6 Thoughts on a Thursday

Notre Dame’s offense is better than it was in 2022. There is zero debate about that.

They are better up front, they are better overall at the skill positions, and they are much better at quarterback.

That’s what makes 14 points against Ohio State that much more frustrating. They proved they can run the ball against a great defense. 4.51 yards per carry and seven rushes of 10+ yards is night and day compared to their performance against OSU last year (2.53 and only two). They also had 22 first downs compared to 12.

Despite all of that, 14 points is 14 points. They failed to convert twice on 4th and short inside OSU’s 40 and missed a field goal. They left without points on three drives where they should have got something and they failed to produce explosive plays in the passing game like we’d seen from them previously.

A lot of that had to do with Ohio State’s defense and pressure on Sam Hartman. He was getting the ball out quickly whenever he felt the pocket potentially closing in on him. Some of it might have had to do with Notre Dame’s staff not having confidence they can win with their receivers. Outside of attacking Davis Igbinosun, they never directly went after another Ohio State defensive back in the passing game (partially because OSU rushed four more than 80% of the time) and weren’t getting a lot of man coverage.

The offense was missing the play-action element that would seem to have been a no-brainer to utilize with the frequency they were running the football. They only had four play-action drop backs (15.4%) and I know that makes it look like offensive coordinator Gerad Parker massively dropped the ball with his approach.

Greg Flammang and I were talking about this on Hit & Hustle earlier this week and we speculated that Hartman may be having a tough time with the adjustment with either footwork or reads with play-action passes in Notre Dame’s offense compared to what he did at Wake Forest.

The numbers back that up.

Out of quarterbacks with at least 122 drop backs this season, he’s second in terms of completion percentage drop off on play-action passes. He completes 19.8% less of his throws off play-action compared to when it’s a straight drop back.

He’s at 53.8% completions, 9.3 yards per attempt, 4 touchdowns and a 68.2 PFF grade with four throw aways and he’s scrambled four times on 29 drop backs.

Without play-action he’s 73.6%, 10.9 YPA, 10 touchdowns, and 84.6 PFF grade with one throw away and he’s scrambled two times on 97 drop backs.

Those play-action numbers look worse when you take out the NC State game as well. Obviously Notre Dame found a lot of success on play-action hitting Holden Staes and Davis Sherwood for some big plays. He was 7 of 11, 63.6%, three touchdowns, 11.8 YPA, and a 78.4 PFF grade in that game.

That’ll do.

In all other games he is 7 of 18, 6.3 YPA, and one touchdown. Against OSU he was 1 of 3 and 2.3 YPA.

That won’t do.

It’s easy to forget that Hartman is making an adjustment to this offense with how well he has played to start the season. The lack of success with play-action does come as a surprise, though, because Notre Dame’s running game has been humming and play-action was the only consistently successful part of Notre Dame’s passing game last season.

Drew Pyne was +4.5 YPA and +12% completions on play-action throws. Tyler Buchner was flat out terrible when he wasn’t running play-action, but he was +9.0 YPA and +17.6% completions when they had a play fake involved.

It’s not all on Hartman because offensive coordinator Gerad Parker has to find the right calls that work for him and find more ways to scheme up potential explosive plays. That’s probably what Tommy Rees did best during his time as a coordinator at Notre Dame.

Whatever the solution is, Notre Dame needs to unlock the play-action passing game over this next stretch of games because they are playing teams like USC (third in PFF pass rush grade) and Louisville (10th) who get after the passer well when teams do straight drop backs.

There are more explosive plays out there for Notre Dame to make on offense. Being better on play-action could be huge in making that happen.

2. I think as the season progresses, more people will realize just how good Notre Dame’s defense is.

They are currently 11th in DF+ (combined FEI and SP+ ranking), but I’ll be surprised if they don’t end up in the top-10 by the end of the season. The 2018 and 2019 defenses both finished in the top-10 (eighth and ninth). In terms of raw EPA (expected points added), Notre Dame is 11th overall, 13th in EPA per rush, and 18th in EPA per drop back.

This group doesn’t have an elite pass rusher and really doesn’t have any elite player in the front seven. Maybe that changes as they get further into the season, but even without that, I think defense will prove over the next few weeks that they need to be talked about more than they have outside of Notre Dame circles.

3. Well, here we are again at the receiver position. For the second straight season Notre Dame is haunted by the ghosts of poor evaluations and misses in recruiting from before the Marcus Freeman era.

They now have Deion Colzie, Matt Salerno, and freshman KK Smith out. Considering it’s a hamstring for Jayden Thomas, I would be surprised if he played against Duke. That’s the type of injury where he could be out for longer than anyone would want him to be.

That leaves Tobias Merriweather, Chris Tyree, Jaden Greathouse, and Rico Flores out of the receivers who have played this season. That means that freshman Braylon James has to be activated with the main group whether he is ready or not. He might not play all that much, but they have to try and prepare him if they need him to.

Notre Dame fans and college football fans in general tend to look at what personnel changes can be made when it comes to playing time after any game, win or lose. That talk gets louder after a loss like Ohio State, so I’m sure there will be people excited about James potentially getting to play. He’s a talented athlete, but I think everyone should temper their expectations until we see him involved on a Saturday.

This is a huge opportunity for the group of four I first mentioned. Merriweather might end up moving to the boundary with Thomas out and the other three are going to be on the field more than they have been.

It also means Notre Dame is going to be in 12 A LOT. Not that that wasn’t already a big part of the offense (or that they wouldn’t have been in it often against Duke regardless), but now Mitchell Evans and Holden Staes are likely to be featured even more. That’s not a bad thing considering what both have shown this fall.

I think it’s fair to say we can expect for more 21 (two backs, one tight end) too.

(At this point, I don’t think anyone should mention Eli Raridon until Freeman actually tells us Raridon is cleared)

This is also a time where I think we’ll get more clarity in terms of if Notre Dame has a go-to receiver that they want to highlight in key situations. Right now Thomas has the most 3rd down receptions on the team with four. Evans is second with three.

After his monster game against Ohio State, it could be the kickstart for Evans to be one of those guys for Hartman. We’ll see if one of those freshman receivers can make that jump as well.

4. On defense, they can’t have the first group play that same high percentage of snaps over the next three games. They need to sprinkle in more snaps for several players and playing Ohio State and playing Duke, Louisville, and USC also gives them a chance to better evaluate their own roster.

There’s a lot of players I want to see more of this weekend and in the back half of the season, but the fact that they put Jaylen Sneed on the field to rush the passer on that last drive of the game should say it all about him getting more opportunities to play in sub-packages.

I understand where he’s at right now with regards to his role in the base defense. I also understand that they wanted him out there on the most important drive of the season as a pass rusher. He had three pressures on seven pass rush opportunities. He has six total pressures on 19 opportunities this season.

They need better edge pressure and I think with what we’ve seen from him in his limited chances, he’s earned more opportunities and could add some juice to the pass rush.

5. This week and the next two for Notre Dame, they’ll be facing the best quarterbacks on their schedule. They have Duke’s Riley Leonard (21st in ESPN’s QBR), Louisville’s Jack Plummer (23rd), and USC’s Caleb Williams (11th doesn’t quite describe it properly).

Everyone has made jokes about Plummer losing to Notre Dame at three different schools in three consecutive years, but he’s playing the best football of his career to start the season. How he performs on the road against NC State this week is going to be interesting to watch.

Williams is a different level that we don’t even need to dive into at the moment, but Leonard is a big reason why anyone who is sleeping on Duke as an opponent hasn’t been paying attention. He rarely makes mistakes and is a key part of their running game as well.

These three quarterbacks are also why people will take notice if Notre Dame’s defense plays as well as I think they will.

After this stretch, it should be a lot less challenging.

Clemson’s Cade Klubnik (90th) has not been “that dude” for Dabo Swinney’s program. Our old friend Phil Jurkovec (102nd) might not even be QB1 by the time the Irish face Pitt. It’s not going well for him in his last go round in college football.

Wake Forest’s Mitch Griffis (119th) is not the next Sam Hartman. Whether it’s Ashton Daniels (98th) or Justin Lamson (133rd), Stanford hasn’t appeared to have found their next Andrew Luck.

Needless to say, I like Notre Dame’s defense in the matchups to come, but these three primetime games are going to really test Al Golden’s defense.

6. The 12 team College Football Playoff is close and I think there are some people who don’t like the idea as much because then it might mean that a game like the one Notre Dame just had means less than it would now. I don’t really understand that way of looking at it.

A game against Ohio State should mean more than a regular matchup, but it shouldn’t mean everything. You have stupid analysts talking about how Notre Dame is already out of the CFP even if they win out, which is just dumb if the fifth game of the season were to do that. That’s also pure click-bait because any reasonable person covering college football has seen wild things happen that lead to teams who we think are out getting back in the mix.

So much can happen over the course of a college football season. Players get injured, players improve, teams find their identity, and stars emerge over 12 regular season games. Saying that we know what all of these teams are when most top teams haven’t played more than two Power 5 programs is ridiculous.

I already went over how Notre Dame has to tweak things on offense whether it’s personnel or play-action passing and the defense is going to adjust as well.

Teams get better. Teams change. Florida State’s win against LSU looked great back in week one, but that doesn’t look nearly as good after they squeaked by a bad Boston College team and we really don’t know how good LSU is. Who would have bet that Notre Dame’s 2018 team would go undefeated in the regular season when they had Brandon Wimbush at quarterback and almost lost to Ball State and Vanderbilt?

We don’t know if Greathouse or Flores could end up as WR1 for Notre Dame before the season is over much like no one we didn’t know that Evans was going to have a huge game against Ohio State. These games are played and unknowns can become stars. That’s something that makes college football great.

Having more teams have a chance to make the playoff will only add to the interest in the sport and it will allow for more teams who evolve during the season to stay in the race. The focus won’t just be on improving to get fans excited about the next season.

There already is so much interest in recruiting and what the depth chart will look like next year with college football fans. It will be nice to see more teams who adapt and improve get an opportunity to showcase that in more meaningful games in November rather than giving a sneak preview of who they’ll be the following season.

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