Instant Reaction | Notre Dame 40 Boston College 7
The performance on offense looked sluggish at times. The play-calling wasn’t as sharp as it had been the last couple of weeks and there was more pressure given up than we’ve typically seen up front.
None of that mattered in the end because Notre Dame’s defense continued to ascend. This is the second week in a row they made a good offense look bad. BC was running it down the throats of every defense they have played with Clemson being the only exception. Notre Dame can now join the Tigers after dominating BC’s offensive line.
AJ Dillon had 56 yards. David Bailey had been averaging over 6 yards per carry. He managed 2.6 today. Those backs combine to weigh 490 pounds, but when they can’t get going, all of that power isn’t allowed to move downhill.
What a performance by the Irish to hold them to 3 yards per carry. Aside from one drive, they had nothing going the entire day and even on that drive, it took a big play in the passing game to put them in a position to score.
Clark Lea has done a magnificent job with this group rebounding after the Michigan game. It took some time to get here, but they are playing like a top-5 defense in the month of November giving up only 3.71 yards per play.
They gave up only 3.0 against BC offense that was averaging 6.25 coming in.
That’s dominance.
- The defense had a 24.5% percent Havoc Rate in non-garbage time. If you’re not having fun watching this defense play, it might be time to log off for a bit.
- What a great start on that opening drive with Lea being aggressive early on 3rd and long. They finally set something up with Alohi Gilman getting free and Dillon not recognizing the blitz. With the way the offense started, the defense needed to start the way they did.
- BC had that one 16 play drive and that one big play in the passing game. Those were the highlights for them. They didn’t have another drive longer than six plays.
BC ran only 64 plays in the game, down from the 79.2 they normally average (7th in the country). Notre Dame ran 85 plays.
Say what you want about the Notre Dame offense in this game, but they only had one 3 and out when the starters were in the game. That was important.
- Notre Dame is banged up on the defensive line and that play with Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa did not look good. It would be surprising to me if he’s available for Stanford and they will need Jayson Ademilola back for that one.
But how about the depth coming through in a big way? Khalid Kareem continued his strong play, but it was Ade Ogundeji who stepped up. The pass rush was fantastic and the way he set the edge in the run game was even more impressive.
This was the best game of his career and a breakout performance.
- I don’t think anyone should worry too much about Kareem’s shoulder injury. I believe he subluxed his shoulder and I speak from experience because that is something I have dealt with during my career.
My shoulder would pop out. It’s painful and it sucks. It’s something that can be fixed in the off-season or with rehab, but a ton of guys play through it. Kareem might be the toughest player on the team so I don’t imagine it will stop him from playing next week.
- It wasn’t Ian Book’s best game in the last month. I didn’t think he was helped with some of the calls early in the game with Notre Dame not adjusting quickly enough to what BC was doing with pressures and coverage.
The line wasn’t as good protecting him in this game and the backs weren’t as good as they have been all season in blitz pick up.
That hurt Book and he also got a little lucky with a dropped interception on the first drive and another almost pick later on. I didn’t think he was too quick bolting out of the pocket in this one, though. I thought the pressure dictated it and his legs helped the offense a lot.
- If you think the line didn’t run block well in this game (and I didn’t on the first watch), then you have to give credit for Tony Jones for running as well as he did. I thought he maximized his yards on just about every carry and looked more comfortable this week.
- I think it’s safe to say that Notre Dame needs to find more ways to get Braden Lenzy touches.
- The Irish are doing exactly what they need to do down the stretch this season. They have outgained their opponents in November by a margin of 209.8 yards per game and have won the last three games by more than 30 points.
This is how Novembers should be for a football program and this was exactly how Senior Day should look for Notre Dame against a team that consider themselves a rival, but isn’t one.