See? I told you Alabama wasn’t going to be in the playoff... The board cleared up considerably this week, and with only a handful of true contenders left we can now get a lot more serious about projecting playoff scenarios. Without the Tide. Heh. The "538 conference championship win probability" is taken from the nifty [...]
Do we always take away too much from how a football game starts? I think for the most part it matters a lot whether that's fair I cannot say. On Saturday afternoon Pacific time--in a drizzly and windy Palo Alto--the Fighting Irish looked out of sorts and even disinterested while Stanford refused to stand down [...]
One more full regular season week of college football, dear friends. As the Irish prepare to win in Palo Alto for the first time in ages as heavy favorites they will be taking a back seat to a busy weekend across the country. But first, let's recap the last week. This Week's Winner: Chase Young, [...]
A dominant defensive effort led Notre Dame to a 40-7 route of Boston College that could have been an even bigger blowout on senior day. The Irish offense created nine scoring chances in ten drives before garbage time compared to just one all game for BC. But the ND offense settled for four field goals [...]
The Pac 12 is dangerously close to being eliminated after a momentous upset, and the Big 12 is alive thanks to a witches' brew of good fortune and home cooking. It's November, folks. Time to get weird... There were a bunch of stinker match-ups in the last couple of weeks, but with Rivalry Week upon [...]
Is anyone interested in an early look at the 2020 schedule? As the current season is winding down we have a good idea of the shape and feel of next year's schedule already. Here are 5 things I have on the brain thinking about the near future. Road Games The lack of true road games [...]
The home winning streak continues through another off-season. The Irish secured their 18th straight victory in South Bend and will have to wait until September 12, 2020 when Arkansas (under a new head coach, prayers up to that staff) strolls into town to open the home slate for next year. On this Senior Day during [...]
I was born and raised in a small town an hour south of Boston. My first trip to Notre Dame was the 1999 game vs Boston College. I was a naive nine-year-old. I didn't expect anything but fun with my dad and uncle exploring the campus I had only seen on television up until that [...]
We are one step closer to the Holy Grail, and with losses to Baylor and Minnesota, now left with just 3 undefeated teams in college football. It feels like we are pretty close to these unbeaten teams being locks to make the College Football Playoff barring a massive upset down the stretch, but of course [...]
The Irish checked all the boxes for a perfect game against Navy - scoring every possession early, forcing turnovers and passing downs, and limiting first down yardage. Second-half garbage time stats obscure in the final box score what was an incredibly dominant performance by Notre Dame against a Navy team that's still competing for the [...]
We got one moderate upset (is it really an upset if the winning, lower-ranked team was favored?) and were sooooo close to a big one, but you know what they say about being close - it only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Most of this week went very boringly to chalk and most of [...]
Well... That was fun. Remember that all advanced stats models include adjustments for garbage time, which is defined differently in each model but basically means being up by enough that both teams will change the way they're playing; by any definition, Notre Dame reached garbage time before the half against Navy. What the Irish did [...]
I don't know why anyone was worried about winning this game. Jokes aside, this is the type of performance that will make people think the Irish are going to blow Navy out for the next 5 years. Don't forget, Notre Dame kicks off against Navy in Ireland to open next season. Back to South Bend, [...]
Saddle up for the 93rd meeting between Notre Dame and the United States Naval Academy, a yearly tradition stretching back to the Knute Rockne days in 1927. Have you heard? Navy football is in the midst of a terrific turnaround season following a dismal 3-10 record a year ago. The Middies enter this weekend ranked [...]
Does LSU's resounding win over Alabama truly signal the end of a dynasty, as ESPN's Ivan Maisel wrote? That feels a little hyperbolic for a Tide team that's still averaging almost a 30 point margin per game this year, but it gives some sense of the impact LSU's win had on the college football landscape. [...]
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