6 Thoughts on a Thursday
When an offense is struggling, fingers are going to be pointed at the offensive coordinator. Whether that is fair to Tommy Rees or not, it doesn’t really matter. It only matters that Notre Dame is 101st in the country in yards per play and Rees is the primary person tasked with changing that.
He’ll need plenty of help from the rest of the offensive staff to do a better job with their position groups. They need to get their guys playing up to their potential and executing at a much higher level. Last year he knew the best way to have success on offense was to play with heavy personnel and lean on a veteran offensive line and two strong blocking tight ends to help them run the football. This year he is five games in and needs to find the answers to make this offense improve drastically over the second half of the season.
He hasn’t been able to find any solutions. It’s certainly not for a lack of trying. He’s kept in backs and tight ends to help plug leaks with the protection. He’s designed plays to help manufacture explosive results. He’s taken more deep shots throwing the football knowing that the offense isn’t efficient enough to get points from long drives.
They averaged 3.4 deep passes (20+ air yards) per game last season. They have almost doubled that rate in 2021 (6.2 per game).
Those things have worked enough to help the team get to a 4-1 record, but they still haven’t found a way to run the football effectively (2.4 yards per carry) and they have one of the least explosive running games in the country with only 13 runs of 10 or more yards (124th) despite having the same backfield that helped produced 89 of those runs last year.
Rees can’t wave a magic wand and make the O-line better. He also can’t completely give up on the run, especially knowing that he has Kyren Williams and Chris Tyree in the backfield. Most importantly, he’s not going to get the best out of his quarterbacks if they are forced to throw it all day long with the defense knowing that there is zero threat running the football.
Los Angeles Chargers head coach Brandon Staley describes the importance of the running game about as well as anyone right here:
“But what the running game does for you, is bring a physical dimension to the football game.” Like the man said, it forces the defense to play blocks and to tackle. It sounds simple because it is. It’s why you don’t ever hear about a defense getting worn down by the passing game.
Even though Notre Dame has talented skill players, they are an easy team to play against because they can’t run the football. They’re 109th in rushing play percentage and the analytics may say that’s a good thing because of the lack of success running, but the reality is that the number has to go up because it’s making the offense one that defenses are happy to face each week.
It would be great if they had a Tommy Tremble waiting in the wings that they could plug in to knock the snot out of a linebacker. If only they had a Quenton Nelson or an Aaron Banks to run behind when they needed to get a yard on 3rd and short, but they don’t have anyone like them at guard right now.
Jeff Quinn has to get more out of the guys that he has up front. John McNulty has to get more out of the tight ends he’s working with. Rees has to find a way for the offense to have that physicality, even if he has to do it a much different way than he did with last year’s offense.
This Notre Dame offense isn’t going to go from bad to good running the football given what we’ve seen, but they need to be much more physical, even if the intended result is taking some pressure away from the passing game.
2. Staley talked about the data saying that a team doesn’t need to run well to be successful running the play-action passing game and it’s true. It’s also true that Notre Dame and their anemic running game hasn’t been great on play-action passes this season.
They are completing only 53.1% of passes (25 of 47) and 7.9 yards per attempt. Jack Coan is averaging 6.9 YPA on those passes.
One thing I’d like to see from Rees is more play-action that isn’t a shot play down the field. Coan’s average depth of target on play-action is 15.1 yards. I don’t think they should get away from attacking teams deep, but they certainly could mix in some easier completions that force defenders to defeat blocks and for them to tackle in space.
Only 14% of Notre Dame’s throws this season have been behind the line of scrimmage. By comparison, 24.7% of Alabama’s Bryce Young’s passing attempts have been behind the line of scrimmage.
There aren’t going to be a ton of big plays resulting from that, but it’s another way to take pressure off of the quarterbacks and also supplement the running game.
3. I’m sure the offensive staff wouldn’t mind a break from playing a good defense each week, but they won’t get that this Saturday. Virginia Tech is 11th in scoring defense and ranks 28th in F+. Notre Dame just got done facing Wisconsin (4th in F+) and Cincinnati (6th). Even before those two top-10 defenses, they faced surprisingly good Toledo (32nd) and Purdue defenses (34th).
This will make it five straight top-40 defenses in a row.
It might have been nice to mix in North Carolina (58th) or USC (68th) in between one of those games. After facing four straight top-40 defenses, they get those two and then Navy (72nd), Virginia (89th), Georgia Tech (60th), and Stanford (83rd).
They say it’s darkest before dawn. Be aware that dawn is coming for Notre Dame’s offense when they finally get to face some average to below average defenses.
4. I think Michael Mayer is going to play in this game, but I’m sure he could have used the bye week right now rather than play against Virginia Tech.
If he doesn’t play or doesn’t finish the game, I don’t really know what Notre Dame is going to do in his absence. He has more than double the receptions of the next leading receiver and no other tight end on the team has even had a ball thrown his direction this fall.
Could we see Notre Dame play in 10 personnel (one back, no tight end)? The last time I can remember seeing it was in 2018 against Clemson where Notre Dame used it for one or two plays. The offense is looking for some answers and if Mayer isn’t available, this might force them into one.
5. One thing I saw from Cincinnati’s defense under Marcus Freeman and their defense last week was stemming from the defensive linemen. They’re frequently moving before the snap and I’ve always been a big fan of it because it can mess with blocking assignments.
As soon as those defensive linemen shift, it can change who an offensive lineman is supposed to block on a given play and it might make them second guess what they’re tasked with or who is supposed to move off on a double team.
I’m not sure why we haven’t seen more of it from Notre Dame up to this point compared to how much I saw from Freeman’s previous defense, but I think it would be a good thing to use more, especially if they can shift alignments and get into some favorable pass rush matchups.
6. They weren’t the biggest games of the Brian Kelly reboot era, but they were arguably the most important.
They are the 2017 bowl game against LSU, the 2018 week four matchup against Wake Forest, and the 2019 game against Virginia Tech.
That LSU game was critical because there had been so much promise during the 2017 season with a much improved defense and a prolific running game. That might have felt like it was for nothing after the Irish got blown out at Miami and had another disappointing loss at Stanford. The program needed that win and they got it with Ian Book coming off the bench at quarterback and Miles Boykin having a breakout performance.
Notre Dame was 3-0 in 2018 when they were on their way to play Wake Forest, but there was something clearly wrong with the offense. A switch at quarterback had to be made and was. They dropped 56 on Wake and then went onto an undefeated regular season.
Things looked pretty bleak after the Irish were embarrassed on the road at Michigan. The only game where Notre Dame averaged less yards per play in the last decade was when they played NC State in a hurricane.
Things were that bad that night. Despite a couple of red zone turnovers that could have doomed them, the team rose up and Ian Book led them to a game-winning scoring drive. No team finished within three touchdowns of them the rest of the season as they won the next five games to finish 11-2.
This week has a bit of the same feel as those games. The offense is the worst it has been in a long time, they may be making a change at quarterback, and they are going into a hostile environment. Sure, there’s the bye week after this for the team and the staff to regroup, but this could be the game where Notre Dame finds its footing on offense and their quarterback for the rest of the season.
Those first three games all turned out pretty well, but were all very different. Even though Notre Dame is 4-1 and fought back to within four points of Cincinnati in the fourth quarter last week, there is a sense of urgency for Notre Dame to step forward and prove that this is a program that doesn’t have to rebuild.
This feels like a game we’ll be talking about when we look back on the post-2016 Brian Kelly era at Notre Dame. A game in Blacksburg is going to be a night to remember. We’ll see soon enough if it’s remembered for good or bad reasons.