When you’re playing a team as utterly hapless as Florida State, you just want to make sure they have no reason to care. Notre Dame did not Saturday night, dispatching the Seminoles 52-3 and moving a step closer to a College Football Playoff spot.
The defense threw a sack party in the Florida State backfield, Riley Leonard looked sharp in all aspects of the game, and the Irish weathered another injury – to Howard Cross – that hopefully will not be long term. Luckily, Notre Dame should be large favorites next week against Virginia and hopefully would be able to give him a week if he needed it.
Defense cuts loose
The Notre Dame defense shutting down FSU was pretty easy to predict, given the ineptitude displayed by the Noles on that side of the ball all season. What added to the amusement on that side was the avalanche of sacks – eight of them in all – foisted upon the FSU front.
Rylie Mills made sport of seeing if he could blow up all the Noles offensive linemen; I think he got three of them. It was fun to see Jaylen Sneed, Junior Tuihalamaka and Gabe Rubio have moments in the backfield as well.
SNEED WITH THE STOP 💪#GoIrish☘️ | @sneed_jaylen pic.twitter.com/QvSwRAnpTn
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) November 10, 2024
The ND back seven was rarely tested for obvious reasons, but we saw Christian Gray make a nice tackle on defense, and even cooler, Luke Talich read a quick pass to a wideout and took it to the house in the waning minutes, leading to two other members of his position group picking up personal foul flags I doubt anyone cared about.
LUKE TALICH 7️⃣9️⃣ YARD PICK 6#GoIrish☘️ pic.twitter.com/ycGzPCij4D
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) November 10, 2024
Cross sprained his ankle. ND shouldn’t need him to beat Virginia (though the Cavs did beat Pittsburgh tonight). It would be useful to have him against Army.
Leonard in command
Riley Leonard just keeps looking better. He wasn’t perfect – no one ever is – but each week he looks more in control of the Notre Dame offense. He scored again, as he does, and he made several nice throws. More than once he escaped the pocket for easy gains; it’s remarkable that someone so big can be so elusive.
The talk all offseason was that Riley Leonard didn’t need to win the games; he just needed to play his role. Since the calendar turned to October, he’s done that pretty much flawlessly. ND fans spent so much of the first few weeks howling about why the Irish took this guy. We now know why.
One play in the second quarter that gained no yards was my favorite of the day. Leonard escaped pressure and was about to take off to his right – and directly into an oncoming rusher. Instead he stepped back to his left into the pocket and made a nice throw. It was dropped (Jordan Faison I think), but it was tangible evidence of what we’ve been seeing week by week – this guy is a good quarterback.
Pass catchers
It’s probably not a coincidence that as Leonard has gotten better as a passer, the guys who catch the ball have started to move forward. Jayden Harrison in particular seems to be developing a strong rapport with Leonard and made a couple nice grabs tonight. Mitchell Evans did not actually catch his leaping grab in the third quarter, but it was the most Mitchell Evans-y thing he’s done all season and stoked hopes that he’s fully back from his ACL tear from just over a year ago. We’re seeing more and more of Faison and Jaden Greathouse.
Notre Dame wants game-breakers, but what it needs for now is reliable players who will grab the ball, run good routes and get open. We are, slowly but surely, working towards that.
Also, it was really cool that Deion Colzie scored. The guy got passed up by about 20 receivers over the past 2 years and is still here. That deserved a garbage time TD, no matter how much Todd Blackledge complained about it. (And his teammates sure seemed to love it.)
1️⃣8️⃣ ➡️ 0️⃣#GoIrish☘️ | @SteveAngeli_125 | @almightydeion_ pic.twitter.com/UQUUYCrCAn
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) November 10, 2024
Looking ahead
So Notre Dame will definitely be passing Miami in next week’s rankings (glad someone finally beat those frauds [not you Cam Ward, but everybody else on your roster]) and could jump past BYU if the Cougars lose (down 2 scores as I type this). They’ll get leapfrogged by Alabama after the Tide took Brian Kelly to the woodshed. It’s TBD if they’ll pass Georgia, but even if they don’t, they’ll pass the loser of next week’s UGA/Tennessee game (as long as they take care of business themselves, of course).
If BYU loses, it essentially clinches that no one from the Big 12 will get an at-large bid over a hypothetical 11-1 ND. No one in the ACC is getting an at-large bid over an 11-1 ND. Things are lining up pretty well for the Irish, and there are still 3 more weeks to play.
Let’s not overlook the stadium doing to war chant at FSU in the fourth quarter. Couldn’t happen to a nicer program.
Speaking of which, I love that Freeman’s teams seem to have a killer instinct. When they’re playing a bad team (not in the MAC), they tend to blast them enough to get the backups plenty of reps instead of farting out 10 point wins over crappy ACC teams.
Merci, Andy — nice to wake up to this first look. I gotta be thinking how consistent Al Golden’s defenses have been to look not great the first series, then start buckling down. Will this cost us? I am thinking maybe it’s because he prepares well and the other team always does new stuff?
I don’t even worry about an opening drive score anymore, as I’ve become absolutely certain it’ll be the last time they score until the backups are in ( or not even then, in the case of last night)
I think it’s a testament to the respect other teams give him and the defense. They know they can’t compete in a straight fight, so they break all tendencies and have a curated script for the first 10-15 plays. This is pretty common when one team is wayyy more talented. Notice how the defense always locks up, due to:
1) all the surprises are made known now
2) OCs aren’t capable of going off tendency for a whole game, that’s counter to human nature.
3) even with the points allowed, it takes A LOT of timely conversions. Almost all these scoring drives allowed are 10+ play with multiple silly goose 3rd and 4th down conversions. That’s not sustainable over a whole game as demonstrated several times over.
Goldens pointed out in several post games “yeah, we’ve never seen that look from team [x] before”. It’d be one thing if they continued to give up points, but after the initial salvo of extremely intentional plays, the game settles and the defense takes over
This nicely sums up my thoughts on Golden as well!
Very much for me too. Thanks guys!
Thanks for the write up. It was a fun game to watch! Nice to see Greathouse get involved, and those two sideline grabs by Harrison were really nice. The drops were pretty rough, and I hope the coaches are hammering home that we won’t be able to miss plays like that when we play real competition in the playoff.
I’m starting to get concerned that 11-1 BYU who loses the Big XII is going to get an at large spot, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Right now the logjam appears to be 2-loss SEC teams. I expect Bama and Georgia will be ahead of us on Tuesday, and Ole Miss right behind us.
Finally, on the Mitchell Evans no catch, I’ve really come to hate modern replay rules. All of this frame by frame, “wait did the ball jiggle slightly” crap really sucks the energy out of the game, especially for the crowd
I really hate how replay is used today. It should be limited to 60 seconds and if the call isn’t obvious, then the call on the field stands
No replay should take longer than it takes me to microwave a bag of instant rice (the only minor exception should be if an overturned call requires work to determine down/distance and clock adjustments)
Agreed. Especially for me the “completing the catch” or “Dez Bryant” rule. We’re going these zoom in close up frame by frame analyses of whether the ball moved slightly as he was rolling over after landing with the ball. It’s not the intent of the rule but the replay officials seem to have become power hungry over it
Good writeup. Thanks for it and I always look forward to your comments. And it was a satisfying victory for sure.
However, I take exception to your comments about Riley. Specifically “It was dropped (Jordan Faison I think), but it was tangible evidence of what we’ve been seeing week by week – this guy is a good quarterback.” Riley is an exceptional runner and continually impresses with his ability to juke and evade defensive tacklers. At this he’s one of the best. However, his passing is below average for top 25 quarterbacks. His accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. If I were a receiver and had Riley miss me with an errant pass when I was open, I’d be frustrated beyond belief. I believe we’re seeing that with some of the receivers now. There were several passes last night that were either overthrown, behind the runner or short. While improved since the start of the year, he’s not a good passer.
I’m afraid I have to agree with you. For all the talk about improvement, getting on the same page with Denbrock, etc (Pete Sampson just wrote an article last week about how Riley Leonard the Passer was going to lead us to the playoffs) he’s still wildly inconsistent, both physically and mentally. Missing the read on Evans – the one Denbrock was yelling at him about on the sideline – cost 4 points that could make a difference against good competition. Between the overthrows and the drops, it was a rough night for “the offense is improving week to week!”
I agree with you two. No way I thought Leonard took a step forward this week. He was not accurate. His footwork on some throws was clearly bad. I think this is a decent offense despite their QBs limits. Once the playoffs start, I think you’ll see ND running Leonard more often, which could open some stuff up.
It seems we get either really good Price or Love, never both. We’ll need that come playoff time.
I’m not surprised some think I was too effusive. I probably was.
That said, just because Leonard is not a great thrower (and never will be) doesn’t mean he’s not a good quarterback. The points count the same no matter how they’re scored!
Agreed he’s a good QB. My quibble was any praise for his passing yesterday. He should be better than that. There had been what seemed to be a step by step progression before yesterday. FSU was not capable of changing that. But it was not a step forward, so I’m somewhat disappointed.
Michael Mayer comes down with that circus catch.
Claypool (and probably Boykin) are talented enough to come down with a few of those bad throws. Problem with our receiver room is we haven’t had a real #1 guy since Claypool. We can get these guys. I found a depressing article of our leading WR since 2001. Starting with Tate in 2008 it’s Tate/Floyd/TJ Jones/Will Fuller/Eq St. Brown/Boykin/Claypool, with Tyler Eifert in 2012 the only time in there a WR wasn’t the #1 reciever.
Any of those guys would be the clear #1 on this team.
I’m looking forward to figuring out whatever it takes to get a #1 WR (and more TEs) that are going to play on Sundays, or a QB that can make throws that make our mediocre WR look better. Yeah, I’d take that too.
The Todd Blackledge comment about whether ND should be throwing the ball at the end of the game irritated me. I made a comment to my brother at the time that it is good to see ND operate their game plan no matter how much they are up and that I hated the ‘ball control’ mode that Kelly would get into when up a few scores towards the end of the game. Then the other teams gets a late score or two in garbage time and the final score is 38-17 instead of the 52-3 domination that the team delivered. Then ND gets flak for not beating the team by 40 and their drive and killer instinct are questioned. The fact that we are putting in the 2nd and 3rd string is enough of a ‘concession’ without us having to run the ball for multiple 3 and outs in the 4th quarter.