Instant Reaction: Miami 41 - Notre Dame 8

This was a statement game for Notre Dame and Miami. Both programs are trying to reclaim past glory and both programs were Playoff contenders before they played this game. Then Miami made a statement and showed that the Irish don’t belong in the Playoff conversation any longer.

What Notre Dame did to USC, the Canes did in a more destructive way to the Irish. It was a straight up beatdown of epic proportions. I’ll save the big picture stuff for later because there will be time to reflect on where things stand in the next few days, but for now, let’s just concentrate on tonight. It was ugly and over quickly so this Instant Reaction won’t be a long one.

- I can say that Miami had not looked like this before. Not even against Virginia Tech. But this Miami team was so much better than Notre Dame that it didn’t even look like the Irish deserved to be on the same field.

The difference in athletes was drastic. They were so much faster and so much quicker than the Irish. It’s almost shocking to think that this program lost in South Bend last season. We saw something similar when the Irish played Georgia, but this was a different level. Brandon Wimbush and Josh Adams have beaten plenty of defenders around the corner this season. Not so much in this game.

- Sometimes as a coaching staff, you’re going to get matched up against a team that has better Jimmies and Joes than you’ve got on your squad. When that happens, you need to find a way to put your guys in a position to win. You adjust. You do things you didn’t expect to do during the week. And you better adjust quickly or else the walls will cave in on you.

The walls caved in on the staff today. They didn’t do enough to make changes after seeing they were overmatched early in the game.

- The Canes defensive line deserves a ton of credit. They were flying off the ball and were the biggest reason the Irish couldn’t run the ball. A lot of plays they were making were from the backside. The O-line did a terrible job of protecting the backside gaps. They needed to adjust and tighten their splits to try and deal with that speed. They didn’t and were overwhelmed.

Tackles on both sides were overwhelmed with the edge pressure too. There isn’t much else to add other than the offensive line that had been bullying people got straight up whooped in this one.

- I knew that if Notre Dame was going to beat an elite team, they would have to get much better play from Wimbush. He couldn’t be a 50% passer and needed to be more consistent if they were going up against an elite team. I incorrectly thought Miami was not an elite team.

Even though he made a couple of nice 3rd down throws to start the game, he also was playing with fire before he ever turned the ball over. He missed a wide open Equanimeous St. Brown on the first drive of the game that would have given the Irish the lead. Then his mechanics completely fell apart.

His feet were all over the place and so his throws went that way as well. He was rattled and, this game more than any other game, he needed his quarterback coach on the sideline. I just don’t think Tom Rees was going to be much help from up in the booth given the issues Wimbush was having. But to be fair, you’d hope that Wimbush wouldn’t be having these issues this deep into the season.

A step forward last week, two steps back this week.

- One thing I will say about the defense is that they were still fighting despite the turnovers. I’ll give them credit for that. It’s tough to give them more than that, though. This was a less miserable game for them than the offense, but that’s about it.

- I don’t understand at all why Notre Dame failed to spy Malik Rosier. The Canes literally did this exact same thing the week before with him taking off and running when he saw the linebackers drop into coverage. They gave him free yards!

- After another turnover near the end of the 1st quarter, the Canes had the ball and had a chance to essentially put the game out of reach early. With that in mind, I was stunned to see Kurt Hinish out there on the defensive line at the start of that series.

This isn’t meant to be a shot at him, it’s just that there is no way he should have been on the field for that series. He ended up getting pushed around on a couple of plays and then the quarter ended, but it was still a bad decision my Mike Elston in my opinion.

I get that you want to keep rotating your players, but they needed to have their best guys out there in that situation. Elston has done a good job with the line this season, but this was the kind of thing where he may have been caught up in the routine rather than adjusting to what the game situation was telling him.

- The fact that Miami closed out the game by running the football at will against Notre Dame was extremely disheartening. That’s what was supposed to happen on the other side of the ball for the Irish. Instead, Travis Homer was trucking defensive backs after the Canes O-line opened up big holes for him up front.

- This is going to be a tough one for the team to bounce back from. The change in culture talk works well when things are going good, but when things go as bad as they did here, it’s going to really be challenged.

8-2 is nothing to be ashamed of. But losing like that in a game that would have cemented them as a national title contender is soul crushing. And now they have to go back home for Senior Day and play Navy, which is always tons of fun! This week is the week where we’ll see if the leadership on the staff and on the team is as good as they’ve claimed it was prior to this game.