A Football Game at a Football Stadium in New Jersey

Notre Dame played Syracuse on Saturday night at the Meadowlands.  Not thinking about Notre Dame's disastrous first game at MetLife Stadium back in 2010, I bought tickets back in November of last year.  I was there in 2010.  Tailgating before the game was fun.  The game itself, not so much.  That was a miserable day.  I drank away my sorrows at my friend John's engagement party that night.  I also didn't think of the last Notre Dame-Syracuse game I went to back in 2008.  We lost 24-23 to a bad Syracuse team and it was 27 degrees at kickoff.  Let us never speak of those two games ever again.

Anyway, this year's game was a night game.  I really hate having so many night games.  It's not the worst thing in the world when you're watching at home.  I like being able to go to mass before the game and then not have to worry about it on Sunday morning.  But my favorite thing is watching us win in the afternoon and then just relaxing, drinking some good beer, and watching the other games at night.  All of our road games this year are probably going to end up being night games.  Fortunately, the rest of our home games are day games.  So my dad and I went to mass at 4:30 and then drove to the Meadowlands.  It took about an hour and 45 minutes to get to the stadium, but we were there with plenty of time before kickoff.

Our seats were up high, right in the middle of the end zone.  They were the cheapest tickets I've gotten for a football game in a long time (maybe since I was a student).  But it actually wasn't that bad of a view.  If you're sitting behind the endzone, I'd rather be up high so that you can tell what's going on when the ball is on the other side of the field (although I definitely would have taken a little bit lower in this case).  I've sat down low by the end zone and that's great when the ball is close to you, but terrible when it's far away.  I'm going to the game against Stanford this coming weekend and I have seats down low behind the south end zone.  Hopefully Notre Dame will score a few touchdowns on that side of the field.

My friends Jon and Notre Dame football legend Kyle were at the game.  They came over to our section at halftime.  It was good to see them, but it was too bad I only saw them for about ten minutes.  I should see them both again before the season is over though.

It was a weird game.  We were minus 4 in turnovers and we won by 16.  That shouldn't happen.  Everett Golson turned the ball over four times, but tied or came one short of the NCAA record for consecutive completions (I saw different things on that and I don't feel like doing the research to see if he actually tied the record or not).  He also had four touchdown passes.  The defense played really well.  Syracuse's offensive statistics were skewed by a fake punt and some late yards.  We won fairly easily, but we should have won by a lot more than 16.  We'll have to play better to beat Stanford.  I thought it was a well coached game.  Brian Kelly called a ton of wide receiver screens, a lot more than I can remember us running in one game.  And Syracuse never stopped them.  We also broke out some formations that I've never seen us run.  People complain about our running game, but I thought it was pretty good in this game.  It certainly wasn't spectacular, but our three running backs had a total of 131 yards and they all averaged at least four yards per carry.  I felt like we were able to get the tough yards on the ground when we needed them with the two tight end formations we were running.  The only thing that kept the game from being a blowout was us giving the ball away.

The game reminded me a little bit of the Big East Tournament, my favorite meaningless sporting event.  I love the Big East Tournament, but the atmosphere isn't great until Friday night or so.  For the earlier nights, you have a decent crowd for the early game and then the crowd clears out.  This game was a little bit like that.  Fans were looking for a reason to leave early.  It never felt like Syracuse was going to win, but lots of fans had cleared out before the game was decided.  As for the makeup of the crowd, I was a little surprised.  If we played Syracuse in basketball at Madison Square Garden, that would be pretty close to a Syracuse home game.  Obviously that's their sport and football is our sport, but I was still expecting more Syracuse fans considering it was technically a Syracuse home game.  It definitely seemed like we outnumbered them.  I wasn't sitting in a section that had been allotted to Notre Dame fans (I got my tickets through Ticketmaster rather than Notre Dame) and there were definitely more Notre Dame fans in my section.

My view for the opening kickoff.

So it was a football game.  Not a great atmosphere and not a great game.  We didn't play very well, but we won and it was never in much doubt.  MetLife Stadium is one of my least favorite sports venues that I've been to.  It's just a football stadium in New Jersey.  I once heard somebody describe it as sterile.  I think that's a good description.  We play Syracuse in the Meadowlands again in two years.  I feel like I'd rather watch it on TV than go to the game, but there's a decent chance that my friends will be there, in which case I'd probably go.

We've played four bad teams so far and we're 4-0.  This week we get our first real test.  I'm hoping we beat Stanford a little easier than we beat them in 2012.  Go Irish!

MVP

This is an update from an earlier post of how awesome Clayton Kershaw is.  There have been many, I know, but right now I'm talking about the one I wrote in July.  I won't go into as much detail here since I have some really simple numbers that show how awesome Kershaw is.

First of all, I thought when Kershaw got hurt early in the season that this wasn't going to be a year when he won the Cy Young.  The lesson, as always, I'm an idiot.  Despite missing over a month, he's going to win the Cy Young easily.  It should be his fourth in a row, but three in four years isn't bad.

Why should he be MVP?  Because he's meant more to his team than any other player in the National League.  In the post I linked, I went through how Clayton Kershaw's WAR was too low back in July.  Right now, ESPN and Baseball Reference have his WAR at 7.7.  Fangraphs has him at 7.2.  Still way too low.

Rather than talking about theoretical wins above theoretical replacement players, let's talk about actual wins and actual players.  The Dodgers went 23-4 in Kershaw's 27 starts (20-1 in his last 21 starts).  When Kershaw didn't pitch, the Dodgers went 68-64.  The Dodgers still have three more games, but they mean absolutely nothing, so I think it's appropriate to go through this exercise now.  Another way to think about that is that they went 14-13 in every 27 games Kershaw didn't start.  So Kershaw was worth nine wins over the rest of the Dodgers starters.  Zack Greinke is way above the theoretical replacement level.  Hyun-Jin Ryu is also well above replacement level.  Josh Beckett pitched above replacement level until he got hurt.  Dan Haren has been up and down.  Sometimes he was at or below replacement level, but he's had several starts that were well above replacement level (especially the last two months).  The other guys that started for the Dodgers, sure, they were replacement level, but most of their starts not made by Kershaw were made by somebody above replacement level.  And Kershaw was nine wins better than those guys.  But his WAR is 7.7 or 7.2?  Ridiculous.

He's the first pitcher ever to lead the Majors in ERA four years in a row (Koufax led the NL five years in a row, but only led the Majors three of those years).  There are all sorts of numbers that show how amazing Kershaw was this year so I won't get into them all.  This year wasn't as impressive as Pedro Martinez's best year, but it was still amazing and this is a better four-year run than any pitcher in a long time.

Kershaw's regular seasons are officially Koufaxian.  I know Koufax pitched a lot more innings, but the game has changed.  Kershaw pitches more than any other starter (he averaged 7.8 innings per start against teams with winning records).  He is dominating the game the way Koufax did.  What Koufax dominated in a way that nobody else has is the postseason (Rivera did too, but he wasn't a starter).  I hope Kershaw can come close to Koufax's dominance in the postseason this year.  He should be the regular season MVP.  I hope he gets the World Series MVP also.

Let's finish up with my Favorite Dodgers Power Rankings (current players only):

1.  Clayton Kershaw
2.  Matt Kemp
3.  Andre Ethier
4.  Juan Uribe
5.  A.J. Ellis
6.  Adrian Gonzalez
7.  Justin Turner (he's the man, the only thing that's keeping him from being higher on the list is the fact that it's his first year with the team)
8.  Yasiel Puig
9.  Zack Greinke
10.  Scott Van Slyke
11.  Dee Gordon
12.  Carl Crawford
13.  Hyun-Jin Ryu
14.  J.P. Howell
15.  Kenley Jansen
16.  Miguel Rojas (for saving Kershaw's no-hitter)
17.  Hanley Ramirez- Last year was great.  This year, not so much.  The Dodgers should probably let him leave as a free agent.  But help them win the World Series this year, and I will love him forever.