It’s not always supposed to be that easy. It’s not supposed to be that easy in a rivalry game against Pittsburgh. On Saturday afternoon, it was just that easy as Notre Dame dominated a forlorn Panthers team 45-3 in front of a quiet pandemic crowd in Heinz Field.
Here are 3 quick takeaways from Notre Dame’s 5-0 start to 2020:
1) The Offense Did Their Job
It wasn’t a beautiful and especially memorable day for the offense, especially scoring 45 points through 3 quarters and having your starting quarterback resting on the bench comfortably before the final frame.
Still, the Irish mixed in a grinding running game, stayed patient and balanced despite some struggles, and finally came through with some big passing plays through the air.
Before the backups came in, the Irish put up nearly 400 yards at a healthy 6.1 yards per play. Additionally, Ian Book threw for at least 300 yards for the first time since the Virginia Tech game last year on November 2, 2019.
2) Pitt Hit the Eject Button
On the one hand, Pitt was dealing with an uphill battle going against this stout Irish defense with their backup quarterback. However, early on the Panthers looked like they wanted nothing to do with having their offense on the field.
Nothing encapsulated their performance quite like trying to run out the clock close to halftime with all 3 timeouts, only to see the Irish stuff them, call their own timeout, and block the punt for a returned touchdown.
If it’s possible for a football team to quit, it looked like Pitt said peace out sometime in the middle of the 2nd quarter.
3) Narduzzi Outcoached
Any time Notre Dame comes to town it’s a highlight game for Pittsburgh. They were one of the hot picks in the pre-season to make a bunch of noise in the ACC and their penchant for knocking off top-rated teams talked about all week.
Pitt fell flat on their face in a big moment and have lost 4 straight games. It was particularly embarrassing for offensive coordinator Mark Whipple who didn’t have any answers for Notre Dame’s defense.
It’s a tough look for Pitt with Pat Narduzzi in his 6th season and seemingly about to squander a very good defense if they can’t get quarterback Kenny Pickett back soon.
This should give Notre Dame a boost of confidence with a big game against Clemson quickly approaching. The defense demoralized another opponent and Tommy Rees & Company figured some things out on offense and scored 5 first half touchdowns.
Full recap to come tomorrow.
Narduzzi is as clumsy as he is stupid.
Whipple, you have failed me for the last time.
We need a picture of Narduzzi with the double nostril fog on the face shield. That dude was ready to explode.
Good win!
Feels pyrrhic with Austin getting hurt on Thursday and Lenzy re-agg’ing something today. Both so talented but also so fragile.
Nice to see Skowronek show out and Mayer also be a focal point. Just build around them in the passing game with the random shot to McKinley and Davis and away we go.
Should be good enough to comfortably beat everyone but Clemson.
Does anyone else remember how in 2018 Narduzzi said UCF was better than playoff entrant Notre Dame? Glad we shut his big mouth for him today!
Came with the receipts.
Is Pitt a rivalry game though?
I have seen seven overtimes of Pitt, and I say this with the utmost sincerity:
Fuck Pitt
For most teams with only 2 or maybe 3 real rivals, no.
For ND, with like 10 rivals and trophies for half those games, yes.
That’s fair. I guess they like share a tier of rivalry with Purdue, or maybe are in a slightly lower tier on their own for being out-of-state.
We’ll know Notre Dame is truly a rival to Pitt when they want to stop scheduling ND like they do for their other real rivals (WVU, Penn St).
I always thought that Penn State was the one (well, Paterno, if we’re being specific) who didn’t want any part of Pitt.
Pitt-West Virginia is that rivalry game where I love that it happens and at the same time would never personally want to be within a hundred miles of it.
Lea came out blitzing and changed early thank god. Our DBs didn’t look all that great in man to man at the start of the game. We were better off with guys in coverage. There were a couple occasions where our DBs went for the hit instead of the ball that irked me. Crawford could have batted that overturned completion and Brown had a pick if he wanted on a long pass down the middle. There’s always room for improvement, right?