Irish O-line Has the Edge vs Stanford's Front 7
It's not a surpise that Bryce Love will be suiting up for Stanford tomorrow. He's played through an ankle injury for the past three games and he's going to do it again. Mike Elko and his defense are going to have a tough task at hand trying to stop Love from breaking free like he has for most of this season.
I think the running game for Notre Dame should be talked about a lot more heading into this matchup than it has, though. Not just because Notre Dame has put up big numbers this season (6th in total rushing per game and 2nd in yards per carry), but because Stanford hasn't been very good at stopping the run.
They are 76th in rushing S&P+ on defense and 110th in Stuff Rate (percentage of carries that are stopped at or before the line of scrimmage). The Cardinal are also 70th in rushing yards per game and 90th in yards per carry. Oh, and they've also had seven backs rush for 100 yards or more against them this season.
I'm not sure why people are ignoring that having that kind of run defense against this Notre Dame offense should equal to bad things for Stanford. It's been a big issue for them and they have not played a rushing attack that is anywhere close to as good as the one they will face in the regular season finale.
Not the same personnel in their front seven
Previous Stanford teams that Brian Kelly coached against were much stronger against the run. This is the worst rushing defense they've had a in a long time. The previous six years the Cardinal were 4th, 5th, 3rd, 7th, 30th, and 39th in rushing defense. To say things have changed for them is a gross understatement.
Some of it changes in coaching and development of their players up front. They simply don't have the same level of players they have had previously on the defensive line and at linebacker. Harrison Phillips and Bobby Okereke are two guys who would have been good enough to start on those great Stanford defenses from 2011-14. That's it, though. The rest of the group is not at that same level.
I love the matchup of Notre Dame's offensive line against them. In particular, I love the idea of them running right at senior defensive lineman Eric Cotton.
Cotton wears #80, likely because he came to Stanford as a tight end. He's played defensive line the last two years and is a starter at left end/tackle. His 3 sacks and 4.5 tackles for loss are not bad, but that doesn't really indicate what kind of player he is when teams run right at him. Cal figured out that they should last week and had a lot of success doing so.
He really has a tough time shedding blocks and his pad level is way too high often. Here he is getting down blocked by Cal's right guard. Cotton shifted into playing the one technique (inside shade of the guard) and he is soft fighting against this. It opens up a huge hole for them to run through.
That's a redshirt freshman doing that to him too. That guard was a walk-on just a year ago. Not exactly the kind of guy who should be moving a 5th year senior defensive lineman like that.
It took Cal way too long to recognize it. They should have been running at Cotton all game long. Here he is at one technique again the guard is able to turns him easily. The play was lost at the snap of the football because he didn't recognize he needed to fight against this sooner.
The next play was 1st and goal and they ran right at him again. He played with bad leverage and got no penetration and the Bears scored. Alex Bars, Robert Hainsey, and Tommy Kraemer are all quite a bit better than the right side of the line for Cal. In other words, I think all of them will have success blocking Cotton when the Irish choose to run to the right.
Stanford is going to have to load the box to stop the Irish to cover up some of their personnel issues up front. That should open up things with play-action, but also with the quarterback run game. Brandon Wimbush is easily the most dangerous running quarterback they have faced this season. They were fortunate to have Utah's Tyler Huntley be injured when they played the Utes, but he is the only one who is remotely comparable to Wimbush that they would have played against.
The weakest part of Stanford's defense is Notre Dame's greatest strength. That hasn't been the case before since David Shaw has been the head coach for them, but it is this year. The Irish need to take advantage of that and and if they do they can have a better day than the one they had against Stanford in 2015 when they rushed for 299 yards.