6 Thoughts on a Thursday

Rudy was on the other day and when Rudy is on, somehow I always get sucked in to watching it. Maybe it’s the music or maybe it’s just Notre Dame, but it always feels special even if some of the story might have been stretched to make the movie more entertaining.

Chris Finke is a former walk-on that has some fairy tale to his story, kind of like the movie Rudy. The big difference is that Finke has done things that Rudy could only dream of.

He had the catch of the year for the Irish against Michigan last season. He was the leading receiver against USC where he dominated a key matchup against their nickel. He earned a scholarship from Notre Dame and then eventually earned his way into a starting role as a slot receiver last season. It’s pretty much everything a kid who walks on at a program like Notre Dame could ever dream of.

Unfortunately he had a nightmarish game on Saturday.

Though he made the best grab an Irish receiver has made in 2019, he also had a key drop that led to an interception. In general it has been a pretty miserable start aside from one big play against New Mexico last week. That 54-yard touchdown was a highlight, but he’s only put up 6 catches for 27 yards outside of that.

This was supposed to be a big season for him in his 5th year and he had a very good spring. His first ¼ has not lived up to expectations, though.

I have seen people react to this last game, and maybe his first three games, as a reason to bench him. While I can understand the frustration after that drop and his lack of production, I really am confused by people saying he should be replaced when he is not playing his best position in order to help the team. There also has been instances where I have seen him open for receptions when Ian Book hasn’t been able to find him.

I think what Javon McKinley did a couple of weeks ago was a great story. He was a highly touted recruit who hadn’t lived up the expectations since he arrived on campus. It looked like there was a time this offseason where he might not be on the team tat all. 

For him to stick it out and make two big impact plays when he had zero career catches headed into the season is remarkable. I’m happy for him.

What he did in his fourth year for the first time is what Finke did against Virginia Tech back in 2016 when the former walk-on beat a 4-star slot corner on a post for a touchdown. Then Finke had a year of solid production as a starter on a 12-1 team and became a captain in his final season.

I’ll admit that I didn’t believe that he would eventually work his way into a starter and do what he has done so far at Notre Dame despite him having continued success in practices early in his career. But Finke can help this team win football games this season and has earned a chance to continue to prove he can.

He proved me wrong and I would bet he’ll prove the people calling for him to be benched wrong before all is said and done in 2019.

2. Completing deep passes against Georgia wasn’t an issue. Ian Book found success doing it with a couple of big plays to Cole Kmet, a back shoulder completion to Chase Claypool, and a 50/50 ball off of a double move by Lawrence Keys.

After watching that, my main question would be, “Why not more ?”

Not just in that game, but overall. The offense needs to push the ball vertically down the field more. Even those plays were between 20-25 yards from the line of scrimmage when they were caught. I’d like to see Chip Long open up things more with more targets longer than that.

Maybe we’ll see that change with an infusion of speed coming with Michael Young and Braden Lenzy both hopefully returning this week from injuries. Even without those guys, I’d like to see more of putting some air under it and letting Chase Claypool go up and get it.

I don’t believe we’ll see too many explosive plays from the running backs any time soon. I’d like to see more stretching the field with the receivers to make up for that.

3. We spent a lot of time in fall camp talking about the potential for the offense this season and it seemed like it could be very good from game one. Three games in and there has been some good things that have happened, but certainly not anywhere close to what I would have expected prior to the season.

Injuries have played a big part in the offense not playing up to expectations. To beat programs like Georgia, I think it’s fair to say that Notre Dame needed all hands on deck at the skill positions. Or maybe not all hands, but most.

Look at what Cole Kmet did. By the end of the game it was clear that he and Claypool were the difference makers. I doubt that Jafar Armstrong, Michael Young, and Braden Lenzy could be considered there with them against Georgia, but even two big plays out of that group combined with with what Lawrence Keys and Tommy Tremble did could have been the difference between winning and losing.

That’s not even including Kevin Austin in there and I believe he would have helped as well.

Notre Dame is 14th in S&P+ for offense right now. They’re 19th in yards per play. That’s pretty good, but it feels like they are underachieving and not having the available talent we thought they had has a lot to do with it in my opinion.

If they can be healthy and mostly stay that way over the next month or two, it will be interesting to see if they can be as good as most people were talking about in August.

4. Georgia felt like a coming out party for the new starters on defense even if they already did some nice things in the first couple of weeks. Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa especially was someone who I felt looked more than capable of holding his own against the vaunted Georgia offensive line.

He’s not Jerry Tillery, at least not yet, but I’m excited to see where MTA will be in November if this is how he looks now. The arrow is pointing way up for him. I think he’s going to get better and better this fall and be an absolute beast in 2020.

5. With so much focus on what just happened, it doesn’t feel real that Notre Dame is facing an undefeated top-20 team this weekend. But they are and Virginia could present some interesting problems for Notre Dame, especially on offense.

I think everyone will want to see the Irish get back to running the ball a lot this week, but Virginia is only giving up 2.17 yards per carry (2.93 vs their two Power 5 opponents). That would make you think they won’t try to run as much and we’ll see a similar game plan to what we saw against Georgia.

Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall brought a pretty great run defense with him to South Bend in 2012 when he was the coach at BYU. They finished the season 3rd in YPC given up (2.74) and 2^nd in S&P+ rushing defense.

Notre Dame ran for 270 yards and 6.28 YPC against them. They ran for over 200 and 5.0 YPC in 2013 as well.

This is a different team, different personnel, and Mendenhall has given more freedom to his defensive coordinator than before, but that did catch my eye.

So maybe this won’t be a pass-happy Notre Dame team we see on Saturday against a good run defense. Maybe we see the Irish get back to a more balanced attack and burst the bubble of Virginia’s run defense.

6. It’s always premature to talk about making the Playoff at this point in the season, especially after a loss, but I think it’s fair to say that the odds are going to be stacked against Notre Dame to be selected even if they run the table.

It doesn’t look like they are going to have the quality wins to impress the committee with Michigan looking much weaker than expected and Stanford looking like they may struggle to qualify for a bowl game. There’s a chance that Virginia could be the best team they face the rest of the season and we really don’t know how good Virginia is yet.

Notre Dame has to worry about winning first, but right after that, they have to think about how it will look. The biggest reason Ohio State made it when it looked like they weren’t going to in 2014 had to do with how they won down the stretch. They finished very strong with a two touchdown win against Michigan and then a 59-0 destruction of 11th ranked Wisconsin.

That was in the Big Ten title game and Notre Dame doesn’t have that extra chance to show the committee something when everyone else does. That means that for the rest of the season, we have to see the Irish steadily get better and better on both sides of the ball with them crushing teams in November to finish on a high note.

That has not been what we have seen from previous Brian Kelly teams. Even the two undefeated ones had some moments in November, but also some scares. There can’t be any of those if Notre Dame wants to be a Playoff team this year.

They have to go Beast Mode for the last four to six weeks while finishing 11-1 to force the people watching to consider them. How likely is that to happen? Not very in my opinion. But if this team wants to go back to the Playoff, that’s what they’ll have to do to get there.