Film Don't Lie | Red Zone Resurgence
Notre Dame’s defense wasn’t bad last season. They just didn’t play at the same standard they had set in recent years.
Nowhere was that more evident than the red zone.
The Irish didn’t give up a ton of opportunities for teams to score, but when they did, opposing offenses were close to automatic. 79.4% of the time they were in the red zone, Notre Dame allowed them to get six points. That was dead last in the country.
To call it a rebound in the red zone this season doesn’t quite describe it. Through eight games, the Irish defense has only allowed touchdowns on 36% of red zone opportunities. That’s good for seventh in the country.
That kind of turnaround is shocking and when a defense jumps up 124 spots like it has, there’s more than one reason why it has happened. For Notre Dame, it’s been a combination of things.
The simple answer is that it’s better coaching combined with better personnel. That’s led to Notre Dame’s red zone pass defense improving from giving up 54.3% completions to 37.5% this fall. The run defense has improved from 2.1 yards per carry to 1.43. The red zone havoc rate, the percentage of negative plays they create, was just over 11% last season and it’s currently 18.5%.
The Irish are better at all three levels of the defense this season and so much of that has to do with development. Many of these players were key pieces on the 2022 defense and the leap in production from several players has been noticeable. Outside of swapping in Isaiah Foskey at Vyper, there isn’t any other player who the coaching staff would definitely trade for anyone who started on the 2022 defense.
The scheme is better this season, mostly because they tweaked it to adjust to the personnel.
Marist Liufau (8) was not used on 3rd down last season like he is now. He’s been a key piece for the defense in his adjusted role and that’s allowed him to make more of an impact while also making the defense as a whole better. He’s been a pass rusher and a spy against mobile quarterbacks like he was here on this red zone 3rd down play against Duke.
The other part of that play is the execution on the back end. The number of coverage busts in the secondary this season can be counted on one hand.
They have experienced players who, most importantly, have experience in this defense. They can disguise a coverage and then execute a call at a high-level, which makes it extremely difficult for any quarterback.
They’ve also been more aggressive in that area of the field in terms of pressure. This is a zone pressure on 3rd down against Duke and they are way better at disguising this before the snap of the ball and then executing at the snap. This kind of call and execution leads to havoc.
This is another aggressive call here and I tweeted this to point out how ridiculous it was for them to pick up the flag for the linemen being five yards down the field, but this also highlights how Al Golden has approached the red zone.
He’s bringing two safeties, Ramon Henderson (11) and Xavier Watts (0), as blitzers and asking Jaylen Sneed (3) to play man on the tight end. Cam Hart (5) is playing man on the receiver and what he is doing also has to do with coaching.
He is playing in front of the receiver and is there to make a play on the ball if the ball is thrown his way. The reason he is doing that has to do with them coaching up that approach for a couple of reasons.
The first is that with pressure, the ball would be getting out quickly so jumping in front makes sense. The second is that Hart has an understanding of where this is on the field. The receiver only has so much room to get up field with the back of the end zone and a completion here is a touchdown.
It’s a veteran player being taught and having the understanding of how to play this route in this area of the field.
This is another example of that against USC last week. Again, Golden is bringing pressure with six rushers and Notre Dame knows what that is going to mean for USC and Caleb Williams. He is going to have to get the ball out quickly or he’s going to get sacked.
Hart also knows a couple of things here. He knows that USC likes to run hitches when they get pressure and are betting on their athletes to win after the catch. Hart also knows that he doesn’t have to get into a back pedal at all here. The receiver isn’t going to blow by him because there is only so much field he can run to. That allows Hart to sit on this and react.
He was clearly ready for them to throw this and that’s why he broke on this in a hurry when he saw it was coming.
These are just a handful examples and there’s obviously a lot more with Notre Dame being better up front that has been a huge factor as well. It’s not just one or two things that have to led to a resurgence of their red zone defense. It’s a bunch of things that all add to great results.
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