Mike McGlinchey: "It's a great opportunity against a great Stanford team"
Notre Dame’s offense had seven possessions last weekend in the win against Navy, but Saturday’s game at Stanford will get the Irish back to regular football.
Offensive lineman Mike McGlinchey is welcoming more offensive possessions this week, as well as a jump in physicality.
“It's certainly going to be very nice, especially now that it shouldn't be 40 degrees and pouring rain to just sit on the sidelines after 45 minutes of them having the football,” stated McGlinchey. “It'll be great. It'll be just a normal football game between Notre Dame and Stanford, and very excited about that.”
A win gives Notre Dame 10 wins, which is something few thought the Irish could do after heading into the season finale a year ago with a 3-8 record.
“It’s huge for us,” stated McGlinchey. “That's exactly where our program wants to be. It's where we've worked since January to get it to, and it's a great opportunity against a great Stanford team, and that's all we're focused on.”
It’s been well-documented since the Miami loss that Notre Dame hasn’t done well on the road against ranked teams. The senior captain doesn’t believe there need to be significant changes and the team is embracing the opportunity they have in front of them.
“I don't know if we necessarily have things that need to be fixed that much,” explained McGlinchey. “Obviously a couple of weeks ago took a big lump down in South Beach, but I don't think it's like a big kind of back to the drawing board like clean-house kind of deal.
“We just need to clean up a couple of small details that didn't allow us to play our best and continue to clean those up as the weeks go on. But we're very confident in our team's football ability and have a great opportunity to win our 10th game against Stanford against a really, really good Stanford football team. I don't think we need to worry about fixing too much other than just cleaning up the things that we did wrong.”
Saturday’s game in Palo Alto is a dream for offensive linemen and McGlinchey was pretty open about why the Cardinal are one of his favorite opponents to play.
“Over my five years here, Stanford is kind of my favorite opponent to play,” stated McGlinchey. “It’s one of those classic football games to me, especially because they're a program and a team that's had so much success over the last probably decade or so, and since I've been here, they've always been at the forefront of the nation in terms of college football programs. Getting the chance to play them and knowing the opponents over the last five years, I've seen some of the same defensive players over my entire three years here starting, and it's just pretty cool to be able to play in.
“They're a team that takes a lot of pride in what they do. They're very strong, they're very tough, and they're just as good as it gets in terms of programs, and they're going to line up, they're going to see if we can beat them, and there's no kind of fancy stuff behind it, it's just line up, play football, our technique versus theirs and let's see what happens.”
McGlinchey is right as there won’t be fancy stuff and it will come down to which team can run the football. Josh Adams vs. Bryce Love is the matchup many fans have wanted to see for weeks and despite both players being banged up, it could end up being a great night of football.
“You're going to get a team that prides themselves on being the best at what they do,” McGlinchey said of Stanford. “I'm speaking specifically on the defensive side of the football for them because they're a team that's always been well-coached. The defensive line and their linebackers are always seeming to be right on task with where they're supposed to be, and you kind of line up and expect it to just be a technique-on-technique, effort-on-effort game, and that's the fun part about it.
“I've known them for the last three years of playing but five years of watching them play, and they haven't really changed, other than just shuffling new players in and out. I feel like having that kind of a game and having that kind of a knowledge of your opponent just makes it a lot more fun because they feel the same way about us. We're going to line up, we're going to see whose technique is better, we're going to see who can play a little bit harder, a little bit tougher, and normally the toughest line on the field wins the game, and that's what we're going to try and do. It's just one of those old-fashioned line up and play football games. There's not going to be much to trick around with or much differences.
"Obviously, they'll have wrinkles for us here and there, but it's just one of those things that they take a lot of pride in what they do, we take a lot of pride in what we do, and we'll see what happens."