A second consecutive drama-free win, despite numerous impactful personnel losses, moved the Irish to 9-1 and put them firmly on course for an 11-1 regular season record and a New Year's Six bowl bid. Our controversial position here at 18 Stripes is that this is a Good Thing, and that given that at the end [...]
In a development that we can quite fairly say surprised not just us but the entire college football recruiting world, blue-chip offensive lineman Aamil Wagner announced his commitment to Notre Dame today. Usually the recruiting sites have content pre-written because the recruit has tipped them off, and when the announcement comes they just push all [...]
Navy is done. Phew. There seems to be an oddly high level of discomfort in the fan base with what was an imperfect but highly effective performance against an annoying opponent. The defense held Navy without a touchdown for the first time since 1998 and held them under 200 total yards for the first time [...]
Another week, another effective performance against a flawed but offensively formidable opponent. This time though, the Irish offense was efficient enough that the advanced stats view the game much more positively. An advantage in yards per play, success rate, and points per scoring opportunity led to a solid bump from both SP+ and FPI, right [...]
Earlier in the year, someone asked SP+ creator Bill Connelly about Notre Dame's upward move in his model after their uninspiring win over Toledo. Connelly replied as such: 91% postgame win expectancy for ND, equivalent to about a three-score win. Massive success rate advantage and some bad turnovers luck. SP+ never ever ever says what [...]
September 13th, 2021. That's the day that Troy finally returned the Homeric favor and sacked the protagonist of the Greek tragedy that had unfolded in Los Angeles over the last several seasons. It is with profound sorrow that we Irish fans bid farewell to Southern Cal head coach Clay Helton, a fine gentleman who most [...]
As it turns out, it was not time to talk to your kids about Iowa football. Purdue's very much non-fluky win over the erstwhile #2 team - they outgained Iowa by almost 200 yards, allowed just 86 yards in the second half, and never trailed on their way to a three-score final margin - was very good [...]
The first half of this season has been... something. Lots of surprises both good and bad, some recent trend upwards, and very little clarity about the back half. Usually when we do this look-back we can get a pretty good sense of where things are headed, but 2021 is not that kind of year - [...]
What a wild week, man. And that's without even getting into what happened in our own game... Texas A&M, a week after a comeback that fell short against Mississippi State knocked them out of the Top 25, completed the comeback against erstwhile #1 Alabama - which marked Alabama's first loss to an unranked team since [...]
I haven't worked on this since Cincy's stinkin' Bearcats ruined everything. And thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice over it? We're closed! Definitely a Notre Dame fan. It was a rough one. As [...]
After a brief hiatus - life can be like that - we're back with some more advanced stats fun. We'll do the Lindsay Nelson thing and tell you that SP+ liked the Purdue game and FPI didn't before skipping ahead to later action. Interestingly, FPI was more impressed by the Wisconsin win than SP+ was, [...]
Notre Dame picked up its fifth 2023 commitment today when Florida running back Sedrick Irvin Jr. committed to Notre Dame. The 5'10", 190-pound Floridian is in fact the son of that Sedrick Irvin, who fans of the late-90s Irish will remember running very well for Nick Saban's Michigan State, and the cousin of Michael Irvin. Pops [...]
In the Toledo postgame episode of The Athletic's Notre Dame podcast, The Shamrock, longtime Irish reporter Pete Sampson noted that this wasn't what he had in mind when he said the one thing he knew for sure about this season was that Notre Dame would be entertaining. We hear you, Pete. We hear you. An [...]
Well folks, it's time to bring back the advanced stats win probability matrices. I know you missed perusing these rainbow-colored Excel graphics and agonizing (?) over decimal point changes, didn't want you to miss out on all that fun as the new season gets going. This is going to be an interesting year for comparisons [...]
We generally only do impromptu posts here for breaking news - usually a quick blurb about whatever development it was, so we both respond in short order and give you all somewhere to chat about it. Well, today we had to start over about fifteen times because news kept breaking. It seems like the last [...]
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