Saturday's game against Virginia Tech presented the Irish with a chance to exorcise the demons of last year's loss in South Beach by going into a hostile road environment and coming out with a victory. But to football nerds like me, it also gave us a chance to see Chip Long - Notre Dame's promising [...]
Welcome back to the 18 Stripes Film Room. Dexter Williams returned to the field on Saturday and responded by slicing through the Stanford defense for a touchdown on his first carry behind a plethora of tight ends and pulling linemen. So pull out your lunch pail because we're talking some smash mouth football today. The [...]
Guys, we did a thing on Special Teams. No, it was not a Newsome punt (still a heavenly sight but the less we see of Tyler, the better we are), but a return. A proper one, at that. Lost in the excitement over us doing something in the return game is the fact that it [...]
Welcome back to the 18 Stripes Film Room. I've been off the past few weeks recruiting grizzly bears for Larz's secret training program. It's hard work but someone has to do it. Today we're going to take a look at Ian Book's touchdown pass to Chase Claypool. It's a good look at how Chip Long [...]
Just like Larz, I've been away from the Film Room for quite some time. But the 18 Stripes crew is already in mid-season form which means we have two film posts this week. Larz already looked at the defense so today we'll move to the offensive side of the ball. We'll take a look at Notre [...]
Two seasons ago Notre Dame and Michigan State combined to go 7-17 in hugely disappointing seasons for both programs. Last year both rebounded for combined 20-6 records each with their own double-digit win season and satisfying bowl victories. The Irish win in East Lansing this past September avenged what was a fairly pathetic effort against [...]
Notre Dame's offensive line won the Joe Moore Award as the best unit in the country yet gave up 30 sacks which was the most during the Brian Kelly era and an underwhelming tied for 87th in the country. What gives? How could a very good running team--and traditionally one of the top pass protecting [...]
With the recent internet rumor of a suspension for Dexter Williams the Fighting Irish could be facing Michigan on September 1st without 4 out of its top 5 running backs from last year's roster. The lone man standing in the backfield is Tony Jones, Jr. a rising redshirt sophomore who finished 2017 with the 4th [...]
Just about a year ago I wrote an article that recapped Notre Dame's run success rate through the recent seasons and wondered what was right and what was wrong. In short, I noticed the Irish lack of long running plays was a glaring weakness and, as luck would have it, Notre Dame proceeded to have [...]
We haven't opened the doors to the 18 Stripes Film Room in a while and with actual football (we can call it this, right?) being played inside Notre Dame Stadium recently I thought it was a good time to take a look at 7 plays that caught my eye early on in the spring game. [...]
I know there's a ton of recency bias in this statement, but Saturday's win in Syracuse had to be one of the top-5 most satisfying in the Brey era. Alstein did a great recap here, but I wanted to take a second to walk you through a few critical plays that tipped the scales in [...]
Braden Lenzy returned to the fold when he signed with Notre Dame today, during the first-ever early signing window for football. Lenzy first committed to the Irish almost ten months ago, shortly after visiting for the first junior day of the 2018 cycle. He flipped to Oregon in June, reportedly due to confusion about how [...]
Our Film Room articles have always been one of our most popular features - I know I've learned a ton from the smart guys on here who actually know what they're talking about with this stuff. We're trying something new with the film room that we hope brings another perspective, something we're calling "Film Room [...]
Chip Long came in talking about running the ball. But I was skeptical. After years of listening to Brian Kelly talk about emphasizing the run game and then seeing him abandon the run at the first sign of an extra defender approaching the line of scrimmage, I’ve learned to ignore the rhetoric and see what [...]
Last season, playaction passes were so insignificant that I actually forgot to tally that particular stat for my playcalling article. I have now tallied it and of the around 300 snaps I have charted just under 6% were playaction. This frequency will almost assuredly increase with Chip Long. Chip Long showed two different categories of playaction [...]
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