Notre Dame opened the 2022 season in a tight battle with no. 2 Ohio State, even taking a lead into halftime. In a game marred by key injuries on both sides it ended up being a very upside down style of play based on expectations from the Irish and Buckeyes. For a while, it looked like Notre Dame was going to be able to win just enough on defense to give Tommy Rees, Tyler Buchner, and crew a chance to put together a drive for victory.
Ultimately, although the scoreboard doesn’t show it, Ohio State started to take firm control of the game in the 2nd half and proved that it could take care of business on home turf leaning on a successful running game, much improved defense, while sprinkling in a couple daggers from their passing game.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | OSU |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 10 | 21 |
| Plays | 48 | 69 |
| Total Yards | 253 | 395 |
| Yards Per Play | 5.27 | 5.72 |
| Conversions | 3/13 | 7/13 |
| Completions | 10 | 24 |
| Yards/Pass Attempt | 9.8 | 6.5 |
| Rushes | 30 | 35 |
| Rushing Success | 34.6% | 80.6% |
| 10+ Yds Rushes | 2 | 5 |
| 20+ Yds Passes | 4 | 3 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 7.5% | 31.2% |
Notre Dame had a lot to be proud of fighting hard in such a big game to open the season. However, they’ll head back to South Bend with several questions and worries in areas that they’ll want to get sorted out very soon.
Offense
QB: B-
RB: D
TE: B
OL: F
WR: C
This was a puzzling performance and gameplan from Tommy Rees that should be dissected in 3 ways:
1) The offensive line played terribly
2) Ohio State’s defense was much improved
3) Buchner isn’t ready to overcome both 1 and 2 at once in his first start.
We have been scratching our heads in the writers room wondering why the offense didn’t try certain things (screens!) or get someone like Styles (2 targets?) involved more. It seemed like Notre Dame went into this game believing they’d control the ball and have a lot of success running while always having that crutch to lean on. That plan got repeatedly stuffed and it wrecked everything.
For a minute, there was a snapshot of a winning formula. The running success was okay in the 1st half, Buchner started the game completing a bunch of passes in a row, and there was just enough explosiveness (more 20+ yard passes than Ohio State!) through the air that the door opened up to loosening things up and coming back with more consistency on the ground.
Limiting Ohio State to just 21 points felt miraculous before the game and if you take a few snapshots of the offense a win was in the cards.
However, the Irish got mostly trashed in the running game especially in the 2nd half when they were desperately trying to establish some groove and move the chains to keep the defense off the field. At the core, this was a game where Notre Dame wanted to control the line of scrimmage and the offensive line failed miserably.
Rushing Success
Tyree – 2 of 6 (33.3%)
Estime – 3 of 9 (33.3%)
Diggs – 2 of 4 (50.0%)
Buchner – 2 of 8 (25.0%)
Buchner with just 2 successful runs was a shock. The far more immobile C.J Stroud had the same amount for Ohio State. The Irish barely ran that many plays (48, the lowest in over a decade) and allowed nearly every third play to be a stuff (2 yards or fewer) by the Buckeyes. So while we lament not getting the ball into Styles’ hands more the blocking was so poor that options were severely limited.
Look at it this way, Notre Dame had just 9 successful runs the entire game while Ohio State had just 6 unsuccessful runs. Maybe if the pass blocking had been better there was a chance to air it out and change things up.
Without grading on a curve and looking just at pure production, Buchner probably deserved a grade of C or something like that. He only finished with 195 total yards, didn’t throw a touchdown pass, and as we mentioned couldn’t get going as a runner. His accuracy looked okay in the rare instances he was given time but I thought a lot of the timing routes were a mess with Buchner unable to step through and deliver balls into good windows.
In his favor, Buchner showed a lot of poise and control (outside of a couple used timeouts you’d like to have back) of the offense in a huge game without much help around him. That bumped up his grade for me.
The running backs were disappointing, as well. There was just one run over 10 yards from this group (12 yards from Tyree) and Notre Dame’s attempt to ride Audric Estime fared quite poorly. I don’t think the backfield is all that dynamic.
Prior to this matchup I thought if Buchner really struggled it would be dark times. Instead, the line flopped and Notre Dame has to re-group and figure out how to move forward with maybe less reliance on the run game. That has to shake things up in the gameplan room but it’ll get easier against future opponents and you have to be like how things can be built around Buchner as he gains experience.
It’s possible the floor is lowered for the offense (struggling OL) but opening things up for Buchner throughout the season could raise the ceiling. It’s early in the Freeman and Buchner era and hopefully we leave behind the notion that burning clock and trying to Iowa our way to an upset is a good strategy.
Defense
DL: D
LB: C
DB: B+
I’m going to be more critical of the defense than most. The Irish got lucky that starting receiver Julian Fleming didn’t play and then got the huge benefit of Jaxon Smith-Njigba exiting early with a leg injury after just 3 targets and 2 catches for 3 yards. The secondary played very well given this and did a wonderful job limiting the damage of Ohio State through the air. Only giving up 3 plays of 20+ yards was one of the most unlikely scenarios of this game.
However, 2 of those long plays resulted in touchdowns for the Buckeyes. You have to admit that as the game wore on and Ohio State adjusted they started moving the ball a lot better with Notre Dame unable to find answers.
During the game, Larz was pointing out that the Irish were doing really well being assignment correct. This felt like a game where the defense was playing well at times, but a lot of it was that Ohio State wasn’t clicking and struggled adjusting without their best receivers. It seems insane to suggest when the Buckeyes only scored 21 points and were kept under 400 yards but their was a shocking lack of playmaking for Notre Dame on defense.
Worst of all, Ohio State’s offense line dominated Notre Dame’s front seven.
Stuffs vs. Ohio State
Cross – 1
Bertrand – 1
Kiser – 1
Bracy – 1
Mills – 0.5
Liufau – 0.5
The Buckeyes talented tackles didn’t seem to have any problem with the Irish edge rushers. They were able to get occasional pressure up the middle but it usually took sending a lot of defenders. Finishing with just 1 sack, 1 tackle for loss, and 3 additional stuffs for the entire game is as bad of disruption as Notre Dame has shown as long as we’ve been tracking these things.
The defense kept things in front of them, tackled well, but got lucky with the JSN injury and a lack of sharpness on Ohio State’s end.
Additionally, the rushing success for Ohio State was super depressing. I use the more traditional stat (4 yards on 1st down is success) and the imbalance between the 2 teams was laughable. The Buckeyes out-rushed the Irish by almost 100 yards, showed a lot more toughness in the trenches, and their success rate is as good as I’ve ever seen Notre Dame allow.
Final Thoughts
Jim Knowles was such a great hire by Ryan Day. We’ll see how they fare against stronger passing offenses. This could be a little bit more ball control type running Ohio State offense in the Big Ten if they can trust their defense a lot more. They’d better run Michigan off the damn field this year.
Notre Dame’s best starting field position of the night was their own 29-yard line. It was a constant uphill battle that they never really dug themselves out of at all.
Positive news as Blake Grupe looked smooth on his only field goal attempt. I was shocked that Ohio State’s normally steady Noah Ruggles missed his only field goal attempt.
After being told it would be freshman Bryce McFerson on kickoffs, the Irish used walk-on kicker Zac Yoakam.
Chris Tyree had 2 kick returns for just 22 yards. The blocking looked obscenely bad.
Notre Dame introduced 3D “IRISH” bumpers on the back of the helmet a couple years ago in all blue. The same was on the front but it wasn’t in 3D. In Freeman’s debut, they introduced the 3D monogram on the front, kept the script on the back, but used gold lettering with blue outline. It’s tough to see, they should use blue outlined by gold.
I can’t see it.
We try not to be too critical of the players. However, the Correll-Lugg duo on the interior struggles so much and it’s difficult to imagine them playing well against the better defenses on the schedule. Losing Patterson only made it worse. It also seemed like there may have been some miscommunication between the line and Buchner on protections.
How about true freshman Benjamin Morrison playing a ton and acquitting himself really well!
Mike Hall, Jr. didn’t even make our game preview and was one of the best players on the field for Ohio State with a sack, tackle for loss, and quarterback hurry. Their depth up front is pretty legit. Hall was the no. 53 overall recruit from 2021.
The offensive pass interference call on Matt Salerno was tough to swallow. It came right after Notre Dame’s best run of the day on 1st down and completely torpedoed a drive that just entered Ohio State territory. Finishing that drive with 3 straight runs is probably the worst decision of the night for Tommy Rees. It was only 14-10 and the Bucks would go on a 14-play touchdown drive that took up nearly half the 4th quarter to effectively seal the win.
That circus catch by Salerno was outstanding, though!
Whoa.
Ohio State had 10 more first downs than Notre Dame. It’s crazy to think the Irish only had 3 first downs from running the ball. That’s the same amount asthey got from penalties.
Outside of Notre Dame’s 4 biggest pass plays the offense gained 114 yards on 44 plays for a lowly 2.59 yards per play. Yikes.
Does Ryan Day color his beard?
Notre Dame didn’t get much out of the 5 defenders (Foskey, Joseph, Liufau, Ademiolola, Hart) players on defense that were inside our top 10 in our annual countdown of the best on the roster. However, the offense was missing one of their top 10 and I wouldn’t say any of the others inside that top of the list (Mayer, Fisher, Styles, Buchner) played poorly.
No turnovers from Notre Dame is a positive. The defense needed to find a way to force one, though.
The 2022 freshmen to participate: Benjamin Morrison, Jaden Mickey, Junior Tuihalamaka, and Zak Yoakam. Nothing from the offense. I was disappointed not even one shot to Tobias Merriweather.
Notre Dame not standing up well to the physicality of Ohio State is what keeps sticking with me. The deficit at the skill positions we already knew about going into the game. When that got pushed a little further toward the Irish with JSN’s injury the door opened for Notre Dame. It’s too bad Ohio State stood up and closed it. Let’s hope Jarrett Patterson will be healthy soon.
No magic bullets. We still lack enough blue chip talent to overcome one critical injury, like on the O-line. No obvious next man up, and just got wrecked over and over. Makes me wonder what happens if Brandon Joseph gets injured.
What happened to Foskey? Interested in a film breakdown there. No consistent pressure with rushing 4.
That was my own dominant impression/depression: getting progressively more and more out-muscled and out-toughed. Just where MF had said we needed to be going.
Is our D-line overrated or OSU’s O-line underrated?
For our O-line: I have a hunch that when Patterson makes Correll better, that may help make Correll better with Lugg. But to everyone’s point on the Instant Reaction thread, that underlines that our depth is nowhere near where we need to be.
Yeah, too many holes. I was hoping for a reload year, but we’re starting three sophomores on the O-line, and our offense features a young QB throwing to a lot of young receivers. and a walk-on.
Our receiver room reminds me of a perennial frustration with my beloved St. Louis Cardinals. Every year they have 3.5 solid starters, and 1.5 injury risks (one guy you just know won’t be healthy all year, and one guy you’re pretty sure will go down). And seems like every year 2-3 starters go down. This year it was #1, 4, and 5.
If you’re the Cardinals, you can wait until the trade deadline, figure out where your strengths are, and trade that for pitching. This year they picked up two guys who are pitching like #2 starters. If you’re Notre Dame and your #1 and #3 receiver can’t play, you’re hosed, because we don’t have CJ Stroud or Bryce Young making them look good.
Which makes looking a lot harder at transfer portal depth seem like a big miss.
AS I understand it, we have policy issues with undergrad portal transfers, effectively closing us out from effectively using it.
I think Eric was unnecessarily harsh on our defense. It kept us in the game despite an offense that could only muster 48 (!) plays, not many of them effective. Foskey was relatively invisible, since he got no sacks, but as a whole, until they got gassed, the D was winning the game for us and making Stroud look mediocre.
Last thought, the Salerno OPI saved a big INT from happening.
Our defensive depth was supposed to keep the D from getting gassed. Perhaps the offense not being able to stay on the field negated that.
Our offense only played 48 snaps. I realize that is partially because we were milking clock and not snapping until there were only around 8 seconds on the play clock, but still…
Agreed. Momentum shifted in the third quarter and OSU gradually became more dominant up front. By the 4th quarter it was embarrassing how over-matched we were.
Buckner is very difficult to grade in the 2nd half because he had almost no time to make decisions. There wasn’t time for the plays to develop.
I don’t know, a lot of people found it very easy to grade Buckner…
OSU made it clear that from year to year it’s much easier to fix problems with top 50 players than it is with top 300 players.
My guess is the coaches (Rees) looked at what was happening on the field and decided screen passes were not going to work. OSU simply had better athletes to defend those than ND had in players to make them work. When you’re getting handled as badly as our oline was, it’s hard to make anything work on offense. When he’s back, I won’t be surprised to see Patterson at center and one or two younger players at guard. Are we really to hope that Correll, Lugg and Kristofic haven’t reached or neared their ceilings yet ?
Is it possible the staff and beat writers all thought the D Line was going to be dominant because they watched them go up against this horrid O Line all preseason? Woof. The interior O line was bad all game. Josh Lugg better really love college, because based on what I saw, there was no reason for him to come back this year. He was brutal.
Foskey is going to absolutely dominate the Marshal’s on the schedule. But he has to show up against USC and Clemson. We need a game changer on this team, and I don’t see one on the offensive side of the ball.
Michael Mayer reminds me of Jason Witten. You want him on your team. You’re happy he’s on your team. Your opponent wishes they had him on their team. But you don’t have to game plan against him, because he just isn’t quite dynamic enough to beat you on his own. That’s unfortunate, since we don’t seem to have a dynamic gamebreaker anywhere else.
I didn’t know what to expect from Al Golden. Thought he was great last night except for the safety blitz that led to the TD on 3rd and long. Maybe they felt they needed to make something happen on defense, but I would have been very happy to let them take 3 points there. Very puzzling decision amidst a really fantastic game plan and execution to that point.
I don’t know what to think of Tommy as a play caller. He does beautiful things, like stacking Mayer and Batman behind the guard and tackle and have them lead block across the formation. Then he runs the ball on a second and third and long. He calls a play action, with Bauman flying down the seam, then only runs a handful of play actions the rest of the game. If the personnel just don’t fit what he wants to do, he’s at least partly responsible for those recruiting misses. If he’s satisfied with his recruiting, then his play calling isn’t good enough. Either way, I wouldn’t be shocked to see him try to get to the NFL this off-season; but I’d be surprised to see that job actually appear. If it does, hopefully that means he really gets this thing going over the remainder of the season.
I don’t think the media saw any real practice action during August. Some stuff without pads. Lots of stretching. Some drill work. A little red zone work. It’s sad.
Ah got it. Well then maybe everybody got too excited about O Line “improvement” in the 2nd half of last season, when really we just started playing some weak D Lines. Or maybe Patterson really is that essential, and his return will tie everything together. Let’s hope it’s the latter.
I was always very skeptical of our OL all of a sudden becoming between great and elite. The OL became serviceable in pass blocking by the end of last year but still was only average at run blocking.
This year we are starting Alt (a sophomore who played well but only in about 8 games last year), Kristofic (who didn’t get the nod last year at the start of the year and the biggest praise basically was that he didn’t screw things up), Correll (who couldn’t hold on to a starting spot last year), Lugg (who is OK but if you haven’t gone pro after 5 years it tells you something), and Fisher (who looked great in 3 games last year).
Point is that without Patterson we don’t have a legit elite offensive lineman on our roster right now. Perhaps by the end of the year Alt and Fisher can be considered that but being only sophomores with so few games played they are good and have awesome potential but can’t be depended on to dominate at this point.
I think that people have been pumping up Heistand as some savior but the reality is that Kristofic, Correll, and Lugg have some significant athletic limitations that will prevent them from probably ever being able to be elite so I’m just not sure why it was so expected that we were just going to dominate OSU and being able to run the ball at will when largely the same group last year couldn’t run the ball against any decent defenses.
I think that it is time to try out Spindler at a guard spot. He has more potential than either Lugg or Kristofic and will have a couple of games to get his feet wet before we play BYU. Along with the return of Patterson and increased experience for Alt and Fisher we could hopefully make a jump to good OL by then.
Maybe, put Patterson at center, his best position, and a couple younger guys at the guard positions? IDK if that’s too much to ask of the younger guys right now. The Oline needs to be a strength this year. Saturday it surely wasn’t.
Not a bad idea to keep Patterson at center. I’m just not sure we have 2 guys ready to play guard right now. Maybe Carmody or Baker…but I think they are really more tackles so it seems like right now the one young guy who is probably very close to ready to play and has a high ceiling is Spindler.
But, your idea is certainly something to consider.
The Jeff Quinn era looks worse and worse in retrospect, since the hype was that he recruited better than Harry, but the mess at interior O Line the past two years makes he clear he either couldn’t evaluate talent or couldn’t coach it up.
I mean I kind of feel like those narratives are overblown. I mean, Quinn got Fisher and he found and developed Alt. Clearly on the interior we are in a not great spot but both tackles he gets credit for.
Hopefully Spindler is ready to go and Coogan and Scrauth are able to develop this year and be ready to compete next year.
Eric, good write-up as usual. One question. At one point in the telecast there was a shot of “ten 5 stars” who hadn’t committed yet. Does that seem strange or is it to be expected?
Quickly looking at the 247 top 40, there are 12 players not committed. Almost all of those are heavy leans to one school or another. By the list, ND is only in on one (Keely) and that ain’t happening. We are still recruiting Samuel M’Pemba #32 but he’s a heavy Ga. lean. with Miami a possibility. The top prospect we are truly in on is RB Jeremiah Love #87.
I wonder if some of those (maybe even most of them) were from the 2024 class if they were genuinely all uncommitted.
I think there are several uncommitted 23’s. Last I looked Bama was in on 8 uncommitted 5s and there were others.. That was about the time Keely jumped ship.
I believe there is only 12 uncommited 5 stars. It would be a lot to have scheduled precisely the ones who are still uncommitted (esp. when a lot of these visits are scheduled way ahead of time). And it’s clear that OSU is not even remotely in on all 12 of these uncommitted 5 stars.
Yeah, I didn’t understand what they were talking about.
There were definitely parts of the broadcast that felt like OSU ads. I don’t remember that graphic (I missed the 1st half) but at the end, once it was clear they were going to win, I remember feeling like I was watching an OSU recruiting pitch.
Agreed. Kirk was trying to hold his excitement and pleasure back…his OSU ties have to be tough to hide.
Can we please use the following decision tree on KO Returns?
Inside the Five? Fair catch
Inside the Ten? Fair catch
Inside the Fifteen? Fair catch
Anywhere else? Seriously consider a fair catch
Especially if we’re going to continue to not block the opposing team.
Anyone know where you can find snap counts for the games. I have found a couple of spots but they require subscriptions and frankly after paying for my 18stripes subscription I just don’t have any discretionary income leftover.