No positional group escaped harsh criticism from the 4-8 garbage of a season Notre Dame put together in 2016. The run game in particular was accused of taking a hefty step back from the preceding year when the Prosise/Adams/Kizer trio burst on to the scene for an exciting season on the ground.
However, there’s a chance the 2016 run game was a victim of enormous hype (No. 1 offensive line in the country pre-season remember that junk?) more than just being poor. And then, it just got dragged down the drain in the 8 losses suffered during the season.
Run Success Definition
A play counts as a success if it gains 40% of yards on first down, 60% of yards on second down, and 100% of yards on third or fourth down. If the team is behind by more than a touchdown in the fourth quarter, the benchmarks switch to 50%/65%/100%. If the team is ahead by any amount in the fourth quarter, the benchmarks switch to 30%/50%/100%.
2016 Rushing Stats
Adams, 158 attempts, 933 yards, 5.91 average, 5 TD
Folston, 77 attempts, 334 yards, 4.34 average, 2 TD
Williams, 39 attempts, 200 yards, 5.13 average, 3 TD
Is it really possible the 2016 run game was in the same neighborhood as the year before? You may be surprised!
Run Success (2016)
| Player | 1st/2nd + | 1st/2nd – | 3rd/4th + | 3rd/4th – | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adams | 75 | 61 | 16 | 6 | 57.5% |
| Folston | 36 | 32 | 5 | 4 | 53.2% |
| Williams | 18 | 18 | 1 | 2 | 48.7% |
Adams Persists
Josh Adams’ rushing average fell by 1.31 yards from his freshman season. For most players that’s a death blow to remaining a competent running back. But remember, Adams was 12th nationally in rushing average among qualifying running backs two years ago and he still almost put up 6 yards per carry as a sophomore.
Whether it was due to no Will Fuller being around, or a weaker offensive line, or Adams being banged up he didn’t break as many long runs. The good news is that Adams’ run success rate only fell 1.9% from 2015. This gives Adams the 2nd and 3rd best run success rate among any Irish running back since 2010 who carried the ball at least 25 times in a season.
Another positive sign is that Adams flipped his 3rd/4th down success from just 1 of 5 as a freshman to a very impressive 16 of 22. He could be a very special player. I don’t say this lightly but there’s a decent chance that Adams is Notre Dame’s best player in 2017 and not just on offense.
Folston Clocks Out
Tarean’s season got off to such a bad start. He had 13 unsuccessful runs (36.1% of his unsuccessful runs on the season) in the opener at Texas with just 5 successful runs. In a game lost in overtime this was a back-breaker. For all of the coverage that the quarterback flip-flopping got putting so much on Folston in his first game back from injury in that Texas heat was a real head scratcher, especially since he never really got the chance to prove himself for the rest of the season.
Still, Folston recovered into the runner he always was nearly always floating around the 50% run success mark in most games before a 10 of 13 night against Army finally erased the big hole he created at Texas.
Larger Sample Size (Barely) for Dexter
In terms of raw percentage Dexter Williams had the 3rd best run success rate of the Kelly era as a true freshman. He also only carried the ball 21 times and made most of his hay against bad teams in his limited opportunities.
Williams almost doubled his carries as a sophomore but still didn’t carry the ball all that much. He’s already going to be a junior this fall and hasn’t carried the ball more than 8 times in a single game yet. Against any decent Power 5 teams, Dexter hasn’t run the ball more than 3 times yet.
The short of it is that we still don’t know all that much about Dexter. His success rate fell a shocking 13.2% as a sophomore it’s just I’m not sure how much to take away from that when he’s really only been featured against some of Notre Dame’s worst opponents.
Other Fun Notes
I remarked in the previous installment of this series that 2015 was the only truly explosive run game of the Kelly era. I wasn’t lying ya’ll. The Irish had 11 fewer rushes of 20+ yards in 2016 falling from tied-22nd nationally to tied-76th in the country.
A sign that the Stanford Regression™ could maybe possibly pretty please happen next year is that their defense has been quietly not that great anymore. After a few years of dominating Notre Dame’s ground game the Irish are 23 of 35 with running back success rate over the last 2 years. With no Solomon Thomas next year this could portend very good things.
For 2016, there were 2 more sacks given up in 1 fewer game, the overall rushing average fell by nearly 1.2 yards, and the team averaged almost 45 fewer yards per game than the year before. Yet, running back success rate only fell by 0.7% overall. What does it all mean?
To me, it means the run game was quietly decent to pretty good for most of the time in a season where the team trailed too much and/or knew the defense wasn’t good enough to ever set the backs ups for a lot of success. The opponent defenses also weren’t all that intimidating. I wouldn’t expect a massive breakout for 2017 when we know so little about two of the top three tailbacks but there are plenty of encouraging signs for a baseline good-to-very-good campaign coming up especially if Josh Adams gets better and stays healthy.
To me, I thought Adams was fine in 2016, even with the statistical drop. Not as many huge plays but as mentioned between the injuries, weaker o-line (and questionable play calls too), I don’t put a ton on him. He’s a good player that will breakthrough if given the chances needed and still is a home run threat to score on any given play. No worries here about him, whatsoever.
Really feel bad that Folston was never the same on the field after his injury. Shame. Williams is a beast, can’t wait to see him get more touches.
Not to get too NDN but bring me the 2 TE formations Long has promised, an experienced o-line and skilled RB’s and the 2017 version of this series (a fun read, btw) has the potential to be among the best of the bunch. Let’s hope, anyways.
Thanks, there will be one more recap post for this series next week or so.
I’m not sure of your wording but anyway I think Adams has definitely had a break through already. If he rushes for 1,000 he’ll already be 6th all-time in rushing yards at Notre Dame. That’s pretty crazy given he’s not running the ball a ton compared to other guys on that list.
My guess is that Wimbush won’t run nearly as much as Kizer did, so that might mean more opportunities for Adams and Williams to run free. I’m not really one of those who thinks we need to be running 80% of the time every game, but I think we should consider running a heck of a lot more against a certain academy team (did someone say Navy?) to wear down their defense and avoid 3rd down incomplete passes that force ND to punt.
How much Wimbush runs should be interesting. We may never see as many QB runs as we did with Zaire/Kizer because they were used so much in short-yardage.
From 2010-14 the running backs average 347 carries per season. That fell to 285 over the last two years. Kizer ate up so many carries. But he was mostly effective.
For Wimbush the goal may be to get a handful more 20 to 30 yard runs on the season compared to Kizer and not use him nearly as much in short-yardage.
If I set the O/U of Wimbush carries at 7.5 per game would everyone take the under? It’s going to be close!
I’m not sure if I would take the under – I guess it depends on how much option play is used by Long this year. I definitely agree that Kizer was an effective short yardage bulldozer, while Wimbush seems to have more of a finesse style.
Yeah, Kizer and Wimbush definitely have different running styles. With an extra three inches and 20 some pounds, Kizer is more suited to being a bulldozer than Wimbush, who has better speed and acceleration (at least when playing against UMass).
Adams was fine, he put up the third most successful year after all. I think the run game suffered because of the lack of a meaningful second back. Williams and Jones should be able to provide that this year.
I still think the problem with the run game is that we are still not very good at getting the yard or two when everyone knows it is coming. You drive for show and putt for dough. We don’t putt very well, and haven’t under Kelly. There is probably a reason that we threw the ball in the hurricane all the time. There was no confidence in the run game to win the game, particularly in a scenario where the defense would be cheating for the run. We run well, and explosively, when the defense can’t cheat. Hopefully, Long’s RPO will give us that.
As for Navy, you beat them by stopping them and scoring. That takes them out of their ball control offense. If you make then inefficient, you win. Otherwise, you play a game of few possessions and play the game they want. Of course, you win every game by being more efficient with the ball than the other team, not TOP, not run yards, not balance.
Everybody loves TOP, and Navy does especially because it means you are not scoring on them, but it really tells you little. If it guaranteed wins, we would want John Goodman (Mr. Fair Catch) back on punts rather than Sanders because it would guarantee a longer field and the chance to chew up more clock. I don’t think anyone objects when Sanders takes a punt or kick to the house even though it may cost us several minutes of possession and force the defense right back on the field.
I’d like to do more research but everything I’ve looked at shows we’re plenty fine to pretty good getting the tough yards. Lots and lots of misperception about that.
I think the huge issue is that we’re not explosive at all and Kelly has never run consistently enough to change the perception about the tough yards.
I fully believe if you’re successful on 50 of 100 ‘tough yard’ attempts for 50% versus successful on 35 of 65 attempts for 53.8% that the first is perceived as better. The 15 more successful runs override the 20 more unsuccessful runs.
I don’t doubt this is perceived as better for the top teams who have good to great defenses.
If you don’t trust your defense to keep you in games should you rely more on your non-explosive run game? I think for some you should because running more helps the defense, builds grit, etc. etc. but those norms are slowly changing over time as data proves it not to work very well.
It’s both a blessing and a curse for Kelly, IMO. He’s cultivated a good enough ground game where he leaves some people thinking we should run more but then the run game is never great enough and he’s moved away from it quickly with decent enough success (do we ever come back and make it a game against Clemson pounding the ball, for example?) that it leaves others thinking we should do the thing (passing) that’s more explosive and better at scoring points.
Eric, completely concur about how much fun this series has been, instructive as well, looking forward to the wrapup. Thanks!
To a couple of the above posts, I thought Chip Long was very explicit (BK as well) that they plan to do far less QB designed runs, more QB choices to run on the RPO?
Also, unless I was mistaken, were there not a few sets in the B&G game and in practice shots with two backs one on each side of the QB; QB under center (!!!), and two TE sets with more blocking from those?
That’s what I thought I picked up, and I thought I’d read something to that effect from B&G maybe.
I would dearly like to see statistical analysis on this. The run game clearly has improved overall since the Weis era–but I’d argue (perceptually speaking, as I haven’t done the stats analysis), that we’ve been more explosive running the ball (I think that’s pretty obvious) but that those yards tend to come in non-“short yardage” situations. I remember someone (alstein, I think) who kept talking about how our run game was good because we averaged 5.whatever yards per rush. That’s good–it really is, and is much better than it used to be. But I’m still left with the overwhelming impression that on 3rd and 1, we don’t convert as often as the stat quoted to me would suggest. More explosive runs in other situations mask the inability to move a pile and get 1-2 yards when the D knows it’s coming. If you guys could take a look at that, it would be fantastic.
If it could then be compared to the NCAA average, and to some of the peer teams (or aspirational peers when it comes to run game, Alabama, Stanford, Oho State, Wisconsin, etc.) as to how we stack up relative to their conversion rates on short yardage situations (3rd or 4th and 2 and under, I guess?) where the D knows what is coming, that would go a long way to settling this. I can scream and yell that 50% isn’t good enough, how come our O-line can’t push forward for 1 measly yard?!?!?! but if Stanford or Bama is about the same, then that puts it in different perspective.
I looked this up in the 2014 post in this series and compared Notre Dame and Alabama, after someone said the same thing in the comment section. I’ll re-post here:
2016
3rd & Short
ND: 32 rushes (10 passes), 20 first downs (62.5%)
Bama: 50 rushes (10 passes), 37 first downs (74.0%)
4th Down
ND: 9 rushes, 8 first downs (88.8%)
Bama: 12 rushes, 5 first downs (41.6%)
2015
3rd & Short
ND: 28 rushes (15 passes), 16 first downs (57.1%)
Bama: 40 rushes (15 passes), 25 first downs (62.5%)
4th Down
ND: 4 rushes, 3 first downs (75.0%)
Bama: 13 rushes, 8 first downs (61.5%)
2014
3rd & Short
ND: 26 rushes (22 passes), 19 first downs (73.0%)
Bama: 49 rushes (17 passes), 27 first downs (55.1%)
4th Down
ND: 10 rushes, 3 first downs (30.0%)
Bama: 8 rushes, 3 first downs (37.5%)
I’m not sure how much we can take from the 4th down rushes (because they aren’t filtered for 1-3 yards) but we’re better than Alabama. But, the Tide could have half of those attempts while blowing opponents out and running on 4th and 6 past midfield, or situations like that. That would take a deeper dive.
Add the stats up and we converted 63.9% of our third and short rushes and Alabama converted 64.0% over this 3-year span.
They ran the ball 76.7% of the time in those situations and Notre Dame ran 64.6% of the time.
Notre Dame converted 59.5% of their 3rd & short passes and Alabama converted 50.0%
Now, the possibility may be that Alabama converts at a higher clip most of their games and then their 3rd teamers really struggle late in games when they get brutally conservative.
The big thing that sticks out is that Alabama ran 48 more 3rd & short plays over the 3 seasons. That’s probably due to being a better offense overall and thus running 525 more plays overall than Notre Dame.
I’ll have a little bit more on offensive run explosiveness in the last post on this series. But for some further info today….
OPPONENT RUSH SUCCESS 3rd & SHORT:
ND
2016: 20/39 (51.2%)
2015: 20/34 (58.8%)
2014: 25/38 (65.7%)
TOTAL: 65/111 (58.5%)
Bama
2016: 23/33 (69.6%)
2015: 9/23 (39.1%)
2014: 18/32 (56.2%)
TOTAL: 50/88 (56.8%)
So, both short yardage situations for offense/defense with each team really aren’t that different EXCEPT Alabama has more attempts on offense and fewer attempts on defense which indicates a broader indictment of being better overall in lots of areas and not a whole lot to do with ‘toughness’ and stuff like that.
The more and more research I do the less important the short yardage stuff seems to be.
20+ YARD RUSHES GIVEN UP:
ND
2016: 16
2015: 26
2014: 13
TOTAL: 55
Bama
2016: 6
2015: 8
2014: 11
TOTAL: 25
Notre Dame hasn’t even been too bad here (especially given BVG’s presence) and still Alabama’s defense blows us out of the water.
Broadly speaking, it seems as though being better in a lot of different areas gives the appearance that Alabama’s short yardage offense is better, or even much better. If your defense is almost never allowing you to be losing your next short yardage success on offense will be perceived as more important.
They can fail on short yardage, punt the ball, pick up a Pick 6, force a punt, and then convert one short yardage on their next drive that leads to a touchdown. Only 50% success so far but they’re up 14-0. And that specific short yardage feels like it was really important in comparison to Notre Dame who might have converted their first short yardage but failed the second and are losing 10-7 early on. Very quickly, perceptions are molded.
Thanks, great work. That does put things into perspective. I’m in the middle of research papers, but will read it more closely later, but for now, I think it answers my question, enough to dispel the “ND never converts in short yardage, and a team like Bama does it all the time.”
There is a huge point in there that you state, but it is kind of buried in your paragraph.
“Alabama has more attempts on offense and fewer attempts on defense which indicates a broader indictment of being better overall in lots of areas and not a whole lot to do with ‘toughness’ and stuff like that.”
AND
“Broadly speaking, it seems as though being better in a lot of different areas gives the appearance that Alabama’s short yardage offense is better, or even much better.”
I was trying to make this point the other day (or maybe other week) when talking about how Pass D is more important than RunD/RunO.
Bama is excellent at everything. They happen to be best at running and stopping the run, so people assume that is why they are winning. It obviously contributes as it is better to be good at things than not, but they keep winning because they are better than basically everyone at basically everything.
What is TOP?
Time of Possession.
It’ll be interesting to see who emerges as the most successful back in 2017. The OL should be better.
I’m glad to see some love for Adams in this article. Despite being our lead back in ’16 & damn good in ’15 he’s somehow the forgotten man during offseason hype discussions There’s a lot of talk about Jones Jr. & Williams over at Irish Sports Daily but Adams is kind of a beast!