Notre Dame Preparing For First Road Challenge Of 2018
No. 8 Notre Dame (3-0) started its 2018 season with three straight games at home with the comfort of 80,795 home crowd fans cheering in their favor, but this Saturday the Irish will travel to Winston-Salem, NC to face Wake Forest (2-1).
Saturday afternoon the Irish players will trot onto the field at BB&T Field and will be welcomed by a hostile atmosphere filled with 31,500 Demon Deacon fans rooting for a top-10 upset.
Notre Dame’s first road test has not changed preparation. The mindset is the same as every other week.
“No. There's not,” Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly strongly stated. “As you get closer to the game -- there are little things that you do during practice in terms of crowd noise. There's a little bit of preparation that needs to occur relative to travel. Then just understanding that when you're on the road momentum is going to usually work against you, you got to close out opponents."
Wake Forest’s offense is anchored by an experienced offensive line, which returned all five starters from last year’s matchup but also has talented, skilled players in redshirt sophomore wide receiver Greg Dortch, and an experienced running back tandem of Matt Colburn and Cade Carney, who combined for 233 yards on the ground against Boston College last week.
A significant difference offensively, however, is the switch at quarterback from John Wolford, the Demon Deacons starter from 2014 to 2017 to true freshman Sam Hartman who is set to make his fourth career college start against the Irish on Saturday.
Despite the inexperience, Hartman has shown he can run Wake Forest’s high tempo offense effectively the first three weeks of the season surrounded by experience in the rest of the offense.
It will be important for Notre Dame to limit the number of plays the Demon Deacons run this week. (Wake Forest ran 106 plays last week against Boston College) The Irish defense is going to have to be at full focus especially on third down in Saturday’s showdown on ABC.
“Force them to punt is the best way,” Kelly explained. “If you look at the statistics, they were in a lot of third-down situations, so third-down conversions, getting them off the field. I think they were maybe six of seven on fourth-down conversions, too.”
“If you think about taking a play off, that's where that drive extends itself. So our focus is really about playing with much more sense of urgency in everything that we do in all facets. If we play with a sense of urgency against a tempo team like this, that's your best bet in terms of slowing them down."
Offensively, Notre Dame will not change its attack to keep up with Wake Forest’s high tempo. Better execution is expected of the offensive scheme we have seen over the first three weeks of the season.
“We want to run an offense that is balanced, that attacks the defense and scores touchdowns.” Kelly expressed. “We've been fairly balanced. We haven't attacked at all times, and we haven't been proficient at scoring touchdowns.
“We've got some work to do. When we talk about philosophy of offense, that has never changed, and that won't change. What has to get better is we've got to keep attacking, and we've got to score touchdowns. That's been lacking. For us to have the kind of success on offense, that's what we got to get better at.”