Notebook: Tommy Rees trying to push Notre Dame QB Drew Pyne past nerves

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Tommy Rees remembers a lot of the details of his first career start at Notre Dame.

The Irish offensive coordinator remembers the final score of the 28-3 victory over No. 14 Utah on Nov. 13, 2010. He remembers throwing a pair of touchdowns to wide receiver Duval Kamara on corner routes and another to wide receiver Michael Floyd that a linebacker nearly prevented. Rees remembers checking into a sprint out for running back Robert Hughes early in the game.

But not every part of the memory from his freshman year is crystal clear.

“I don't remember the emotions of it,” Rees said Tuesday. “I probably couldn't feel my legs.”

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Rees could relate to current Irish junior Drew Pyne, who made his first career start in Saturday’s 24-17 victory over California. But Rees didn’t spend a lot of time digging into whether Pyne was nervous.

“I haven't asked. I'm sure he was nervous,” Rees said. “You want your quarterback to be pretty smooth sailing emotionally, and that's something we continue to press and push. I think that comes with experience.”

Similar to Pyne, Rees saw action as a relief quarterback before making his first start. Rees took over midgame for injured starter Dayne Crist in a 28-27 loss to Tulsa two weeks prior to his starting debut against Utah and had a bye week to help him prepare for the game.

“There’s more nerves to start, because you have to build up,” Rees said. “Being a backup quarterback’s hard, because every time the quarterback’s hit, every time you look at it, helmet comes off, you’re living on a string, because you never know. I might get thrust in there. But you’re never that nervous. It’s just the anxiety of going in.

“If you have a week to prepare, you’re thinking about everything. There’s more time to kind of go through that. As you get experience preparing for games, that helps smoothing out the nerves. There’s some build-up of having either past success or past experience and you certainly learn how to handle those things.”

Pyne’s first quarter plus one play in the second quarter couldn’t have gone much more poorly. He led the Irish to four three-and-out drives to start the game and then fumbled a snap, which Cal recovered, to start the second quarter.

Pyne missed multiple throws and received a profanity-laced earful on the sideline from Rees, who delivered his message via telephone from the press box. But Pyne responded positively to the criticism and completed 13 of his last 14 passes for 123 yards and two touchdowns.

“That's a mark of playing quarterback,” Rees said. “Obviously, we want to start faster and be ready to go right off the bat. You hit a couple of those plays early, you're probably calling a different game.

“We have to continue to get (Pyne) to feel really good going into the game and get him in rhythm and get him in rhythm with the guys. That starts to open things up a little bit. Drew responded like we knew he would.”

Steeping away from the emotions of the game, Rees and Pyne have worked to identify what fundamentally went wrong to produce his poor throws early in the game.

“You watch those throws, we have to do a better job rotating our upper body, get some shoulder rotation and not short arm and jab a throw,” Rees said. “That's when you miss low on the run. It happened on the first play. And then it happened on the one to (tight end) Mike (Mayer).

“So we try to strip out the emotion of 'Oh, it's your first start. You can't feel your legs, you're nervous,' whatever it may be. No, what technically can we focus on instead of just focusing on the result? Let's try to focus on mechanically or some of the physical things that happened that got us to that point.”

Notre Dame’s decision to not add a quarterback from the transfer portal this past offseason has come into question following the season-ending injury to sophomore starter Tyler Buchner. Head coach Marcus Freeman told Inside ND Sports in June that he didn’t feel the need to add a quarterback after Rees assured him that they had quarterbacks already in the program who could help them win a national championship.

When asked about it Monday, Freeman said the transfer quarterback discussion was had soon after he became the head coach in December.

“I had conversations with coach Rees about it,” Freeman said. “We felt like at that moment we did not need to get a college transfer.”

Rees admitted Tuesday that the Irish did at least look into the possibility of adding a transfer quarterback, but he declined to get into details of why there wasn’t a match.

“We certainly looked around,” Rees said. ‘There's a lot of reasons why sometimes transfers work and don't work. To go through all the reasons why, it’s probably a waste of time at this point. But it was something we looked into, it was something we had conversations about and with.

“For reasons in our control and out of our control, it didn't happen. So that's that. Continue to press on and move forward.”

Notre Dame’s offensive line finally found its footing against Cal, particularly in the second half. Proof of that improvement came in Notre Dame’s running game.

According to data cited by ESPN’s Bill Connelly, Notre Dame averaged 0.4 yards before contact per rush against Ohio State. That number rose only slightly to 0.7 yards before contact per rush against Marshall. Notre Dame bumped that metric up to 2.8 yards in the victory over Cal.

An offensive line that can consistently push the line of scrimmage can make life much easier for a play caller.

“It certainly helps develop an identity,” Rees said. “It certainly helps give you a call that you feel like, ‘Hey, we're going execute this and we're going to stay ahead of the sticks.’ It's a little bit of a safety net when you feel like you can do some of those things.

“We're going to continue to strive to get better there and at the other spots. Hopefully in these next couple of weeks, we can put the pieces all together so it can be multi-faceted and teams have to defend us in a couple of different ways.”

Notre Dame didn’t know it would need freshman walk-on Zac Yoakam to perform kickoff duties until about 30 minutes before the season opener at Ohio State, special teams coordinator Brian Mason said Tuesday.

Fellow freshman Bryce McFerson, a scholarship punter, had been tabbed as the kickoff specialist by Mason prior to the season. A groin injury for McFerson became a growing concern prior to kickoff.

That presented Yoakam with an opportunity.

“I don't know that you're ever super confident with a true freshman going in, in a situation like Ohio Stadium,” Mason said of Yoakam. “Certainly, there (we) believed that he was the second-best guy because he had the most consistent placement of the kickoffs. So, we wanted to directionally place the kickoff to help out the coverage unit. He was the most consistent at doing that.

“He might not have the biggest of all the legs. He has a big enough leg and he is the most consistent at placing the ball, and we felt really good about that, and we feel like we have a really good coverage unit. And as long as we can place the ball correctly, we're going to be just fine.”

With 11 kickoffs in the first three games, Yoakam has kicked seven for touchbacks. Only three kickoffs have been returned for a total of 68 yards.

The 5-foot-8, 180-pound Yoakam should continue to fill the role as McFerson isn’t ready to return to action.

‘We've slowly been trying to work him back in,” Mason said of McFerson. “Kickoff is going to be a longer process for him to get back into, because with a groin injury, kickoff’s the most stressful thing on your leg.

“We've been trying to get him back in to be the emergency or the backup punter. And there's been some ups and downs with some of that. He was the emergency punter on game day.”

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