Notre Dame Focused on Stopping Louisville's Jawhar Jordan, Irish Getting Healthy
No. 10 Notre Dame (5-1) will hit the road to face another undefeated team this weekend as No. 25 Louisville (5-0) will host the Fighting Irish in primetime.
It will be the first ‘big’ game in the Jeff Brohm era and the Irish defense will need to be sharp as Louisville boasts two gamewreckers on the offensive side of the ball.
Running back Jawhar Jordan (510 yards) is priority No. 1 for Notre Dame. If the Irish can’t stop him, it will open up the Cardinals offense for receiver Jamari Thrash. Jordan is also Louisville’s big play threat as he has nine runs over 10 yards and is averaging 7.7 yards per carry while also adding a total of seven touchdowns on the season.
Marcus Freeman is very aware of Jordan’s presence and made sure his defense saw his big plays on film this week.
”Jordan is a home run threat,” stated Freeman. “We’ve shown our defense the multiple explosive plays that he’s had. He has elite speed and ability. I’ve seen him break tackles and do some things like that. We have to tackle him.
“They have two other guys they roll into the game who are good players. 23 is more of a bigger back and I think he transferred from Wisconsin. They have a talented running back room and you’ve seen them have a lot of success running the ball.”
Freeman also issued a challenge to his defense as he hopes Notre Dame can make the Louisville offense rely on Jack Plummer’s arm and decision-making on Saturday night.
“Our challenge is to make sure they become one-dimensional,” explained Freeman. “We have to stop the run. That’s going to be so important. When we force them to throw the ball, we have to be good. We have to limit the explosive plays and we have to tackle. Those are the two things we’ve talked about all week. We have to tackle and really limit their explosive plays.”
TACKLING
Speaking of tackling, Notre Dame hasn’t been bad at tackling in 2023, but there have been moments where it hasn’t been sharp. Duke found a way to get loose in the second half, which may have to do with the Irish defense being tired more than anything, but defensive coordinator Al Golden is on it.
“I thought we had some uncharacteristic missed tackles the other day, which were disappointing,” said Golden. “I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not talking about at the end, when the running back was running really hard and we were kind of hanging on. I'm not talking about that. That's a different deal.
“I'm talking about when we had opportunities in the open field and we just did not trust our technique and bring our training to the game and we didn't really press it. We got crossed over a couple of times and I think that would be the only thing that would be disappointing about that.”
And Golden did give Duke credit for forcing a few of the missed tackles as quarterback Riley Leonard is a good athlete and Jordan Waters plays (and looks) similar to Audric Estime.
“Big quarterback, rotated a bunch of backs in there,” stated Golden. “I thought they were a really good team going in, thought they ran the ball hard going in. I don't know how many runs they had in the game, but I would say all but five or six I like where we were at. It wasn't like there were 12 of them. But there was a couple that got out and that skewed the run game for us. Can't happen.”
Freeman admitted Notre Dame can’t do much live tackling at this point in the season as the Irish are coming off a physical fall camp and Saturday will be the seventh game in a row. Player safety, but also keeping his team fresh is important, so the emphasis has been on fundamentals.
“We have to be smart in the way we practice,” Freeman explained. “It’s the fundamentals of tackling and not just live tackling. We are constantly working on it and looking at new ways to continue to attack it in practice.
“We’re always trying to improve as a tackling team. There’s no perfect tackling team in the country. One missed tackle is too much. How do we continue to work on the fundamentals of tackling? Is it a tracking issue? Are we tracking in the right way? Is it a footwork issue? Is it a leverage issue? All those different things we see in a game, we have to continue to attack in practice and continue to work on it.”
VYPER
Notre Dame will be without vyper Jordan Botelho for the first half on Saturday as he was ejected for a bogus targeting call against Duke. It will pave the way for two sophomores to get valuable reps at the position as both made the transition to vyper in the last year.
”Both Junior (Tuihalamaka) and Josh (Burnham) have done an extremely good job in practice,” Freeman said. "You’ll see them both. I think Josh will start the game off and they’ll rotate I would say 50 percent of the time. Jordan will be back in the second half.
“Those guys have been playing well all season in their opportunities. I’m excited to see what they do with these opportunities now, being able to go out there and play the majority of the first half. We’ll see exactly the situation for the second half. Jordan will obviously be back. I’m excited to see those two guys go out there and play at a high level in the first half.”
INJURIES
Notre Dame receivers Jaden Greathouse and Jayden Thomas missed last weekend’s game with hamstring injuries, but both will return on Saturday and tight end Eli Raridon is full go to make his season debut.
“All three will play,” stated Freeman.
Linebacker Nolan Ziegler recently rejoined the team after working through a mental health issue and while he’s practicing, Freeman was a bit hesitant to commit to him seeing playing time against Louisville.
”He’s on the travel roster,” said Freeman. “He’ll be there. I don’t know if he’ll get in the game. That will be determined by situations within the game. He’s ready to go if the opportunity presents itself.”
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