Instant Reaction | Notre Dame 24 Michigan 17

Notre Dame showed up ready for this game.

They showed up on offense. They showed up on defense. The fans showed up in the stands with the Sea of Green. They came out better prepared than Michigan and it’s a major reason why they won the game.

It was a tremendous performance by the defense and I think what I wrote in 6 Thoughts a few days ago is going to happen. People are going to start talking about this Notre Dame defense. And they should because they just outplayed the Michigan defense (which ended up being as good as advertised in the second half).

While most programs were playing cupcakes in week one, the Irish went the road less traveled. I know many Notre Dame fans didn’t like it heading into this game, but how can they be upset about it now?

This is the statement win of week one of college football. The Irish are good and can build off what they showed in this game.

- When you give up only 10 points on defense and only 1.4 yards per carry, that’s a strong debut. Clark Lea didn’t have a perfect first game and I’m sure he’ll learn from the few mistakes he made. Overall, though, he had his group prepared and they played extremely well at all three levels.

I can only imagine the freak outs some were having while Michigan was dinking and dunking down the field early in the game, but it actually paid off brilliantly. Lea had to have known that his D-line had the advantage over Michigan’s O-line. He let his guys take over and created blown assignments by Michigan’s line with some pressures and stunts.

Those blown assignments directly caused a couple of drives to end up going backwards.

Would I have liked to see him go after Dylan McCaffrey when he came into the game? Yes. At the same time, his defensive line generated pressure consistently and ultimately won the game in the end.

Maybe next time he is a bit more aggressive. It’s difficult to argue with his strategy when the results turned out like they did.

- There are so many players that are worth mentioning on defense, but I’ll start with Te’von Coney. The fumble recovery was obviously huge, but his work versus the inside running game and that big pressure he had that caused the Julian Okwara interception were massive.

Devin Bush is a very good football player. Coney was the better inside linebacker tonight.

- Asmar Bilal coming up with that tackle for loss immediately after the Brandon Wimbush’s interception could easily be forgotten due to everything that happened after. That play and what he did to stop the speed option on a key third down after were as important as any for Notre Dame.

- I mentioned Alohi Gilman vs Zach Gentry as a key matchup coming into this game and it was. Gilman got the better of Gentry with two pass breakups. Gilman might have been the best player on the field tonight. Six of his seven tackles were solos.

- The Notre Dame O-line was solid vs Michigan in first half. The left side in particular did a really nice job in the running game to create some opportunities. I thought Alex Bars played well.

The rest of the line was up and down and you could see Rashan Gary and Chase Winovich take over in the second half. The good news is that Notre Dame won’t face ends anywhere near as good as that until they play Florida State at the end of the year.

They didn’t play well, but did enough.

- After Wimbush threw his first screen that made Cole Kmet dive for it, I was pretty concerned. He was much more accurate in the screen game than he has been outside of Michigan State game last season, though.

The most important thing was that he made throws down the field that gave his guys a chance to make plays. He averaged 7.7 yards per attempt.

That and running the ball effectively was what he needed to do to give the Irish a chance. He did a tremendous job knowing when to step up in the pocket as well. Many people were counting him out before this game and he proved those people wrong.

He still has to improve his consistency. On that slant he missed to Claypool on a key third down in the 4th quarter, he threw it off his back foot and that’s a big reason why it was wild.

The good far outweighed anything else he did, though. I know this offseason had to be tough so I’m glad he came out and had this kind of game against a very good defense.

- I know we all predicted that it would be Chris Finke that would win the key 50/50 ball of the game. The little man got up there and took it away from the Michigan defender. Man, was that impressive. I loved his “nervous bird” dance after as well.

- Ok, that’s enough with Brian Polian’s strategy of trying to pin the opponent deep on kickoffs. The team has not covered well. It was a straight up bonkers strategy after the first time Ambry Thomas almost broke one. It shouldn’t have to come down to realizing in a game that they needed Justin Yoon to kick it through the end zone. They needed to figure this out sooner because it could have cost them the game.

It was a one score game, but it shouldn't have been that close. This poor decision helped make it closer than it should have been.

- I thought Chip Long came out with a great game plan in the first half. If the Irish had hit on a couple of screens to Avery Davis, he would have looked like a genius. The one thing I didn’t like was that they didn’t do enough things like midline option or trapping Michigan’s ends.

The running game was a bit too straight up in the second half and if there were one or two more wrinkles, they might have been able to close out the game before Michigan scored their touchdown in the fourth quarter.

- He also would have looked a lot smarter if Alize Mack and Miles Boykin didn’t both line up on the line on the called back touchdown to Boykin in the 3rd quarter. That’s a first game mistake and hopefully we don’t see that kind of thing again this season.

- Daelin Hayes finished with one tackle. That just goes to show the stat sheet can lie because I thought he had his best game in a Notre Dame uniform. He was great as a pass rusher and did a good job setting the edge versus the run. He harassed Shea Patterson for most of the night.

Khalid Kareem did show up on the stat sheet quite a bit (9 tackles, 2 sacks, 2.5 TFLs) and he needs to be mentioned too. It was a breakout performance for him.

- I know Julian Love got beat deep on a post pattern, but the way he got run by on that play makes me think he assumed he had safety help over the top.

- Should we start calling him “Big Game Jerry”? Because Tillery came through again in a game when Notre Dame needed him to.

- The best thing to say about Nick Coleman as the nickel is that he wasn’t very noticeable in coverage. There was never a time where I felt Notre Dame was in trouble with him in coverage.

- Jim Harbaugh gets partial credit for this Notre Dame win because of his clock management and his curious play-calling at times.

This now makes Harbaugh 1-6 against Michigan State, Ohio State, and Notre Dame since he came back to Ann Arbor. I’m sure everyone is going to have fun with that and the fact that it’s now 17 straight losses on the road for Michigan against ranked opponents.