Quote Originally Posted by Biggin View Post
Now I have to hear about how Jimmy has a comeback win all week

Chubz, as an ND fan, whats your honest opinion of him?
I think he may be the most overrated player in the nation.

His arm isnt that strong, neither is it accurate.
His decision making is far from proven. He will fall back to reality when the Trojans come to down, especially without Floyd.
I guess I should first point out that although Notre Dame is the team I keep up with most, I'm far from a diehard fan and don't keep up with them 24/7 like some folks do with their favorite college teams. I keep up way more with high school football and the teams in this area. I just thought I'd get that out of the way first to clear up any possible misconceptions, and folks that watch them much more than I do may have a better idea of what Clausen has been doing and how he has looked. Due to work, I've already missed a game or two this year and was lucky this one was played at night so that I could see it. But with that said . .

I think Clausen, from what I've personally seen up to this point, is very solid overall and much improved, but I wouldn't say he's outstanding or even great. He's certainly not on the level of greats such as Tebow, for example. They were, however, saying before the game that he was 2nd ranked in the nation in terms of passing efficiency, but I'm not sure after this game if that would hold true or not because his performance tonight was anything but great. His toe injury seemed to be bothering him a lot, too, because you could see him wincing and limping immediately after throwing the ball since his right foot is the one he uses to push forwards when throwing. When you start blaming little things like that, though, it amounts to nothing more than excuses that most folks would wave off and that you would expect a QB to overcome through mental and even physical toughness. Dayne Crist looked even worse than Clausen I thought, but he hasn't had much experience either. I think that, taking away the blame from the QBs themselves, the offensive line could've done a better job protecting the QBs because there were numerous sacks that were caused by guys completely missing their blocks; but at the same time, there were several poor throws and decisions from both quarterbacks such as the huge pass that was overthrown by Crist and the awful decision by Clausen to throw the ball after it had been almost knocked out of his hands, giving the defender time to match up with the receiver and leading to an interception by the time the freaking ball got there.

Between Clausen and Crist, though: At this point, you know for sure your starting QB is the best QB on the roster when he's hurt and they still have to bring him in just to win the game at the very end. Near the end as Crist was still out there doing a whole lot of nothing, they were starting to get hammered; but as soon as Clausen came out, down the field they went to score the game-winning touchdown. It was a big momentum shift, I think, and a really lucky break for Notre Dame. Even with those things said, had Purdue not called that ridiculously stupid time-out as 30-some seconds were left and the clock was still counting, I still wonder if the Irish would have even scored that last second touchdown. It was just an awful game by the Irish, and one that the Boilermakers could have very easily won without a doubt. I was really embarrassed by the way they played tonight. How many tackles did the defense miss that resulted in huge gains?