Does Notre Dame have a Tommy Rees problem?
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
I ask that in regards to Notre Dame’s offense and the disaster it has been two games into the 2022 season. The news for the squad that is averaging just 15.5 points per game to date didn’t get any better Monday as it was announced starting quarterback Tyler Buchner is officially done for the year.
Related: Notre Dame updates depth chart ahead of Cal game
Now comes Drew Pyne and the roughly 50% completion rate he’s put up in limited time through his first two years on campus. At least he has Tommy Rees to help guide them though, right?
That’s what most Notre Dame fans would have thought this off-season if they were told Pyne would be called upon this early, but what about now?
Our friends at Trojans Wire are experiencing whiplash from how quickly they’ve seen a modern offense come storming into Troy, led by Lincoln Riley and Caleb Williams. They’ve also now weighed in on a concern for Marcus Freeman’s time at Notre Dame, and related it back to the offensive coordinator and former Washington head coach Jimmy Lake’s demise.
From Trojans Wire (and do yourself a favor and read the entire piece):
Translated: Lake did not seek the best of the best on offense. He is a brilliant defensive tactician, but he dramatically underestimated the value of having a strong, top-tier coordinator on the offensive side of the ball. Head coaches with expertise on one side of the ball have to hire a top-shelf coordinator on the opposite side.
This is the connection between Jimmy Lake and Marcus Freeman.
Look, we know Tommy Rees can recruit, and that Notre Dame’s staff is an excellent recruiting staff. There are lots of things Freeman understands about the business … but at the coordinator level, you can’t do things on the cheap. You need a star play-caller. Tommy Rees could be a quarterback coach, but the keys to the offense needed to be handed to a master chess player.
Next: Back to the chicken-egg question in regards to Rees…
Is Tommy Rees a bad play caller? Part of the time I find myself questioning his decisions in a huge way with a perfect example of this being Chris Tyree getting just five touches against Marshall despite being Notre Dame’s biggest threat to be a home run hitter offensively.
Then I look back to 2021 where the offensive line was border-line putrid and yet Rees was able to make salad out of you-know-what and do enough offensively to sport an 11-1 record by the end of November.
We’re two games into the 2022 season and what I know right now is that the Notre Dame football team is not a good one. Not presently, anyway, and the offense has been brutal.
Is that all on Tommy Rees as a play caller? Does the blame fall on the players for not performing? Or does it go back to Rees for not developing?
I won’t go as far now to be overly upset at him beyond a few issues (specifically stated above), but I think any Notre Dame fan that says they’ve been inspired by his play-calling would be lying if they made the claim today.
There are compelling cases to be made for each but whatever the grand cause is, and whoever is most responsible, it’s not good.
What Notre Dame and Rees need is this offense to grow up and do so quickly, even with a backup quarterback now heading to the starter’s role. It won’t be easy but it’s one of the major questions, and there are a lot of them, we already find ourselves asking just two games into 2022.
Again, please check out Matt Zemek’s piece at Trojans Wire and follow their work for not just great USC content but a great look at the Pac-12 (for now) as a whole.
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