Instant Reaction | Notre Dame 49 Stanford 7
Stanford isn’t a good football team. Everyone knew that going into the game and it was confirmed coming out of it as well.
With a Troy Taylor opening script and a couple of big scrambles for Ashton Daniels, they were expectedly frisky to start the game. The longer the game went on with them losing more players to an already banged up roster, reality hit and Notre Dame turned it into a blowout despite the best efforts of some poor ACC officiating (again).
Stanford was overmatched by the Irish in this game, but Notre Dame did exactly what good teams are supposed to do with an overmatched opponent. They took advantage of Stanford’s weaknesses and methodically pulled away to a 42-7 lead at the start of the fourth quarter.
Led by a stellar day from Riley Leonard, the defense settled into their typical dominance. The only upsetting thing about today was that the weather delayed the final outcome.
- Stanford has played the run well this season and it was obvious they were going to sell out and make Notre Dame pass to beat them. That’s a big reason why they weren’t having a ton of success running the ball in the first half.
Mike Denbrock had a great plan of attack. Notre Dame ran more RPOs in this game than I think they had in the first five games combined. Leonard was very good throwing them, which included an absolute seed to Jayden Thomas for a touchdown and another perfectly placed ball to Kris Mitchell on a slant.
Leonard averaged 10.4 yards per attempt and had three passing touchdowns (along with one rushing). He was late on some deep throws, but the Irish still managed to be explosive passing the football against a defense that has allowed too many big plays in the passing game all season.
When you can do that and get big runs mixed in from Jeremiyah Love, Jadarian Price, and Leonard, there’s not much a defense can do.
- Notre Dame came in averaging only 4.7 YPA on 1st down. Leonard averaged 6.9 YPA on 1st down today. When they weren’t able to run the ball well on early downs, it helped in terms of setting them up for success on 3rd downs.
They were six of eight on 3rd and 4th downs with Leonard in the game. Leonard also did a great job of escaping the rush when he needed to and him escaping a sack from David Bailey and turning that into a first down was massive.
- The first drive for Stanford averaged 7.0 yards per play and was highlighted by a long scramble where Adon Shuler, who was spying the quarterback, missed Daniels. It hit for Stanford’s biggest play of the day.
All of the drives after that (prior to garbage time) averaged 2.9 yards per play. Stanford was 4 for 13 on 3rd and 4th down in the first three quarters. Many of those 3rd downs were waving the white flag runs with run calls.
- The officiating didn’t matter in the game, but boy am I tired of mentioning how poor officiating didn’t matter. How about these guys get better at their jobs?
That Anthonie Knapp “hold” that killed the first drive was not a hold. That Ben Morrison “hold” that took the Xavier Watts interception off the board was also not a hold. The refs were so bad that Marcus Freeman couldn’t even properly celebrate a spectacular play by Josh Burnham when he tipped the ball to himself off the pitch. Freeman was too busy worrying that the refs were conferring after the play to possibly take that play off the board.
You know things are bad when the officiating consultant that the broadcaster employs is questioning the calls.
- WR Elic Ayomanor is an extremely talented player and Stanford couldn’t even get him the football in this game. He had three catches for 16 yards with a long of nine on five total targets.
They moved him to the field to get away from Morrison and they had the one hitch and go play that could have hit, but the ball was off by Daniels. I can’t imagine how frustrated a player like him Ayomanor is with what they’ve had at quarterback.
- Stanford was who we thought they were.
The interior of their offensive line was bad and those guys had a tough time with Howard Cross III and the rest of Notre Dame’s defensive tackles.
They are beat up. They had numerous injuries to key players and an already thin roster was stretched to the limit.
They were near the bottom of the FBS in havoc rate allowed and have given up 3.5 sacks per game to FBS competition. Notre Dame had a 24% havoc rate and had four sacks against them today.
Notre Dame won big just like they were supposed to and that matters coming out of the bye week, it matters for the overall confidence of the team, and it matters in the eyes of people who will be making decisions about Notre Dame’s College Football Playoff credentials too.
Maybe a beatdown of Stanford doesn’t mean much in the big picture of evaluating this team, but it’s a data point when Clemson also beatdown Stanford a couple of weeks before this. The Irish don’t get an edge for beating them 49-7 rather than Clemson beating them 40-14, but people are going to look at every little thing to say Notre Dame is or isn’t worthy. Style points are important.
The offense was unrecognizable today, in the way that Freeman wanted it to be unrecognizable. It may just be Stanford, but this looked different (better) than it did when they beat the breaks off of Purdue.
They look like they can do this against another struggling defense next week when they play Georgia Tech. And if they can keep stacking up performances like this, then Notre Dame fans should enjoy this stretch run a lot more with an offense who can take advantage of the weaknesses of its opponents.
Men's Tommy Bahama White Notre Dame Fighting Irish Sport Bali Beach T-Shirt
