Sorry for disappearing after the Pitt loss, but things were just busy the last few days because of the election.  Now that it's over - save for a recount here and a run-off there - there will be a lot more time spent dissecting how awful Notre Dame is at football (and hopefully how awesome they are at basketball).

You can look at what happened against Pitt Saturday in two ways, I think.  The more positive Irish perspective is what I predicted to happen the week before the game, although I still thought we'd win: the loss to Rutgers jars Dave Wannstedt into just keeping it simple and running LeSean McCoy 45 times while play-actioning to Jonathan Baldwin.  When you consider the fact that the Panther starting quarterback was hurt, that put the game even more on the shoulder of Shady, one of the top three or four backs in the country.  Pitt's strength, running, went up against the Irish weakness, run defense, and that was the game.

On the other hand, you could say Charlie Weis blew a game where his team won the yardage, first down and turnover battles, all while getting a top-notch performance from their much-maligned kicker.  For some reason, when the strength of Pitt's defense was their linebackers and their weakness was their secondary - which Michael Floyd exploited for dizzying results in the first half - whoever was making decisions on the Irish sideline decided to run short little screens and dunks well short of the first down line instead of doing what has worked best for Notre Dame all season: chucking it deep.

I think the real answer lies somewhere in between, where a team of young players made mistakes and a coaching staff didn't exactly help them overcome it.  Perhaps the biggest problem Saturday was that the team lost any fire, perhaps a result of coming off a bye week and then walking through a glorified scrimmage against Washington.  A lot of people want to blame the coaching staff for not getting the team up, but honestly, if you can't get excited to play at Notre Dame Stadium in front of 80,000 people while trying to not lose to Dave Wannstedt, then that's a problem deeper than anything Weis can say to you.

The game against Boston College is obviously huge, as the Trojan train appears to be rolling and it may be the difference between 8-4 and 7-5.  The Eagles got handled by Clemson on Saturday, but you know they'll be up to play a night game, at home, against Notre Dame.  Jimmy Clausen hasn't been sharp for a while now, despite the numbers, and he'll need to both look for and connect with Floyd and the rest of his shiny targets on Saturday night. 

Sorry for the massive delay in posting, and there'll be much, much more in the coming days.  Blame this damned democracy of ours for taking up my time, but more analysis of the game, the polls and everything else in the college football world in the coming days.

Go Browns, Beat Broncos.