Going over Notre Dame’s dramatic comeback win over LSU in Orlando – where did Ian Book give the Irish passing attack some much needed momentum? And how did Notre Dame counter a -2 turnover margin and rough day converting scoring opportunities?

The Basics

As expected, this was a close, intense game from start to finish. It wasn’t always pretty, especially in the first half, but the Irish and Tigers were in a dead-heat in terms of generating yardage and scoring opportunities. With the game tight throughout, garbage time was not a factor for this review.

Explosiveness

On a per play basis, the Irish held a slight edge in yards per play and were able to pull off a few more explosive plays (gains of 12+ on the ground or 16+ through the air). The difference-maker, which pushed the Irish into a big edge in yards per successful passs, was Miles Boykin’s game winning grab. The junior entered this game as Notre Dame’s sixth leading receiver and etched his name into Irish history with a catch and run sequence that made LSU’s secondary look like West Virginia high schoolers vs. Randy Moss.

Dave Aranda’s defense was swarming and disruptive through three quarters, but Ian Book and Boykin were finally able to break through on Notre Dame’s final two possessions. I’ll devote plenty more words to Book later, but it was impressive to see him battle back after LSU was able to create negative plays with key third down conversions (somehow going 2 for 2 on a pair 3rd and 19’s, on drives that led to 11 of Notre Dame’s 21 points).

Mike Elko’s unit was extremely active as well, generating pressure on Danny Etling at key moments and continuing to mostly be in the right places at the right times. A healthy Derrius Guice was relentless in fighting for every yard, but the Irish defense kept him about as contained as one could have hoped for. There were a few painful completions of 20+ yards allowed, but Elko and company effectively stiffened up yet again in the right areas of the field.

Efficiency

To my eye test it definitely didn’t seem like the Irish were efficient running the ball, yet they were over the 50% mark in a performance landed right in the middle of their most efficient running success rates of the year. The reason maybe it didn’t feel that great could be the weird ways in which the offense was successful – the running backs averaged 4.4 yards per carry, with a 44% success rate, and amassed just 80 yards. Meanwhile, Wimbush and “Speed Reads” Book piled up 102 yards (excluding sacks), running for 9.3 YPC and successful on seven of eleven runs (64%). Add it all up and it’s a surprisingly solid 6.3 yards per carry against a talented LSU front, albeit one missing several key starters in the front seven.

 

In a tight contest, performance on passing downs made a significant difference, and this is where the QB change by Brian Kelly (while instant fodder for Twitter critics, including a certain former QB) turned out to be prescient.  With Wimbush in, the Irish were successful on just 2 of 12 passing downs (17%). Once Book took over, the Notre Dame offense faced fewer passing downs and fared better when they arrived, succeeding on five of eight passing downs (63%).

Speaking of coaching decisions, it wasn’t mentioned much, but I though the LSU staff played into Notre Dame’s hands a little bit with their play-calling in this one. The Tigers had 11 third downs with four or fewer yards to go, with eight of them coming in Notre Dame territory (where with a poor kicking game, going for it on fourth seemed like an even better idea than usual). But on those 11 occasions LSU opted to run the ball just three times. The Irish defense deserves a lot of accolades, but Matt Canada may have also outsmarted himself a bit in this one.

Finishing Drives, Field Position, & Turnovers

Before the soul-crushing meltdown in Miami, one of my constant worries for this playoff contending team was what would happen if the turnover well dried up a bit and the insane rate of converting scoring opportunities fell off. Against the Hurricanes it really didn’t matter since everything went wrong, but in the season finale in Palo Alto both of those areas killed the Irish. Notre Dame outgained the Cardinal in total yardage and yards per play, and had the same number of scoring opportunities as Stanford. But three turnovers were extremely costly, and Stanford more than doubled up the Irish in points per scoring opportunity, 6.33 to 2.83.

So in the Citrus Bowl it was fantastic and perhaps indicative of this team’s toughness to see Notre Dame pull out the win despite both losing the turnover battle and not performing well on LSU’s side of the field. The credit overwhelmingly belongs to the ND defense (with a shout-out to some Tiger kickers) holding their opponent to just 2.83 points per trip inside the Irish 40 yard line.

While there was no shortage of special teams drama, Tyler Newsome cancelled out a few errors with a great day, leading to only a small advantage in average starting field position for LSU. The Tigers average drive started at their own 29, while the Irish began on average at their own 26.

On to a long offseason

Before closing, thanks to everyone for reading and engaging in these previews and recaps this year. 2017 was an adventure that was mostly tremendous fun sprinkled with intermittent frustration, anger, and disappointment (less than usual, although did you notice there wasn’t a Stanford recap?). Every year I try to build and improve these reviews bit by bit, so if you have any constructive feedback feel free to drop a comment or shoot me an email.

A few parting thoughts as we move into the offseason:

Pump the brakes a bit on the Ian Book hype train – the QB competition is far from over

Transparently, I’m frustrated we are back in quarterback competition land again. At one point in the first half, I in absolute sincerity asked if BK was a rich man’s Les Miles in terms of handling offense and quarterbacks (in hindsight, hyperbole with a hint of truth?) Wimbush is a special runner, seems to be a great kid, and it seemed like he could be a three year starter. But given his lack of progression as a passer, due to what is probably a combination of mechanical and decision-making problems, he is probably the underdog in most fan’s minds entering the spring. It’s completely understandable – Wimbush struggled mightily in the three Irish losses, and earlier flashes of brilliance were always countered with head-scratching moments. Book was clearly better on Monday against LSU.

But what we’ve seen from Book as a whole this season hasn’t been all that different from Wimbush in terms of results. Stylistically it’s been different – Book completed a higher percentage of his passes at 61% vs 49% – but Wimbush is still better in yards per attempt (6.8 vs 6.1 YPA). Book also has four interceptions in 75 attempts (5.3% of passes) versus 6 in 275 attempts for Wimbush (2.2% of passes). Considering the level of competition, Book’s performance against UNC (4.7 YPA, 2 picks) is arguably as bad as Wimbush’s output against Miami or LSU.

Neither QB is a finished product, and whoever starts next year – assuming it’s one of these two – will have more growing pains to endure.

2017: a bounce-back that just clears the bar

As I’ve tried to make sense of this season – the incredible highs, the painful letdowns, the uplifting finish – I keep trying to return to preseason expectations as a measuring stick. I wrote this preseason in an article that mostly was critical of BK dipping in program quality over the last few seasons and also underachieving in wins relative to program quality:

“After finishing 29th in F+ last season, combined with performances below the top-25 level in three of the past four years, Kelly needs to show strong improvement to argue he’s made changes that are correcting the program’s course back to a top 10 (or near) level. A top 10-15 performance would represent a step in the right direction, and unless lightning strikes twice, will lead to enough wins that Kelly should be back. Any worse than top-15 in program quality, and that’s where lucky with wins and losses will determine Kelly’s fate.”

That’s pretty much exactly where the 2017 team ended up, right? Whether you use traditional polls or advanced stats, this team will finish in the top 10-15 range. It was a team good enough that there was little luck involved in getting to ten wins – the Irish played just three one-possession games and went 2-1 in those contests. I’ve written about second order wins before as a way to measure the lucky or unlucky breaks of a team – last season, for example, the Irish had 7.2 second order wins in a 4-8 season, one of the worst on record over the past decade. This season there’s little disparity, with 9.3 second-order wins in a 10-3 season.

Improvement on the defensive end seems to definitely represent a strong course correction and strong hire by Kelly in picking Elko. On the offensive side of the ball, things remain more murky – would an out-of-touch fan really have noticed much of a difference between the 2017 offense called by Chip Long and previous seasons? The Irish seemed to be developing a strong offensive identity through the first nine games, only to see the run game bog down over the final few games. I’m not sure if it was the increase in opponent quality, guys wearing down, or the passing game falling apart or a combination of the three, but it leaves me without much of an idea of what Chip Long’s ideal offense looks like next year.

It’s interesting to consider how much the sequencing of this season also impacts our perceptions of the Notre Dame program heading into this offseason. In an alternative timeline where the team finishes stronger– say we even just switched the USC and Stanford games on the schedule – I think there’s much more confidence in the upside of this era moving forward. For the fanbase, at least, you get the sense that the sour taste of the Miami and Stanford losses still weren’t quite washed out with the sweet Citrus Bowl win. Hopefully that isn’t true for the coaches and staff, who will look to capitalize on that momentum heading into the final signing period and spring practice.