Instant Reaction: Notre Dame 24 - Navy 17
When you schedule Navy, this is what can happen. If they get a chance to play their game, they will take advantage of it. They forced Notre Dame to play their game and it almost earned the Midshipmen a win.
But, it didn’t. Don’t let that part get lost in the details of the game. Notre Dame won and that is what matters more than anything even if Navy forced them to do it in an ugly way. Stanford will try and do something similar next week, but if the Irish win, then who cares? They can have the moral victory and the Irish can have the actual victory.
Winning is hard and the Irish earned their ninth win of the season. They’ll get a chance for double digits next week after winning a dogfight in brutal weather today.
- Navy had the ball for over ⅔ of the game and Notre Dame’s defense still held them to their lowest total yardage of the season. This was also the least amount of points Navy has scored all year. There were some mistakes made by some individuals, but the group as a whole played really well. Navy had only one play over 20 yards in the game.
No one knew how Mike Elko would do in his first game against Navy and I’d say he came up with a pretty good plan and his players did a better than decent job of getting off blocks. Could they have gotten off the field more on 4th downs? Of course, but they had the big stop when it mattered and forced Navy to end two drives on downs.
Those are as good as turnovers and if you add that in with Troy Pride’s interception, that was three on the day for his defense.
- Speaking of Pride, it was a terrific game for a guy who was bumped up to the starting lineup with Julian Love moving to safety. Pride finished with six tackles, a tackle for loss, a pass breakup, and that interception. The INT will be the thing that sticks out, but I’m not sure if everyone realizes how far he has come as an overall football player since he arrived at Notre Dame.
He was not known as a strong tackler as a recruit. That’s a big reason why some considered him more of a track guy than a pure football player. Playing corner against this type of offense forces you to be a football player or you may get exposed. If anything was exposed in this game regarding Pride, it’s that he is developing into a very good football player.
- Love may be the most valuable player on the defense. His work at safety today was tremendous. It’s no surprise that he, Greer Martini, and Drue Tranquill all played outstanding today. If you were playing a game of football where you could just pick people regardless of position, they are three that you’d want on your team just about every time.
Martini finished with a career high 15 tackles, Love finished with 14, and Tranquill had 8 (two for loss).
- It wasn’t a banner day for Jalen Elliott at the other safety. Regardless of how this season finishes up, I think it’s pretty clear that there is going to have to be competition at the safety position in the spring. The defense has not had good enough play from the safeties in general all year. They may have had some moments, but it’s been a roller coaster ride far too often.
Elliott had the one drive that was basically nightmare fuel. He whiffed bad on the 3rd and 16 fullback dive that would have forced a Navy punt and then was beat for a touchdown when he got turned around on a post route.
- Two plays in particular would have changed the defense’s performance from a pretty good one to possibly a great one. The first was that Elliott missed tackle on 3rd and long. The second was the fumble by Chris Finke on that punt return.
I get that some people love to praise a guy who shows no fear in never calling for a fair catch, but he should have done so on several occasions this season. It hasn’t cost him up to this point, but it did here on a wet day. It would be one thing if Finke was a threat to take it to the house on every return, but that’s not the case. He is there mostly because he has sure hands.
That fumble gave Navy the ball back after a great 3 and out drive by the defense.
- I’m just going to get out what I didn’t like about the offense today in one big cluster.
I’ll start with the first drive and three called passes to open up the game. When you need to maximize possessions, you can’t take a chance like that in bad weather and with a quarterback who has been inconsistent throwing the ball.
The start by Wimbush missing high on his throws early was not great either. If he doesn’t sail that pass to Equanimeous St. Brown, he’s not getting dumped on his head like that. Mechanically there are still issues that need to be worked on and it’s probably not going to get fixed this season.
And I did not like the 3rd and 2 call when Notre Dame went three and out to give Navy the ball back at the end of the game. Alize Mack should have caught it, but 3rd and short should have been a run call there. With this offensive line against Navy’s front, I would have liked to have seen a designed run for Wimbush instead.
Those were the main things I didn’t like about the offense today. They did get it rolling in the middle of the game, though.
- The offense really only had seven drives on the day if you take away the victory formation drive at the end of the game. That’s a credit to Navy for making that happen and forcing Notre Dame to be efficient. The start certainly wasn’t what anyone hoped it would be, but the three straight touchdown drives were impressive.
Chip Long really got into a nice rhythm and he made a couple of terrific calls on 3rd down on the last touchdown drive of the game. The clear out by Josh Adams and Miles Boykin with Kevin Stepherson running free on the crosser worked to perfection. The screen to Stepherson on 3rd and 10 that was set up by motion from Durham Smythe and KJ was even better.
Long had not run that play all season. Navy had not seen it and didn’t expect it and it hit for big yards to keep the drive alive and eventually score the go-ahead touchdown.
- Adams is definitely not completely healthy, but even an Adams that is not at full-strength is still pretty good. I thought they needed to go to Tony Jones Jr. and Dexter Williams more in this game. They could have helped. At the same time, there were still a bunch of runs where Adams finished with five or six yards when he was hit after only gaining two or three.
- Wimbush could have went into the tank after another poor starting throwing the ball. A lot of other players would have. He kept fighting and made several throws when he needed to. The ball was not coming out pretty, but it came out well enough to help Stepherson have a 100 yard game.
- It wasn’t fun watching the game. What did you expect? It’s Navy.
You know what is fun? Winning. And the Irish won. They did what was needed when it mattered. Survive and advance. Enjoy your Saturday night knowing that the W is added to next Notre Dame and not Navy. I know that’s what I’m going to do.