6 Thoughts on a Thursday

One of the reasons why Notre Dame’s defense has been good this season is that the coaching staff has leaned into the strengths of the personnel.

They have great corners and play a ton of man coverage because of it. They have a hybrid defender in Marist Liufau and they have him rush the passer on 38.9% of pass plays and almost ¼ of his snaps have him lined up on the edge. They don’t have a singular dominant pass rusher, so they pressure with five often and run plenty of stunts up front.

What Al Golden does on defense accentuates the strengths of Notre Dame’s personnel. That’s partly why they have been as good as they’ve been this season.

It’s not been the same on offense and that’s one of the reasons they’ve struggled the way they have over the last six games.

They don’t find enough ways to get their playmakers the ball in ways that highlight their strengths. While they’ve been forced to play different skill players more reps because of injuries, they haven’t found a way to adapt to the strengths and the weaknesses of everyone who now has a bigger role.

Quarterback Sam Hartman has been a square peg fitting into a round hole at too many points this season. Yes, he has to adapt to what Notre Dame does compared to what Wake Forest did, but there hasn’t been enough effort to lean into his strengths while he’s been struggling.

I’m sure that Gerad Parker and the staff in general went into the season thinking they would be one type of offense. They wanted to have a dominant offensive line and dominate with their running game. They aren’t that, though. They wanted to be better at receiver and win more one on one matchups, but that hasn’t been the case either.

They didn’t know their own personnel well enough and haven’t changed enough after evaluating the personnel further. The offense never evolved. They didn’t learn from what they saw, both good and bad.

A football season isn’t set up for teams to perform better each week. The arrow isn’t always pointing up because the opponent and circumstances change. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be growth over the course of the season and that’s something we’ve seen with several players on defense this fall. I can’t say the same about the offense.

Mitchell Evans was having a breakout season before his injury. The fact that he’s the only player who I could point to with that distinction pretty much says it all about the state of the offense. (I wouldn’t put Audric Estime in this category. His breakout was last season)

It’s not that we haven’t seen exciting moments from Chris Tyree, Rico Flores, Jaden Greathouse, Jeremiyah Love, or JD Price, but it’s never turned into the kind of progress you’d hope to see where roles are expanded and production has increased. It would be different if Evans and Jayden Thomas were monopolizing all of the targets or if Notre Dame was riding Estime like Clemson rode Phil Mafah last week, but the first two aren’t playing and Estime had three carries in the second half of a one-score game.

The experience gained will make all of these players better for 2024. There’s still three games left for 2023 where they need to do a better job of setting them up for success and tailoring the offense around the skill set of these players.

2. Notre Dame has a serious problem along the interior of their offensive line. It’s been exposed whenever they played anyone who has NFL caliber “dudes” at defensive tackle.

Rocco Spindler has had some struggles, but I think he’s pretty banged up at this point. Zeke Correll’s limitations were on full-display when they played Clemson and they lined up a defensive tackle head up on him. That’s not something that we haven’t seen before.

Pat Coogan was credited with allowing seven pressures against Duke and nine pressures against Clemson by PFF. Honestly, I’m not sure those numbers reflect how tough of a time Coogan had throughout the game. Watching it back, it’s shocking they kept him in the game.

They’ve got a couple of options to deal with it this season.

They can continue to play with this group and help them out by adding in more quick game, RPOs, and play-action. In other words, they can put them in less true pass sets.

Notre Dame had 390 drop backs in 2022. Their starting group only had to block in true pass sets on 140 of those (35.9% of drop backs). In 314 drop backs in 2023, the starters have had to block 135 times in true pass sets (43%). It makes sense to put less pressure on them in these situations.

Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of losing at the point of attack in the run game, something we’ve seen far too often. That’s why we probably need to see more people getting snaps at center and guard to close out this season.

Ashton Craig made the most of his snaps in the Clemson game when he got his opportunity. It would be great to see more of him in the next few games.

Notre Dame should be better at these spots. They have to be better at these spots in 2024. Now’s the time to evaluate their options and see if they might have the answer on their roster or if they need to look at bringing in someone to compete there via the transfer portal.

3. Speaking of the portal, I just don’t see any way Notre Dame can go into this next season with the situation as it stands at receiver.

They don’t have a proven option at the boundary on the roster, which is a long way from the time they had Equanimeous St. Brown, Miles Boykin, Chase Claypool, Javon McKinley, and Kevin Austin on the roster at the same time. Thanks to Del Alexander they went from that to where they are now.

It doesn’t really matter at this point how they got here. It matters what they can do about fixing it.

Asking Micah Gilbert to play there as a true freshman isn’t realistic. Maybe a healthy Thomas will be better there in 2024, but it doesn’t feel like his best position. Greathouse has been put in a tough spot having to play there after Thomas went down, but a year older and year stronger could make it his position next fall.

It would be a big deal to get a proven commodity there. That’s a position that has to deal with press coverage a lot. Their experience with Kaleb Smith last season shows how difficult it can be to find a good one to play there, but just because that didn’t work out doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try again this December.

4. Javontae Jean-Baptiste has quietly been one of the best transfer portal additions Notre Dame has had in recent years. There’s probably an argument that he might be the best one they’ve added after Alohi Gilman and the portal wasn’t even a thing then.

He’s played the third most snaps on the defensive line, he’s second on the team in pressures behind Howard Cross, and he’s been surprisingly great as a run defender. I’m not sure where the defense would be without him.

The only bad thing about JJB is that he doesn’t have another season of eligibility. That means that Notre Dame is likely going to be in a position where they are looking for another strongside end because NaNa Osafo-Mensah may also not be back and he hasn’t proven he can be a starter in his five years on campus.

This is where it all comes back to recruiting. Mike Elston landed Aiden Gobaira in his final recruiting haul to play that spot, but Goibaira tore his ACL in fall camp and Notre Dame shouldn’t rest their hopes on him and either Tyson Ford or Brenan Vernon behind him. Both of them might be better suited to play as 3-technique defensive tackles and it’s unclear if any of this group is capable of being a high-level starter in 2024.

Elston landed Alex Ehrensberger, Devin Aupiu, and Jason Onye as other strongside end candidates in the 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes. Ehrensberger is done with football, Aupiu is currently a back up at UCLA, and Onye moved to defensive tackle.

That’s how Notre Dame got into this predicament. Getting out of it may mean that they have to land another JJB type or shuffle someone at Vyper over to the other end.

If they don’t land an edge defender in the portal, this spot is going to be one to monitor during the spring.

5. One other position I’d wonder about for next season on defense is the nickel. They added Thomas Harper last year and that worked out well and they may be just fine filling that spot with internal candidates.

Jaden Mickey played there a bit as a freshman and always seemed like a fit. Him making more of a permanent move there could be a good way to get him, Benjamin Morrison, and Christian Gray all starting together.

There’s also Micah Bell, who has the traits to develop into an impact defender in that role.

I do wonder if they’ll add at least someone to compete there because they may have only six scholarship cornerbacks on the roster and that’s not enough. It all depends on what happens with Clarence Lewis (played four, but has one year left if he wants it), Chance Tucker, and Ryan Barnes.

Harper was a terrific evaluation by the Notre Dame staff. He didn’t play the same role at Oklahoma State, but has been good in this one for the Irish. Notre Dame is in a better spot to find answers for the nickel on the returning roster than it is at defensive end, but I do think it would be a good idea to add someone to the mix there.

6. It’s easy for fans to only think each of these last three games should be about the future. That’s not how it is for most involved in the program.

It’s more than just getting to 10 wins. It’s about the guys who may not ever wear a Notre Dame jersey again. It’s about the guys who are trying to showcase themselves for the next level. The Irish don’t have a ton of projected high picks and it’s more competitive than ever to get invited to all-star games now that juniors can be invited as well.

Players and coaches are thinking about their futures. Results matter. Every rep can matter.

You think Jason Onye wants his final rep of the season to be him getting reach blocked and then pulled against Clemson? That’s someone who will want to get a chance to play and show he deserves to be in the rotation.

I want to see more from Gabriel Rubio, Jaylen Sneed, Josh Burnham, Jordan Faison, JD Price, Jeremiyah Love, Ashton Craig, and others to end this season. I’m sure Marcus Freeman would love that as well because he also has to have an eye on the future.

What Freeman said before the season about only having so many guaranteed opportunities means as much now as it did then. These last three games matter. I hope this team can finish while building towards next season.

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