6 Thoughts on a Thursday

A fifth-year quarterback coming off a 3,000-yard season with 34 touchdowns. An offensive line that returned all five starters with four of them being future NFL Draft picks. It sure sounded like a good situation to at least weather the storm of having to replace talent at receiver and break in a new running back.

It didn’t look so good at the start.

Notre Dame had three straight three-and-outs to start the season against a Duke defense that would finish 98th in DF+ (combined FEI and SP+ ranking). They rushed four times for seven yards and gave up two sacks on those drives.

Things clearly went up from there, but if you only used that game as a snapshot, no one would have predicted Notre Dame was going to score 47 on Clemson, make the College Football Playoff, or that the offensive line would end up being a finalist for the Joe Moore Award.

You can learn things in the first game of the season, but you have to be careful not to define a team by what you see in week one.

I guess that preamble is there as a warning that things can change from week to week in football. Things can often change drastically within a game. Performance by a team and a coaching staff is as much about reacting to what happened as anything else.

With that in mind, I think we can learn a bit more than a normal first game when it comes to Notre Dame’s offense and their new offensive coordinator, Gerad Parker.

It’s specifically because of the matchup against Navy. I feel comfortable declaring that because we know that Navy’s defense is going to present challenges and we know what those challenges are.

Brian Newberry is an aggressive coach. He knows what he needs to do in order to be successful on defense at a program like Navy’s. Bringing pressure is part of their identity. It might even be more of their identity now than the triple option on offense. (More on that later)

When the going got tough for Navy last season, I’d say giving up 35 in the first half is pretty tough, they leaned harder into who they are. Newberry basically said screw it and blitzed on 17 of 18 second half snaps on defense (minus kneel downs).

He might not bring the house as much to start this game, but you can bet that with 10 of their top 13 tacklers and 74% of their overall production returning, he won’t be playing passively and frequently dropping eight into coverage. Newberry and defensive coordinator PJ Volker are going to continue to keep Navy’s defense an attacking one.

Parker has the advantage of having this first game being one where he and the rest of the returning staff on offense saw exactly what went wrong in the second half last against Navy. Some of it was personnel driven and some of it could have been avoided with some different coaching decisions.

If presented with the same kind of relentless pressure from Navy this year, Notre Dame has a better quarterback and should have a better plan to counter it.

No one should be expecting the Irish offense to come out executing at an elite level to start the season. There will be some mistakes and they are playing what should be a pretty good defense.

With all that said, Parker and the staff had plenty of time to address the mistakes of last season and come up with a good plan to deal with zero blitz. With an experienced quarterback versed in RPO decision-making, they should have answers to questions that Drew Pyne couldn’t solve last year as well.

No one can say that they know how good Notre Dame will be on offense in 2023 after this game. What they should be able to say is that Notre Dame has a staff on offense that knows how to pass when they know what kind of questions are going to be on the test.

2. One thing I don’t expect to learn much about is the workload for the running backs this season.

Navy’s defense is going to crowd the line of scrimmage to stop the run like they did last season when they were 26th in EPA per rush, 9th in opportunity rate (the percentage of carries (when four yards are available) that gain at least four yards), and 7th in stuff rate (runs against that went for zero yards or less).

Taking out the two games against fellow service academies and their run-heavy schemes, opposing offenses only ran on Navy on 44.8% of plays. That was the seventh lowest percentage of rushing attempts in the country. Navy also had the lowest 1st down rushing attempts against them in the country and second lowest yards per carry against them on 1st downs (2.55).

Unless they want Audric Estime to go off, they aren’t going to line up with a light box very often. They’ll play the same style of defense they did last season, which means we won’t see a ton of carries for Estime or get a clear picture on the rest of the backfield going forward.

No matter what happens in this game, I’d expect Estime to average close to 20 carries a game this season. Kyren Williams averaged 17 per game in 2021 and caught 42 passes in only 12 games. I don’t see Estime getting close to 40 receptions as a receiver this season, but as Notre Dame’s RB1, he’ll carry the football more times per game than Williams ever did.

3. ISD’s Andrew Mentock wrote about the rare advantage of playing Navy to start the season and that definitely helps when you get to use part of spring and fall camp working against the triple option rather than a typical practice week during the season.

But the unknown with Navy tweaking their offense under new coordinator Grant Chesnut and the addition of RPOs, quick passing game, and who knows what other wrinkles they’ll have makes this different than opening with Navy when they had Paul Johnson and Ken Niumatalolo running the program.

They have Chesnut coming in from Kennesaw State, new fullbacks coach Tommy Laurendine coming in after being the offensive coordinator at Division II Mississippi College, and they also kept former OC and current quarterbacks coach Ivin Jaspers from the previous staff.

Notre Dame definitely used the extra prep time to get ready, but they have to be flexible to adjust quickly if they get surprised by anything on Saturday. Defensive coordinator Al Golden talked about this during his media availability on Tuesday.

“Yeah, you’ve basically got three influences on offense, and so it’s definitely made us simplify. We’re going to have to keep it simple and be able to adapt on game day. But that’s game one. It’s just magnified a little more this year because it’s already a different offense than you’re used to seeing. Now you compound that with not knowing the percentage of each system or each concept, how much it contributes to the whole. So, we’ll see how it unfolds on game day.”

ISD’s Matt Freeman mentioned that linebackers Jack Kiser and Jaiden Ausberry were working with the safeties on Tuesday and that the staff could be preparing for them to play that high safety look at times against Navy. That might be in the plans, but that plan could also get thrown out fairly quickly if Navy is showing something a lot different than what they have in the past.

We were set to play a Wing-T offense in our opening playoff game during my first year as a high school defensive coordinator. They ran Wing-T exclusively during the regular season and then during the first round of the playoffs (our team had a bye), we went to scout them and saw them line up in spread formations the entire game.

They won easily against an inferior opponent and it forced us to prepare for many things we hadn’t seen from them that season and took reps away from working against the Wing-T.

Of course, we watched them in warmups before our game and they only ran the Wing-T. We realized we were going to see that all day long.

We did and they had a ton of success until our kids got used to playing against it and we made some adjustments to shut them out in the second half. That first part of the game was not fun, though.

This is a long way of writing that there is a world where Navy has some success early on offense because it’s a bit uncertain what they’ll be doing until we actually see it on game day. If they don’t have success on offense early, I think there’s a very good chance that Notre Dame walks away with a comfortable win. (Keep that in mind if you’re live betting this game.)

4. Just a reminder for anyone who forgot from last season, but JD Bertrand getting hurt during warmups and not playing against Navy was a very big deal. Double digit tackles for him feel like a safe bet on Saturday.

If you’re looking for an unexpected star in this game who plays defense, my pick would be Ausberry. It might not mean much for the rest of the season, but he just knows how to find the football.

Drew White went from scout team to playing 54 snaps against Navy in 2018 with Drue Tranquill out that week. White had played one career snap on defense prior to that game and he played well.

Who plays the most and who excels the most in week zero might not be predictive for who ends up near the top of that list after the season, but I think Ausberry is one of those players who is a natural to play well against Navy during his time at Notre Dame.

I don’t know if his time starts this weekend, but I can see him doing well if his number gets called.

5. The Senior Bowl listed their watch list of players heading into the 2023 college football season and Notre Dame has nine on the list: Rylie Mills, Nana Osafo-Mensah, Marist Liufau, Javontae Jean-Baptiste, Sam Hartman, Cam Hart, Thomas Harper, Antonio Carter II, and JD Bertrand.

There’s a few things that can add some needed context to the list.

The first is that all of those players except Hartman, JJB, and Harper can potentially play another season of college football. A good number of the players listed from every school can do the same.

The other thing is that most of Notre Dame’s best NFL prospects are not eligible for this game. For example, four of Notre Dame’s five starters on the offensive line are in their third year in college. RB1, WR1, and TE1 for Notre Dame are in their third year as well. The most talented players on the team in terms of overall NFL traits are in the freshmen and sophomore classes as well.

So is Ole Miss more talented than Notre Dame because they have 20 on this list? No. Is Ole Miss more talented than Ohio State and their 12 players listed? No.

Ole Miss has built a lot of their roster through the transfer portal and have more fourth, fifth, and six year players on their roster.

What’s interesting is that there are several guys who are starters for Notre Dame who have to play their way onto the radar. Jack Kiser, Xavier Watts, Ramon Henderson, Howard Cross, Chris Tyree, and Jordan Botelho aren’t there and while all have eligibility left after this season, I think there’s a chance that Watts, Cross, and Botelho could end up as three of the most valuable players on the defense this fall.

Even with the nine who did make the cut, many of them have a lot to prove this season if they are going to earn Senior Bowl invites or ultimately become selected by an NFL team. It’s maybe the longest list of seniors that I can recall, but the good news is that the majority of them had really strong fall camps and it all starts there.

6. Brian Fremeau, the creator of the FEI ratings that I reference often on ISD, tracks net points per drive every season.

Net points per drive are the difference between points scored per offensive drive and points given up per defensive drive. No College Football Playoff champion has finished below 1.37 net points per drive (Clemson in 2016) and championship teams are becoming more dominant. Every winner has been at 2.28 net points per drive or more in the last five years.

Notre Dame’s best finish in net points per drive was 1.53 in 2019.

It sounds simple to say Notre Dame needs to score more points and allow less of them in order to get to a championship level, but it’s just a fact that teams who win it all have a lot of dominant wins. Notre Dame’s defense was 24th in points per drive last season. They were 12th in 2021, 7th in 2019, and 8th in 2018. Sure, they can get better, but if the defense gets back to that previous range, they’ll be fine. That also seems very achievable for them.

Last year the offense was 29th in points per drive. They were 30th, 20th, 17th, 22nd, and 21st in the seasons before that. The only time they’ve finished in the top-15 was in 2015 and they were right at 15.

As a defensive guy, I hate to admit that offense wins championships, but I’m going to say it again because it’s the truth right now in college football.

Only one champion in the last five seasons finished outside of the top-four in points per drive on offense and it was Clemson in 2018 when they finished seventh. Georgia (twice), Alabama, and LSU were all top-four.

No matter if Notre Dame runs the table this regular season or not, they aren’t likely to win it all unless they are winning by lighting up the scoreboard. A great defense and a great special teams can help them with that, but the offense needs to be great as well to beat others who already have offenses that are elite.

Men's Colosseum Navy Notre Dame Fighting Irish Mossy Oak SPF 50 Performance Long Sleeve Hoodie T-Shirt