It was far from pretty. In fact, in the 1st half the ranked vs. ranked matchup looked downright bizarre with turnovers and mental mistakes occurring all over the field. At the end of the game, the Irish were able to come through with a hard fought victory against a growing rival in Louisville. Both the offense and defense sputtered, special teams had a couple gaffes, but just enough plays were made to pick up the win.
I don’t know how many heads will be turned by this win. Still, Notre Dame moves to 4-1 and heads into the bye week looking to get healthy after another rash of injuries plagued the team on Saturday.
QUARTERBACK: B
I was shocked to see only 6 incompletions and a 74% completion rate in this game for Riley Leonard. The way the game was unfolding it never felt like the passing game was in a rhythm or that plays were being made through the air. In fact, the offense spent most of the game averaging in the low 4.0 yards per play range until a couple of plays were made.
Those plays were obviously huge! Leonard hit a wide open Jaden Greathouse for a touchdown early in the game and found Jayden Harrison on a busted play with the late beautiful screen pass to Jeremiyah Love mixed in as explosiveness through the air. That was exactly 100 yards of offense for the Irish–or 35.7% of the total offense on the day.
On other passing attempts, Leonard finished 14 of 20 for 63 yards. This is what we’re exposed to for the most part–an offense that doesn’t have any belief that it can move the ball consistently through the air. As was exhibited on the final non-kneel down offensive drive (2 straight quarterback runs up the middle followed by a rolling out simple short read that was eaten for a loss) the coaching staff doesn’t trust Leonard to make throws and that remains frustrating.
It’s like a true freshman is playing and it’s weird. It should be pointed out that Leonard was just okay as a runner in this game. With the lone sack removed he ran for 58 yards on 12 carries for 4.8 per rush.
RUNNING BACK: C-
The late Love touchdown reception left an awesome taste in everyone’s mouth but also masked what was a pretty poor day for the running backs. Devyn Ford fumbled the opening kickoff and I’m not sure why someone else isn’t being used in this role!? Jadarian Price lost a fumble and I’m pretty sure he didn’t see the field the rest of the game.
It seemed like Louisville made a concerted effort to contain Love and it worked. For someone averaging over 7 yards per carry this year to then be limited to 3.1 yards per carry was a huge win for the Cardinals. They probably thought this would’ve been an easy win if Love was held to such minor production!
WIDE RECEIVER: B
Not a great day for Beaux Collins after a strong start to the season. He wasn’t officially credited with a second drop (the ball was thrown behind him a bit) but 5 targets for 5 yards is not ideal. I wonder if the early season scouting report is really focusing now on shutting down Love and Collins?
The offense did get Jaden Greathouse going a little bit, finally. Unfortunately, after an impressive 3rd down conversion while making a play in space we saw Jordan Faison leave the game with a tweaked ankle injury. He can be a big difference maker, let’s hope he heals up over the bye week.
It was fun to see Harrison wide open late in the game, although I thought he could’ve scored if he didn’t hesitate and try to juke a defender who was already off-balance and flat-footed. It’s fine because Love scored 2 plays later!
TIGHT END: C
I feel bad for this group, they are really struggling to be a big part of the offense besides their blocking roles. We’ve resorted to little dink and dunk passes and keep watching Mitchell Evans catch the ball running towards the sidelines, trying to stop and shrug off a defender at his feet, and get taken down for a 4 yard gain.
Through 5 games, Evans has 82 total receiving yards. This has to be one of the worst starts for a starting tight end at Notre Dame in a really long time. Granted, he was injured to start the season. In the 5th game last year (Ohio State) he exploded for 75 yards.
OFFENSIVE LINE: B-
The line continues to pass block really well and should be praised for giving up only one sack. I didn’t think they did a good job opening running lanes and allowed the offense to get really bogged down for long stretches of the game, though. A couple 2nd half false starts from Rocco Spindler didn’t help things in a really tight game.
Sam Pendleton left the game late after getting rolled up on and was replaced by Sullivan Absher. I don’t know how many more injuries they can take at this unit. Overall, they are exceeding expectations on the season. I see a lot of anger about how bad the line is playing, am I just grading on a curve? There’s just no way this group can play at a super high and consistent level against decent Power 4 teams with quality defenders given the limitations of the passing game.
DEFENSIVE LINE: C-
We saw a couple flashes of dominance from Rylie Mills and Traore with the latter leaving with a leg injury. Too often this unit is invisible and are suffering from an inability to plug holes AND make disruptive plays. There were a season-high 7 tackles for loss against Louisville (yay!) and only 2 of those (1 from Traore, 0.5 for Mills and 0.5 for Tuihalamaka) came from the defensive line.
I fee like at the end of the year we’re going to hear that Howard Cross dealt with a really bad injury.
LINEBACKER: B+
I thought the young kids did a lot of good things! Early on, Louisville was really running the ball pretty well and in the second half it felt like the Irish were doing a better job bottling things up and tackling especially.
I went back and checked…Louisville only gave their running backs 8 carries to start the 2nd half by the time we got well into the 4th quarter. Partly due to the score and time remaining of course, but Jeff Brohm does have a tendency to get way too pass happy.
At the same time, he was mixing in runs late in the game when time was really running out! Anyway, I would’ve thought not throwing the ball 41 times and trying to gash the Irish on the ground would’ve been a better idea. I think their gameplan got blown up in the 1st half by a couple of crippling turnovers.
SECONDARY: B+
There were a couple of mistakes by the secondary, including an unnecessary personal foul by Jordan Clark. You’re having a great season man, why are you head butting someone out there? Maybe this team is going to build a tradition of one dumb personal foul penalty from the secondary every game now?
Tyler Shough put up some numbers and credit to him. He made some excellent throws and Louisville receivers made 2 of the best catches we’ve seen inside Notre Dame Stadium in a long time. I thought the secondary was pretty strong overall and didn’t allow Louisville the opportunity to build any momentum when it was trying to come back in the 2nd half.
Christian Gray didn’t play, Morrison missed a bit of time, and Leonard Moore was truly thrown into the fire and acquitted himself well. This could’ve been so so much worse overall. I really wonder how this game plays out if Moore doesn’t cause that fumble on Shough after the long run while the game was tied 7-7.
NOTES
Is this win a big deal? If I was on preview duty I probably would’ve predicted a loss. Taking this win is definitely preferred! Notre Dame still remains in a weird place, though. We’re not that good, heavily injured, and there aren’t any quality opponents to test this team against until the post-season. Louisville is a pretty good team, although in the grand scheme I’m not sure this will live on as a super great win. The best thing to come out of this is that there are no signs that the players are in disarray after that stinky NIU loss. This is just a really injured team that doesn’t have a competent passing offense.
I love these green jerseys and the shiny gold trim is an incredible touch. I don’t love a program making tens of millions of dollars unable to get white pants with something other than blue logos, though. This was a good example of why there should be a contrasting color rule in the NCAA. If the Irish were wearing white pants (which I think it looked solid overall) then Louisville should have to wear red, black, or gray from their selections.
Notice Louisville uses an Adidas ball and Shuler is wearing an Apple watch.
Notre Dame is +1.75 in yards per play differential so far this season. That feels super high, right!? Especially with this game being a tie (5.2 YPP for both sides) and losing this stat bigly to NIU. Nuking Purdue into space certainly helps a lot.
Riley Leonard has 750 passing yards through 5 games, a perfect average of 150 yards per game.
Louisville is probably kicking themselves for losing this game, I think. Notre Dame only had 11 first downs! That was the fewest since only 10 were created by the Irish during the 2016 hurricane game at NC State. I wonder how far you’d have to go back (cfbstats stop at 2016) to see a Notre Dame win with 12 or fewer first downs?
Also, Notre Dame was 2 of 10 on 3rd downs (we can’t pass the ball).
Can we get Max Hurleman some reps in the slot? He looks feisty on punt returns. I need to see what he can do with one screen pass, please.
Did you know that Notre Dame hasn’t run more than 70 plays on offense in a game since the bowl game against South Carolina to close out 2022? Today was a season-low (and 2023-24 low) of only 54 plays for the Irish.
Early in the 4th quarter the offense ran true freshman Aneyas Williams on 3rd & long then ran Leonard up the middle from the Louisville 46-yard line on 4th down. Too aggressive for everyone’s tastes, especially when it’s a super conservative play-call, right?
Now we’re off to the bye week!
Collins 2nd drop illustrates his problem…unless the ball is thrown perfectly he doesn’t make any effort.
Pendleton went out and was replaced by Pendleton? What in the glitch?
i’d give most units lower grades than you did…especially the lines, but this team just won’t stop shooting itself in the foot. i was pleasantly surprised to see them quickly recover from the opening fumble, but the 2nd big mistake…the Love fumble seems to have impacted the entire game. There are no good reasons for ND to not have scored 40+ today with the way the 1st quarter went…and no excuse to give up 3 TDs.
Absher in for Pendleton.
I mean they gave up two fumbles inside their own 25, including a 9 yard drive, seem like pretty reasonable reasons to give two of the touchdowns. Also tyler shough threw some dimes.
Also price fumbled, not love
Thanks for the correction on Price. But his fumble was part of my “no good reason” bit…without it the game might’ve been very, very different.
Air try I took it as criticism of the defense but really it was just a statement on the overall allowance of three touchdowns due to terrible turnovers
I thought the first half was delightfully nuts.
Also all the talk in the comments last week about how this team is going to get murdered if we soft-schedule our way into the playoffs looks pretty accurate!
Total agreeance with your first comment — at least until RL got shaken up. (More in a separate post.) But it was kinda crazy fun.
To your second comment, with respect, but with a dose of optimism… maybe there’s a way we can actually get better as the season wears on,and play decently in a first round playoff game. Like:
1, we are injured like Eric points out, and let’s say some of those will heal up (if of course we don’t keep getting injured — it’s all HCMF’s fault for his ridiculous bragging at the end of fall camp about how healthy we were, ugh.)
2, specifically, if RL can heal up AND get better. Denbrock is trying goodness knows. It’s a question of turning flashes of good into more consistent good.
3, the O-line keeps improving.
It all starts with Stanford!
Serious question because I’m curious: What do folks here think the score would be if we played Bama or Georgia?
I’d say like 30-3.
Somewhat incredibly SP+ implies that we should only be 4.5-point dogs to Georgia on a neutral field. (8-point dogs to Bama.)
I think with our starting defense we’d stand a chance of limiting them somewhat. I just have no faith in scoring any points, though. And the injury gods are laughing their heads off at the idea of ‘our starting defense’ as they continue taking out one after another with sniper rifles.
lol slippery balls
big win for baylor
Just no talk about brohm game management at the end. Just horrendous, they burned 2 minutes Including a delay of game, just to throw a semi prayer with 45 seconds left without gaining a first down. If I’m comparing 10 men and this, honestly this was more egregious. I’ve definitely entertained the thought of brohm coming to ND but i’m probably good.
In todays greta broadcasting with jason garrett while talking about the one two punch of love and price, he talked about the thunder of price and he loves to run between the tackles. it’s like he hasn’t seen price run this year. he is literally trying to pop everything out side
If I were a Louisville fan I would be apoplectic about Brohm’s timeout usage through the second half and then his clock management at the end. Worse than anything Freeman has done in that regard, and that’s saying something.
Jason Garrett is somehow worse at announcing than he was at coaching.
Garrett could not have been worse if he tried. He had a lower conversion rate than ND did on his pre-snap “predictions” and then would comically have to walk through whatever play unfolded in the exact opposite way he had suggested.
The call on the off-setting OPI/DPI play was one of the most bizarre things. We listened to him say it was clear DPI, that our corner was holding the receiver’s jersey, while watching in slow motion the exact reverse happen: their receiver drag the corner down by his jersey while the corner’s arms were flailing in the air. It was almost Orwellian in its suggestion that were reject the evidence of our eyes. It was just so strange, with no good explanation outside of him just being bad at the job.
Also I think I like denbrock as OC, he seems to do a really good job with both hands tied behind his back. He didn’t recruit leonard, leonard had already committed when Gerard parker left ND. Denbrock seems to routinely put leonard in positions to make plays and the harrison love sequence were all him
I remember one intelligent thing Doug Flutie said was that a great OC can scheme two big plays a game: one in the first half based on film, one in the second half based on what the D is doing in the first half.*
The Love screen seemed to be that play, Leonard had been rolling out right all game, they set it up perfectly, Louisville totally off guard. I think Denbrock has a LOT more of those waiting, in the best case we scrape through to USC with no more losses and he has about six of them saved for the Trojans.
*I still remember the play, beautiful roll out to the right with the QB (Book?), all the receivers on the right side crossing, the TE was lined up as a halfback on the right, he released straight upfield then drifted off to the left. Nobody within 20 yards of the TE, Book turned back left and threw almost without looking because he’d read the coverage.
I think you are talking about the Alize Mack reception against Stanford?
https://www.nbcsports.com/watch/broken-coverage-leads-to-easy-notre-dame-touchdown
That pass was one of my favorite ND plays of the “modern era” (basically BK 2.0 post-2016). The other is when we lined up two halfbacks at the goal line against Syracuse in 2018, fake pitch into a “fullback” hand-off. 2:09 here. Improbably, both were Chip Long calls.
https://youtu.be/11hLiWeGVPM?si=vzb1pa2rnkigoGN8
Funny, that fake pitch play was our go-to third and long in junior high football. Worked almost every time. That, and play action seam pass to the TE behind the LBs and in front of the safeties.
That’s an interesting comment from Flutie. I’ve been thinking about the differences between Rees and Denbrock. Rees was able scheme those plays into a game but it seemed like he never used much variation to do that, and if that play didn’t work he had nowhere else to go. Denbrock seems to use a variety of plays from the same/similar formations to set up the big play, and is concurrently working on setting up multiple big plays.
I’m not a huge X’s and O’s guy so I could be wrong, it just looks to me like this is the case.
There’s a reason Denbrock is employed as an OC right now and Rees isn’t.
The II guys in their Instant Analysis made quite a big point about when Riley got dinged and came out of the game in the 2Q, and was never the same after:
— he didn’t run at all the rest of the 2nd Q.
— his designed runs in the 2nd half were less good and less frequent, I believe.
— he himself talked about healing up over the bye week.
Yes, he’s tough, but yes, like many of you have been saying, running QBs gonna get banged up.
BTW, concur with Eric’s point about Howard Cross must be playing through something pretty serious.
We beat a top 15 team by 7 playing our I don’t even know what string O-line by the end, without two of our four top cornerbacks, with our third string Vyper, Faison out, Cross seemingly not at 100%…
Credit to HCMF and Chad Bowdoin for building the depth that on top of those injuries and our best WR having a bad game, we have the depth to still grind out a win. Heck, Oben actually had three tackles, as disappointing as he’s been, he’s depth.
I’m not sure Louisville is kicking themselves. It was winnable for them, but they had two amazing diving catches along with Shough dropping some dimes like the first TD. And yeah, he fumbled after his long run, but he got lucky on the Morrison almost-forced fumble. Louisville got a FG out of that, that was a 10 point swing. If ND is up 31-14, How is Louisville going to put up three scores?
MotS self-reply.
Last, Rendell had a chance to boom the last punt and make it a lot harder for Louisville. He only averaged 41.5 yards, partly because he did put his first three inside the 20, but a massive field flip on that last one would have helped us all breathe a little easier. On the bright side, we hit our only FG with no drama. Solid B for special teams?
I think the bye week presents Freeman with an important choice and an opportunity.
He can accept this team for what it is — heavily injured and not very good aside from the DBs — and start building toward 2025. We can roll in to 2025 with the offense having half a season under their belts already rather than starting from square one for the fourth time in four years. Start Carr, play Leonard situationally if we have to.
I know I’m a broken record on this, but trying to brute force a playoff appearance — and that is all it will be, an appearance — with this team is a short-sighted mistake.
It’s an interesting thought but in reality there’s no chance it happens at this point, and realistically it probably wouldn’t even happen had we lost to Louisville. The team almost certainly doesn’t realize (or doesn’t believe) they’re not very good and would be generally uncompetitive against the best teams, and the coaches (particularly position coaches who would be sacrificial lambs in a 9-3 or worse season, deserving or not) presumably think it’s in their best interest to win as many games this season as possible.
A more positive/less cynical case is maybe we can backdoor our way into the playoffs via a weak schedule, get lucky playing a passing team in the first round, and win a low-scoring defensive struggle. Kind of sad that’s the absolute ceiling for the “most talented Notre Dame team in a while”, but it is what it is.
Yeah, I know there’s virtually no chance my suggestion happens. But I just hope people aren’t surprised when next year’s offense looks like a bunch of guys who have never played together before.
There’s not a chance in Hades that they give up on this year yet. Nor should they. That said, Eric’s comment on the game plan looking like we are using a freshman QB, has me wondering if a 2QB plan might give defenses more to worry about. With a week off this might be the time to work it in. Stanford might be a good opponent to try it against too. Is it really that far fetched of an idea ?
It reminds me a bit of 2006 when Weis would leave Brady Quinn in blowouts to rack up stats chasing a Heisman that had already been lost in Week 3 against Michigan. As a result, we went in to 2007 with no QBs with meaningful game experience.
And we all know how that went.
Except that in the only blowout, Angeli got a lot of work. My idea, and I’m sure it’ll have problems, is that maybe you can make this team better, while gaining some experience for a younger QB. This team right now, won’t have many more blowouts, I’d guess.
I’m all aboard the 2-QB system idea, but the thing they absolutely must do going forward is if they are not committed to running Leonard full steam ahead like the second half of NIU or the middle of the game, they just need to take him out. They need to acknowledge to themselves, and Leonard needs to be understanding, that he is for all intents and purposes an option quarterback and if he can’t run (or even if his running is limited) he is a pure value-negative player and shouldn’t be playing. .
For some reason this didn’t show up on the front page for me, I had to go digging around for it*. Does anyone else have that problem?
* People acting like we had lost the game instead of covered the spread
Sometimes I have to randomly refresh the page on my phone to get new articles/comments, even though I just clicked to go to the site or the comments on the page. Then the new stuff loads.
Same here. I assume it is a cookies-esque situation where the web hosting service that 18S uses is asking your browser to load the most recently visited version of the site, for the sake of speed, which works less well when the site is frequently updated.
Fire Murtaugh
I just got the in-article ads removed a man can only do so much!
I am getting signed out of my profile every day, anyone else getting that too? It is annoying.
Yes, I get that too. But on the plus side I don’t have to refresh the page a billion times for it to let me log in.
i can’t remember the last time i came to the site to find myself still logged in…probably been a couple years
That only happens to me every 2-3 weeks.
That’s because you’ve haven’t signed up for 18 Stripes ++
i never got my bonus gift when i signed up the first time so i cancelled my subscription
Just a random thought going into the bye, but there’s a timeline where our O-line left to right is Blake Fisher-Wagner-Craig-Knapp-Jagusah. Still young overall, but the upside talent on that line is scary.
I could see Jagusah being moved inside with Will Black grabbing a tackle spot very quickly.
There are not going to be enough spots next year for the amount of talent a healthy O-line room will have. Lambert – Jagusah – Craig – Knapp – Wagner leaves Pendleton, Schrauth, Spindler, Absher, Black, and 20+ game starter Coogan, who was very good this week, by the way, without a spot.
Couple of random thoughts I wanted to highlight… I think Louisville is easily the most complete team we’ve faced so far. Brohm is one of the best playcallers in the country. Their skill position talent on offense is likely the best we’ll face outside of USC, particularly in the speed they can bring all over the place. DE Ashton Gillotte is an All-American candidate and, with due respect to Nic Scourton, probably the best DE we’ll see all year. They’re not Georgia or Ohio State but they’re legitimately decent. Holy crap, the injuries. Our preseason OL was supposed to be Jagusah, Pendleton, Craig, Schrauth, and Wagner. It’s now Knapp, Absher?, Coogan, Spindler, and Wagner. Tuihalamaka was probably the fourth option at that DE spot – behind Botelho, Traore, and Burnham – and had to play almost an entire three quarters there. Freshman Loghan Thomas go We desperately need Rubio back to spell Cross and Mills more and to shore up the middle against the inside run in a way that Hinish, for all his willingness, just can’t do. Speaking of, Cross very clearly isn’t 100% and is gutting it out for the team. Warrior. Leonard isn’t 100% either. Kid is tough as nails but I think that left shoulder is maybe the happiest joint on the team during the bye week. Gray didn’t play at all and Morrison went to the locker room at some point and I don’t think came back. With Gray hurting and Mickey out of the picture, that meant true frosh Moore started for Gray. When Morrison got hurt Clark slid out from the nickel and Heard came down to nickel for Clark. And the secondary didn’t miss a beat. PAY MIKE MICKENS. Kiser seems to be banged up to some degree as well – he came out in the second half and didn’t come back in, and I don’t think it was performance-related particularly given his role as the QB of the defense. Due in large part to all of that injury mess, at one point in the second half we had four true freshmen on the field together for meaningful play: Moore, KVA, Bryce Young, and Loghan Thomas. Wow. Double wow: Moore and X Watts co-led the defense with 76 snaps. Kid’s first start, and a true freshman, and he’s in on every defensive play of the game. Louisville had 14 points basically gifted to them by mistakes, and still all three touchdowns were low-percentage plays inches away from either being broken up or just being incomplete – they basically drew an inside straight three times in a row. Credit to them, but it shouldn’t take away from what overall was another very good defensive performance despite the MASH unit. Matt Freeman at ISD noted that Jaylen Sneed was “visibly upset” and “left the field immediately after the game and well before the alma mater,” presumably because he got 12 snaps while Drayk Bowen got 56 and KVA and Ausberry each got 38. I… Read more »
Agree with most of this, just two notes on the injuries:
Thanks!
Oh yeah, one more thing… How in the bloody hell was that not a flag for fair catch interference? And how did their 300 pound DL not get flagged for flinging himself on top of Leonard after he was already down?
I can deal with refs being imperfect, even noticeably so. But those two non-calls were ridiculous.
The fair catch interference call miss was quite big too – them having to go 22 yards to score instead of 7 after the fumble would have been helpful.
We need to get out of the ACC deal. It’s done nothing but screw us over.
I think this also shows how secretly bad the recruiting had gotten by the end of the Kelly Era. We have to rely on a ton of underclassmen and keep having to bring in transfers we hope can play quarterback.
Maybe every fanbase says this, maybe the numbers bear that out, but I really, really does feel like we whiff on a disproportionately high number of our top recruits, the (rare) 5-stars and top ranked 4-stars.
This game showcased the difference between Kelly and Freeman teams and exactly why I don’t understand why some fans don’t want to see what ND can do in the playoffs. The injuries this team has had so far this season are wild. 3 OL and maybe a 4th are out. Down multiple DLs, starting CB, true freshman plays 72 snaps and Louisville had 1 sustained drive that ended in points. Everything else was off of shortfields.
Games like this under the last regime I just don’t think we would have pulled out. Up against it and needing a W to keep the season going, fumble the opening kickoff in the rain and they gutted out a big win. 2013 OU, 2014 ASU, 2015 Stanford, 2017 Miami/Stanford, 2019 Michigan (could’ve ended Harbaugh that day), 2021 Cincy.
Leonard is just flat out a bad QB. He looks like he has the yips and is trying to place every single ball so perfectly. He’s so slow getting the ball out too, it kills any momentum the player might have to make a play after the catch.
Honestly, in a weird way I think all the injuries and young guys or guys who the staff don’t trust as much is going to be a blessing for this team over the next 5 weeks. With these young guys the staff is going to have to drive that urgency every play and every week which will hopefully help with what appears to be CMF’s tendency to let up on the gas against inferior teams.
Jeff Brohm noted the crowd was a major disturbance for Louisville’s playcalling (specifically on 3rd and 4th down)
First time I’ve heard a coach actually mention ND Stadium that way
First time since the late 80s!
The II guys were mentioning Brohm wearing 2 hats, play caller and HC and how that can affect clock management. Perhaps he needed an excuse for his goofs.
Yeah, I think an excuse. There are tons of HCs that call plays at all levels. Andy Reid comes to mind immediately as being renowned for terrible clock management, but I never heard anyone blame it on the fact that he was also calling plays. Sure is nice to coach Mahomes, really takes away the need to worry about the clock.
I saw he said that. Looked almost like another excuse. One of the big problems with our crowd noise is that we haven’t been peaking BEFORE the snap, and though the big board guy knows this, our band can screw it up and often does by playing the Celtic Chant at the wrong time, which of course automatically silences the 12,000 noisiest fans at a key moment.
I know at least one of you was at the game — was this favorable crowd noise a thing?