Recapping Notre Dame’s tough loss to Georgia with an review of the advanced stats. In a fairly even contest, where did the Irish come up short?

Bear with me for a quick trip into an alternate universe…

Notre Dame finally reversed their streak of losses in close games, gutting out a tough 22-20 win over a tough Georgia defense in a back and forth affair. The Irish defense was able to mostly contain the Bulldog running attack and force true freshman Jake Fromm to beat them. And while Fromm performed admirably and limited his mistakes, he wasn’t able to move the ball consistently against the Notre Dame defense. Kicker Justin Yoon bounced back in a big way with five field goals, including the game winner, after going 0-for-2 in the first game against Temple.

There are still many question marks for this team – Brandon Wimbush had an inconsistent day throwing the ball, and the Notre Dame offensive line went from unstoppable against Temple to unable to open up any running room against the Bulldogs. But there’s time for a young quarterback to improve, and the line won’t face many fronts with the combination of size, athleticism, and speed of UGA. The defense will have to pass much tougher tests against offenses with better passing attacks and lines, but looks to be head and shoulders above where it was in 2016 – it’s been a long time since the Irish have had competent units on both sides of the ball. The schedule now sets up nicely for ND, who will be favored in each game until a showdown with USC at home.

We weren’t all that far away from a write-up like that one after Saturday night. But how different does it feel this week? Our football fandom is constantly sitting on a seesaw, waiting for enormous athletes to jump on our side or the other and send our hopes diving toward a collision with the ground or catapulting up into the air. And if you’re a Notre Dame fan, even though there was a lot to like, it’s easy to be nauseous from the constant up and down, which lately has included a lot more landing with our butts on the ground than time airborne. There’s a strong desire to just get off the seesaw and go do something else (the Irish have played more one-possession games (42) than any FBS team since 2010), but I’m an optimist and a sucker, so here we go.

The Basics

This was an even contest that was mostly controlled by both defenses. The Dawgs outgained Notre Dame by a decent margin, but add in the penalty yardage and it’s almost dead even. UGA had a hard time keeping their hands away from Irish facemasks, and racked up 12 penalties for a whopping 126 yards. The Irish had a few dumb plays of their own, but account for penalty yardage and this contest was essentially dead even.

Explosiveness

A week after gashing Temple with one long run after another, the Irish were completely bottled up by the Georgia defense. The Bulldogs had the size and strength to clog runs up the middle and athleticism to contain attempts to attack with speed to the edge. Notre Dame’s longest runs of the day was an 8-yard Wimbush scramble and a Josh Adams 7-yard scamper. Those were the only rushing gains longer than 5 yards on the evening – Georgia completely shut down the explosive rushing game. I won’t beat a dead horse, but some carries for Dexter Williams – the guy sporting a 20.7 yards per carry average in this young season – may have been a good idea.

The Irish were able to find more success through the air – unfortunately just not on a regular basis. On the opportunities where Brandon Wimbush had time he was able to find some Alize Mack, Cam Smith, and Josh Adams downfield with some space to run. But in his second start Wimbush was constantly pressured and forced to make quick reads, and a few big opportunities downfield were barely missed.

Georgia faired a little worse breaking big plays through the air but better on the ground. The Notre Dame run defense was stout and disruptive for much of the game, but the few lapses they had went for 30+ yards and were able to tilt the field. The Bulldogs found success motioning backs across the formation and making the Irish cover the run to the edge and up the middle, and caught Notre Dame out of position enough to make a difference.

The passing defense continues to limit long gains downfield, although the secondary hasn’t faced a murderer’s row of opposing passing offenses. Still, Mike Elko has forced inexperienced quarterbacks and less threatening receivers to make plays, and to his credit and his players, opponents haven’t been able to make the Irish pay yet. There were a few drops by UGA receivers, but the majority of long gains came where Irish defensive backs were in the right position and simply had receivers make a better play on the ball. This is a defense that through two games that isn’t perfect, but looks much more fluid, cohesive, and fundamentally sound, and will be tested further in the coming weeks.

Efficiency

Sustaining drives and being efficient is difficult when the average distance to go for Notre Dame on 2nd down was 8.7 yards, and 7.7 yards to go on 3rd down. These were the Chinese finger traps the Irish offense had to avoid – passing downs with a young quarterback against a strong defense. It’s easy to criticize play-calling, and I agree that some more creativity and attempts to take advantage of Georgia’s aggressiveness were needed, but little was working regardless of how the Irish tried to move the ball.

Defensively, you couldn’t ask for a much better performance against a dangerous rushing attack. With a true freshman making his first start in a semi-hostile/semi-supportive environment, the Bulldogs were going to try to ride their talented backs and wear down the Notre Dame defense. And down to the final defensive possession, the Irish held their own against Georgia’s vaunted rushing attack. It remains to be seen just how strong that attack will be (is the Bulldog offensive line still bad, or now passable?) – but by success rate, this was Georgia’s 3rd worst rushing performance in their last 15 games.

Last week I predicted that leverage rate and the ability to avoid passing downs would be critical, and the Irish lost both of that battles. Both quarterbacks struggled on passing downs, but Notre Dame faced 10 more of them than Georgia. The Bulldog defense was simply the best unit on the field, and in the end controlled the game enough to scratch out a narrow win.

Finishing Drives, Field Position, & Turnovers

In an even matchup, the Irish lost a few more small but costly battles in the final three factors. Despite six scoring opportunities inside the Georgia 40, the Irish walked away with just one touchdown. This is the cost of inefficiency – even if you can break a big play, or string together a few successful plays, or the opponent commits a dumb penalty, it still requires additional successful plays to convert red zone visits into touchdowns.

Notre Dame barely lost the field position battle – starting drives on average on their own 28 while UGA’s average starting field position was its own 32. Tyler Newsome had another strong day, and Justin Yoon was perfect after his close misses in the opener. But the Irish coverage units gave some yards away, in particular on kickoffs.

The ND defense also did a strong job tightening up in the red zone, and added two takeaways to the ledger. One was a gift from a botched handoff, but Drue Tranquill had a fantastic pick that gave the Irish offense a chance to put a scoring threat together before halftime. Both Wimbush fumbles were tremendously costly, but it’s hard to fault him too much for them after the number of hits he took in this game. I don’t think ball security with fumbles will turn into a Golson-like issue for Wimbush, but after putting three on the ground last week it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Big Picture

This loss lowers Notre Dame’s ceiling for 2017 and leaves us frustrated, but mostly confirms many things we probably thought before the season. This was most likely going to be a top-20ish team, and against this schedule that projected to translate into something between 10-2 and 7-5 without some excessively good or bad luck or coaching blunders. This chalks up another one in “close loss” category and incrementally decreases the number of expected wins, putting some of the uglier scenarios in play. But the most likely outcome of 8-4 probably included a loss like this one.

And the way it unfolded wasn’t particularly surprising – we expected a close game, hoped for more against a talented yet incomplete team, and received a result that didn’t surprise anyone. The offense struggled more than expected, but the defense balanced that out by out-performing expectations. A Notre Dame quarterback in his second start struggled against a talented defense, and an offense under new leadership and playcalling had an early clunker. The defense is much improved but not to a place yet where it can (or should be expected) to be good enough to win games with the offense struggling.

The big picture piece of this that stings the most – that “we are who we thought we were” which is probably a good and not close to great team, according to this measuring stick. That’s been a constant theme of the Kelly era, and so have the inability to put together a strong offense and defense at the same time. I’m obviously a huge advocate for advanced stats, but we’re definitely to a point where BK may be an advanced stats darling – a coach good enough to avoid blowouts and win enough not to get fired, but not to beat strong teams.

On to Boston College?

Each game early in the season is an attempt to learn as much as we can about how good or bad this Notre Dame game truly is, but we’re still finding a lot out. Boston College will provide some more answers – mostly for the offense. The Eagles will have the usual solid defense, and probably try to replicate Georgia’s gameplan of forcing pressure and the passing game to beat them. Can the offensive line return to a better form? Can Wimbush and the receivers step up and find more consistency to make defenses pay for aggressiveness against the run?

The Eagles are playing faster on offense (9th in adjusted pace), and I applaud them for trying something new. But so far the results have been more of the same, and failing fast isn’t a great strategy. I’m still not sold that the Irish defense won’t be a liability against more complete offenses later this season, but this week provides another showcase opportunity for Elko and company to create havoc and turnovers. The defense should be able to attack without much fear of the Boston College passing game (125th in passing success rate) or rushing attack (111th in Rushing IsoPPP and 123rd in stuff rate). Hopefully we can continue to see young players improve, coordinators getting more and more comfortable, and mental toughness from a team and coaching staff that preached it over the entire offseason.