6 Thoughts on a Thursday

Notre Dame is in the middle of their four primetime games and also in the middle of their season.

It feels weird to reflect on being halfway through the regular season because they have to worry about Louisville and then it’s straight on to USC. It’s also hard not to look at where the Irish are six games in because they were in a very different place at this same time last season.

There’s a huge difference between 5-1 and 3-3. It’s more than just having more wins, though. Notre Dame was 5-1 at the halfway point in 2021 as well, but those five wins were a lot different than these five.

Three of those wins came by a field goal, they needed a special teams touchdown and Wisconsin to go full Mertz to win that game big, and they could have played Cincinnati ten times that season and lost nine.

Notre Dame is playing well this year. It’s not like they don’t have flaws, but they’re in the right quadrant when it comes to opponent adjusted EPA (expected points added) per play.

(The offense being positioned where they are might surprise some people, but they’ve also played the ninth, 16th, and 21st defense in the country according to OF+, the combined FEI and SP+ rankings).

Despite not having an elite wide receiver emerge, not to mention having the depth severely tested last week, the offense is averaging 4.8 explosive passes (20+ yards) per game, which is up from 3.7 last season. They are averaging 1.8 20+ yard runs per game this season, which is up from 1.4 last season.

In raw EPA, they are 12th in EPA per rush and seventh in EPA per drop back. They have a front line quarterback in Sam Hartman who is 15th in ESPN’s QBR. Mitchell Evans has made a leap and has the second highest PFF grade out of Power 5 tight ends behind Brock Bowers. Audric Estime is the highest graded Power 5 running back and Joe Alt has the third highest grade out of any offensive tackle.

Being a coordinator at a major college football program is often about what have you done for me lately and people aren’t too jazzed about Gerad Parker after the Duke game, but the offense is night and day better than it was at this same point last season. 

The same can be said for the defense. They’ve made huge strides in year two under Al Golden. The problems the defense had last season haven’t just been fixed. Weaknesses have become strengths.

It’s incredible to see that improvement and it starts with several players taking their game up a notch this fall. Howard Cross and Rylie Mills have the second and sixth highest grades from PFF for Power 5 defensive tackles. Marist Liufau was someone many fans wanted to bench last season. He’s playing like the disruptive hybrid player he was supposed to be before his injury. He has PFF’s sixth highest grade for Power 5 linebackers and how they’ve used him this season on 3rd downs has been beneficial to him and the defense.

Javontae Jean-Baptise went from Ohio State backup to an every down factor for the Irish. He has a top-20 grade out of Power 5 edge defenders. Led by Benjamin Morrison, the secondary is one of the best in the country and the numbers against the pass back that up. They are third in pass efficiency defense, eighth in yards per attempt, and 15th in EPA per drop back.

Both sides of the football are significantly better than they were last season and in addition to the players who are grading out amongst the best at their positions in college football, Notre Dame has underclassmen who fans are clamoring to see more of for the right reasons. There are plenty of first and second year players who have made plays and shown exciting potential.

The season doesn’t end with six games. Things can flip quickly with games against Louisville, USC, and Clemson still to come. I’m not ignoring that.

I’m acknowledging that Notre Dame football is in a lot better shape than it was a year ago at this time. Marcus Freeman is 11-2 in his last 13 games and he has a team that has a legitimate chance to run the table the rest of the regular season.

2. In everyone’s rush to criticize Notre Dame’s offense against Duke, myself included, we didn’t give enough credit to Duke’s defense. It’s not just that Mike Elko and Tyler Santucci had a great game plan against the Irish, they have a very good defensive line and are as disciplined in the secondary as any team in the country.

Go back and watch all of those big plays to Evans and none of those are busts. They were mostly great throws against tight coverage or great catches by a guy who is a problem after the catch.

Duke’s defense is fifth in the country in points per drive and that’s after playing Clemson and Notre Dame. They do have some tests to close out the back half of the season. Florida State (14th in OF+, combined FEI and SP+ ranking), Louisville (28th), and North Carolina (11th). They also have Wake Forest (55th), Virginia (104th), NC State (98th), and Pitt (81st). Even with Riley Leonard out for a period of time, Duke’s defense will give them a chance to win most of their remaining games.

I think it’s likely that people will look back at that game and realize that Duke’s defense is really, really good, much like everyone learned about Marshall’s defense last season. They finished 15th in DF+ and their defensive coordinator, Lance Guidry, is now the DC at Miami where they’ve improved from 57th to 14th in DF+.

3. If you don’t watch the weekly videos of Notre Dame’s coordinators each Tuesday, you should be. There’s a lot of good stuff from the coordinator notebooks as well, but the videos give you a chance to see the answers to questions with a little bit more context.

ISD’s Matt Freeman also does a great job with questions and he asked Al Golden about his process of scouting and developing a game plan for an opponent each week and whether or not there are certain markers they are looking for to put the plan together.

Golden obviously isn’t trying to give too much away, but the gist of what he said can be narrowed down to “who and what”.

“There are certain things that you look for…see what you think they do really well. Who and what. Who and what can cause you to lose. Who meaning personnel and what meaning, what do they do that is really challenging.”

(For more of the full quote, go to 1:25 of the video)

The main “who” for this week is Jamari Thrash. He’s their top target and he’s one of the fastest receivers Notre Dame will face this season. The transfer from Georgia State is dangerous as a deep threat and after the catch.

The “what” is the play-action passing game. Teams have to respect Louisville’s running game because they have a home run threat in Jawhar Jordan and Louisville coach Jeff Brohm takes advantage of that with plenty of early down play-action. (They are seventh in early downs EPA and just under 40% of quarterback Jack Plummer’s drop backs involve a play-action fake).

The play-action piece of it makes it trickier, but one thing we saw last year with Golden’s defense was the ability to limit the “who” at receiver. Josh Downs, Marvin Harrison Jr., and Flowers were good examples of that. USC beat Notre Dame in other ways, but Jordan Addison didn’t go off (3 for 45).

Harrison Jr. had 3 for 32 against Notre Dame this season.

Thrash is the only other true WR1 that Notre Dame will have faced after Harrison and while Louisville has talent at wide receiver, they don’t have a number two who is close to Emeka Egbuka at Ohio State.

In Louisville’s first four games, Thrash had 19 catches for 400 yards and five touchdowns. NC State limited him to three catches on five targets for 44 yards with no touchdowns. He was matched up with NC State’s top corner Aydin White for most of the day and did get him once for 31-yards, but didn’t get much else.

They tried to move him around more, he lined up in the slot more times in that game than he had all season, but couldn’t get him the football. We should see plenty of Thrash against Benjamin Morrison and I’d also expect Notre Dame to bracket him at times as well.

4. Plummer is having a good start to this season, but he really isn’t that different from the player he was at Purdue and Cal. He lost to Notre Dame twice at those schools and had his worst pass efficiency performances of the season in both games.

Plummer has been lights out on 1st down this season (73.1%, 11.1 yards per attempt, 123.6 NFL passer rating). Much of that has been what Louisville has been able to do with play-action (70.6%, 13.6 YPA, 136.2 NFL passer rating).

When it’s obvious passing situations, he’s not nearly as good. That’s where he’s shown he’s pretty much the same guy.

On 3rd down he’s much worse. He’s been a 50% passer with an NFL passer rating of 65.7. That’s even worse than his rating at Cal last season (78.3). Opposing passers have a passer rating of 75.9 against Notre Dame’s defense on 3rd down this season. The rating is even better for Notre Dame on all passing plays with opposing passers having a rating of 54.6.

I don’t envision Plummer becoming someone different this game or for Notre Dame’s pass defense to be any different. If the coverage remains as tight as it typically has been, that’s not a good sign for Louisville either.

Opposing pass catchers are 7 of 29 on contested targets against the Irish (24.1%) and Louisville’s receivers are only 8 of 23 (34.8%) on contested targets.

5. There’s a lot of numbers that can be pointed to as examples of how much the defense has improved from last season to this one. I mentioned a few of them above.

One stat for individuals that jumped out at me while looking at PFF’s tracking is the number of “stops” by Notre Dame’s defenders compared to last season. Here’s how PFF describes a stop:

A stop is a play where a defender makes a tackle, and the location of the tackle means the play is a successful one for the defense. While the definition of a successful play for a defense will differ slightly from one site to another, here is how we have always defined it:

On a first down, if the offense gets 45% of the way to a first down or less

On a second down, if the offense gets 60% of the way to a first down or less

On a third or fourth down, if the offense doesn’t get a first down.

It’s a better measurement than tackles because often a tackle can be misleading. Making a tackle on an eight yard gain on 1st and 10 is not as good of a play as making a tackle for a three yard gain on 1st and 10.

I think everyone can understand that, but people get caught up in regular counting statistics. These four players on Notre Dame’s defense really jump out with how much they’ve improved and are making more plays.

Marist Liufau only had 17 stops all of last season. Through six games in 2023 he has 13. Howard Cross had 13 last year. He’s already had 17 this season. I know many Notre Dame fans have been wondering how Rylie Mills is considered as having a good season so far when he isn’t putting tackles for loss or havoc plays in general. Well, he only made 10 stops last season and he’s at 12 this year.

I think the biggest improvement has come from Javontae Jean-Baptiste. He’s playing the best ball of his career and has really become a much more complete player than he was at Ohio State. He has 13 stops, which is more than any other single season number for him.

No individual on the defense is having a Te’von Coney kind of impact (57 and 53 in 2017 and 2018!), but what the group has done collectively has been very good and the improvement from players has been evident.

6. Mike and I were half-joking about it on Power Hour this week when we talked about making sure Howard Cross III gets some nice NIL money to stick around for a sixth-year. Before it seemed like there was a strong possibility he would be back next season, but people in NFL circles are now taking notice as well.

Jim Nagy, former NFL scout and executive director of the Reese’s Senior Bowl, raved about Cross after the Duke game.

The Athletic’s Dane Brugler shared similar sentiments.

Cross didn’t even make the Senior Bowl’s watch list in the pre-season. They had JJB, Mills, and NaNa Osafo-Mensah listed from Notre Dame’s defensive line. Cross is certainly on their radar now.

Liufau was also on the watch list from Notre Dame and he is someone who has likely helped himself in the eyes of NFL scouts. He’s in the same category as a lot of Notre Dame defenders who are improving their draft stock, but aren’t projected to be high picks.

There are 14 players who have played over 120 snaps on defense for the Irish this season. Morrison is the only sophomore from that group. The 13 other players are in their fourth, fifth, or sixth seasons. The only players who don’t have the option of coming back are JJB, Thomas Harper, and DJ Brown.

Considering how well many of them are playing this season, I think Notre Dame’s staff would be happy to have many of them back. Then the question becomes whether or not they want to come back and the implications that has on roster management if they do come back.

These are good problems to have. Cross has rightfully earned praise for how well he is playing and Notre Dame fans should want him to continue to turn heads just like they should be rooting for Mitchell Evans to keep playing his way into the conversation as someone who could potentially leave early for the NFL. It’s good for everyone involved.

And if Notre Dame is able to keep everyone they want to stay on the roster for next season, that will set them up well to not only start strong on the road at Texas A&M, but also put them into a better position to win it all than they’ve been in a long time.

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