6 Thoughts on a Thursday
Everybody wants to see more young players playing. It’s the allure of hope. They have seen something (or haven’t seen something) from older players already and there is the unknown of the ceiling of the young freshman whose ceiling as a player isn’t defined as much as the fourth-year player.
That’s why it’s never surprising when the initial reaction after a game like last week is to ask “Where was Tobias Merriweather?” or “I thought we’d see Eli Raridon”.
But this isn’t college basketball where one-and-done is the norm. Most good teams in college football are built with third, fourth, and fifth-year players dominating their two-deep. In the case of post-pandemic college football, some sixth-year players are mixed in as well.
As the illustrious FunkDoctorSpock pointed out on ISD’s board earlier this week, youth isn’t the cure-all for anything. Notre Dame’s defensive snaps against Ohio State were dominated by older players (94.8% from third, fourth, and fifth-year players). On the other side of the ball, 45.3% of the snaps went to sophomores. I don’t believe it’s coincidental that one side of the ball performed better than the other.
It’s not good to have second-year players be that important to an offense, but Notre Dame doesn’t have much choice in the matter. Those sophomores that are playing (Tyler Buchner, Lorenzo Styles, Joe Alt, Blake Fisher, Jayden Thomas, Audric Estime, and Logan Diggs) are the best options.
Not only are they being counted on to be some of the best players on the team, as I pointed out a few weeks ago in 6 Thoughts, that group contains the best NFL prospects on offense outside of players like Michael Mayer and Jarrett Patterson. It’s not ideal for that to be the case when none of them will be eligible for the draft after this season.
As Funk pointed out, the expectation is that there will be significant improvement on offense because those guys should get better. Ohio State had a great example of that with CJ Stroud last year. It was after week five when Stroud took off as one of the best quarterbacks in college football. For a star freshman, everyone remembers Justyn Ross as a game-changer for Clemson in 2018, but they probably forget that it was steady build up to get there before he exploded later in the season.
Eventual first round NFL Draft picks like Ronnie Stanley and Mike McGlinchey weren’t dominant players immediately in year two. McGlinchey didn’t even start until late in that second season. It’s a certainty that Alt and Fisher will be better as the season goes along. I feel the same way about all of those players and they’ll have to be as Notre Dame isn’t going to magically have guys step up and be better than them.
It’s not all on them, but the ceiling for the offense is largely going to be determined by how good those sophomores can become this season. We’ll see how we’re talking about them five weeks from now. The Irish play defenses that are currently ranked 56th (Marshall), 19th (Cal), 83rd (UNC), 21st (BYU), and 80th (Stanford) in SP+ during that time.
2. I’m sure we’ll get an update today on Jarrett Patterson, but my guess is he won’t be available for a while. There’s no need to try and do the dance every week to see if he can be good for game time. When he’s ready, he’s ready.
Maybe the biggest part of not having him is the experience. Obviously he’s a great individual player and one of the best interior offensive linemen in college football, but it’s even more difficult to replace someone who has been in what seems like a million more situations on the field than everyone else on the offensive line combined.
His ability to communicate on the field and in between series had to be greatly missed. Him being on the sideline isn’t the same as seeing something close up to help the other linemen. It remains completely absurd that his absence wasn’t a topic that was continually brought up during the telecast given the lack of success up front for the Irish.
I do think Patterson will be back at some point. Maybe even soon. Until that happens, this is a bit like 2018 for Notre Dame when they lost Alex Bars for the season. They had two young tackles in Liam Eichenberg and Robert Hainsey and another young guard in Tommy Kraemer. That’s not that different from the situation the Irish have up front at the moment with Alt, Fisher, and Andrew Kristofic.
The way it’s different is that they still had Sam Mustipher on that line and the equivalent for that is Josh Lugg. Lugg has to be the Mustipher for this offensive line until things get settled with Patterson back.
Is Lugg capable of that? I guess we’ll find out, but as a sixth-year player with over 20 career starts, they need him to be.
3. Flipping things over to the defense, I’m going to continue to emphasize how fantastic the back seven was for Notre Dame in coverage against Ohio State. (Check out my Film Don’t Lie piece for more on that)
It begs the question, how good can this pass defense be this season? They held Stroud to 6.6 yards per attempt, which was his lowest average in a game during his time at Ohio State. He’s going to be a first round pick. Here’s who Notre Dame’s pass defense performed in YPA against other first round quarterbacks in the Brian Kelly era (I’m excluding Kenny Pickett from the conversation because he was nowhere close to the player he was at the end of his time at Pitt)
Trevor Lawrence: 8.3 YPA in 2020 and 8.0 YPA in 2018
Mac Jones: 9.9 YPA
Sam Darnold: 7.2 YPA in 2017 and 6.8 YPA in 2016
Deshaun Watson: 4.0 YPA (Monsoon game)
Jameis Winston: 8.8 YPA
Andrew Luck: 7.5 YPA in 2011 and 7.4 YPA in 2010
EJ Manuel: 8.0 YPA
Outside of Watson in a monsoon, that’s the lowest YPA for Notre Dame’s defense against a first round quarterback in a long time. It’s the lowest point total they have held an offense with a first round quarterback since they beat down Darnold and USC in 2017 and that defense had a lot more help from their defensive line.
They have the veterans in the secondary and at linebacker, but also have freshmen like Jaden Mickey and Benjamin Morrison who are only going to get better. Maybe I’m guilty of overreacting to one game and it’s a long season, but I don’t think I can be blamed for having a lot more confidence in how the Irish pass defense will handle going against North Carolina, BYU, and USC later this fall.
4. It would help the pass defense quite a bit if the pass rush can be a lot more productive than it was on Saturday night. That’s very likely the best offensive line they’ll face in 2022, but a 20% pressure rate isn’t even close to where things need to be.
I think there will be a lot more pressure generated against an inexperienced and overmatched Marshall line, but I also would like to see Al Golden and Al Washington add in more things to help facilitate the pass rush going forward. It’s less about bringing more blitzes, although I do expect to see an increase there.
It’s more about incorporating more movement up front. They didn’t stunt against Ohio State. With quicker players, especially at defensive tackle, they can present more problems with more movement to confuse offensive linemen after the snap.
I hope we see a lot more stunting from the defensive line this weekend and in the coming weeks.
5. I think we’re going to see more linebackers this week and not just because Marshall isn’t Ohio State in terms of talent. That’s something to think about because the Irish played in their base defense on only a handful of snaps against OSU to combat their personnel.
They could do the same thing this week if it’s about matching personnel. Marshall is also going to be a primarily 11 personnel team, but my guess is we’ll see a bit more of three linebackers on the field for Notre Dame.
The guy I know most people want to see is Prince Kollie, who has had some bad luck a couple of years in a row at the start of the season. Last year it was Covid and this year he was injured in camp and didn’t get healthy until camp was over.
My guess is he’ll get some run in both base and nickel this week and then everyone can react appropriately whether he shines or not.
6. I know what happened in the second half for Notre Dame’s offense, but when you’re leading on the road at halftime against a team like Ohio State, there’s going to be a feeling that they let the game slip away.
That kind of feeling helped spark the 2017 team after they lost a close game to Georgia. They took a downturn later on in that season, Brandon Wimbush’s struggles were the driving force for that, but there was this belief after Georgia that they knew they could compete at the highest level.
I think what happened against Ohio State has the potential to do the same for this 2022 Notre Dame team. I can’t imagine what it’s like to play a game one and get run out of the building by Georgia like Oregon did and then tell them their goals are still achievable.
It’s a lot easier to do after an outcome like the one the Irish experienced in Columbus. How Marcus Freeman and this team will be judged this season is largely going to be on how they respond after a game like that.
They don’t have to be perfect every week and they don’t have to have all things clicking right away on offense to know they’ve responded well. They just have to be better and it starts with being sharper up front, putting more pressure on the quarterback, and playing up to their standard and not down to a team with lesser talent.
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