Notre Dame won a game Saturday against Louisville, 12-7. At least, I think they won. It can be hard to see sometimes on a day where Clemson – the one measure of this season – utterly blowtorched Georgia Tech 73-7 and invited some (more) pessimistic thoughts about whether the Irish can hang in when the teams play in three weeks.
However, the day wasn’t completely without positives. (Again, I think.) I tried to find a few.
Situational football
One good thing I observed today was pretty high-level situational play from Notre Dame in the second half. The Irish ran nearly eight minutes off the clock to end the game, coming up with clutch third-down conversions time after time. (Kyren Williams was good all day, but especially so on that final drive.)
Ian Book’s touchdown, which proved to be the game-winner, was another example of good situational play. Rather than panic out of frustration that things weren’t coming a bit easier (*cough*fakefieldgoal*cough*), Book saw an opening and created a little something for himself. Book wasn’t always very good today, but he made a nice play there.
And, of course, on defense the Irish were mostly solid as usual. Louisville had one drive where it pretty much ate Clark Lea’s lunch, but before and after that there wasn’t much damage done. Seven points is always a good number to allow.
We learned a new rule
If you didn’t know blocking wasn’t permitted on an onside kick prior to the ball going 10 yards, congrats: You’re qualified to be an 18 Stripes postgame recapper. I sure as heck didn’t know that. Now that we know the rule, we know it was applied correctly on Louisville’s surprise-but-maybe-it-shouldn’t-have-been-a-surprise onside kick in the third quarter with Louisville already ahead 7-6. But it was pretty freaking lucky that it was, because I suspect that play was more likely than not to work out for the Cardinals even without that block.
The defensive line didn’t make things easy on Louisville
I have no particular evidence for this, but it felt like ND’s defensive line had a pretty solid game. Louisville wasn’t able to get much of anything going up the middle in the run game, and the Irish stretched plays out fairly effectively and didn’t allow Malik Cunningham a ton of time to throw. (Now, the secondary, that might be a slightly different story; far too many passes that looked wounded duck-y were completed for my taste.)
Seriously, though, Kyren Williams is awesome
Not much more needed here. Kyren Williams pretty much makes the most he can make out of almost every carry he takes. It’s pretty terrific to watch. And if you weren’t counting, he can be a bell-cow, too. His 25th carry of the game – that’s a lot for a college running back these days – was the game-clincher on 3rd and 5 that saw him make a couple of great cuts and get loose for a big gain.
This one wasn’t pretty. I don’t have a laundry list of positives. Brendan’s Win Probability Matrix is going to give us something like a 25 percent chance to beat Clemson when he publishes it later this week. That’s about 23 more than I’d give us. But, hey, we don’t have to play Clemson next week. We have to play Pittsburgh. Hopefully I’ll have a more fun recap to write after that one.
That was bowling show ugly. Credit to Louisville for playing well, but no one really ever credits Clemson’s opponents for giving them a great game. That’s reason for concern.
Can excuse a B- effort last week for being the first game in 3 weeks. This one though is tougher to overlook.
Coaching decisions to not kick a field goal and go for 2 needlessly directly took 4 points off the board in a game with no margin for error. Always drives me crazy.
Passing game make no sense. Tight ends had two total catches. That’s a head scratcher. It’s like they wanted to go into a fight with one hand tied behind their backs.
But, a win is a win is a win to echo the title of the article. Survive and advance. Notre Dame had a typical “Pitt game” this week, so they better bounce back and easily win next week against actual Pitt if they want to give any indicators they are a playoff worthy team.
Exactly. Very disappointing result, though I was encouraged by the way the defense played, but for that one drive. Louisville was supposed to have a good offense, and we did a good job of shutting them down. The offense, and the passing game in particular seemed poor. Someone in the chat mentioned that they need to stop trying to force the ball to McKinley. I agree. He must have had 3-4 balls he could have caught but didn’t. The D played well on those balls, but he needs to come down with more of them. Still waiting to see something from Johnson. Did he play at all today?
I don’t think Johnson had a snap. You ain’t gonna see anything of significance from him this fall. He’s just not ready and has too many others in front of him.
Need to see more from Austin and Lenzy (who I believe also didn’t play today due to a soft tissue injury). I can live with the freshman not being ready, because no freshman WR ever makes an impact. Gotta get more from Austin and Lenzy to have any hope of beating UNC, let alone hanging with Clemson.
A win is a win. And it’s tough to win.
Offensively, we out-gained Louisville by approx. 100 yards, more than that in the running game. Were unable to finish drives. Sad.
Here are a couple of observations: ND/Book called inside running plays several time when Louisville had 8 in the box. Is Book not able to check out of a play? Is the offensive scheme not flexible enough? Williams is fantastic. Wanted to see Mayer involved in the passing game more. The misdirection plays that worked so well against Florida State didn’t seem to work today. Book had open men several times (e.g., Tyree in the middle one time) but the defensive pressure was so strong Book was unable to find them. Excluding Williams, the offense gets a C-.
Defensively, Cunningham was 16 for 19 with no picks! Just outstanding. I can only recall one possible interception by Crawford. Is this the “bend don’t break” Lea approach? Can’t complain about only giving up one touchdown. The defense gets a B.
Tony Dungy may be a great football mind but I’d like him to at least show a little favoritism to the Irish. All year he has been praising the coaches, players, schemes and character of our opponents. All that is well and good but I’d like him to err on the side of complimenting the Irish on their game plan, execution, players and coaches. I find myself cringing at some of Dungy’s praises of our competitors. It seems over the top to me.
Yeah, Dungy isn’t good. Thankfully the BC game is on the road, that would be so much cringe to hear him gushing about Jurkovec all game.
NBC has done their rights holder in Notre Dame a great disservice to avoid hiring Brady Quinn, where his ND ties have actually hindered his chance of getting the job. And now he’s probably outgrown it anyways with his career trajectory going to the moon.
Dungy has been gushing about Tommy Tremble all year, to name one ND-related compliment. He’s merely functional, but he’s a big upgrade from Flutie. He had a couple of good moments today -his pointing out the blocking on an early big gain, I think by Williams, was a good one.
After watching that game, people want to complain about the color commentator ? Perhaps your angst during the game had more to do with your teams performance? When I listen to Dungy I find myself thinking this is exactly what people would get upset with Flutie about. I’m not surprised to see complaints about him when ND has a disappointing performance.
I thought Dungy did a great job in this game. He continually called things out correctly and quickly which is 95% of what I want out of a color guy.
Have to have Austin out there more. He is a game changer and we could see that on the near TD pass that he was just barely out of bounds on.
Also, ran successfully all day and yet I barely remember any play action. I of course could be wrong but where the play action to a dragging TE or a deep go route to Lenzy (he did play a little bit but not much) off a play action fake on a 2 and 3. Seems like there were several chances for these types of play calls but they just never happened.
If we can’t get the ball down the field further than 10 yards in the air then we are just going to be severely limited against solid defenses. The run game looked very good all day, so let’s put that to our advantage and utilize play action!
Strange game.
A lot of good points. Hopefully they stop trying to make McKinley happen. He’s a great blocker. He’s not even close to being Chase Claypool so he shouldn’t get targets like that. Just not reliable enough.
I thought Book was OK. Nice to see him gunning downfield a bit. It’s frustrating when it looks like he has a drag route underneath wide open and he panics and steps into the pressure instead, trying to run. I noticed that like twice yesterday and not even on 3rd downs. Sometimes it feels he’s more on his 6th start instead of his 26th. But I def think you’re right that Ian Book will be appreciate a lot more once he leaves and ND has to replace him. He’s nothing if not steady and finds a way to win. How many times would a QB like Rees or Golson or Kizer have found a way to lose that type of game (with at least one back breaking turnover)? Book always wins those games.
Well, my prediction of the fiftyburger went over like a lead balloon. That’s why I don’t gamble. Anywho:
Very poorly coached game on the offensive side of the ball. Bad, weird days happen in college football, and if you can escape with a win, that’s fine.
Fine, however, is going to get creamed by Clemson.
This was the worst-coached win of the Kelly era, I think? The end-of-half timeout usage in the first half was unbelievably bad. I thought they were supposed to have somebody whose job it is to tell him how to manage those (as pathetic as that is, considering end-of-half timeout usage is pretty straightforwardly obvious most of the time)? If that guy exists, he or she should be fired.
That and the fake field goal call were the clear giveaways that Kelly was really unhappy with the offensive production and trying to steal more points (I was thinking it before Dungy said it, but this was another good thing he pointed out yesterday).
Painful game. I am enjoying going to the local, socially distanced game watch. You can’t really hear Dungy. I think he is ok, but a little bit on the boring side. Flutie would just make you mad. Mayock and Haden, I at least felt a little smarter after watching the game. Dungy, I am just glad I am awake. Game calling was odd, but I think there was a method to it. Heading south, both Louisville and ND threw the ball. Heading north, not so much. I think that was wind related. I think we should have established the run in both directions, but I am not paid the big bucks. The fake field goal had two elements. It may have been too far to work, and he went wide when he was supposed to cut inside right away. Watching it on the highlights, if he had gone in the B gap (between guard and tackle) right away, he makes the 5 untouched and Banks was crushing the guy standing on the five so he would have converted if not scored. That is a tough criticism for a guy who probably didn’t practice it at all and can’t be expected to catch the ball, stand, put the ball away and cut upfield on a read in a second or two. Considering Dexter Williams was a trained RB who tried to bounce everything outside and only ran inside when there was an enormous hole, that call goes on the coaches. Take the points there. You are winning, get to a two score lead. At the end of the day, the polls don’t matter. Looking good doesn’t matter. Beating Clemson matters. What we did today means nothing toward that. GT beat Louisville by 19. We beat them by 5. Anyone think GT is going to beat us by two TDs? Right now, the only game that matters is Pitt. Beating them matters more than anything else. In 7 days, it will be beating GT. As for Book, he is what he is at this point. His receivers are not helping at all. The play calling is not helping the receivers. Book was always a high floor, low ceiling guy. He was supposed to back-up Wimbush then mentor/back up Jurkovec. The problem with the plan came when Wimbush couldn’t hold the starter job and Jurkovec wasn’t ready for whatever reason. Book came in and won. After taking you to the play-off, you couldn’t pass him up for Jurkovec. Then he kept winning. Played just well enough that you couldn’t take him off the field. That is what he keeps doing, except this year, the two back-ups are guys that are bridging between Book and Buchner. Both probably have decent floors, but don’t have the ceiling that Buchner is projected to have. Hypothesis for you. Assuming we get to play Clemson twice, which means we beat UNC (thanks Fla. State – and we need another Miami Loss), I would argue all we have to… Read more »
Undefeated Pac-12 or Oklahoma State would easily get in over an ND team that just lost the ACCCG. Maybe undefeated BYU too.
I doubt BYU, they are playing a very weak schedule. I agree with you on undefeated OSU or Pac-12. I tend to doubt OSU will be undefeated though. As for Pac-12, I think a one loss team will get in over a 7 win team. that said, I tend to doubt they will get an undefeated team either. None of the PAC-12 are ranked particularly high. USC and Oregon are the only ones.
BYU isn’t going in over a 1 loss ND team that beat Clemson, whether the loss is in South Bend or Charlotte. There is zero chance whatsoever of that.