The Breakdown: Notre Dame Defense vs NC State
NC State came into Notre Dame ranked 14th in the nation and they did it based on the strength of their offense. They were the 16th ranked offense in the nation in S&P+ and top-25 in total offense. Even in their only loss of the season, no one really stopped them.
At least until they played the Irish. It was going to be the toughest test of the season for Mike Elko's group and they passed with flying colors. They held the Wolfpack to 263 yards and only seven points (minus the special teams score). No one had done anything close to that to them all season.
The same goes for what they did to quarterback Ryan Finley. They made a good quarterback look average.
It was fun to watch at the time and even more fun to re-watch when finding some plays to highlight in this week's Breakdown.
Discipline makes the play
NC State loves to get Jaylen Samuels the football, but they love to have you think he is getting the football even more. If a defense's attention is on Samuels, then NC State can hit them back with something else as simple as this run.
Samuels goes in motion and Notre Dame has that covered with it being passed off to Nick Coleman (24) and Drue Tranquill (23) going out with the tight end. That's all they need and you don't see Nyles Morgan (5) or Te'von Coney (4) overcommitting to the jet sweep action. Coney in particular is sliding over rather than splitting the difference now that Samuels is gone from him side, but he's not frantically overcommitting to chasing the sweep. Neither is Mogan, who you see take a short shuffle step over and then react to what the line is doing. It's no surprise that both players were in a position to make the tackle because they didnt' get caught up with the pre-snap motion. Coney did a terrific job of beating this block by the guard too.
Up front, I'd like to see Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa (95) stick on that guard a little longer before he can get to Coney, but MTA does not allow himself to get reached by the center after. Daelin Hayes (9) gets upfield and sets the edge. The back cannot go outside here.
The back might have thought for a split second he could cut back with Jerry Tillery (99) being cut blocked by the left guard, but Morgan didn't overpursue and would have been there. That left the back with only one choice and he runs right into Coney, MTA, and Morgan for a short gain. If the two inside linebackes got sucked in by the motion, then this could have been a bigger gain.
No go on the RPO
I can't remember a game where Notre Dame blitzed more on early downs this season than this one. The strategy obviously worked well and it did on this play too. Devin Studstill (14) is blitzing from his safety spot a play after Jalen Elliott (21) did the same. The reason why that is important is that it cause Finley to pull the ball rather than hand it off to the Samuels on the outside zone. Finley chose to pull it and throw the pass on this RPO.
The reason it didn't work is because Tranquill was playing man coverage and was all over this slant route to break it up. Tranquill on a slot isn't the best possible match-up, but the blitz triggers what Elko likely expected to happen with the RPO and the slant. That, Tranquill can certainly handle.
It doesn't help Finley's cause that Khalid Kareem (53) is in his face either. The one thing to watch is that Kareem is aiming his arm to match Finley's arm to hopefully bat this pass down. That is something that is taught and we saw put into practice by Julian Okwara in the UNC game. It doesn't get the same result, but I love developing good habits like this on the defensive line.
Daelin sets the edge
Coney got the game ball for this one and he deserved it. I think Daelin Hayes might have had the best game of his career versus the run, though. He is growing into a heck of a player and more than just a pass rusher.
It's another zone run to the boundary and Hayes sets the edge with help inside from Jonathan Bonner (55). On an ideal play, Bonner would have beat the left guard and forced him back instead of getting passed off to the center, but he forces no possible lane for a cut back by getting penetration.
With nowhere to go, Samuels tried to get outside and ran right into the arms of Hayes for a tackle for loss. That is how it supposed to look from Hayes.
Stunt blows it up
We haven't really seen Notre Dame stunt a lot this season on downs that weren't obvious passing situations (3rd and long). They did it a bit early in the year and went back to it in this game a couple of times that led to stops.
Here we have Bonner stepping outside and Hayes stepping back to the inside of him. Two guys end up blocking Bonner and Hayes is there waiting for the back in the hole unblocked because of it. Throw in Kareem crashing down off the edge after Samuels misses his block and they combine on the tackle that was set up by the line movement.
Notre Dame beat them straight up versus the run and they also messed with their blocking assignments by doing stuff like this.
4th down stop
There are three big keys to this 4th down stop by the Irish. The first is that Tillery jumped, but stayed on side. It was the exact same thing as the pick six by Julian Love. It could have been bad, but at least he was disciplined enough to not screw up the play.
The second is that the right guard for NC State takes way too wide of a step to block MTA. He is able to come straight up the field because of that and the guard is forced to react back to slow him down. Because MTA got penetration into the backfield, that led to the third key.
Samuels reacts to MTA being so far into the backfield that Samuels chooses to help block him rather than iso block the linebacker, who happened to be Coney. That left Coney free to scrape untouched to the ball carrier where he made a perfect tackle to get the stop.
I should mention Okwara (42) too because he set the tackle back and wouldn't allow for the back to bounce this if he tried to.
They may have verterans on the offensive line, but this was not a great group. Even if they had Nyhieim Hines, they would have struggled to run the football. There was nowhere to run because they couldn't block Notre Dame's front seven. And that is why they only managed 50 yards rushing on the day.
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