Notre Dame checked off almost every item on the Navy wish list in the first half. Use this opportunity for Drew Pyne and the passing game to get in rhythm? How about five touchdowns and 14.6 yards per dropback in the first 30 minutes! Converting passing downs? The Irish went 7 of 10, with wide receivers prominently involved making explosive plays. Take an early lead and make the triple option inefficient? It wasn’t pretty, but a 30% success rate implies a good chance limiting the Midshipmen. What could go wrong?

A whole lot, it turns out! The second half featured zero (0) successful Notre Dame runs, with Navy sacking Pyne five times. The Irish defense did a better job limiting explosive plays, but still yielding some long scoring drives (and a short one after a Pyne interception) that made things tense late.

No garbage time in this game, only end of game kneel-downs and end of half possessions excluded from the numbers below.

Stats from a few excellent sources – College Football Data, Game On Paper, and often referencing SP+ and FEI numbers. If you get lost, check out this handy advanced stats glossary here or reach out in the comments.

Unpredictable Irish offense (in a bad way)

Imagine waking up from a coma and looking through the box scores of the Notre Dame offense this season. “We dominated Clemson on the ground….but struggled to run on Stanford, Marshall, and Navy? Did the offensive line go on vacation those weeks?” Without diving into the X’s and O’s, the causes are obviously more complicated than simply the running game having a hard time. A common theme throughout the run game struggles was the passing game failing to pose enough of a threat. The Midshipmen pushed that idea to an extreme in the second half, loading the box and blitzing without concern.

There’s no shame in not winning the havoc battle against Navy, but losing this badly is some grim stuff. The Middies didn’t sell out quite as much in the first half, but the formula was out there – take some easy short yards in the passing game, and look for some deep shots or opportunities to leak out backs against blitzes.

Defensive consistency is hard, especially missing personnel

There aren’t many profound takeaways about the defensive effort in this game. Defending the triple option is no fun to begin with, and more difficulty was piled on Al Golden with the absences of JD Bertrand and Brandon Joseph. In an obvious let-down spot and missing key players I’m less concerned with an output like this – keeping the Midshipmen inefficient on the ground, but suffering some lapses that let them accelerate drives and wriggle out of bad situations.

Red zone stops continue to be an issue for this Notre Dame team, although they did hold Navy to a field goal on one visit and nearly come up with a pick on another. I have to think Ken Niumatalolo is kicking himself over some early gambles he didn’t take in this game, especially punting on Navy’s first possession near midfield.

On a similar note, I thought the missed Grupe field goal attempt in the first half was the first obvious missed 4th down decision for Marcus Freeman, especially given the distance, recent struggles kicking, and opponent. That was also a weird possession where it seemed like the staff may have been trying too hard to play clock games – with a few minutes remaining before halftime, they were running the play clock to zero. The intention of limiting how much time Navy had for their likely final possession I can get on board with, but the Irish offense was too far away and there was too much time left to be planning that far in advance. And those 1st and 2nd down plays seemed off in their timing as a result, putting the Irish in a 3rd and long they couldn’t convert with a Styles screen before the ill-fated field goal attempt.

What’s Notre Dame’s record with average special teams play?

With a lot of credit to Brian Mason’s magic, the Irish are 2nd nationally in field position advantages, starting the average drive ten yards closer to scoring than opponents. This is a massive edge over the course of a game! By FEI’s special teams rating Notre Dame is 4th nationally, including 1st in punt return efficiency (which captures blocks and returns).

Against Navy, this field position matters a ton, and again Notre Dame was +13 yards per possession. Back up the proverbial Brinks truck to keep Brian Mason as long as he’s willing to stay and do cool stuff on special teams.