Marcus Freeman may have stumbled upon the ideal Spring Game format Saturday as the Offensive Blues triumphed over the defensive Golds 76-31 in front of 40,000 spectators on a beautiful spring day in South Bend. The game was surprisingly legible and smooth, even with intermittent 7-on-7 freakshow offerings interrobanging the full squad action.

Caveats apply for all Spring Game takeaways, but nevertheless, here we go.

 

#1 – You Can See the High Ceiling With CJ Carr at the Helm

There’s an old coaching sawhorse that goes something like this: Good defense is when you stop the run. Perfect defense is when you stop the run from two-high. Carr shows tantalizing glimpses in the above highlights of really turning the geometry of the field on Notre Dame’s favor.

  • The dude’s mechanics are, I would dare to say, Clausenesque. That ball is high and tight and when he decides to go it comes out cleanly and with real, well-arced velocity to a downfield target. (I always have thought Clausen was overrated personally, but he threw a damn pretty ball)
  • In this game, at least, he displayed that most elusive and precious quality for a QB: intuition and a sense of timing for downfield throws. This is so rare that even very good college QBs (looking at you Ian Book) never figure it out. Look at all three of his deep throws and there is a ton of calculus going on: overall scheme vis a vis defender leverage and positioning vis a vis who the receiver is vis a vis the actual throw.
  • Very thin evidence here, but there were a few moments when he seemed to exhibit Ian Book-type agility. No idea as to his long speed but on the few occasions where he tried to run it seemed like he could get up to speed quickly and change direction well.

Thinking of how all the pieces might fit together, there is a lot to like here. Please observe this poorly/hastily drawn powerpoint slide:

Now, the real key assumptions here are as follows:

  • Greathouse becoming a legitimately, national-level dangerous downfield guy in the CFP was anything but a mirage
  • Faison continues to improve

Rairdon and Fields have shown enough to feel comfortable pencilling them in as “plus” guys.

Take all those elements and add in the stuff Carr showed Saturday and the dynamics get damn attractive as to what the defense has to do with their safeties.  Can the defense get to merely be “Good” in order to slow you down (e.g., stop the run by bringing another hat into the box) or do you have the horses and cohesion to make the defense play perfectly in order to stop you?

Drop a safety down, and you are leaving one of Faison/Greathouse/Fields single-covered, with a QB that can and will get it to them quickly and accurately downfield. Keep them both high and you now have 6 defenders in the box against 6 blockers, so unless someone wins clean up front (or you’ve got a war daddy 2-gapper on the DL) you are giving Jeremiyah Love a lot of room to work with.

The dynamic answer from a defense would be to start the safeties deep but have them trigger downhill aggressively on the run to more or less get the best of both worlds. The risk assessment there comes down to how much you trust your corners and nickel to hold up for the 1-3 seconds it might take the safety to fully assess whether they’re seeing play action or a bona fide run play. Moreover, Love and Price have speed such that you really don’t want to risk your back line players being hasty with their angles as the come downhill.

Like I said, it’s tantalizing. If Carr is what he appears to be, ND should have a lot of success against 4 down teams.

Here’s the Catch, Though

Or, here are the catches:

  1. Not every team plays 4-down. 3-safety looks have come to be more and more en vogue and are generally the bane of young college QBs (just ask Gunnar Stockton/Conner Weigman/Drew Allar, et al.)
  2. This geometric advantage is not available to you in the red zone. Angles are compressed and the challenges become almost totally different.

 

For these reasons, I think it’s absolutely vital that Freeman & co. prevail on Steve Angeli to stick around. He’s a veteran. He kn0ws how to work well within the offense. Perhaps most importantly, he’s a big, strong athlete and can, in the red zone, put the QB inside run game on the table in a way that Minchey or Carr probably cannot.

 

So there you have it, my endorsement is for a Carr/Angeli battery. Especially early on in the season I’d look at having a red zone package for Angeli.

 

 

Other Random B/G Game Thoughts

  • I hate to sound like I’m down on Minchey, because I’m not! He had some great throws in the B/G game, including a great toss on the move following an outside zone play fake. That said, the “sack” he took on 4th and 5 on his first series was brutally bad. He had his WR open and just didn’t rip it.
  • The 2nd string WRs looked pretty lost. Saldate’s route on Carr’s interception was awful. There sure doesn’t look to be much of a drop off between Smith/Saldate (who have been in the program for 3 years) and Richardson/Buress/Bettis, who just got to campus.
  • Total fashion fail for Chris Ash in his first appearance on the NBC cameras. Undershirt bleed through, not what we need out of that position.
  • Our efforts at playing zone didn’t look terribly fluid. Lots of work to be done on carrying and handing off guys between the 2nd and 3rd levels
  • That said, terrific signs vis a vis the defensive backfield with Hobbs and Talich flashing (among others).  Hard to see ND needing to stop the run from two-high much when they have so many good cover guys.

Other stuff? What did everyone think?