Professional. Efficient. Clean. The opening test of the season wasn’t an especially tough one, but Notre Dame still studied and passed with flying colors in a dominant win over Navy in Dublin. Sam Hartman led an near-perfect offensive attack that operated with extreme efficiency and distributed touches fairly evenly among the veteran and new faces at the skill positions. The Irish defense took advantage of the early lead, shut down explosive plays, and capitalized as soon as the Midshipmen fell off schedule.

The EPA over time graph shows a fairly ideal gator mouth, the best representation of a dominant game. For the numbers below garbage time is excluded – this starts when Notre Dame scored to go up 35-0 in the 3rd quarter. As a result 38% of plays were thrown out, although the Irish still dominated these plays despite taking their foot slightly off the gas (Yards/play in garbage time: ND 4.67, Navy 2.00).

Stats from a few excellent sources – College Football Data, Game On Paper, and often referencing SP+ and FEI numbers. If you get lost, check out this handy advanced stats glossary here or reach out in the comments.

Senior Citizen Sam Hartman Blesses the Offense

This is the kind of thing that advanced stats can’t possibly account for. Sam Hartman has seen everything. At 24, he’s almost three full years older than in-state colleague and starting Colts QB Anthony Richardson. He’s in his Ph.D phase of playing high-level college football (and thankfully not literally taking Ph.D courses in South Bend, he needs time to study film and recover). Hartman’s ability to study, plan and react is in an entirely different category than any QB who played for the Irish last year. And that difference was on full display against Navy – a team that flustered the ND offense last year but couldn’t manage a stop until garbage time of this year’s edition.

Hartman’s numbers were absurd – a 75% passing success rate, 11.4 yards per drop back, and successes on 5/6 passing downs before garbage time (the one failure the early drop by Tobias Merriweather on 2nd and 10). He spread the ball around in his Irish debut, with no receiver seeing more than four passing targets (Jaden Thomas and Chris Tyree tying for the lead). The accuracy was as-advertised, and the decision making was sparkling. The only missing ingredient was a deep bomb, and saving those for another day feels exceedingly reasonable (the near-TD to Merriweather was also close).

The Rushing Attack Crushes the Assignment Too

Notre Dame’s running numbers lit up the stat sheet too – 7.8 yards per carry on a 78% (!) success rate. The offensive line looked dominant in Pat Coogan and Rocco Spindler’s starting debuts, and remember this Navy defense was 6th in FBS in yards per carry (44th in EPA/rush) last season and returned a ton of continuity. Audric Estime pounded the ball, and the stable of backups each flashed impressively in their limited touches (Sidebar: Can we please get more creative for a multiple-pronged rushing attack than “X-headed Monster” on the telecast? If you have a great nickname idea, I will help push it.)

Without reading too much into one game, the theory that Hartman + the ND running game would amplify each other has legs. Gerad Parker also deserves a lot of credit – the offense was prepared for Navy’s defensive curveballs, and the near-50/50 split of runs and passes combined with varying tempo seemed to keep the Midshipmen off balance.

Are the lack of explosive plays a concern? No, and if they weren’t reasonably on watch from the preseason (simply building off last year’s numbers and looking at the roster) it’d be absurd to even mention it. The Irish reeled off a slew of “chunk” plays of the more moderate variety – 17 of 38 plays (44.7%) before garbage time went for 10+ yards! If the efficiency declines significantly – both on a per-play and per-drive basis – as competition toughens, then it will justifiably be time for the explosiveness concerns to go under the microscope. But at present, it’s a little greedy to even nitpick the lack of a super-long touchdown.

Limiting explosives with long fields suffocates the new Navy offense

Disclaimer: This Navy offense may have real issues. The QB position may be weaker than usual, and there’s a tough combination with a lack of explosive personnel and transition into an expanded new offensive scheme. But regardless of degree of difficulty, Al Golden’s unit deserves credit for a disciplined and very effective first outing in 2023.

Like the offense, it wasn’t the flashiest performance – no turnovers despite three Navy fumbles, a relatively low havoc rate, and a couple sacks that came when the game was out of hand. But the Irish defense did all of the critical things well, holding the Midshipmen to a long gain of 14 yards and only three 10+ yard gains on the 30 plays before garbage time. Since Notre Dame had a scoring chance on every possession, this forced Navy to string together long drives, which proved challenging for the Middies especially as it became evident they’d need touchdowns to stay competitive.

The Middies success rate was a respectable 43% – around average in FBS. But with the lack of explosive plays, Navy averaged just over 4 yards per play, and the Irish were patient defensively waiting for a miscue or chance to throw the option off schedule. And when they forced those chances, Notre Dame capitalized, allowing Navy just one successful play on six passing down opportunities.

On To Tennessee State

After a near-perfect start, the Irish will return home for a relatively quick turnaround and hosting Tennessee State. This game should be leisurely – SP+ spits out a 51-0 projected score – so the critical goals are to stay healthy, get as many players snaps in the game as possible, and ideally boost the confidence of anyone still in need (Merriweather, the tight end room, players in the secondary who are bored against Navy).

It will be interesting to see how long the starters play, especially on offense – Hartman and Estime are definitely in early-season awards watch territory and stayed in deep into the second half against Navy. I’d expect some fairly vanilla offense as Gerad Parker focuses on executing the basics well and keeps the creativity in the bag until the following week at NC State.