6 Thoughts on a Thursday

There wasn’t a single person who thought Notre Dame’s offense would come out of the gate playing at a high level. Everyone knew the challenges of playing Texas A&M’s defense on the road to kickoff the season and how a young offensive line would need some time to gel.

Well, they weren’t afforded any time before being forced to pivot. Their starting left tackle was out for the season in the first week of camp. The line who started against Texas A&M were down another two starters before halftime of the Purdue game. This new starting five has had two games together and we’ll have to see how things are configured up front after they come back from the bye week.

The instability on the offensive line, Mitchell Evans being slowly integrated back into the mix at tight end, and an uneven start to the season for quarterback Riley Leonard meant the Irish offense hasn’t been close to what fans have hoped it would be through five games. And while there’s still over half of the regular season left, there still seems to be much to learn about how high of a ceiling the offense has.

At this time, it doesn’t appear to be super high.

Obviously a lot can change with tweaks to their approach and improvement from players. We’ve seen it happen before.

Evans had no catches against Navy and one catch for two yards against NC State last season. He missed the Central Michigan game and most people would have said he was a disappointment in the first ⅓ of the season. He then racked up 24 catches and 359 yards over the next five games before a knee injury knocked him out for the season.

Quarterback Jack Coan completed 61.1% of his passes and averaged 7.4 yards per attempt in his first five games of the 2021 season. He had only one game with an NFL passer rating over 100 out of those five. In the final eight games he completed 72.8% of his passes and his YPA jumped to 8.7. He had an NFL passer rating over 100 in six of those eight games.

I’m not predicting that we’ll see Leonard make as big of a jump as Coan did in the back half of this season, but it would certainly help Leonard to have Evans back to being a key cog in the offense after the bye. It also should help the offense as a whole that they won’t face a defense over their next seven games that is ranked higher than 38th in DF+ (combined FEI and SP+ ranking).

They won’t face any defenses with defensive lines close to Texas A&M’s (21st) or Louisville’s (24th) either. (Northern Illinois’ defense is 23rd in points per drive, 14th in yards per play, and 24th in havoc rate in case anyone was wondering)

It’s reasonable to expect the offense to get better. It’s reasonable to expect Leonard and the offensive line to be better as well. I know Purdue was the game where Leonard put up the most numbers, but the Louisville game was by far his best all-around performance of the season.

Those two things should equate to better things for the rest of the skill talent as well. That and the fact that they’ll face weaker competition should mean we’ll see noticeable improvement on that side of the ball. It probably won't be enough to make discontented fans happy, but I don’t think an offense that had a healthy O-line all season would have satisfied those who were hoping for elite results.

2. I know there’s a lot of talk about self-scouting and scheme in regards to what changes get made during the bye week for the coaching staff, but there’s also a lot of evaluating your own roster.

Which guys can help us more that haven’t done so yet? Do they need to shift anyone to learn other roles? Do they need to look at activating any freshmen who haven’t played yet?

They really can’t dig too much deeper with true freshmen when you consider that six of them played key snaps against Louisville. Anthonie Knapp and Aneyas Williams were the two on offense and Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, Bryce Young, Loghan Thomas, and Leonard Moore were the four on defense.

I imagine that all of them will continue to play a lot and they really don’t have a choice with Young and Thomas in particular. They need them to play and develop because of injuries at Vyper.

It’s more likely they’ll rep Josh Burnham, who will hopefully be ready to go by the time they play Stanford, at Vyper with Junior Tuihalamaka. Him moving there Twould leave Young with RJ Oben at end, but Burnhan might just play both spots.

Thomas will most likely stick with the same subpackage role rushing the passer that he had against Louisville. I don’t see them moving KVA to Vyper unless they have another injury because he’s been really coming on at linebacker, but KVA and Jaylen Sneed are going to have to be key pieces in Notre Dame’s subpackages as well.

As mentioned in my Rewatch Notes, KVA has the third best pass rush win rate for Power 4 linebackers at 21.7% (25+ opportunities).

Sneed isn’t a fit as a Vyper and I think he has to improve when he’s working stunts, but line him up in a wide nine and he can present problems off the edge when attacks like this.

I’m not sure we’ll see much shifting with personnel outside of that unless we’re talking about some things at receiver.

3. The timing couldn’t have worked out better for a week off because there are so many injuries. Unfortunately it looked like Boubacar Traore could be another season-ending injury, but most of the others who left the game at certain points or who have been out in recent weeks should be back.

Ideally they’ll get at least a few back for Stanford and others like Benjamin Morrison or Howard Cross who could use the rest can get some. If this was last season and Notre Dame was coming off of Ohio State to play Duke, Louisville and USC in consecutive weeks, the current situation would be a nightmare.

The depth is better on this roster than it was last season and this team can be much better once they get more pieces back.

The defensive line will be better when Burnham and Gabriel Rubio are back. The offensive line will be better when Billy Schrauth is back. Christian Gray makes them better in the secondary. I think people can be hopeful that that group will be back sooner than later, but we’ll have to see what the status is with others like Cooper Flanagan, Jordan Faison, Jack Kiser, and Sam Pendleton when Notre Dame releases an injury report on Monday.

I don’t remember another season when they had this many injuries pile up this early. They’d be in a much worse spot if it was a different season. 

4. It’s stunning that Notre Dame is 39th in havoc rate allowed. I think a lot of people would have expected it to be much worse.

That number is even a bit misleading because three of Notre Dame’s eight sacks allowed came against Steve Angeli in garbage time in the second half of the Purdue game.

Leonard deserves a lot of credit for his ability to avoid pressure and avoiding turnover worthy plays. Out of all the dropbacks Leonard has been pressured, he’s only been responsible for 2.9% of those pressures. That’s tied for the eighth lowest percentage in the country. He’s also tough to tackle as are Notre Dame’s backs, who gain a lot of yards after contact.

Leonard’s turnover-worthy play percentage is also only 2.0% according to PFF. The bad pick against Northern Illinois sticks out like a sore thumb, but it wasn’t foreshadowing what we’d see from him in the future.

The players deserve credit and the coaches deserve credit too. Everyone wants to run their system and have players adapt to it. Notre Dame isn’t in a position to do that on offense, though. Maybe they’ll be ready to do more of what Mike Denbrock envisioned during the rest of the season, but he’s doing his best to give his players a chance to succeed now.

In Notre Dame’s loss to NIU, they dropped back to protect on true pass sets (no play-action, no quick game, no moving the pocket, no screens) 25 times. That was the only game Leonard had multiple turnover-worthy plays as a passer. In the four other games, they protected on true pass sets 12, 10, 11, and eight times in their most recent game against Louisville.

There was no way he was going to try and take too many chances on straight dropbacks against the constant blitzes that were sent by Louisville.

Good coaches adapt to their personnel and Denbrock has done that. They have to not only do that to help players succeed, but also do it to avoid plays that don’t have much chance of succeeding.

5. Notre Dame’s defense is now fourth in DF+ after their first five games. They are ninth in points per drive and 23rd in havoc rate.

They’re ninth in red zone touchdown percentage, fourth in 3rd/4th down success rate, and seventh in Eckel rate (how often your defense allows a big play touchdown or a first down inside the 40 on any given drive).

That’s a nice little start to say the very least. The finish will be a bit tougher to navigate without Traore and Jordan Botelho, but they should get other reinforcements back soon.

It sounds strange to say it, but Army and Navy might present the toughest challenges Notre Dame’s defense would face the rest of the season. While they haven’t exactly played strong opponents so far, it did jump out at me and Navy is currently first in points per drive and Army is fourth. They are also first and second in havoc rate allowed.

I don’t know what their final records will be, but Notre Dame is catching them both in seasons where they have good quarterbacks for their system who are thriving. It’s never a fun experience for Notre Dame when that is the case.

The Irish also face Stanford (89th in OF+), Georgia Tech (22nd), Florida State (82nd), Virginia (62nd), and USC (ninth).

It’s impossible for me to see teams like FSU (111th in havoc allowed) and Stanford (125th) not having major problems against Notre Dame’s defense and we’ll have a pretty good idea about what Virginia can be after they get done playing Louisville and Clemson in a few weeks. From what I have seen, Georgia Tech and USC have some plenty of skill talent that will challenge Al Golden’s group, but are also very flawed.

Neither are great up front and when that’s the case with USC’s offense, they traditionally struggle against Notre Dame no matter who else they have on offense. Miller Moss has made some impressive throws, but he’s much different than Caleb Williams when it comes to mobility. That doesn’t bode well when they are currently 130th in PFF’s pass block grades and 113th in run block grade.

When Williams won the Heisman in 2022, they were 10th and 11th.

They aren’t that young up front. They just aren’t very good. That’s something to monitor with them going forward.

6. Sometimes it’s just luck how it works out with the schedule with bye weeks, but the three parts this season can be broken up into for Notre Dame couldn’t have been planned better.

They just got done playing five games and now have the week off. They come back after that and have three games against Stanford, Georgia Tech, and Navy. They then have a bye week after Navy before closing out with Florida State, Virginia, Army and USC.

Injury luck is a different story, but they’ll take it with how the breaks work out with the schedule.

There will be some challenging offenses they’ll face during this stretch, but that’s a lot better than the other side of the where USC shockingly has the best one they’ll play out of the next seven opponents and I think there’s still a bit of mystery to how the offense will evolve by the time the Irish travel to Los Angeles.

It’s one step at a time the rest of the way, but just like I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the path still remains for them to win these next seven games. I may still be a bit skeptical that they won’t stumble along the way, but beating Louisville made me more confident that they can do it. And specifically, the way they beat Louisville with that many injuries before and during a game have led to them losing that type of game in the past.

I know they need this week off and I’ll take it as well. However, their most recent result makes me want to see more of this team as soon as possible. I’m intrigued by the freshmen on defense. I still don’t know what to expect on offense, but I think they gained some confidence in each other.

I know I liked watching this football team against Louisville and I enjoyed rewatching the game. I want to see more.

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