Despite the efforts of many, Notre Dame’s regular season winning streak against ACC teams continued late on Saturday night as the Irish came from behind to drop a physical Duke team 21-14 in Durham. It certainly wasn’t pretty but it’s an important victory with a pair of big night games still to come on the schedule until a much needed bye week gives this team some respite.
Here’s the 18S review of the win at Duke.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | DUKE |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 21 | 14 |
| Plays | 63 | 67 |
| Total Yards | 381 | 323 |
| Yards Per Play | 6.0 | 4.8 |
| Conversions | 6/18 | 7/16 |
| Completions | 15 | 12 |
| Yards/Attempt | 7.1 | 4.9 |
| Rushes | 32 | 40 |
| Rushing Success | 41.9% | 39.4% |
| 10+ Yds Rushes | 3 | 6 |
| 20+ Yds Passes | 5 | 3 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 23.8% | 20.9% |
Offense
QB: C
RB: C+
TE: A
OL: D
WR: D
As I mentioned in the preview to this game, Duke’s rushing defense stats were a little worse than last year but overall they’d been solid. Clemson ran for 213 yards at 5.0 yards per carry against them and it felt like some Irish fans believed this would be a 300-yard game on the ground for Notre Dame. Thanks to a perfectly executed fake punt and the late touchdown run, the Irish got to 4.96 yards per carry in this game but only 159 yards total.
This was the offensive lines worst game of the season by quite a big margin. There was very little running room most of the night, Hartman was pressured way too often and hit too many times, and we saw a frustrating amount of pre-snap penalties.
I was mentioning in the writers room Slack chat late in the game how much it stinks to face a running quarterback when you don’t have one–it feels like such an enormous differentiator in these close college football games. Then, Hartman came through with a gutsy 17-yard run to move the chains on 4th down. In general, I wish Hartman was a little more decisive running the ball–while realizing that’s not really his game–but he seems way too relaxed and chill (it is his overall vibe to be fair) a lot of the time when there are opportunities for positive run plays before him.
Through the air, it was a very blah day for Hartman whose long streak for touchdowns in consecutive games comes to an end.
No doubt, I’ll give Hartman (and by extension Gerad Parker) some leeway for all of the injuries at wide receiver. They tried to get true freshman Rico Flores going but that was terribly inefficient (2 catches on 7 targets). The fact that Hartman was trying to go to such a young player on the road against a ranked team is evidence enough that it wasn’t a great situation overall.
Overall, wide receivers caught just 4 passes. Four passes. Yikes. Double yikes.
I believe DJ Brown was credited with the 9-yard reception by Estime on the last full offensive series so that’s 11 receptions from non-wide receivers in this game. There’s no way the Irish can keep pace with USC’s offense (and maybe another opponent or two down the line) if the receivers don’t start doing better when they get healthy.
Rushing Success
Estime – 8 of 18
Love – 2 of 5
Hartman – 2 of 4
Payne – 1 of 3
Just a couple games ago it looked like Holden Staes was going to take the torch as the no. 1 passing tight end on the team. Since that big game against NC State, he has just 1 catch in 3 games though. In steps Mitchell Evans, fighting through an ankle injury, and dominates Duke with a player of the game 134 yards on 6 catches from 8 targets.
That’s the most yards from a Notre Dame tight end in a game in a very, very long time. Now, Evans leads the team in catches and yards on the season, although he’s yet to catch a touchdown in 2023.
Defense
DL: B+
LB: B
DB: B+
I didn’t have much to quibble about with the Notre Dame defense against Duke. Things got a little hairy in the 2nd half as the Irish offense was getting too bogged down but it never looked out of control for Notre Dame’s defense.
They took the run away from Duke early and that was evident by the Blue Devils’ running backs having zero successful carries in the 1st half. That’s not a winning recipe if you’re Mike Elko. Their tag team running backs of Jaquez Moore and Jordan Waters had long carries of 34, 13, and 12 yards on the night but were shut down for just 39 yards on their 17 carries for 2.29 yards per rush.
Full credit to Riley Leonard who hung in there and carried Duke’s offense for some stretches of the game. He cobbled together 3 long runs for a total of 64 yards and ended up leading the team in rushing.
If the Irish offense had a better day though, this is probably a sobering night for Duke when looking at things through the prism of the loss, Leonard’s injury, and really not a whole lot done on offense.
Their wide receivers only caught 7 passes for 62 yards and Duke didn’t give the Irish a ton to worry about through the air. Leonard would finish with just 134 yards through the air, his fewest over the last 13 games at Duke.
Stuffs
Cross – 5.5(!!!!)
Lifuau – 2.5
Botelho – 2
Mills – 1.5
JJB – 1
Harper – 1
Burnham – 0.5
Watts – 0.5
Nana – 0.5
Notre Dame did a pretty good job of harassing Leonard and providing a good pass rush, too. We still haven’t had a game with 3 sacks this season but the overall pressure rate was very high on Saturday night.
We need to make special mention to Howard Cross, as well. Recently, I wondered about his playmaking this season and he came through with one of the best games from an Irish interior defensive lineman in modern history. In total:
- 13 tackles
- 5.5 stuffs
- 1 sack
- 3.5 TFL
- 2 forced fumbles
For a nose guard, those are stupid amazing numbers.
Final Thoughts
From anything inside 45 yards, be honest how sure were you that Spencer Shrader would’ve hit a game-winning field goal if needed on that last drive? He’s only 5 of 10 this season, it’s been a while since Notre Dame’s kicker had struggles like this.
The Irish got a little lucky shall we say, on the game-winning touchdown. Top defensive lineman DeWayne Carter torched right guard Rocco Spindler and Estime found his momentum stopped stuck behind center Zeke Correll and left guard Pat Coogan. However, Spindler got just enough of a late push on Carter towards the backfield that Estime was just able to outrun Carter’s diving tackle from behind.
On the flip side, Notre Dame was pretty fortunate that Duke’s kicker missed from 25 and 38 yards, respectively. That’s really bad.
I’m not stopping anyone from counting Tobias Merriweather out from becoming a valued starter as a receiver, at least for this season. I’m not surprised by only 4 targets on the game, but zero catches is pretty embarrassing. Merriweather also false started once and is awfully lucky Notre Dame pulled out the win after his OPI call on the last drive.
OPI (and an ugly drop to boot) nearly derailed ND’s game-winning drive.
It’ll get lost in the win but Hartman was close to being intercepted for the first time this season on the play right before his epic 4th down scramble.
What was Chris Tyree doing fielding that punt return? In the moment, I was sure Notre Dame was going to lose if they didn’t recover that. However, we finally recovered a fumble from the other team! God is good!
You have to feel terrible for Riley Leonard and his injury. If nothing is broken I have to believe he’ll be out several weeks with a really bad sprain. Duke has a bye week then faces NC State, Florida State, and Louisville afterwards.
Last week, I complained about how college football is broadcast on television and consumed by fans. I’m not one to ask about these things because I am as anti-official as they come. However, in combination with TV’s grip over the sport I feel like we need a complete teardown of how football is officiated. Among other errors, the crew made up an illegal review of McFerson’s coffin corner punt. Just decided to check it out without indisputable evidence and of course they overturned the call, didn’t they!
No carries from Jadarian Price is duly noted. Once again, true freshman Jeremiyah Love was featured quite a bit (great call on the punt fake everyone!) and I think he may go into this off-season as the clubhouse leader to be RB1 in 2024.
I don’t necessarily like it, but excessive tackles with the crown of your helmet in non-head/neck areas are going to be called more and more in the coming years. I do feel bad for Jordan Botelho who will miss the 1st half against Louisville.
I’ve been thinking more about Parker and the offense in this game. It seemed needlessly conservative trying to run right through the middle on so many plays without many constraint plays to build off that approach. Granted, the problems at wide receiver make things difficult. We’re also seeing Estime continue to struggle with his vision and working in tight space when there isn’t a lot of room at the line of scrimmage. The Irish back had his 30-yard touchdown run to win it, plus a 6-yard touchdown run and an additional 9-yard run to end the game with another 6-yard run and 5-yard run. His other 13 carries went for 25 yards!
Former Notre Dame player Ja’Mion Franklin picked up a sack last night.
I know for many it’s just Duke and it doesn’t matter, but the advanced stats say this will likely be the 2nd toughest defense Notre Dame faces in the regular season. We might see a very similar type of frustrating offensive game against Clemson. Let’s hope it’s not so against USC’s defense.
Notre Dame is “only” 72nd nationally in penalties per game. It feels much worse than that, doesn’t it?
We tend not to look too critically at other team’s coaching mistakes but the decision to punt on 4th & 6 from Notre Dame’s 33-yard line was really dumb for Duke. They downed it to the 5-yard line to their credit. But that deep in Notre Dame territory with just a 1-point lead? I would’ve gone for it, myself. Full credit to safety Xavier Watts for coming off the edge (with clean up help from NaNa Osafo-Mensah) to make a stop for -2 yards on the previous 3rd down to push Duke back to a 4th & 6 situation.
Pretty dreadful offense performance last night. Seemed like there were chances but no consistent follow through.
I am choosing to focus on the positive, though – Evans and Cross are some ballers!
How many of those unsuccessful third downs were impacted by previous penalties? Advanced stats may show often Hartman had third and long more than other games to sustain drives. Towards the end of the game were those designed rollouts to the right?
Elko.
I like the end of game pic, where his hands are on his head with his back to the camera, and his body language is saying “we lost”.
I’ve been trying to put a finger on who I thought he looked like and it hit me when I was rewatching.
Garth Brooks At the very least Garth’s brother (no idea if he has one)
Has there been any noise about the coffin corner punt review? I don’t get how the ACC doesn’t acknowledge it.
There were several funny moments on the broadcast where Herbie would praise ND or the officials for the call on the field, and then it was overturned, and he’s going “uh…”
I mean the punt very clearly was going over the pylon (the pylon cam shot was indisputable) and, at least from some angles, looked like it shaded inside. They got the call right. People are getting worked up over this, but it’s hard for me to given the result was ultimately correct even if the process was improper.
Maybe the reason you can’t review that call is the pylon camera is not trustworthy ? The ref was only 2 yds away. It didn’t look indisputable to me. And the rule is the rule.
Pylon cam is on the inside of the pylon and it looked like it went right over the top of that. Overhead cam made it look like it was a touchback by a foot. The entire ball needs to stay outside the pylon for it to be OOB. There is no way it wasn’t a touchback as a matter of fact.
The replay rule is the rule and they shouldn’t have overturned on that basis, but (1) that’s kind of a dumb rule and (2) in the broader scheme of things there are way way way worse calls that went against ND this season. It’s more objectionable they made the technically correct review on the target IMO considering stuff like that probably happens 20x a game.
Going off memory here, but it seemed like different camera angles showed totally different things. Overhead camera looked like it went over the pylon and the call was right. Sideline camera looked like it went out at the 1 and wasn’t close to the pylon.
I don’t know. It’s the ACC. I think the penalty ratio was 10:1 in Duke’s favor at one point last night.
The ref was a yard away and had a better look at it than any. I saw no angle that was definitive and for all I know the pylon cam was a pigeon flying by. JMO
I think it’s a little weird to say “it’s fine that they did XYZ thing in contravention of the specified rules/processes in order to get to the ‘correct’ answer.” Like I get it, but the whole point of articulating a rule is to follow it. I’d argue it’s actually a core component of civilization (as ridiculous as that sounds).
Laughing at myself, looking at your username and realizing that you presumably went to Harvard Law and I’m trying to explain how important rule of law is
I mean, yes, I get that, but also do you feel wronged by the Bush Push? It’s the same deal here. Bad rule that nobody knew about prior to the event and that makes little sense, not enforced. They screwed up, no doubt about it, but on some cosmic scale there were worse calls made against ND in this game!
In any case, other than that they both went against ND it makes zero sense to complain about this and also feel like ND was wronged by the targeting call, which is basically a mirror image of the touchback call – I.e., they clearly got that call right as a matter of applying the rule but it’s kind of a dumb application of the rule. (Haven’t seen that here but that inconsistency is all over the message boards.)
I don’t feel wronged by the targeting call. Stupid rule that is applied correctly.
I don’t really understand your first paragraph. If they went back and reviewed the Bush push (when they technically shouldn’t be able to review it), determined that Reggie’s pushing was done illegally, and oveturned the touchdown… THEN that would be the parallel to what happened, but they didn’t, so I’m not sure what you’re saying?
I’m saying both instances involved situations where there were dumb rules that nobody knew about were not followed and the cosmically just result occurred as a result of the rules not being followed. It was obviously a touchback (I legitimately cannot believe people are arguing the opposite; I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. There’s not a single replay angle that indicates it went out before the pylon and there were multiple that indicate it was a touchback), and it’s ok (again, on a cosmic level) that Reggie Bush shoved Leinart in because it felt right that you should be able to do that. As they did after the Bush Push, I have a feeling they may change the dumb rule as a result of this play.
I guess I quibble with “because it felt right that you should be able to do that.” That is your subjective POV after the event occurred, whereas rules-based games are naturally structured by setting the rules and then playing the game according to those rules. The rules say you can’t review it, so don’t. It is fairly intuitive why people are upset about that.
The real apt parallel with the Bush Push is that both involved human error, but with the Bush Push, we were forced to live with the human error, while with the punt call, the rules were broken in order to remedy the mistake. I guess you can call me a hypocrite for being upset at both results…
Btw, the cosmically just result IMHO is an ND win on the Bush Push and the touchback on the punt. I don’t know another ND fan who would say the Bush Push was cosmically just!
The reason people weren’t particularly annoyed with the Bush Push call being missed wasn’t that it couldn’t be reviewed and oh well what can you do; it was that you should be allowed to push the QB in the back on a QB sneak and everyone kind of intuited that even though it was technically against the rules (which nobody knew until afterwards). Similarly, the reason people shouldn’t be particularly annoyed that they got the process wrong that ultimately got the right call on the field is because they ultimately got the right call on the field, and following the process would have meant we benefitted from a dumb rule where you can only review that call if it hits the pylon or is ruled a touchback instead of ruled OOB (which is a rule nobody knew, including the refs in this game and the replay guy calling the game, until afterwards).
Again, I get it, it’s the rules, and we *should* have benefitted if following the rules. I’m just saying that, among many other things from the game (including other bad calls from the refs!), I don’t view it as something to get relatively worked up about because, and this really can’t be stated enough apparently, it was actually a touchback.
To your latter point, fine, cosmically ND should win every game, fair enough.
I’m not even sure this is true.
1) We had the ref standing literally right at the goal line make his call.
2) A tighter replay shot directly from the official’s POV that is inconclusive, but I think backs up his initial call.
3) The pylon cam view which seems inconclusive, maybe leaning toward touchback.
4) A replay shot from row 37 well behind the goal line. This *seems* to suggest touchback the most but is by far the worst angle. The shadow also helps the perception that the ball is a touchback. Additionally, this replay kind of proves how poor the angle is as the ball bounces at the 2-yard line, seems to take forever through the air (when does it cross the field of play?), and is suddenly well out of bounds. It does seem like the last bounce was really whacky though. Right off the ground it looks like it’s going to hit the guy in the black with headphones on and he even shifts his weight away from the line, but then the ball bounces a few feet to his left.
If Eric and I are agreeing that the replays are inconclusive that’s conclusive that they are.
The reason people weren’t annoyed with the Bush Push is because the refs never enforced a rule, and continued to not enforce that rule, so there was some consistency in the inconsistency of which rules are applied or not. (which also bothers me…)
Agree with Eric that it is less clear cut than you seem to think it was. Otherwise the call would’ve been “right” on the field, no?
What I originally asked was whether there was recognition from the ACC. Suppose the ACC publicly said: “it doesn’t matter that this was done improperly because we got to the right answer.” Would you feel uncomfortable with the ACC if they published a statement like that? I sure would…
I can’t figure out the geometry in my head, but that pylon cam is a little fish eye, and seemed to be pointing slightly towards field center. If it is pointed straight down the line, does that change the perceived direction of the football?
Either way, taking out the rule violation, I don’t think it was indisputable video evidence.
Totally concur!
I believe that camera is pointing straight down the sideline. That’s how I understood it. I wonder if the other camera, pointing down the goal line would even see the ball?
The rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
https://x.com/tbhorka/status/1708882627476836790?s=46&t=SWwcz0JnMUQisPh34tTT1A
Exciting update
Hey, great teams cover.
Where is the discipline with this team? Line up on-sides, don’t target a QB on the ground, wait until the ball is snapped before moving, cover a RB in motion. Yuck.
Four starting P5 QBs who have passed for more than 50 yards have no interceptions.
-Brady Cook, Missouri, 11 TDs, QBR 187.66, 74.5% (he just broke the SEC record for number of consecutive passes wiihout an interception which was 326)
-Cam Ward, Wash State – 13 TDs, QBR 187.65, 74.5% completions
-Sam Hartman, Notre Dame – 14 TDs, QBR 182.53, 66.2% completions
-Drew Allars, Penn State – 9 TDs, QBR 141.41, 64.2%
Arguably, Hartman has faced a stronger SoS.
Caleb Wiliams, Quinn Ewers, Bo Nix, Michael Pratt, Kyle McCord all have one interception. Penix has two.
Not the day to be griping about blown official reviews from the booth. #COYS
Love to see it.
That was a great game. Felt bad for Matip
Good write up Eric.
Cross is a star. We’re lucky to have him.
Rece Davis and Kirk Herbstreit were commenting that the targeting rules are there to protect the defensive player as much as the offensive player. That may be true, but the offensice player is most often injured. Feel bad for Botelho.
Is it just me or did both announcers praise Duke more than ND?
Merriweather is just not ready for prime time.
Hope Correll learned a lot from this game because it seemed he was, surprisingly, pushed off the ball many times last night.
Duke should be praised more, this might be the only game to give them their flowers. ND will have another primetime game on ABC next week (and presumably every year in the future)
All I will say is:
1. It is exhausting being everyone’s Biggest Game Ever In Program History every week. I get that it comes with the territory, but Jesus, ACC, have some chill. Onto Louisville’s Biggest Game Ever In Program History Ever next week.
2. This team does not exhibit the signs of a well coached team.
For your first point, I’ve said it before, but I feel like a lot of schools look at their schedule and circle two games: their rival and Notre Dame.
For the second, I’m raising the Chansi Stuckey alarm. Our two best receivers came in polished out of high school, and he looks to have lost Merriweather. FWIW, I’m in the camp that Merriweather was never going to pan out, but turning him around would have been a great coaching job.
I just…we have nothing to do with these southern basketball schools.
Criminy.
Merriweather looks totally out of his realm as a pass catcher. It doesn’t look like he has much fight or want to in him. Unfortunately the situation with the WR room doesn’t leave any room for patience.
Admiting the rash of sloppy penalties, still — I think it does exhibit some of the signs of a well-coached team. They have tons of fighting spirit. They do not play dirty. They have shown many signs of potential excellence.
They are tough as nails, that is true. Last night, every part of my ND fan brain was expecting a devastating, season-destroying loss.
Me also, those expectations. I was clutching the remote control and telling myself not to throw it again. All very intense for 0530.
I mean to point 2, so you think it’s just from watching too much nd football relative to other teams. I imagine georgia, lsu usc, and just about every other team bemoan little things done wrong, especially when all they watch is their team. But these are college kids and there’s like 150 plays in a game.
The penalty discrepancy I don’t know what to say, and the wide receiver crew stinks. As already stated here chansi should be on high alert. But other than that, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say this is a terribly coached team.
ND is not the only team I watch, which I think you probably know. “Other teams commit penalties too” doesn’t mean that ND is well-coached.
I didn’t say it was a terribly coached team and I wouldn’t say that. But here are the things that, IMO, point to questionable coaching.
-Penalties, which no one can seriously dispute at this point. I don’t think we get a fair shake from ACC refs but last night we couldn’t even line up correctly on either side of the ball.
-10 men on defense in multiple games, one of which cost us the game.
-Incoherent strategy about going for it vs. punting/kicking field goals.
-Freeman’s discussion of preferring to set up a FG instead of the game-winning TD last night.
-Essentially useless special teams (although the fake punt was cool). Man do we miss Mason.
-Repeatedly trying to run behind struggling guards.
Nah I wasn’t saying that, I think we are just more prone to focus on the teams we root for warts, same way we do with our spouse, our boss, ourselves.
The ten men on defense multiple times is indefensible, I think the tackling is not good enough, they have way too much faith in spencer shrader, I mean no fan had faith he would make any fg.
Special teams is fine. and honestly I think their 4th down decision is fine. Like Eric said, if ND had a mobile quarterback I bet we’d feel way different, but they used 4th down conversions on their first touchdown drive, their second field goal drive and obviously their last touchdown drive. I’m of the opinion they should always go for it on 4th and 2 or less so I might not be the best person. I think Kelly got really good at this his last couple years
To my original point I just think if I watched every snap of other good teams i’d have lots of questions, like tackling, questionable 4th down decisions, horrible special teams (looking at you lincoln riley). we’re probably arguing semantics, because we both seem to agree the coaching is fine but could be better in spots
Special teams. We’re not as good as we were last year, but I do wonder how much is coaching. I don’t think Tyree should be our returner, which is a coaching decision, but do we know if anyone in practice is any better?
For punt blocks, it’s hard to replace a freak like Foskey. We don’t have a freak this year like JOK or Foskey. That’s not coaching.
Our pedigreed kicker isn’t accurate. Hard to coach that.
Our punter seems pretty good overall, definitely helped keep us in the OSU game. Everybody has bad games.
I’ve seen this take a couple of places regarding the special teams not being as good and I’m not sure I really agree with those takes. I agree with you, talent makes a difference and if Schrader were making 95% of his FGA we would all feel differently.
Outside of a few plays, I haven’t seen us needlessly run the ball out of the endzone on kickoffs setting us up inside our own 15. Punt return hasn’t been great, but man Brandon Joseph was terrible last year and always let the ball bounce 15 yards.
The punt block was awesome last year. I also think it was born out of necessity since there was so little confidence in the offense. I don’t remember knowing who the ST coach was until that streak got going. Special teams hasn’t cost us a game and I haven’t seen any glaring issues that will cost us the game. Outside of him going and kicking the FG’s, what else can a coach do? Similar to how I feel about Stuckey. Is he supposed to go out and catch the ball that hits the WR’s in the hands. Sometimes players have to make players and it’s ok to criticize them and not just blame the coaches.
Eric, I’d agree with you on Elko’s pooch punt except a FG beats you. 5yd. line vs. 33.yd line? Tough call.
I think considering how inept both offenses were, punting felt like the right call. If it were 4th and 4, you go
5 yard line vs. 33 yard line vs. possible 1st down and maybe sealing the game. You have to add in that latter possibility too if you’re adding in the result of the punt.
@Yes, if they had gotten a first down it most likely would have been considered the correct call.@
if you told me that notre dame would escape durham with a last second win despite questionable officiating i’d have thought micah shrewsberry was doing an epic year 1 turn around of MBB
being serious though i survived
barely
go irish
Two thoughts about the offensive line and lack of rushing success:
This is a pretty sweet all access production of the game winning drive:
Totally, Gambit, I was just going to post this rec myself.
For all the handwringing about the notable shortcomings (all deserved) the guts and poise on this drive are memorable.
A few thoughts given the (moderate) distance of time to consider…
Oh boy was the officiating terrible. Like really bad. A bunch of the false starts were from Duke simulating the snap count and Freeman went nuts on the refs over it, but of course to no avail. 12 flags for 70 yards on us vs. 2 flags for 28 yards on them – and, notably, with the conference commissioner in attendance right after he publicly said our win streak is a problem for the conference. Yeah, OK… We’ve averaged 4.3 flags per game in four non-ACC games and 11 flags per game in two ACC games this year. Something to keep an eye on.
Duke’s defense is really good. Elko has done the same thing with them that he did with ND in 2017; he knows how to put guys in place to succeed and he knows how to put together a really good game plan.
Jamion Franklin played at probably the highest level of his entire career, and he’s been a solid player for them this year overall.
I don’t think we can overstate how impactful the missing WRs were. Not only did we miss Thomas and Greathouse’s ability as receivers, but Thomas is a big part of the run game (Rico is, uh, not up to his level yet) and those guys missing (and Salerno, remember) meant Merriweather and Flores had to play way more snaps than they ever had before. And on top of that, knowing that ND would have untested guys outside Duke overloaded on the run and just generally gummed everything up. The offense had serious issues but they were going against a good D missing top contributors from the shallowest spot on the depth chart.
The offense has found some tough sledding against the top half of the schedule to date, certainly. It’s also worth noting that we faced the 9th (OSU), 16th (Duke), and 21st (NC State) ranked defenses per F+, which combines FEI and SP+. The remaining schedule features the 7th (Clemson), 42nd (Louisville), 58th (Wake Forest), 64th (USC), 94th (Stanford), and 101st (Boston College) ranked defenses. Clemson looms large, obviously, but there should be more air available against everyone else. Also worth noting that F+ ranks the Irish offense 15th.
It still seems like Parker could have done some different things given the above difficulties (key players missing, really good Duke D) but it’s still a really helpful perspective to have. Hopefully against Clemson we can play closer to what we did against NC state if we can hold up in pass blocking better than against OSU.
Also where do you find the F+ rankings now? I had previously seen them on football outsiders but that website doesn’t seem to be working anymore.
Lets go win this
Not sure how many people saw this post on the final drive of the Duke game, however throwing it up here for those who aren’t aware of it. Nice to get a look inside the coaches talking about what’s going on in game. However, it is selective in how its cut I’m sure.
Isn’t simulating the snap count a penalty on the defense?
yes, i’m pretty sure it is.