There are two reasons why some Irish fans reacted the way they did to Saturday's loss.  The first is that they were so beaten down by 2007 that the entire concept of a hard fought game against a good team turning on a few critical plays is now foreign to them, and they can only accept blowouts or low-scoring "slug" fests between awful teams.  The other option is that some of these people only watch Notre Dame play, and are unaware that each week, dozens of pairs of good teams go against one another and there were mistakes made on both sides that could have turned the game one way or the other.

Notre Dame's offensive skill players who play the most time consist of a sophomore quarterback who is well beyond where Brady Quinn was his sophomore year, two sophomore running backs, a freshman wide receiver and tight end, two sophomore wide outs and a senior receiver and junior running back.  When your team is so fantastically talented and so incredibly young, they will do things like put up nearly five hundred yards of offense.  They will also do things like turn the ball over five times in the span of just over thirty minutes.  If these mistakes are still plaguing this team when they're seniors, then you can get angry, but for now, just accept the coin as it is.  One side is incredibly shiny and a perfect representative of offensive football (the first half), and the other is charred beyond recognition due to the giant explosion that killed your fiancé.  Either you accept this coin as is or move onto a different team.

North Carolina was turning their opponent over at such an incredible rate all season that it seems silly to think that the Irish could have gone the entire game without succumbing to their pressure.  It's like Michigan fans saying "Well, if we don't fumble and give up those deep passes, we'd be favored!," when the fact, everyone on Michigan loves to turn the ball over and they can't cover anybody (twenty catches by Nick Moore on Saturday).  I'm proud of the way the team responded after the pick six to start the second half, and there is so much good to take from this game on offense (the running game looking stellar, Duval Kamara's head getting screwed back on, the Clausen-Tate-Floyd connection putting on another show) that I find it hard to be overly depressed going into the bye week.

I'm not sure how anyone can say this team isn't improving.  Yes, the run defense is still going to be a problem (LeSean McCoy is licking his chops in anticipation of November 1^st), but we knew that coming into the season.  As far as I can tell, Weis is presiding over a team that is improving week-to-week and he's still recruiting well.  I wish he was bringing in top-tier defensive linemen as well, but I'm going to chalk that up to simple bad luck (Trattou and Hunter defecting late), unless you really think Weis is purposely choosing to not bring in big hosses for up front.  The Brown-Tenuta defensive connection still needs a little work, but I have plenty of faith in them to keep the team moving in the right direction.

This is way too brief and way too general, and I apologize.  I have a day off tomorrow, at which point the entire game and first half of the season will be looked at again.