It's amazing to think that after playing six teams that will probably be Bowling at the end of the season, Notre Dame is yet to face a team with a great quarterback.  Taylor Bennett and Brian Hoyer were both very much able to sit back and play-action their way to glory, while Ryan Mallett was playing with a playbook a quarter of an inch thick, with each page simply stating "RUN MIKE HART" on it.  Curtis Painter missed a lot of throws, McLeod Bethel-Thompson somehow made our defense look like the `85 Bears and Anthony Morelli has some combination of mild mental retardation and drug addiction.  All of this leaves us sitting with a top ten pass defense as nobody needed to throw on us, and the only team that tried, UCLA, failed miserably.

Enter Matt Ryan, senior heartthrob at Boston College and owner of all kinds of shiny, seemingly-legitimate Heisman hype.  His numbers are very impressive:

160 for 255 (62.7%), 1857 yards, 15 touchdowns, 5 interceptions

The Heisman buzz on him from non-Boston College fans is surprisingly light, as teams take into consideration the rather awful competition he's faced.  To date, Number 12 has went against Wake Forest, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Army, Massachusetts and Bowling Green.  He threw 51 times against Army and 42 times, for only 204 yards, against UMass.  The three ACC opponent he slew to start the season are a combined 3-7 in conference, so to say the following three weeks against Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and Florida State are important to both Ryan's and Boston College's chances would be a gross understatement.   

Despite the rather light slate of competition recent struggles in closing out the likes of Army and UMass, anyone who say Ryan play against Georgia Tech the evening after we got throttled in Ann Arbor knows how good this guy can look.  I remember sitting there, as Yellow Jacket blitzers continued to ineffectively sling themselves at the Golden Eagle quarterback, and thinking "My god, he's going to throw for 700 yards on us."  Ramblin Racket thought that Matt Ryan was The Truth. 30 for 44, 435 yards, 68.2 completion percentage in Atlanta at night.  Granted, as Georgia Tech stumbles their way blindly through the season, this looks less and less impressive, but at the time I was amazed at how perfect Ryan was. His key to success?

From the only real BC blog of note on the Internets, Eagle in Atlanta:

(ATL_Eagle also takes the time to compare our offensive lines, but thankfully, the Irish protectors have been a lot better the last few weeks after bottoming out against Michigan. )

We haven't faced an accurate quarterback yet, and as I'm sure Irish fans have noticed, there have been a lot of open throws that were either poorly executed by the quarterback or not hauled in by the receiver.  This secondary, despite the success in the Rose Bowl and gaudy statistics, hasn't proven itself against anyone the caliber of Ryan, and I think that could potentially lead to some seriously disheartened fans after the first few Boston College drives.  If we want to have success against the Golden Eagle's offense, we need to get a lot of pressure on Ryan and take him out of his comfort zone, making those accurate throws a lot tougher to get off.  I know what you're thinking: If freaking Georgia Tech couldn't rattle this guy, what hope do we have?  Great question, and I wish I had an answer beyond hoping Corwin Brown has something up his sleeve or Boston College was so familiar with Tech's blitzes they knew exactly how to handle them, but I don't.  The only thing I can guarantee you is that if we don't get pressure on Ryan, we're going to lose in embarrassing, blowout fashion, especially if our offense plays as poorly as it did against UCLA.   

As Tim Russert drives the bandwagon (after the sign-off), I think there's one way to potentially eliminate Ryan from the equation.  Do this: