Easy, it was not. Notre Dame walked into the L.A. Coliseum on Saturday night with a playoff berth on the line and found itself quickly struggling against a precision short-passing game from JT Daniels and a revived USC defense with an aggressive blitz-heavy attack. It took a while, but the Irish righted the ship, crawled [...]
Notre Dame is in the College Football Playoff after defeating rival USC 24-17. As inspiring as it was to see the Trojans play a terrific first half and make the Irish sweat a bit in the second, a no-show job like the UCLA game the week before would've been ok. In any case, 12-0 has [...]
The stakes are high as the Fighting Irish take the biennial plane ride to Los Angeles and face their rival Southern California Trojans. For Notre Dame, a trip to their first-ever College Football Playoff is on the line while USC has little to play for except a minor bowl game or the role of spoiler [...]
Welcome back to the playoff big board! One fringe contender fell by the wayside and one more very nearly did, and a couple of serious contenders looked sluggish before taking care of business. You know who didn’t fall into either category? Yeah, you know who... The astute among you may notice that last week’s post [...]
One more full regular season week remains which means it's now Rivalry Week. Or for some, Hate Week. The top of our rankings remain static once again as we tumble towards what is looking like the most drama-free playoff race since its inception 5 years ago. Certainly there has to be some craziness awaiting us [...]
It wasn't Syracuse's day, that's for sure. After the Orange's 9th play from scrimmage they lost quarterback Eric Dungey to a mysterious back issue after just crossing mid-field and trying to climb back from an early 10-0 deficit. Although considered the better passer, Syracuse's backup quarterback did not fare well and was harassed for the [...]
Worst title ever. This will be only the 9th all-time meeting between Notre Dame and Syracuse which doesn't seem right. Whether it's the basketball rivalry coloring things stretching back to the Big East days or the fact that this will be the 6th meeting in the past 16 years on the gridiron, this feels like [...]
Notre Dame's recruiting machine added an unexpected piece today when linebacker Marist Liufau became the 20th member of the 2019 class. The 6'3", 210-pound Hawaiian wasn't on the radar of any casual fans and, in fact, many more dedicated recruitniks. He was, however, just on campus for an official visit, so he was quite clearly [...]
One thing I like about Chip Long is his ability to creatively use formations and motion to out-scheme the defense. I feel that past Notre Dame offenses where too reliant on one player making big plays to be successful, whether it's Will Fuller getting open deep or CJ Prosise breaking off a big run. Having [...]
In a game where the Irish needed to lean on the run, Dexter Williams and the offensive line came through with a season-high 8.14 yards per carry (excluding garbage time) against a solid FSU front. The Noles entered the game ranked 33rd in Rushing Defense S&P+, including the 26th best run stuff rate. But the [...]
Welcome back to the playoff big board! Another week that was chalk for our contenders... Our board will consist of all ranked undefeated teams and all ranked one-loss Power 5 teams from the the playoff committee rankings. I define "resume wins" for our purposes as wins over currently-ranked teams; it gets too complicated to project [...]
We found ourselves with a very quiet weekend and as a result not a single team moves inside the 18 Stripes Top 12 rankings. The rest of the rankings, well, they continue to be awfully weird. That's good because this upcoming weekend is as bereft of traditional big games as any in recent memory. There's [...]
Notre Dame barely could've scripted a better start to Saturday's game forcing a turnover on the second play from scrimmage and quickly jumping out to a 17-0 lead just over halfway through the 1st quarter. It was never close beyond Florida State closing the gap briefly to 11 points before the Irish ran away with [...]
Notre Dame won on Senior Day and it wasn't close. An interception by the forgotten Nick Coleman on Florida State's first series brought the ball deep into Seminole territory. From there, the Irish would score and the route was on inside a frigid Notre Dame Stadium. Run Game Stepped Up (and On FSU) The Irish [...]
It seems just like yesterday that Florida State was no longer the 9-win team incapable of breaking through and suddenly had morphed into an elite National Championship team. There was a time from mid-2011 through mid-2015 that the Seminoles were on a scorching hot 52-4 run that probably isn't fully appreciated yet historically. Today, things [...]
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