Aaron Taylor has vivid, if not entirely pleasant, memories of his first hours in a Notre Dame uniform in August of 1990.
"Chris Zorich was the guy who I took my first reps against," said Taylor, who was an offensive lineman. "He threw me to the ground and then he ragged on me. Over and over."
That evening Taylor slunk back to his dorm room. "And you have to remember," he said, "I was All-Everything in high school coming out of De La Salle. But that night I cried to my mom wondering if I could play at this level."
Zorich, a nose tackle three years Taylor's senior, won the Lombardi Award as the nation's outstanding college lineman in 1990.
Taylor, an offensive tackle, won the Lombardi Award in 1993.
No Fighting Irish player has won it since.
This isn't a story about the Lombardi Award. It's a story about defense. Or, more specifically, Notre Dame's lack of it in recent years.
In the modern era, the Fighting Irish have won national championships in 1966, 1973, 1977 and 1988. In those four seasons, they never finished lower than 10th in rushing defense and only once finished lower than 3rd (12th in 1977) in scoring defense. In the last four seasons under Charlie Weis, the Irish never finished better than 45th in rushing defense and never finished better than 42nd in scoring defense. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
basketball drills sector 9 teacher training skateparks tennis rackets
No comments:
Post a Comment