, at the end of the day, it’s 38-3 and I still say we’re a better football team than that.”
By the end of the first quarter, Texas had zero first downs, 28 total yards and, in passing yards, 111 fewer than Notre Dame’s 111. By halftime, the total yards stood at 230-75. Texas had 30 passing yards, but nobody could remember any of them. It wasn’t that the Longhorns didn’t threaten; it was that they carried the distinctive look that they couldn’t.
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Some of that figured. Texas bid adieu to 2014 with the nation’s 113th-ranked total offense and 109th-ranked scoring offense. Up against the new aristocrats of the Big 12, the Longhorns managed seven points against Baylor, 10 against TCU. In the eon since Colt McCoy expertly helped see to a 13-1 record in 2009, a program as big as Texas, in a state as big as Texas, has rummaged around for a Rushmore-level quarterback. Either junior Tyrone Swoopes or redshirt freshman Jerrod Heard might become that quarterback, but the becoming remains ongoing.
Texas' incoherence might make it hard to tell about Notre Dame. Yet it's easy to tell one thing about Malik Zaire, the junior quarterback who entered with one prior start: Please, let's see him more. "He clearly has the ability to throw the football as much as we need him to throw the football — and throw it accurately," Kelly said.
By the time Zaire left the game with a heap of the fourth quarter still left to endure, he had this string of gorgeousness: 19 completions, 22 attempts, 313 yards, three touchdowns, zero interceptions . “A lot of fun,” he called it matter-of-factly, bemoaning only a few penalties. To the idea of people presuming him a running quarterback, he said, “I hope people keep thinking that so we can keep having games like this.” And: “The only thing I was nervous about, I hoped it didn’t rain. It didn’t rain!”
The left-hander led a 55-yard drive to open the scoring with a pretty 16-yard touchdown to a crossing Will Fuller. He led drives of 95 yards in the second quarter and 90 in the third, the latter with a blazing long rocket up the right sideline to Fuller for a 66-yard touchdown. He stepped aside from rushes, kept his competence meter at the utmost and took off once on a skittering, dazzling 14-yard scramble. In general, Fuller said, “We were very prepared.”
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Somewhere amid all that, Notre Dame showcased a promising freshman in running back Josh Adams, who took his sturdy 212 pounds and covered ground in touchdown runs of 14 and 25 yards and continued to earn compliments for his smarts from Kelly. The Irish defense, riddled for 178 points in four losses late last season when riddled of depth through academic suspensions and normal attrition, looked pretty rowdy, even if perhaps Texas made it hard to tell. “It’s the best depth we’ve had,” Kelly said of his sixth Notre Dame team.
From here, No. 11 Notre Dame will play at Virginia next Saturday, then at home to No. 16 Georgia Tech and Massachusetts, at No. 12 Clemson, at home to Navy and No. 8 Southern California, all by mid-October. If it could weather all of that with a shiny record, it would work its way deeply into early playoff conversations as the 12-member committee sets to start gathering in early November. By aiming to “be convincing and be compelling in all our games,” as Zaire put it, it also would work to avert a rehash of 2014, when it started 6-0 and then 7-1 before careening.
Texas looks all set for rehash. When two storied programs met with 881 and 882 all-time wins, Texas failed to tie Notre Dame at 882. It stands a so-so 36-29 in the 2010s. In a road stadium with a surprisingly high burnt-orange presence, those in burnt orange wound up needing still more of something they’ve grown accustomed to needing, something their ancestors didn’t always need: patience.
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